The South and Reconstruction

The “Reconstruction” of the United States of America was the point in history just after the Civil War. The point in time where the secessionist southern states were brought back into the Union and all Blacks were declared free also marked the beginning of this era. This attempt at re-building the fragile Union cannot be said however to be a great success. Many will even go to the point of saying that although the Civil War was lost by the South, it can be said that the South won in the Reconstruction. Why was it then, that the North allowed this to come to be, and what exactly made it a Southern victory?

The South did not earn a victory during the Reconstruction so much as the North failed to achieve one. The times of re-knitting the Union was a troublesome and rocky operation, with many obstacles impeding the path to success. To start, solid leadership was few and far between after the close of the Civil War. Most of the nations leaders and honorable gentlemen had all been sent off to war, and the vast majority of them never returned. Abraham Lincoln, possibly the most stalwart leader of them all, lost his life before he could see his endeavors to their end. A number of Southerners were far from cooperative as well during this transition, as many simply refused to accept the end of the war, and some even went to the extreme as to move to Brazil to escape the grasp of the Northern politicians. The issue of the African American was hardly fixed as well.

Racism was said to be even stronger than it was before the war. A resentment between races mounted not only in the South but unfortunately in the North as well. Institutions such as the KKK strived to keep the pre-Civil War South alive, and committed themselves to preserving the old Confederate way of life. The actions of such organizations grew to become quite violent, and casted the South in an even darker light. Despite the efforts of the northerners, the Confederate “Lost Cause” seemed to not be so lost at all. Unstable and corrupt administrations such as that was under Ulysses S. Grant did not help the situation either. It seemed that the war was not won at Appomattox, and could not be won afterward either.

The South succeeded in not being abducted into the Northern way of life without a doubt. The sincerely stubborn southerners refused to adopt the new and restrictive ways, and as a result never quite did so. The heritage of the Confederacy lived on, and to this day can be seen as living on, as it continues to survive through items such as the state flags of the various southern states, which shockingly represent the flag of the Confederacy.