Friday, November 8, 2013

Reconstruction, Restoration, or Redemption?

Reconstruction policies took many forms in its ten-year duration.  And surely, it is important to distinguish between policies that were meant to restore political stability to the Union and those that brought rapid change (i.e. Civil Rights amendments).

What is undeniable, is that Reconstruction was an attempt to change society, even if critics argue it was a failed one.  Is Reconstruction the proper term?  Does the act of reconstruction imply that an institution is torn down and rebuilt from scratch?  Would a better word be redemption or maybe even restoration?

Pick a handful of specific examples from tonight's reading to help illustrate your point.

15 comments:

  1. I believe Reconstruction was not the proper term to use because that would have meant to reconstruct everything from 0. However, as the article says, the South was very damaged after the war and many cities such as Atlanta were almost in ruins and they lost around 1500 million dollars in total for these damages. But the word I would use is restoration because they restored everything from what had been left and everything was kind of in the same location and place, Therefore, we can't call that Reconstruction but restoration.
    Also another example I think is the education because in the South, they were still very few people that were instructed and the rest of the population (70%) including the black freed slaves did not even know how to read sometimes. Therefore, they needed a restoration in education, and they needed to restored all the schools and maybe take advantage of the more instructed part of the country, the North.

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  2. as i said and was told in the reading the south was heavily resistance to the ideas that the north wanted to apply. the north had physically destroyed the south and its economy that was the easiest part of reconstruction to build up the economy. but the true challenge for reconstruction and why people say that it is a failure was the reshaping of the souths morals, and values on equality. the south had a set view on african americans and there place in their society. every law or action reconstruction took to bring equality the south created loop holes to counter them such as jim crow laws that were stated in the reading. like grandfather clauses on voting rights or literacy test. reconstruction failed because it is very hard to change a culture that does not want to change.

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  3. Reconstruction was not the proper term. Yes, they were trying to re make the south and re build it, but reconstruction was not what happened. I agree with Laura when she says that the word she would use is restoration. Reconstruction is starting from completely nothing, but restoration is starting from something and building off of it. It is like restoring and remaking what is already there. I also think redemption would be a good word because they are redeeming themselves from the loss in the war. Since they lost so much, they are restoring and redeeming everything. The loss was large but you cannot call it reconstruction after the war, it is more of restoring and redemption.

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  4. Well i do not think reconstruction is the proper term because to me, i think reconstruction as tearing something down and starting from the bottom.Now i believe a better would to choice could possibly be modify. I believe this because it was not like they were changing everything but just tweaking some things. I agree with Laura when she says restoration is another good choice to name this time period because like she said there was something there they were just fixing it and making it better for all.

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  5. I think that reconstruction would only have been the correct term if what they were doing was destroying everything and starting again, a complete RE-construction of what was previously there. The word that I think is best to describe what was being done is restoration. Restoration is more like bringing something back to its original state, rather than restarting and completely redoing. Like Sifiso said, the reason why reconstruction was said to have failed is because of the way that the South thought and how no matter what was done to improve equality, there was always a way for the South to dispute it. In order for reconstruction to have worked, everyone would have had to have been on the same page and seek the same outcome. The South was just against all efforts towards equality and that is why reconstruction was unsuccessful.

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  6. I don’t think that the proper term is “reconstruction” but it should have been called the “restoration” period. I think this because reconstruction does insinuate that something is torn down and rebuilt from scratch, however a restoration is when something that already exists is just refurnished and touched up without being torn down or completely rebuilt. In the article it even says "The national government consequently turned its back as white southerners engaged in a process euphemistically labeled Redemption", and that "Redemption contributed to a nationwide resurgence of the new Democratic Party". The word Redemption is also a better word for the era because it means to built or make a comeback from what has already happened but not hiding the past or trying to start over from scratch. Overall I think that restoration or redemption would be better terms than reconstruction.

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  7. I think reconstruction was the correct term for what the people wanted to accomplish, but not what they actually did. If they had called actually gone through reconstruction they would have started the government from scratch and not keep the old government or take from both sides and make a completely new government that everyone agrees with and is better than the old one. I think restoration is what the south wanted, to restore the to government to how it used to be when slavery was okay and everyone was alright with it. I think the north more wanted redemption, to fix the government to how they want it to be and how they feel it should have always been so that they could redeem themselves of what they had previously done/been doing. The problem was that the sides wanted different things so the so-called reconstruction was in all reality more of an attempt at redemption that took a turn for the worse and I supposed in some way even today were still trying to redeem ourselves for what our country used to do.

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  8. I believe reconstruction and redemption is what was meant to happen to the South, but what ended up happening is restoration. In a way, the South did need reconstruction it was physically torn apart by war since a lot of land was torn up. Their economy was a mess because of the fact that one their source of free labor was taken away all at once and two that their way of receiving income which was normally based off of agriculture was messed up because since the war the Souths former trading partners had decided to buy from Egypt and other places closer to them. Therefore, in a way the South needed to be reconstructed from the ground up: the the northerners eyes even the Souths morals would be reconstructed in order to be able to accept the changes the US was going through. Redemption was also what the Union wanted to do because they wanted to change the Souths wrong ways (slavery) into good ways. However, those goals failed. The South continued to be racist and didn't try to conform to the new rules set upon them. Instead, they fought back with things such as the KKK. Therefore, at the end what happened was restoration, because they restored the Souths economy and land but didn't change their ideas.

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  9. I do believe Reconstruction was the proper term. Since most of the battles during the Civil War were fought in that region, the South was left in shambles. Cities like Atlanta were left in ruins and the North was making an attempt to reconstruct the South, economically and physically. The North was also trying to rid the South of it's old morals and practices; slavery was not to be a policy practiced in the Union. This was a reconstruction of the South more than it was a redemption or a restoration. The North had torn it down piece by piece and meant to build it back anew.

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  10. I think either redemption or restoration is a better, more precise word than reconstruction. Before the civil war, south had a strong economy. The residence had a peaceful life. Even the slaves might have a better life before the war than facing the possibility of getting killed by the kkk at night. The north totally destroy the south physically and its economy. So what the north government was trying to do was to restore the peacefulness and haplessness to people. At the same time, modifying the policy in order to give African Americans the equality. What they did was not reconstruction and it couldn't be reconstruction because reconstruction literally means torn everything down and build from scratch. The biggest thing that made the post-war a failure is the fact that (southern white) people's heart could not be changed. In their mind, the black people made them lost everything. And they just create troubles for the blacks. No matter what the north does, is not possible to change how people think from that point. Therefore I think this post-war process really should be described as a restoration with modification in the policy.

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  11. The term Reconstruction is not entirely accurate because it has positive connotations. I think a better term would be punishment or revenge on the white Southerners, particularly the slave-owning class. Also, Reconstruction was not all too helpful for the Freedmen because they were eventually abandoned by the government that had sworn to protect them. A former Republican governor of South Carolina said that the President's Southern policy "consists in the abandonment of... the colored race, to the control and rule...of that class at the South which... steadily opposed citizenship and suffrage for the [African Americans]." Also, if the South was to be 'reconstructed' and made into an equal part of the Union, then Southern economy wouldn't have taken twenty years to recover, the Southern income would not have been 40% below the country's average, and the South's credit markets would not have been stifled in recovery due to the new National Banking System. The South was practically treated as a colony after the end of the war, taxes from the South sent wealth up to the North paying for the Union veterans' pensions. Reconstruction should have fixed the social and economical problems that plagued the South, instead, it left many Southerners in debt, in bankruptcy, or even in illiteracy. Therefore a better name for Reconstruction is 'Punishment and Abandonment'.

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  12. I do not believe that reconstruction was a correct term for the period. I believe that It should have been either called as restoration and redemption period. Because based on the word reconstruction, reconstruction means tearing down everything and starting from the beginning. However, this was not the case for the Union. Even though It took some effort to bring back the Southerns states into the house of representative with strategies such as Lincoln's 10% plan, nothing about African Americans had changed dramatically. Civil War ended the slavery but it was somewhat superficial since even after the civil war, Blacks were most likely treated the same way or even worst. People were not willing to accept the changes the Union was trying to bring. Not only did organizations such as KKK appeared in order to suppress the African Americans but also Jim crow laws and grandfather clause prevented blacks' right as a citizen.

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  13. I don't think that reconstruction was that accurate of a term for that period in time. Reconstruction means demolishing and completely starting over and rebuilding. The Union did start over, but it was not from scratch. Also, not a lot was changed after the Civil War. Although slavery was abolished, African Americans were still segregated and being discriminated, and the KKK was formed shortly after. Reconstruction is also meant to be a good thing. People reconstruct to make something better or to fix mistakes. During this period, the South greatly faced the consequences of the Civil War. Their economy was in trouble because of the reparations that they had to pay. The United States wanted to reconstruct, but in reality, that's not what happened. I think that restoration is definitely a better term to use.

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  14. Reconstruction might actually be the correct term due to the level of damages the North did to the South. The reason it is called reconstruction is probably because how the North sabotage every aspect of the South such as economy and stability.There are many things for the North to do to fix the turmoil for the South. In addition to the deep-rooted racial issue such as the KKK, there were also economy, education waited to be rescued. Therefore, reconstruction seems like a correct term within this context.

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  15. i think restoration is more appropriate than reconstruction but if you think about it some of the places in the south actually did have to be completely reconstructed from zero just because the title doesn't correctly fit every single contingency doesn't mean its proven un true this isn't geometry

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