![]() ![]() According to this view, Radical Republicans in Congress, bent on punishing defeated Confederates, established corrupt Southern governments presided over by carpetbaggers (unscrupulous Northerners who ventured south to reap the spoils of office), scalawags (Southern whites who supported the new regimes) and freed African-Americans, unfit to exercise democratic rights. For decades, these years were widely seen as the nadir in the saga of American democracy. Reconstruction refers to the period, generally dated from 1865 to 1877, during which the nation’s laws and Constitution were rewritten to guarantee the basic rights of the former slaves, and biracial governments came to power throughout the defeated Confederacy. But that era has long been misunderstood. Issues that agitate American politics today - access to citizenship and voting rights, the relative powers of the national and state governments, the relationship between political and economic democracy, the proper response to terrorism - all of these are Reconstruction questions. This is unfortunate, for if any historical period deserves the label “relevant,” it is Reconstruction. ![]() Preoccupied with the challenges of our own time, Americans will probably devote little attention to the sesquicentennial of Reconstruction, the turbulent era that followed the conflict. ![]() Lee at Appomattox Court House, 150 years ago next month, effectively ended the Civil War. ![]()
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