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The "Redeemers" were a political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction era, who sought to oust the Radical Republican coalition of Freedmen, carpetbaggers and Scalawags. The Southern United States &mdashcommonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South &mdashconstitutes a large distinctive The Radical Republicans is a term applied to a loose faction of American politicians within the Republican party from about 1854 (before the American Civil War A freedman is a former slave who has been manumitted or emancipated. In United States history carpetbaggers was the term southerners gave to northerners who moved to the South during Reconstruction, between 1865 and 1877 In the United States, a scalawag was a Southern white who joined the Republican Party in the ex- Confederate South during Reconstruction They were the southern wing of the Bourbon Democrats, the conservative, pro-business wing of the Democratic Party. Bourbon Democrat was a term used in the United States from 1876 to 1904 to refer to a conservative or Classical liberal member of the Democratic Party The Democratic Party is one of two major Political parties in the United States, the other being the Republican Party.

Contents

History

Political cartoon from 1877 by Thomas Nast portraying the Democratic Party's efforts to reach out to newly enfranchised African-American voters
Political cartoon from 1877 by Thomas Nast portraying the Democratic Party's efforts to reach out to newly enfranchised African-American voters

Between 1868 and the Compromise of 1877, in the process known as Redemption, Redeemers won many state and local offices by appealing to Scalawags (white Southerners who supported the Republican Party after the civil war and during the time of reconstruction). Thomas Nast ( September 27, 1840 – December 7, 1902) was a famous German-American Caricaturist and Editorial cartoonist African Americans or Black Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa The Compromise of 1877 was an informal unwritten deal that settled the disputed 1876 U Disfranchisement after the Civil War Redemption, in the history of the United States, was a term used by white Southerners to refer to the reversion of the U In the United States, a scalawag was a Southern white who joined the Republican Party in the ex- Confederate South during Reconstruction The History of the United States Republican Party is an account of the second oldest currently existing Political party in the United States In addition, in many states affiliated white paramilitary groups conducted intimidation, terrorism and violence against black voters and their allies to reduce black voting. Their program emphasized opposition to the Radical Republican system which they considered to be corrupt and a violation of true republican principles. They denounced high taxes and high 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.

State legislators gradually worked to strip blacks of their ability to vote. Blacks continued to vote in significant numbers well into the 1880s, and black Congressmen continued to be elected, albeit in ever smaller numbers, until the 1890s. African Americans or Black Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa George Henry White, the last Southern black of the post-Reconstruction period to serve in Congress, retired in 1901, leaving Congress completely white. George Henry White ( 18 December 1852 &ndash 28 December 1918) was a Republican U

In the 1890s, the Redeemers and Bourbon Democrats faced their 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. The Farmers' Alliance was an organized agrarian economic movement amongst U In Economics, bimetallism is a Monetary standard in which the value of the Monetary unit can be expressed as a certain amount of gold or as a certain amount The Populist Party (also known as the People's Party) was a relatively short-lived Political party in the United States in the late 18th century On the national level, William Jennings Bryan defeated the Bourbons and took control of the Democratic Party nationwide. For other persons of the same name see William Bryan and William Jennings.

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 taxes, literacy and understanding tests, and residency that effectively disfranchised nearly all blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites in the South. 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, 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. [1]

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, and 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, 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. [2] 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). Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5 1856 &ndash November 14 1915 was an American educator orator author and leader of the African-American community A supreme court, also called a court of last resort or high court, is in some Jurisdictions the highest judicial body within that jurisdiction's Williams v Mississippi, 170 US 213 ( 1898) is a United States Supreme Court case that reviewed provisions of the state constitution that set Giles v Harris, 189 US 475 (1903 was a turn-of-the-century United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld a state constitution's requirements [3]

Religious dimension

"Redemption" was deliberately chosen as a term from Christian theology. Historian Daniel W. Stowell[4] concludes that white Southerners appropriated the term to describe the political transformation they desired, that is, the end of Reconstruction. This term helped unify a large number of 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. Historians 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. The Bible Belt is an informal term for an area of the United States of America in which socially conservative Evangelical Protestantism is a [5]

Historiography

In the years immediately following Reconstruction, most blacks and former abolitionists held that Reconstruction lost the struggle for civil rights for black people because of violence against blacks and threats 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. Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 14 1818 February 20 1895 was an American abolitionist, editor, Orator John Roy Lynch ( September 10, 1847 - November 2, 1939) was the first African-American Speaker of the House in

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. The Dunning School refers to a group of historians who shared a historiographical School of thought regarding the Reconstruction period of American Historian Claude Bowers said that the worst part of what he called "the Tragic Era" was the extension of voting rights to African American Freedmen, a policy he claimed led to misgovernment and corruption. Claude Gernade Bowers (1878 - 1958 was an American writer Democratic politician and ambassador to Spain and Chile. 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 Radical Republicans were "extremists". This interpretation of events was the hallmark of the Dunning School which dominated most history textbooks from 1900 to the 1960s. The Dunning School refers to a group of historians who shared a historiographical School of thought regarding the Reconstruction period of American

Beginning in the 1930s, historians such as C. Vann Woodward and Howard K. Comer Vann Woodward ( November 13, 1908 - December 17, 1999) was a pre-eminent American Historian focusing primarily on 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. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (duːˈbɔɪz ( February 23, 1868 August 27, 1963) was an American Civil rights activist Black Reconstruction in America is a book by WEB Du Bois, first published in 1935 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, 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 made the struggle of Freedmen center stage. Neoabolitionist (or neo-abolitionist or new abolitionism) is a term used by some historians to refer to the rebirth of the Civil rights movement in the Kenneth Milton Stampp (b July 12 1912 Alexander F and May T Morrison Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California Berkeley (1946-1983 is a celebrated Eric Foner (born February 7, 1943 in New York City) is an American historian 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 [1].

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Glenn Feldman, The Disfranchisement Myth: Poor Whites and Suffrage Restriction in Alabama, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004, p. The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enacted primarily but not exclusively in the Southern and border states of the United States between 1876 and 1965 136
  2. ^ COMMITTEE AT ODDS ON REAPPORTIONMENT, The New York Times, 20 Dec 1900, accessed 10 Mar 2008
  3. ^ Richard H. Pildes, "Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon", Constitutional Commentary, Vol. 17, 2000, pp. 12 and 21], accessed 10 Mar 2008
  4. ^ Blum and Poole (2005)
  5. ^ Blum and Poole (2005)

References

Secondary sources

Primary Sources

Dictionary

redeemers

-noun

  1. Plural form of redeemer.
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