honest and effective. Though the period has sometimes been labeled “Black Reconstruction,” blacks never dominated the Radical governments in the south. There were no black governors, only two black senators and a handful of congressmen, and only one legislature controlled by blacks. Those black who did hold office appear to have been about equal in competence and honesty to the whites. It is true that these Radical governments were expensive, but large state expenditures were necessary to rebuild after the war and to establish--for the first time on most southern states--a system of common schools. Corruption there certainly was, though nowhere on the scale of the Tweed Ring, which at that time was busily looting New York City; but it is not possible to show that Republicans were guiltier than Democrats, or blacks than whites, in the scandals that did occur. If the Civil War was fought to set black slaves free, then Reconstruction proved to be a fight to limit their freedom. Former slaves gained political power during the late 1860s, but any power gained was all but gone by the end of the 1880s. Blacks were given liberty in name only for the most part. They were not allowed to develop nor use the skills necessary to take advantage of that liberty in America’s unique system of democracy and capitalism. For most African Americans living in the south during the Reconstruction era, life changed dramatically from enslavement, to a life of limited rights. Even though the reconstruction offered them a few unreliable rights, it failed to offer them the equal amount of social, economic, and political freedoms. It was these three contributing factors that participated in changing the south. The freed slaves who rallied and protested for civil rights as well as justice started the Reconstruction. In addition to this, Radical Republicans from 1865 to 1877 temporarily wiped out each state in the South’s system of government. ...
