Reconstruction
When white Southerners spoke bitterly in later years of the effects of Reconstruction, they referred most frequently to the governments Congress helped impose on them-governments they claimed were both incompetent and corrupt, that saddled the region with enormous debts, and that trampled on the rights of citizens. When black Southerners and their defenders condemned Reconstruction, in contrast, they spoke of the failure of the national and state governments to go far enough to guarantee freedmen even the most elemental rights of citizenship-a failure that resulted in a harsh new system of economic subordination. In the ten states of the South that were reorganized under the congressional plan, approximately one-fourth of the white males were at first excluded from voting or holding office. That produced black majorities among voters in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana (
such thing ever actually existed in any of the states. No black man was ever elected governor of a Southern state. African Americans never controlled any of the state legislatures, although they held a majority in the lower house in South Carolina for a time. In the South as a whole, the percentage of black officeholders was always far lower than the percentage of black in the population. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ African Americans played a significant role in the politics of the Reconstruction South. They served as delegates to congressional conventions. They held public offices of practically every kind. Between 1869 and 1901, twenty African Americans served in the U.S. House of Representatives, two in the Senate (Hiram Revels of Mississippi and Blanche K. Bruce of Virginia). African Americans served, too, in state legislatures a
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 597
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)
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