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[[File:Reconstruction1.jpg|left|250px|thumbnail|<i>America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877</i> by Eric Foner]]__NOTOC__
''This article was originally published on [http://videri.org/index.php?title=Reconstruction| Videri.org]and is republished here with their permission.''
As the United States entered the 20th century, Reconstruction slowly receded into popular memory. Historians began to debate its results. William Dunning and John W. Burgess led the first group to offer a coherent and structured argument. Along with their students at Columbia University, Dunning, Burgess, and their retinue created a historical school of thought known as the Dunning School. This interpretation of Reconstruction placed it firmly in the category of historical blunder.
Regarding social mobility, the South was forced to embrace meritocracy at least in the area of military matters. No doubt at the war’s beginning, the planter class dominated the military, however, as Thomas points out, “Before the war entered its second year, martial merit had challenged planter pedigree in the Confederate command structure. And combat provided ample opportunity for Southerners of all backgrounds to earn, confirm, or forfeit their spurs.” Again, Thomas limits his language noting that martial merit “challenged” the aristocratic system rather than replacing it. The planter class still held a powerful position, “Still, the Confederate army was at the same time an agency of both democracy and aristocracy. Members of the planter class often won the elections to company commands.” Thus, the reader is left wondering what is meant by revolution, since Thomas seems to be saying that the South revolutionizes during the war but then retreats from its revolution once the war comes to its conclusion.
Therefore, would this not serve more aptly as an example of wartime necessities that are undertaken for war but not intended for permanence? One might respond that such cases begin the process of change since historically once people are granted rights or freedoms it proves to be quite difficult to reclaim such rights, mobility, or freedoms. However, one last point concerning social mobility must be made. Considering the conditions of trade for the South during the war, new ways of trade needed to be located. Such avenues to wealth did provide many southerners previously excluded from the planter class to ascend the ladder of social mobility once new avenues or means to profit were established, “Those who were able to take advantage of new opportunities in trade and industry became wealthy and powerful men … Not only did exemplary men rise from commonplace to prominence in the Confederate period; statistical evidence tends to confirm that the Confederate leadership as a whole came from non-planters.” However, Thomas’s argument that the Civil War’s demands changed the nature of slavery in the South fails to convince. Thomas argues that increased responsibilities and rights given to slaves because of the War’s demands on the white population proved that the Confederacy was even willing to sacrifice slavery for independence, “White Southerners depended upon black Southerners to do more than till the fields and tend the campfires … As the war wore on the trend toward black labor became more pronounced. Every black man employed meant one more available white soldier .” While the nature of slavery was altered, it did so on a temporary basis. The physical lack of people in rural and even urban areas because of the war granted slaves increased autonomy. Also, the war demanded laborers, so the Confederacy was forced to pay slaves or hire them as workers (in case of labor shortage or some cases strikes). Still, this did not change their legal status as property. Once the war ended, providing the South won, slavery would have gone back to its previous form. Thomas remarks on the effects of Reconstruction on his ‘southern revolution’.
However, while Thomas’s overall argument has strength, it has a weakness in that all the change he describes as revolutionary occurred strictly as a result of the Civil War. The United States’ experiences in World War I, World War II, and the Korean War illustrate the rubber band like quality to wartime societal shifts. Shifts occur, but once the war ends, the shape returns with some alterations which might lead to true change but nothing revolutionary or sudden.
Perhaps the most ironic aspect of Reconstruction lay in white hopes for freedmen. Jones notes such in her work ''Soldiers of Light and Love'', as many black communities chose African American teachers over white missionaries. Freedman wanted independence, privacy. Whites wanted freedmen to become like wage laborers in the North, adopting middle-class values. Freedmen focused more on land and the right to own their labor, to produce for themselves. In this way, sharecropping can be viewed as a compromise fought for by African Americans, while it failed to provide them with the economic independence they desired, it did grant them land and some autonomy. Thus, while this was a great change from the slave system, it failed to significantly change the lives of African Americans for the better, nor did it advance the southern economy. Woodman refuses to acknowledge this as revolutionary, “Instead of chronicling quantity we must rather assess quality: the problem is not how much change but what kind of change.”
====Reconstruction was a Failure====
So, how successful was Reconstruction? Foner argues that Reconstruction proved revolutionary for a period but ultimately failed. “Here, however, we enter the realm of the purely speculative. What remains certain is that Reconstruction failed and that for blacks its failure was a disaster whose magnitude cannot be obscured by the genuine accomplishments that did endure. For the nation as a whole, the collapse of Reconstruction was a tragedy that deeply affected the course of its future development.” Thomas views the final results of Reconstruction similarly but through a slightly different historical lens. According to Thomas, Reconstruction undid the revolutionary advances of the Confederacy, “Ironically, the internal revolution went to completion at the very time that the external revolution collapsed … The program of the radical Republicans may have failed to restructure Southern society. It may, in the end, have “sold out” the freedmen in the South. Reconstruction did succeed in frustrating the positive elements of the revolutionary Southern experience.”