APUSH Podcast #3: The Significance of Reconstruction

Before this unit, I was part of the 80% of high school students who did not know about Reconstruction. I had no idea that African Americans actually did have equal rights under federal law, but that state governments ignored it; I did not know such a progressive time period was even attempted. As Eric Foner said, “Reconstruction was a historical process” from which the United States “came to terms with consequences of the civil war”- the most important one being the issue of what to do with the 4 million freed blacks. This raised numerous problems like citizenship, the continued issue of the states’ power vs. the federal government’s power, affirmative action, and the relationship between economic and political power. I feel as though the laws addressed all of these issues well though, it was just the lack of enforcement that lead to its failure. Foner made some very interesting points, and showed really just how much has changed in such a little time span, from Reconstruction to now.

For 50 years the Reconstruction Period was seen as too radical, but this view has changed, and now many believe it was not radical enough. Foner explains that this was due mostly because of the racial norms; until the 1960’s there was still a great deal of discrimination towards blacks, but now almost everyone believes in equality. Many believed that it was a mistake to give African Americans the right to vote and that the radical republicans in office gave them too many rights too soon. Today, most people feel the opposite; they should have been given complete equality right away. I also believe that the fact that the North didn’t understand Southern race relations doesn’t actually matter; eventually with enough effort and force, those race relations could have been permanently changed. A common point of view now is that if they had kept troops in the South for longer and done a better job enforcing these new laws after leaving, then the South maybe would not have treated blacks so terribly because they would have learned to accept and abide by those laws. The laws and amendments passed during Reconstruction were incredibly progressive for their time and could have significantly and positively effected race relations had they been better enforced. By no means was it a mistake to give African Americans the rights they deserved (especially since they helped fight to save the Union), but they had to be more strongly protected, particularly in the South. As Foner brilliantly put it, “the problem wasn’t that it was attempted, but that it failed”.

Another point that Foner touched upon was how equality wasn’t a normal thing in that time period. Today we take that for granted, as it is just expected, but back then it was a very radical idea. It’s so hard for me to wrap my brain around the fact that it never occurred to most whites that they should be treating blacks better. White supremacy was incredibly popular in the South, so spreading equality was especially difficult there. Foner shocked me when he said that terrorist groups like the Klu Klux Klan actually killed more Americans than Osama Bin Laden did on September 11^th. That to me is absolutely horrifying that people actually believed they had the right to kill other people because they thought they were inferior. It was also estimated that over 4,000 lynchings occurred in the South, most of which were of blacks. These things make me ashamed of our country, but also at the same time extremely proud that we were able to overcome that and are becoming closer and closer to racial equality all the time. Equality seemed nearly impossible at that dark time in our history, but now I feel we’ve almost achieved it.

During Reconstruction a major issue was state governments ignoring the laws made to protect blacks’ rights. Foners said, “We didn’t need a new constitution, we just needed enforcement!” This is because the Civil Rights Laws and the new amendments were not repealed, they were just simply violated through things like disenfranchisement and violence. The law might have said “separate but equal”, but that was never actually the case. What I found interesting was that the 14^th Amendment actually gave more power to the federal government for once, since normally the Constitution was based around limiting the powers of the federal government, and yet it was still violated by the states. “Just to write it in the books was not enough”, the Southern states’ governments didn’t abide by the Constitution when it came to issues like voting and segregation. This seemed to go against everything the North was fighting for during the Civil War because the states had so much power and could basically choose which rights they would allow African Americans to have. It bothers me so much that race relations could have improved so much and so much sooner had the lawsactually protected blacks.

Eric Foner really just made me realize how much the government was responsible for all these problems. The key to avoiding most of this was really just enforcement, but they failed to do that. Reconstruction was probably the worst part of America’s history, as it is so unbelievable now that people could have harbored so much hate for others based on the color of their skin.