Redeemers
Encyclopedia
In United States history, "Redeemers" and "Redemption" were terms used by white Southerners
to describe a political coalition in the Southern United States
during the Reconstruction era which followed the American Civil War
. Redeemers were the southern wing of the Bourbon Democrats, the conservative, pro-business wing of the Democratic Party
, who sought to oust the Republican coalition of freedmen
, carpetbagger
s and scalawag
s.
During Reconstruction, the South was under occupation by federal forces and the state governments
were dominated by Republicans. Republicans nationally pressed for the granting of political rights to the newly freed slaves as the key to their becoming full citizens. The Thirteenth Amendment
(banning slavery), Fourteenth Amendment
(guaranteeing the civil rights
of former slaves and ensuring equal protection of the laws
), and Fifteenth Amendment
(prohibiting the denial
of the right to vote on grounds of race, color, or previous condition of servitude) enshrined such political rights in the Constitution
.
Numerous educated blacks returned to the South to work for Reconstruction. Some blacks attained positions of political power under these conditions. But, the Reconstruction governments were unpopular with many white Southerners, who were not willing to accept defeat and continued to try to prevent black political activity by any means. While the elite planter class often supported insurgencies, violence against freedmen and other Republicans was often carried out by other whites; insurgency took the form of the secret Ku Klux Klan
in the first years after the war.
In the 1870s, the Southern Democrats
exercised power through paramilitary organizations such as the White League
and Red Shirts, especially in Louisiana and Mississippi, respectively. The Red Shirts were also active in North Carolina. Southern Democrats continued to enforce their influence with white paramilitary groups that turned out Republican officeholders, and terrorized and assassinated other freedmen and their allies to suppress voting. By the time of the presidential election of 1876
, only three states of the South — (Louisiana
, South Carolina
, and Florida
) had not yet been taken over by white Democrats, or were "unredeemed". The disputed Presidential election between Republican governor of Ohio Rutherford B. Hayes
and Democratic governor of New York Samuel J. Tilden
was resolved by the Compromise of 1877
, also known as the Corrupt Bargain
. Hayes became President in exchange for numerous favors to the South, one of which was the removal of Federal troops from the remaining "unredeemed" Southern states. With the removal of these forces, Reconstruction came to an end.
In the 1870s, southern Democrats
began to muster more political power as former Confederates began to vote again. It was a movement that gathered energy up until the Compromise of 1877
, in the process known as the Redemption. White Democratic Southerners saw themselves as redeeming the South by regaining power. They appealed to scalawags (white Southerners who supported the Republican Party
after the civil war and during the time of reconstruction).
More importantly, in a second wave of violence following the suppression of the Ku Klux Klan, violence began to increase in the Deep South. In 1868 white terrorists tried to prevent Republicans from winning the fall election in Louisiana. Over a few days, they killed some two hundred freedmen in St. Landry Parish. Other violence erupted, From April to October, there were 1,081 political murders in Louisiana, in which most of the victims were freedmen. Violence was part of campaigns prior to the election of 1872 in several states. In 1874 and 1875, more formal paramilitary
groups affiliated with the Democratic Party conducted intimidation, terrorism and violence against black voters and their allies to reduce Republican voting and turn officeholders out. These included the White League
and Red Shirts. They worked openly for specific political ends, and often solicited coverage of their activities by the press. Every election from 1868 on was surrounded by intimidation and violence; they were usually marked by fraud as well.
In the aftermath of the disputed gubernatorial election of 1872 in Louisiana
, for instance, the competing governors each certified slates of local officers. This situation contributed to the Colfax Massacre
of 1873, in which white Democratic militia killed more than 100 Republican blacks in a confrontation over control of parish offices. Three whites died in the violence.
Later that year, thousands of armed white militia, supporters of the Democratic gubernatorial candidate John McEnery fought against New Orleans police and state militia in what was called the "Battle of Liberty Place". They took over the state government offices in New Orleans and occupied the capitol and armory. They turned Republican governor William Pitt Kellogg out of office, and retreated only in the face of the arrival of Federal troops sent by President Ulysses S. Grant
.
In 1874 the White League turned out six Republican officeholders in Coushatta, Louisiana
and told them to leave the state. Before they could make their way, they and five to twenty black witnesses were assassinated by white paramilitary
. In 1874 such remnants of white militia formed the White League
, a Democratic paramilitary group started first in Grant Parish of the Red River
area of Louisiana, with chapters rising across the state, especially in rural areas.
Similarly, in Mississippi, the Red Shirts formed as a prominent paramilitary group that enforced Democratic voting by intimidation and murder. Chapters of paramilitary Red Shirts arose and were active in North Carolina
and South Carolina
as well. They disrupted Republican meetings, killed leaders and officeholders, intimidated voters at the polls, or kept them away altogether.
The Redeemers' program emphasized opposition to the Republican governments, which they considered to be corrupt and a violation of true republican principles. They also worked to reestablish white supremacy. The crippling national economic problems and reliance on cotton meant that the South was struggling financially. Redeemers denounced taxes higher than what they had known before the war. At that time, however, the states had few functions, and planters maintained private institutions only. Redeemers wanted to reduce state debts. Once in power, they typically cut government spending; shortened legislative sessions; lowered politicians' salaries; scaled back public aid to railroads and corporations; and reduced support for the new systems of public education and some welfare institutions.
As Democrats took over state legislatures, they worked to change voter registration rules to strip most blacks and many poor whites of their ability to vote. Blacks
continued to vote in significant numbers well into the 1880s, with many winning local offices. Black Congressmen continued to be elected, albeit in ever smaller numbers, until the 1890s. George Henry White
, the last Southern black of the post-Reconstruction period to serve in Congress, retired in 1901, leaving Congress completely white.
In the 1890s, the Democrats faced challenges with the Agrarian Revolt, when their control of the South was threatened by the Farmers Alliance, the effects of Bimetallism
and the newly created People's Party
. On the national level, William Jennings Bryan
defeated the Bourbons and took control of the Democratic Party nationwide.
Democrats worked hard to prevent such populist coalitions. In the former Confederate South, from 1890 to 1908, starting with Mississippi, legislatures of ten of the eleven states passed disfranchising constitutions, which had new provisions for poll tax
es, literacy tests, and residency requirements that effectively disfranchised nearly all blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites. Hundreds of thousands of people were removed from voter registration rolls soon after these provisions were implemented.
In Alabama
, for instance, in 1900 fourteen Black Belt
counties had 79,311 voters on the rolls; by June 1, 1903, after the new constitution was passed, registration had dropped to just 1,081. Statewide Alabama in 1900 had 181,315 blacks eligible to vote. By 1903 only 2,980 were registered, although at least 74,000 were literate. From 1900 to 1903, white registered voters fell by more than 40,000, although their population grew in overall number. By 1941, more poor whites than blacks had been disfranchised in Alabama, mostly due to effects of the cumulative poll tax. Estimates were that 600,000 whites and 500,000 blacks had been disfranchised.
African Americans and poor whites were totally shut out of the political process and left unable to vote for representation. Southern legislatures passed Jim Crow laws imposing segregation in public facilities and places. As blacks were segregated, millions of people were quickly affected, to devastating effect. The disfranchisement lasted well into the later decades of the 20th century. They were shut out of all offices at the local and state level, as well as Federal level. Those who could not vote could not run for office or serve on juries, so they were never judged by peers.
While Congress had actively intervened for more than 20 years in elections in the South which the House Elections Committee judged to be flawed, after 1896 it backed off from intervening. Many Northern legislators were outraged about the disfranchisement of blacks and some proposed stripping the South of seats in Congress. They never managed to accomplish that, as southern representatives formed a strong, one-party voting block for decades. Although educated African Americans mounted legal challenges (with many secretly funded by educator Booker T. Washington
and his northern allies), the Supreme Court
upheld Mississippi's and Alabama's provisions in its rulings in Williams v. Mississippi
(1898) and Giles v. Harris
(1903).
It also represented the birth of a new southern society, rather than a return to its antebellum predecessor. Historian Gaines M. Foster explains how the South became known as the "Bible Belt
" by connecting this characterization with changing attitudes caused by slavery's demise. Freed from preoccupation with federal intervention over slavery, and even citing it as precedent, white southerners joined northerners in the national crusade to legislate morality. Viewed by some as a "bulwark of morality", the largely Protestant South took on a Bible Belt identity long before H. L. Mencken
coined the term.
, making racial segregation
required in all public facilities, and ushering in the nadir of American race relations
at the turn of the century. The constitutions included provisions for poll tax
es, literacy test
s and other tests, and residency requirements that were difficult for poor sharecroppers and laborers to meet.
Dominated by whites of the elite classes, state legislatures were also suspicious of lower-class whites and worked to prevent their affiliation with African Americans. From 1890 to 1908, starting with Mississippi
and ending with Georgia
, ten of the eleven states of the Confederacy passed new constitutions or amendments that created new requirements for voter registration. The effect on black disfranchisement was immediate and devastating. Hundreds of thousands of African Americans were removed from voter registration rolls across the South and effectively disfranchised, most before 1910. Tens of thousands of poor whites were also disfranchised. One-party rule under white Democrats was established. This wing of the Democrats kept control on the Southern U.S. until the 1960s, a phenomenon known as the Solid South
.
The impact of disfranchisement is illustrated by the case of Alabama
. In 1900, fourteen Black Belt
counties had 79,311 voters on the rolls; by June 1, 1903 after the new constitution, registration had dropped to just 1,081. Statewide Alabama in 1900 had 181,315 blacks eligible to vote. By 1903, only 2,980 were registered, although at least 74,000 were literate. From 1900 to 1903, white registered voters fell by more than 40,000, although their population grew. By 1941, more poor whites than blacks had been disfranchised in Alabama, mostly due to effects of the cumulative poll tax. Estimates were that 600,000 whites and 500,000 blacks had been disfranchised. With the disfranchisement of possible opposition, white Democrats established one-party rule in most of the South for more than 60 years. They benefited from the total number of population, which determined how many seats the South got in Congress, but only white people, and not all of them, got to vote.
African Americans and poor whites were totally shut out of the political process and left without representation. As blacks were segregated, millions of people were quickly affected, to devastating effect. The disfranchisement lasted well into the later decades of the 20th century. They were shut out of all offices at the local and state level, as well as Federal level. Those who could not vote could not serve on juries or in local offices. Because blacks lacked the vote, segregated schools, welfare institutions and services were consistently underfunded. Whites gave local sheriffs broad authority to enforce white supremacy
.
. As the last Federal troops left the ex-Confederacy, two old foes of American politics reappeared at the heart of the Southern polity – the twin, inflammatory issues of state rights and race. It was precisely on the ground of these two issues that the Civil War had broken out, and in 1877, sixteen years after the secession crisis, the South reaffirmed control over them.
“The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery”, wrote W. E. B. Du Bois. The black community in the South was brought back under the yoke of the Southern Democrats
, who had been politically undermined during Reconstruction. Whites in the South were committed to reestablish its own sociopolitical structure with the goal of a new social order enforcing racial subordination and labor control. While the Republicans succeeded in maintaining some power in part of the Upper South, such as Tennessee, in the Deep South there was a return to ‘home rule’.
In the aftermath of the Compromise of 1877
, Southern Democrats held the South’s black community under increasingly tight control. Politically, blacks were gradually evicted from public office, as the few that remained saw the sway they held over local politics considerably decreased. Socially, the situation was worse, as the Southern Democrats tightened their grip on the labor force. Vagrancy
and ‘anti-enticement’ laws were reinstituted. It became illegal to be jobless, or to leave a job before the contract expired. Economically, the blacks were stripped of independence, as new laws gave white planters the control over credit lines and property. Effectively, the black community was placed under a three-fold subjugation that was reminiscent of slavery.
for black people because of violence against blacks and against white Republicans. Frederick Douglass
and Reconstruction Congressman John R. Lynch
cited the withdrawal of federal troops from the South as a primary reason for the loss of voting rights and other civil rights
by African Americans after 1877.
By the turn of the century, white historians, led by the Dunning School
, saw Reconstruction as a failure because of its political and financial corruption, its failure to heal the hatreds of the war, and its control by self-serving northern politicians, such as the people around President Grant. Historian Claude Bowers
said that the worst part of what he called "the Tragic Era" was the extension of voting rights to freedmen, a policy he claimed led to misgovernment and corruption. The freedmen, the Dunning School historians argued, were not at fault because they were manipulated by corrupt white carpetbaggers interested only in raiding the state treasury and staying in power. They agreed the South had to be "redeemed" by foes of corruption. Reconstruction, in short, violated the values of "republicanism" and they classified all Republicans as "extremists". This interpretation of events was the hallmark of the Dunning School
which dominated most history textbooks from 1900 to the 1960s.
Beginning in the 1930s, historians such as C. Vann Woodward
and Howard K. Beale
attacked the "redemptionist" interpretation of Reconstruction, calling themselves "revisionists" and claimed that the real issues were economic. The Northern Radicals were tools of the railroads, and the Republicans in the South were manipulated to do their bidding. The Redeemers, furthermore, were also tools of the railroads and were themselves corrupt.
In 1935, W. E. B. Du Bois published a Marxist analysis in his Black Reconstruction
: An Essay toward a History of the Part which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880. His book emphasized the role of African Americans during Reconstruction, noted their collaboration with whites, their lack of majority in most legislatures, and also the achievements of Reconstruction: establishing universal public education, improving prisons, establishing orphanages and other charitable institutions, and trying to improve state funding for the welfare of all citizens. He also noted that despite complaints, most Southern states kept the constitutions of Reconstruction for many years, some for a quarter of a century.
By the 1960s, neo-abolitionist historians led by Kenneth Stampp and Eric Foner
focused on the struggle of freedmen. While acknowledging corruption in the Reconstruction era, they hold that the Dunning School over-emphasized it while ignoring the worst violations of republican principles — namely denying African Americans their civil rights
, including their right to vote.
upheld Mississippi's and Alabama's provisions in its rulings in Williams v. Mississippi
(1898), Giles v. Harris
(1903), and Giles v. Teasley. Booker T. Washington
secretly helped fund and arrange representation for such legal challenges, raising money from northern patrons who helped support Tuskegee University.
When white primaries
were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Smith v. Allwright
(1944), civil rights organizations rushed to register African-American voters. By 1947 the All-Citizens Registration Committee (ACRC) of Atlanta managed to get 125,000 voters registered in Georgia, raising black participation to 18.8% of those eligible. This was a major increase from the 20,000 on the rolls who had managed to get through administrative barriers in 1940. Georgia, among other Southern states, passed new legislation (1958) to once again repress black voter registration.
It was not until African-American leaders gained passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
and Voting Rights Act of 1965
that the American citizens who were first granted suffrage by the Fifteenth Amendment after the Civil War finally regained the ability to exercise their right to vote.
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
to describe a political coalition in the Southern United States
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
during the Reconstruction era which followed the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. Redeemers were the southern wing of the Bourbon Democrats, the conservative, pro-business wing of the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
, who sought to oust the Republican coalition of freedmen
Freedman
A freedman is a former slave who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, slaves became freedmen either by manumission or emancipation ....
, carpetbagger
Carpetbagger
Carpetbaggers was a pejorative term Southerners gave to Northerners who moved to the South during the Reconstruction era, between 1865 and 1877....
s and scalawag
Scalawag
In United States history, scalawag was a derogatory nickname for southern whites who supported Reconstruction following the Civil War.-History:...
s.
During Reconstruction, the South was under occupation by federal forces and the state governments
State governments of the United States
State governments in the United States are those republics formed by citizens in the jurisdiction thereof as provided by the United States Constitution; with the original 13 States forming the first Articles of Confederation, and later the aforementioned Constitution. Within the U.S...
were dominated by Republicans. Republicans nationally pressed for the granting of political rights to the newly freed slaves as the key to their becoming full citizens. The Thirteenth Amendment
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, passed by the House on January 31, 1865, and adopted on December 6, 1865. On...
(banning slavery), Fourteenth Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...
(guaranteeing the civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
of former slaves and ensuring equal protection of the laws
Equal Protection Clause
The Equal Protection Clause, part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, provides that "no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws"...
), and Fifteenth Amendment
Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude"...
(prohibiting the denial
Denial of request
Denial of request is the refusal of one party to grant the request of another. Some acts that can be considered denial may include the refusal of a person or a group of people representing a company, organization, or government agency to provide what a client or one seeking to be a client has...
of the right to vote on grounds of race, color, or previous condition of servitude) enshrined such political rights in the Constitution
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
.
Numerous educated blacks returned to the South to work for Reconstruction. Some blacks attained positions of political power under these conditions. But, the Reconstruction governments were unpopular with many white Southerners, who were not willing to accept defeat and continued to try to prevent black political activity by any means. While the elite planter class often supported insurgencies, violence against freedmen and other Republicans was often carried out by other whites; insurgency took the form of the secret Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
in the first years after the war.
In the 1870s, the Southern Democrats
Southern Democrats
Southern Democrats are members of the U.S. Democratic Party who reside in the American South. In the 19th century, they were the definitive pro-slavery wing of the party, opposed to both the anti-slavery Republicans and the more liberal Northern Democrats.Eventually "Redemption" was finalized in...
exercised power through paramilitary organizations such as the White League
White League
The White League was a white paramilitary group started in 1874 that operated to turn Republicans out of office and intimidate freedmen from voting and political organizing. Its first chapter in Grant Parish, Louisiana was made up of many of the Confederate veterans who had participated in the...
and Red Shirts, especially in Louisiana and Mississippi, respectively. The Red Shirts were also active in North Carolina. Southern Democrats continued to enforce their influence with white paramilitary groups that turned out Republican officeholders, and terrorized and assassinated other freedmen and their allies to suppress voting. By the time of the presidential election of 1876
United States presidential election, 1876
The United States presidential election of 1876 was one of the most disputed and controversial presidential elections in American history. Samuel J. Tilden of New York outpolled Ohio's Rutherford B. Hayes in the popular vote, and had 184 electoral votes to Hayes's 165, with 20 votes uncounted...
, only three states of the South — (Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
, South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
, and Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
) had not yet been taken over by white Democrats, or were "unredeemed". The disputed Presidential election between Republican governor of Ohio Rutherford B. Hayes
Rutherford B. Hayes
Rutherford Birchard Hayes was the 19th President of the United States . As president, he oversaw the end of Reconstruction and the United States' entry into the Second Industrial Revolution...
and Democratic governor of New York Samuel J. Tilden
Samuel J. Tilden
Samuel Jones Tilden was the Democratic candidate for the U.S. presidency in the disputed election of 1876, one of the most controversial American elections of the 19th century. He was the 25th Governor of New York...
was resolved by the Compromise of 1877
Compromise of 1877
The Compromise of 1877, also known as the Corrupt Bargain, refers to a purported informal, unwritten deal that settled the disputed 1876 U.S. Presidential election and ended Congressional Reconstruction. Through it, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the White House over Democrat Samuel J...
, also known as the Corrupt Bargain
Corrupt Bargain
The term Corrupt Bargain refers to three separate events that each involved a United States presidential election and a deal that was struck that many viewed to be corrupt from many standpoints, such as in the Election of 1824 controversy over the House of Representative's choice for president with...
. Hayes became President in exchange for numerous favors to the South, one of which was the removal of Federal troops from the remaining "unredeemed" Southern states. With the removal of these forces, Reconstruction came to an end.
History
Southern Democrats
Southern Democrats are members of the U.S. Democratic Party who reside in the American South. In the 19th century, they were the definitive pro-slavery wing of the party, opposed to both the anti-slavery Republicans and the more liberal Northern Democrats.Eventually "Redemption" was finalized in...
began to muster more political power as former Confederates began to vote again. It was a movement that gathered energy up until the Compromise of 1877
Compromise of 1877
The Compromise of 1877, also known as the Corrupt Bargain, refers to a purported informal, unwritten deal that settled the disputed 1876 U.S. Presidential election and ended Congressional Reconstruction. Through it, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the White House over Democrat Samuel J...
, in the process known as the Redemption. White Democratic Southerners saw themselves as redeeming the South by regaining power. They appealed to scalawags (white Southerners who supported the Republican Party
History of the United States Republican Party
The United States Republican Party is the second oldest currently existing political party in the United States after its great rival, the Democratic Party. It emerged in 1854 to combat the Kansas Nebraska Act which threatened to extend slavery into the territories, and to promote more vigorous...
after the civil war and during the time of reconstruction).
More importantly, in a second wave of violence following the suppression of the Ku Klux Klan, violence began to increase in the Deep South. In 1868 white terrorists tried to prevent Republicans from winning the fall election in Louisiana. Over a few days, they killed some two hundred freedmen in St. Landry Parish. Other violence erupted, From April to October, there were 1,081 political murders in Louisiana, in which most of the victims were freedmen. Violence was part of campaigns prior to the election of 1872 in several states. In 1874 and 1875, more formal paramilitary
Paramilitary
A paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....
groups affiliated with the Democratic Party conducted intimidation, terrorism and violence against black voters and their allies to reduce Republican voting and turn officeholders out. These included the White League
White League
The White League was a white paramilitary group started in 1874 that operated to turn Republicans out of office and intimidate freedmen from voting and political organizing. Its first chapter in Grant Parish, Louisiana was made up of many of the Confederate veterans who had participated in the...
and Red Shirts. They worked openly for specific political ends, and often solicited coverage of their activities by the press. Every election from 1868 on was surrounded by intimidation and violence; they were usually marked by fraud as well.
In the aftermath of the disputed gubernatorial election of 1872 in Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
, for instance, the competing governors each certified slates of local officers. This situation contributed to the Colfax Massacre
Colfax massacre
The Colfax massacre or Colfax Riot occurred on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, in Colfax, Louisiana, the seat of Grant Parish, during Reconstruction, when white militia attacked freedmen at the Colfax courthouse...
of 1873, in which white Democratic militia killed more than 100 Republican blacks in a confrontation over control of parish offices. Three whites died in the violence.
Later that year, thousands of armed white militia, supporters of the Democratic gubernatorial candidate John McEnery fought against New Orleans police and state militia in what was called the "Battle of Liberty Place". They took over the state government offices in New Orleans and occupied the capitol and armory. They turned Republican governor William Pitt Kellogg out of office, and retreated only in the face of the arrival of Federal troops sent by President Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...
.
In 1874 the White League turned out six Republican officeholders in Coushatta, Louisiana
Coushatta, Louisiana
Coushatta is a town in and the parish seat of rural Red River Parish, Louisiana, United States. It is situated on the east bank of the Red River. The community is approximately forty-five miles south of Shreveport on U.S. Highway 71...
and told them to leave the state. Before they could make their way, they and five to twenty black witnesses were assassinated by white paramilitary
Paramilitary
A paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....
. In 1874 such remnants of white militia formed the White League
White League
The White League was a white paramilitary group started in 1874 that operated to turn Republicans out of office and intimidate freedmen from voting and political organizing. Its first chapter in Grant Parish, Louisiana was made up of many of the Confederate veterans who had participated in the...
, a Democratic paramilitary group started first in Grant Parish of the Red River
Red River (Mississippi watershed)
The Red River, or sometimes the Red River of the South, is a major tributary of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers in the southern United States of America. The river gains its name from the red-bed country of its watershed. It is one of several rivers with that name...
area of Louisiana, with chapters rising across the state, especially in rural areas.
Similarly, in Mississippi, the Red Shirts formed as a prominent paramilitary group that enforced Democratic voting by intimidation and murder. Chapters of paramilitary Red Shirts arose and were active in North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
and South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
as well. They disrupted Republican meetings, killed leaders and officeholders, intimidated voters at the polls, or kept them away altogether.
The Redeemers' program emphasized opposition to the Republican governments, which they considered to be corrupt and a violation of true republican principles. They also worked to reestablish white supremacy. The crippling national economic problems and reliance on cotton meant that the South was struggling financially. Redeemers denounced taxes higher than what they had known before the war. At that time, however, the states had few functions, and planters maintained private institutions only. Redeemers wanted to reduce state debts. Once in power, they typically cut government spending; shortened legislative sessions; lowered politicians' salaries; scaled back public aid to railroads and corporations; and reduced support for the new systems of public education and some welfare institutions.
As Democrats took over state legislatures, they worked to change voter registration rules to strip most blacks and many poor whites of their ability to vote. Blacks
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
continued to vote in significant numbers well into the 1880s, with many winning local offices. Black Congressmen continued to be elected, albeit in ever smaller numbers, until the 1890s. George Henry White
George Henry White
George Henry White was a Republican U.S. Congressman from North Carolina between 1897 and 1901. He is considered the last African American Congressman of the Reconstruction era, although his election came twenty years after the era's "official" end...
, the last Southern black of the post-Reconstruction period to serve in Congress, retired in 1901, leaving Congress completely white.
In the 1890s, the Democrats faced challenges with the Agrarian Revolt, when their control of the South was threatened by the Farmers Alliance, the effects of Bimetallism
Bimetallism
In economics, bimetallism is a monetary standard in which the value of the monetary unit is defined as equivalent both to a certain quantity of gold and to a certain quantity of silver; such a system establishes a fixed rate of exchange between the two metals...
and the newly created People's Party
Populist Party (United States)
The People's Party, also known as the "Populists", was a short-lived political party in the United States established in 1891. It was most important in 1892-96, then rapidly faded away...
. On the national level, William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan was an American politician in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. He was a dominant force in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as its candidate for President of the United States...
defeated the Bourbons and took control of the Democratic Party nationwide.
Democrats worked hard to prevent such populist coalitions. In the former Confederate South, from 1890 to 1908, starting with Mississippi, legislatures of ten of the eleven states passed disfranchising constitutions, which had new provisions for poll tax
Poll tax
A poll tax is a tax of a portioned, fixed amount per individual in accordance with the census . When a corvée is commuted for cash payment, in effect it becomes a poll tax...
es, literacy tests, and residency requirements that effectively disfranchised nearly all blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites. Hundreds of thousands of people were removed from voter registration rolls soon after these provisions were implemented.
In Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
, for instance, in 1900 fourteen Black Belt
Black Belt (region of Alabama)
The Black Belt is a region of the U.S. state of Alabama, and part of the larger Black Belt Region of the Southern United States, which stretches from Texas to Maryland. The term originally referred to the region underlain by a thin layer of rich, black topsoil developed atop the chalk of the Selma...
counties had 79,311 voters on the rolls; by June 1, 1903, after the new constitution was passed, registration had dropped to just 1,081. Statewide Alabama in 1900 had 181,315 blacks eligible to vote. By 1903 only 2,980 were registered, although at least 74,000 were literate. From 1900 to 1903, white registered voters fell by more than 40,000, although their population grew in overall number. By 1941, more poor whites than blacks had been disfranchised in Alabama, mostly due to effects of the cumulative poll tax. Estimates were that 600,000 whites and 500,000 blacks had been disfranchised.
African Americans and poor whites were totally shut out of the political process and left unable to vote for representation. Southern legislatures passed Jim Crow laws imposing segregation in public facilities and places. As blacks were segregated, millions of people were quickly affected, to devastating effect. The disfranchisement lasted well into the later decades of the 20th century. They were shut out of all offices at the local and state level, as well as Federal level. Those who could not vote could not run for office or serve on juries, so they were never judged by peers.
While Congress had actively intervened for more than 20 years in elections in the South which the House Elections Committee judged to be flawed, after 1896 it backed off from intervening. Many Northern legislators were outraged about the disfranchisement of blacks and some proposed stripping the South of seats in Congress. They never managed to accomplish that, as southern representatives formed a strong, one-party voting block for decades. Although educated African Americans mounted legal challenges (with many secretly funded by educator Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915...
and his northern allies), the Supreme Court
Supreme court
A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of many legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, instance court, judgment court, high court, or apex court...
upheld Mississippi's and Alabama's provisions in its rulings in Williams v. Mississippi
Williams v. Mississippi
Williams v. Mississippi, 170 U.S. 213 is a United States Supreme Court case that reviewed provisions of the state constitution that set requirements for voter registration...
(1898) and Giles v. Harris
Giles v. Harris
Giles v. Harris, 189 U.S. 475 , was an early 20th century United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld a state constitution's requirements for voter registration and qualifications...
(1903).
Religious dimension
People in the movement chose the term "Redemption" from Christian theology. Historian Daniel W. Stowell concludes that white Southerners appropriated the term to describe the political transformation they desired, that is, the end of Reconstruction. This term helped unify numerous white voters, and encompassed efforts to purge southern society of its sins and to remove Republican political leaders.It also represented the birth of a new southern society, rather than a return to its antebellum predecessor. Historian Gaines M. Foster explains how the South became known as the "Bible Belt
Bible Belt
Bible Belt is an informal term for a region in the southeastern and south-central United States in which socially conservative evangelical Protestantism is a significant part of the culture and Christian church attendance across the denominations is generally higher than the nation's average.The...
" by connecting this characterization with changing attitudes caused by slavery's demise. Freed from preoccupation with federal intervention over slavery, and even citing it as precedent, white southerners joined northerners in the national crusade to legislate morality. Viewed by some as a "bulwark of morality", the largely Protestant South took on a Bible Belt identity long before H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the...
coined the term.
Disfranchising constitutions
The end of Reconstruction marked the beginning of a period, 1877–1908, in which white Democratic legislators took two major steps to reduce rights of African Americans. First, they passed laws to make voter registration and election rules more complicated. Then they created new constitutions that effectively completed disfranchisement of freedmen and poor whites. With control of the state legislatures, they passed Jim Crow lawsJim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
, making racial segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
required in all public facilities, and ushering in the nadir of American race relations
Nadir of American race relations
The "nadir of American race relations" is a term that refers to the period in United States history from the end of Reconstruction through the early 20th century, when racism in the country is deemed to have been worse than in any other period after the American Civil War. During this period,...
at the turn of the century. The constitutions included provisions for poll tax
Poll tax
A poll tax is a tax of a portioned, fixed amount per individual in accordance with the census . When a corvée is commuted for cash payment, in effect it becomes a poll tax...
es, literacy test
Literacy test
A literacy test, in the context of United States political history, refers to the government practice of testing the literacy of potential citizens at the federal level, and potential voters at the state level. The federal government first employed literacy tests as part of the immigration process...
s and other tests, and residency requirements that were difficult for poor sharecroppers and laborers to meet.
Dominated by whites of the elite classes, state legislatures were also suspicious of lower-class whites and worked to prevent their affiliation with African Americans. From 1890 to 1908, starting with Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
and ending with Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
, ten of the eleven states of the Confederacy passed new constitutions or amendments that created new requirements for voter registration. The effect on black disfranchisement was immediate and devastating. Hundreds of thousands of African Americans were removed from voter registration rolls across the South and effectively disfranchised, most before 1910. Tens of thousands of poor whites were also disfranchised. One-party rule under white Democrats was established. This wing of the Democrats kept control on the Southern U.S. until the 1960s, a phenomenon known as the Solid South
Solid South
Solid South is the electoral support of the Southern United States for the Democratic Party candidates for nearly a century from 1877, the end of Reconstruction, to 1964, during the middle of the Civil Rights era....
.
The impact of disfranchisement is illustrated by the case of Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
. In 1900, fourteen Black Belt
Black Belt (region of Alabama)
The Black Belt is a region of the U.S. state of Alabama, and part of the larger Black Belt Region of the Southern United States, which stretches from Texas to Maryland. The term originally referred to the region underlain by a thin layer of rich, black topsoil developed atop the chalk of the Selma...
counties had 79,311 voters on the rolls; by June 1, 1903 after the new constitution, registration had dropped to just 1,081. Statewide Alabama in 1900 had 181,315 blacks eligible to vote. By 1903, only 2,980 were registered, although at least 74,000 were literate. From 1900 to 1903, white registered voters fell by more than 40,000, although their population grew. By 1941, more poor whites than blacks had been disfranchised in Alabama, mostly due to effects of the cumulative poll tax. Estimates were that 600,000 whites and 500,000 blacks had been disfranchised. With the disfranchisement of possible opposition, white Democrats established one-party rule in most of the South for more than 60 years. They benefited from the total number of population, which determined how many seats the South got in Congress, but only white people, and not all of them, got to vote.
African Americans and poor whites were totally shut out of the political process and left without representation. As blacks were segregated, millions of people were quickly affected, to devastating effect. The disfranchisement lasted well into the later decades of the 20th century. They were shut out of all offices at the local and state level, as well as Federal level. Those who could not vote could not serve on juries or in local offices. Because blacks lacked the vote, segregated schools, welfare institutions and services were consistently underfunded. Whites gave local sheriffs broad authority to enforce white supremacy
White supremacy
White supremacy is the belief, and promotion of the belief, that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds. The term is sometimes used specifically to describe a political ideology that advocates the social and political dominance by whites.White supremacy, as with racial...
.
Withdrawal of Congressional oversight
While Congress had actively intervened for more than 20 years in elections in the South which the House Elections Committee judged to be flawed, after 1896, it backed off from intervening. Many Northern legislators were outraged about the disfranchisement of blacks and some proposed stripping the South of seats in Congress but they did not succeed in taking action.The 'redeemed' South
When Reconstruction died, so did all hope for national enforcement of adherence to the constitutional amendments that the U.S. Congress had passed in the wake of the Civil WarCivil war
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same nation state or republic, or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly-united nation state....
. As the last Federal troops left the ex-Confederacy, two old foes of American politics reappeared at the heart of the Southern polity – the twin, inflammatory issues of state rights and race. It was precisely on the ground of these two issues that the Civil War had broken out, and in 1877, sixteen years after the secession crisis, the South reaffirmed control over them.
“The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery”, wrote W. E. B. Du Bois. The black community in the South was brought back under the yoke of the Southern Democrats
Southern Democrats
Southern Democrats are members of the U.S. Democratic Party who reside in the American South. In the 19th century, they were the definitive pro-slavery wing of the party, opposed to both the anti-slavery Republicans and the more liberal Northern Democrats.Eventually "Redemption" was finalized in...
, who had been politically undermined during Reconstruction. Whites in the South were committed to reestablish its own sociopolitical structure with the goal of a new social order enforcing racial subordination and labor control. While the Republicans succeeded in maintaining some power in part of the Upper South, such as Tennessee, in the Deep South there was a return to ‘home rule’.
In the aftermath of the Compromise of 1877
Compromise of 1877
The Compromise of 1877, also known as the Corrupt Bargain, refers to a purported informal, unwritten deal that settled the disputed 1876 U.S. Presidential election and ended Congressional Reconstruction. Through it, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the White House over Democrat Samuel J...
, Southern Democrats held the South’s black community under increasingly tight control. Politically, blacks were gradually evicted from public office, as the few that remained saw the sway they held over local politics considerably decreased. Socially, the situation was worse, as the Southern Democrats tightened their grip on the labor force. Vagrancy
Vagrancy (people)
A vagrant is a person in poverty, who wanders from place to place without a home or regular employment or income.-Definition:A vagrant is "a person without a settled home or regular work who wanders from place to place and lives by begging;" vagrancy is the condition of such persons.-History:In...
and ‘anti-enticement’ laws were reinstituted. It became illegal to be jobless, or to leave a job before the contract expired. Economically, the blacks were stripped of independence, as new laws gave white planters the control over credit lines and property. Effectively, the black community was placed under a three-fold subjugation that was reminiscent of slavery.
Historiography
In the years immediately following Reconstruction, most blacks and former abolitionists held that Reconstruction lost the struggle for civil rightsCivil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
for black people because of violence against blacks and against white Republicans. Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing...
and Reconstruction Congressman John R. Lynch
John R. Lynch
John Roy Lynch was the first African-American Speaker of the House in Mississippi. He was also one of the first African-Americans elected to the U.S House of Representatives during Reconstruction, the period in United States history after the Civil War.-Biography:Lynch was born a slave near...
cited the withdrawal of federal troops from the South as a primary reason for the loss of voting rights and other civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
by African Americans after 1877.
By the turn of the century, white historians, led by the Dunning School
Dunning School
The Dunning School refers to a group of historians who shared a historiographical school of thought regarding the Reconstruction period of American history .-About:...
, saw Reconstruction as a failure because of its political and financial corruption, its failure to heal the hatreds of the war, and its control by self-serving northern politicians, such as the people around President Grant. Historian Claude Bowers
Claude Bowers
Claude Gernade Bowers was an American writer, Democratic politician, and ambassador to Spain and Chile.-Biography:...
said that the worst part of what he called "the Tragic Era" was the extension of voting rights to freedmen, a policy he claimed led to misgovernment and corruption. The freedmen, the Dunning School historians argued, were not at fault because they were manipulated by corrupt white carpetbaggers interested only in raiding the state treasury and staying in power. They agreed the South had to be "redeemed" by foes of corruption. Reconstruction, in short, violated the values of "republicanism" and they classified all Republicans as "extremists". This interpretation of events was the hallmark of the Dunning School
Dunning School
The Dunning School refers to a group of historians who shared a historiographical school of thought regarding the Reconstruction period of American history .-About:...
which dominated most history textbooks from 1900 to the 1960s.
Beginning in the 1930s, historians such as C. Vann Woodward
C. Vann Woodward
Comer Vann Woodward was a preeminent American historian focusing primarily on the American South and race relations. He was considered, along with Richard Hofstadter and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., to be one of the most influential historians of the postwar era, 1940s-1970s, both by scholars and by...
and Howard K. Beale
Howard K. Beale
Howard Kennedy Beale was an American historian. He specialized in nineteenth and twentieth-century American history, particularly the Reconstruction Era. He also wrote biographies of Theodore Roosevelt, Edward Bates, and Charles A. Beard. Beale was born in Chicago to Frank A. and Nellie Kennedy...
attacked the "redemptionist" interpretation of Reconstruction, calling themselves "revisionists" and claimed that the real issues were economic. The Northern Radicals were tools of the railroads, and the Republicans in the South were manipulated to do their bidding. The Redeemers, furthermore, were also tools of the railroads and were themselves corrupt.
In 1935, W. E. B. Du Bois published a Marxist analysis in his Black Reconstruction
Black Reconstruction
Black Reconstruction in America is a book by W. E. B. Du Bois, first published in 1935. It is revisionist approach to looking at the Reconstruction of the south after its defeat in the American civil war. On the whole, the book takes a Marxist approach to looking at reconstruction...
: An Essay toward a History of the Part which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880. His book emphasized the role of African Americans during Reconstruction, noted their collaboration with whites, their lack of majority in most legislatures, and also the achievements of Reconstruction: establishing universal public education, improving prisons, establishing orphanages and other charitable institutions, and trying to improve state funding for the welfare of all citizens. He also noted that despite complaints, most Southern states kept the constitutions of Reconstruction for many years, some for a quarter of a century.
By the 1960s, neo-abolitionist historians led by Kenneth Stampp and Eric Foner
Eric Foner
Eric Foner is an American historian. On the faculty of the Department of History at Columbia University since 1982, he writes extensively on political history, the history of freedom, the early history of the Republican Party, African American biography, Reconstruction, and historiography...
focused on the struggle of freedmen. While acknowledging corruption in the Reconstruction era, they hold that the Dunning School over-emphasized it while ignoring the worst violations of republican principles — namely denying African Americans their civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
, including their right to vote.
Supreme Court challenges
Although educated African Americans mounted legal challenges, the U.S. Supreme CourtSupreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
upheld Mississippi's and Alabama's provisions in its rulings in Williams v. Mississippi
Williams v. Mississippi
Williams v. Mississippi, 170 U.S. 213 is a United States Supreme Court case that reviewed provisions of the state constitution that set requirements for voter registration...
(1898), Giles v. Harris
Giles v. Harris
Giles v. Harris, 189 U.S. 475 , was an early 20th century United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld a state constitution's requirements for voter registration and qualifications...
(1903), and Giles v. Teasley. Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915...
secretly helped fund and arrange representation for such legal challenges, raising money from northern patrons who helped support Tuskegee University.
When white primaries
White primaries
White primaries were primary elections in the Southern States of the United States of America in which any non-White voter was prohibited from participating. White primaries were found in many Southern States after 1890 about until 1944...
were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Smith v. Allwright
Smith v. Allwright
Smith v. Allwright , 321 U.S. 649 , was a very important decision of the United States Supreme Court with regard to voting rights and, by extension, racial desegregation. It overturned the Democratic Party's use of all-white primaries in Texas, and other states where the party used the...
(1944), civil rights organizations rushed to register African-American voters. By 1947 the All-Citizens Registration Committee (ACRC) of Atlanta managed to get 125,000 voters registered in Georgia, raising black participation to 18.8% of those eligible. This was a major increase from the 20,000 on the rolls who had managed to get through administrative barriers in 1940. Georgia, among other Southern states, passed new legislation (1958) to once again repress black voter registration.
It was not until African-American leaders gained passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation...
and Voting Rights Act of 1965
Voting Rights Act
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of national legislation in the United States that outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S....
that the American citizens who were first granted suffrage by the Fifteenth Amendment after the Civil War finally regained the ability to exercise their right to vote.
Secondary sources
- Ayers, Edward L. The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction (1993).
- Baggett, James Alex. The Scalawags: Southern Dissenters in the Civil War and Reconstruction (2003), a statistical study of 732 Scalawags and 666 Redeemers.
- Blum Edward J. and W. Scott Poole, eds. Vale of Tears: New Essays on Religion and Reconstruction. Mercer University PressMercer University PressMercer University Press, established in 1979, is a publisher that is part of Mercer University....
, 2005. ISBN 0-8655-4987-7. - Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt. Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 (1935), explores the role of African Americans during Reconstruction
- Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (2002)
- Garner, James Wilford. Reconstruction in Mississippi (1901), a classic Dunning School text.
- Gillette, William. Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869-1879 (1979)
- Going, Allen J. "Alabama Bourbonism and Populism Revisited." Alabama Review 1983 36 (2): 83-109. Issn: 0002-4341
- Roger L. Hart, Redeemers, Bourbons, and Populists: Tennessee, 1870-1896. LSU Press, 1975.
- Jones, Robert R. "James L. Kemper and the Virginia Redeemers Face the Race Question: A Reconsideration." Journal of Southern History, 1972 38 (3): 393-414. Issn: 0022-4642
- King, Ronald F. "A Most Corrupt Election: Louisiana in 1876." Studies in American Political DevelopmentStudies in American Political DevelopmentStudies in American Political Development is a political science journal founded in 1986 and presently published by Cambridge University Press....
, 2001 15(2): 123-137. ISSN: 0898-588x - King, Ronald F. "Counting the Votes: South Carolina's Stolen Election of 1876." Journal of Interdisciplinary HistoryJournal of Interdisciplinary HistoryThe Journal of Interdisciplinary History is a peer-reviewed academic journal published four times a year by the MIT Press. It covers a broad range of historical themes and periods, linking history to other academic fields.-Contents:...
2001 32 (2): 169-191. ISSN: 0022-1953 - Moore, James Tice. "Redeemers Reconsidered: Change and Continuity in the Democratic South, 1870-1900" in the Journal of Southern History, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Aug., 1978) , pp. 357–378.
- Moore, James Tice. "Origins of the Solid South: Redeemer Democrats and the Popular Will, 1870-1900." Southern Studies, 1983 22 (3): 285-301. Issn: 0735-8342
- Perman, Michael. The Road to Redemption: Southern Politics, 1869-1879. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. ISBN 0-8078-4141-2
- Perman, Michael "Counter Reconstruction: The Role of Violence in Southern Redemption", in Eric Anderson and Alfred A. Moss, Jr, eds. The Facts of Reconstruction (1991) pp. 121–140.
- Pildes, Richard H., "Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon", Constitutional Commentary, 17, (2000).
- Polakoff, Keith I. The Politics of Inertia: The Election of 1876 and the End of Reconstruction (1973)
- Rabonowitz, Howard K. Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865-1890 (1977)
- Richardon, Heather Cox. The Death of Reconstruction (2001)
- Wallenstein, Peter. From Slave South to New South: Public Policy in Nineteenth-Century Georgia (1987).
- Wiggins; Sarah Woolfolk. The Scalawag in Alabama Politics, 1865—1881 (1991)
- Williamson, Edward C. Florida Politics in the Gilded Age, 1877-1893 (1976).
- Woodward, C. Vann. Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (1951). emphasizes economic conflict between rich and poor.
Primary Sources
- Fleming, Walter L. Documentary History of Reconstruction: Political, Military, Social, Religious, Educational, and Industrial (1906), several hundred primary documents from all viewpoints
- Hyman, Harold M., ed. The Radical Republicans and Reconstruction, 1861-1870. (1967), collection of longer speeches by Radical leaders
- Lynch, John R. The Facts of Reconstruction(1913) Online text by African American member of the United States Congress during Reconstruction era.