Chapter XXIV

The End of Reconstruction

Many of the former Confederates hated the Reconstruction governments in the South. One such person was Bedford Forrest. During the Civil War, he had been a general in the Confederate Army. He was a very cruel man and he hated Black people. During the war, he refused to take Black soldiers from the Northern army as prisoners. When any were captured by his soldiers, they were immediately shot. After the war, he lived in Pulaski, Tennessee. There he met with other men that hated the Reconstruction governments. They realized that in order to get rid of the Reconstruction governments, they had to stop Black men from voting. They decided to form a secret organization called the Ku Klux Klan. Men in this organization wore white robes so that they could pretend that they were the ghosts of the Confederate dead. They wore a hood to cover their face so that nobody would recognize them. They were an illegal terrorist organization. At night, they put up signs saying they did not want Black people to vote and they would kill any Black man who voted. The organization spread rapidly, and soon it was organized in all of the Southern states. To frighten a Black voter, they would erect a large wooden cross in front of his house. They would soak the cross in turpentine so that it would burn well. Then a large group of Klansmen wearing their ghostlike costumes would gather in the yard and burn the cross. If the Black man went to vote in the next election, they would kill him by tying a rope around his neck and hanging him from a tree. While Grant was president, the Klan did not do this very often because Grant kept a large army in the South. The American army tried to maintain order and to protect the Black people. Grant was reelected in 1872 and he served as president for eight years.

But in 1876, new elections were held. This was almost sixteen years after the beginning of the Civil War. The older people, who were very much against slavery, were beginning to die out. Their children were beginning to enter politics. Unlike their parents, younger people did not think about the war. The younger people were not interested in the problems of the Black people. Many of the younger people were going into business. As businessmen, they wanted low taxes. It cost a lot of money to keep a large army in the South. Many of the younger businessmen in the North began to say that they did not need the army. They wanted to become rich. They said it was not necessary to keep a large army in the South. They said they would rather keep the money in their pockets than pay taxes for a large army. At the same time, many new immigrants were coming from Europe. These were economic immigrants. They were coming to America to earn money. The new immigrants did not understand the American Civil War and were not interested in it.

In 1876, Congress allowed everyone in the South to take an oath of allegiance to the United States so that they could become citizens of the United States again. After that, all of the former Confederate soldiers could vote. In 1876, Hayes was elected president.

This was a period when there was a great increase in corruption in both the North and in the South. In the West, quite a few former soldiers became bank robbers. In some places, the elections of 1876 were not honest. Congress had to decide who won the election. Congress decided that Hayes had won the election, after he had made some secret deals with certain congressmen. Among the secret deals was a promise to make the army cheap by making it small. He promised to take the army out of the South.

President Hayes was very different from the former President Grant. Hayes was interested in growth for the North. He wanted to see more railroads built. He wanted all of the smaller cities of the East to be connected by railroad. The new president was not interested in the problems of the South. He was not interested in the problems of Black people.

After Hayes took the army out of the South, there was no one to protect the Black people. Black people were hated because they had helped to destroy the Confederacy. The Klan became much more active. Earlier, some of the former Confederate soldiers were afraid to join the Klan because the army might arrest them. But after the army left, more people joined the Klan. The Klan began killing more Black men. It is not known how many Black men were killed. One historian says it was about five thousand. Another historian says that in some years as many as 3000 were killed in a year. For a while, in some places, the Black people were able to protect themselves. In 1876, some Black men were still elected to Congress, to the Senate, and to other positions. The Black people began to lose their rights. In some places, the police came under the control of the Klan. Year by year, in more and more cities and villages, Black people stopped voting. The year 1900 was the last year that a significant number of Black men won elections. After that, most Black men in the South were afraid to vote. The governments became all white. For half a century, Black men did not vote in the South. The Fifteenth Amendment was still there. The Fifteenth Amendment said that Black men could vote. But the Black men did not vote. The next generation of Americans forgot about the Black people and their problems.

After the Black people stopped voting, the state governments in the South passed a group of laws that in slang were called the Jim Crow laws. These laws were designed to separate white people from Blacks. These laws said that there had to be separate schools for Black and white children. Black people could not eat in the same restaurant as white people. On the railroads, Black people could not ride in the same carriage as white people. Even in public places, separate drinking fountains had to be installed. Black people could not drink water from the same fountain as white people. This system was called segregation. Segregation violated the 14th amendment. A Black man named W.E.B. Dubois formed an organization called the NAACP to end segregation. This organization eventually got the Supreme Court to say that the 14th amendment prohibited segregation in the schools. It was not until after World War II that President Eisenhower began to enforce the 14th amendment. He sent soldiers to the city of Little Rock in Arkansas to stop segregation in the schools there. Around 1960, Martin Luther King and other Black leaders began to organize to get back the right to vote in the South. This right had been lost for two or three generations, but King and his friends were successful. Black people could vote again.