1/ Was Reconstruction a success or failure? Who benefited from it, and what did they gain?

Who was hurt

by it and why?
Right when Civil War was finished, reconstruction started in the South. During Abraham Lincolns
presidency, reconstruction started in 1865. It was an approach of North America to reform the current
structure of Southern America. Reconstruction did not succeed, at least certainly in its broad aims. The
aim was to create a functioning, interracial democracy in the South. Its aim was to entrench the notion of
equal rights, equal civil rights, and equal political rights for blacks in the society. It didn't work; those
rights were eventually taken away and for a long time they were violated. Inequality is a very big flaw
within the reconstruction period. As long as it survives, the Southerners can be superior over the freemen.
The people of the South have attempted to have more state power which led to ignoring the federal laws.
This can be noticed when the federal government passed a law that the freemen and slaves wont be able
to vote because of particular reasons such as illiteracy. Many of the laws which are passed within the
reconstruction period is commonly taken advantage of and ignored by South America. A large part of the
slaves are Republican and they were the top supporters of the Reconstruction plan. The laws that aided the
reconstruction have made secret organizations rise up. They are intended to commit crimes which are
against the federal laws.
On the other hand, Reconstruction created a window of opportunity in which many forms of
progress took place. Blacks were able to create their own institutions, churches, families; many of them
did acquire land, eventually, although another failure of Reconstruction was that a large majority of blacks
were left in a status of dependence, economic poverty, and dependence on whites, so Reconstruction lays
the groundwork for future struggle.
Both whites and blacks got a little hurt and a little benefit with reconstruction. Whites were hurt
because they lost a lot of labor force from the end of slavery. But whites also benefited because the new
laws in reconstruction had loopholes, which the southern whites abused to gain unfair power over blacks.

Blacks were hurt because although they were no longer slaves, the new laws still treated them as
second class citizens (or designated them as different people than whites)
because of this, blacks were always treated differently because their race was used as a differencing
method. Blacks were able to establish their own communities. These communities were always poorer
than the white communities but they were still a big improvement over the days of slavery.
2. In the aftermath of the Civil War, Northerners acted to protect the civil rights of former slaves. What
specific actions did they take? In what ways did southern white behavior lead northerners to try to protect
those rights? What happened to those rights after Reconstruction?
-they formed the freedman's bureau to aid the black. it's an agency in the federal gov that used tax dollars
to give complete aid to the black in food, housing, health care, contract establishment, etc
-the south's reactions were then the black codes. It was passed by the new southern governments that
attempted to regulate the lives of the former slaves. These laws granted blacks certain rights, such as
legalized marriage, ownership of property, and limited access to the courts. But they denied them the
rights to testify against whites, to serve on juries or to vote. The Codes also restricted the types of
occupation of the blacks, and it declared that the freed people who failed to sign yearly labor contracts
could be arrested and hired out to white landowners.
-then the north again pass the civil rights bill in 1866 to overwrite the black code
-they also passed another bill to extend the life of freedman's bureau which had been originally
established for 1 year
-to protect the rights of blacks in the south, the government posted federal troops all throughout the south.
this was during reconstruction. but in 1876, as part of a deal between the new president (Hayes) and the
south, federal troops were withdrawn from the south. when this happened, the southern whites started
passing state laws called Jim Crow laws, to discriminate between whites and blacks. despite the civil
rights act being law, the government couldn't enforce it in the south, which allowed whites to pass Jim

Crow laws. when these laws came into effect, whites used them to bully blacks into an inferior role in
society, and to push all whites into the higher positions in society.
5. In the late 19th century, the United States experienced one of the largest and most rapid economic
revolutions. The main causes for it were the boost in transportation due to railroad expansion, and the
invention of machines to help with manufacturing and farming. The expansion of national railroads
opened up commerce and enabled manufacturers to reach a wider range of consumers. The number of
miles of railroad track in the U.S. tripled between 1860 and 1880, and tripled again by 1920, opening vast
new areas of land to commercial farming and creating a truly national market for manufactured goods.
Innovations in agriculture technologies such as barbed wire, plows, and automatic reapers also made it
possible to grow and manage crops and livestock at a much larger scale. This rise in commerce also
created a need for a large workforce to keep up with demand. Gone were the days of small scale shops
and markets; they have been replaced with corporations staffing hundreds, even thousands of employees,
each with a set of different skills and tasks that combine with other workers, utilizing the concentration of
resources to create the mass-produced products needed. This national transition, from small shop to large
workforce, has been named the Industrial Revolution.
As the consequences of the growth, the countrys economic growth distributed its benefits very
unevenly. With minimum regulation from the government, big corporations had great power and control
over their employees. Workers were treated poorly with bad working condition and very low wages while
their employers grew richer from the mass-scale profitability. The wide gap between the rich and the poor
only became wider with industrialization.
In order to defend the rise of big business, business leaders found more efficient ways to manage
their companies, two methods of which are vertical and horizontal integration. Vertical integration
involves manipulating and controlling every part of the manufacturing process, top to bottom. The
Carnegie Steel company practiced this. The company controlled not only the mills where the steel was
made, but also the mines where the iron ore was extracted, the coal mines that supplied the coal, the ships

that transported the iron ore, the railroads that transported the coal to the factory, the coke ovens where the
coal was cooked, etc. The company also focused heavily on developing talent internally from the bottom
up, rather than importing it from other companies. Horizontal integration is to monopolize one part of a
production process so that the company can have better prediction and stability. For example
Rockefellers Standard Oil implemented a horizontal integration in their company for a period of time
buying out competing oil refineries. By owning all refineries, Rockefeller can monopolize one aspect of
his industry, as well as have better control over its stability. Standard Oil would not be taken by surprise
if the market fluctuated. Besides that, the bigger a company gets, the more trained and specialized it needs
their employees to be. Therefore workers post-industrialization do not need as many skills to perform
their jobs, and as a result are categorized in lower level positions in the company's structure. This makes
it very difficult for workers to defending their benefits, bargain with their employers for raises, or feel
secure in their jobs. On the reverse side, employers have a much stronger control over labor costs and can
easily maximize their profits.
The poor and the working class criticized the growth of business because it made them poor, and
powerless to fight against their employers for job security, raises, and safe work environments. Business
grew so fast and so powerfully that it could not be regulated at the same time. According to Henry
Geogre, labor is what produces wealth. Business owners are siphoning off the profits of the laborers for
their own, or stealing the value of their work. Wealth belongs to the human who creates it. You did the
work, you deserve just compensation for it. Just because someone was able to hire you for a set wage
doesn't give that employer the right to steal the value of your work.
6/ One of the methods workers used to compensate for these changes was grouping together to form
Unions. As a group, Union represented the interest of lots of different workers and gave the workers more
leverage with their employers when negotiating for better benefits, reasonable work hours, and safer
working environments. Some examples of effective unions that came about include the Knights of Labor,
and the American Federation of Labor. However the union was not recognized and there was a lot of

pressure to break them up. Small unions didn't work because the employers could easily fire a small group
of employees on strike and replace them with workers from the large group of unemployed people. Also,
employers could rent out police to intimidate small groups of striking employees until they returned to
work. The Knights of labor (1869) had the concept of industrial union. They avoided confrontation and
strike, they brought together every worker in the industry from the most skilled to the less skilled to gain
their negotiation power to the corporations. They are critical with child labor, working hour per day and
week, etc. The American federation of labor brought together the workers in the same industry and helped
them to gain their leverage by monopolizing their skills and set the fixed right price for the job.
4/ Washington's focus is on education. Slaves were just freed, so they are "behind" on education. His
proposal is for blacks to either go to school, or to instead work hard and adopt industrialization. basically,
he thinks blacks should get "balanced" with whites via social status and do it quickly via hard work and/or
education. Du bois disagrees with washington, saying he is too nice/peaceful. They shouldn't just adapt or
go along with the rules of government and industrialization. It's like being submissive to the whites again.
Du bois thinks Washingtons passive approach is easy to be taken advantage of by whites. Some proof is
the Jim crow laws being implemented after reconstruction ends and how Washington has to bring funding
for blacks in from the north through fundraisers and friends. So du bois' approach is for blacks to fight for
their rights in politics, pass laws to protect black rights, sue to preserve rights that are violated and stage
protests. Education for blacks won't work because black schools will never be as good as white schools
because they get less money for books and good teachers.
8/Allegory
Baum viewed these events from up-close in both rural South Dakota and urban Chicago. He mourned the
destruction of the fragile alliance between the Midwestern farmers (The Scarecrow) and the urban
industrial workers (the Tin-man). Along with Bryan (the Cowardly Lion with aloud roar but little bit),
they had been taken down the yellow brick road (the gold standard) that leads nowhere. Each journeyed to
the Emerald (the Capitol) seeking favors from the Wizard of Oz (the President). Even the name Oz is an

abbreviation of the standard measurement of gold, the ounce. Dorothy, the symbol of Everyman, went
along with them, in her silver shoes (changed to ruby in the 1939 movie). She was innocent enough to see
the

truth

before

the

others.

Along the way they meet the Wicked Witch of the East who, Baum tells us, had kept the little Munchkin
people "in bondage for many years, making them slave for her night and day." If we have any doubt as to
whom the witch represents, Baum soon tells us. The Tin Woodsman, once an independent and hardworking man, had been put under aspell by the witch so that each time he swung his axe it chopped off a
different part of his body. Lacking another trade, he "worked harder than ever." The worker becomes like
a machine, incapable of love. (Recall the Tinman singing: "If I only had a heart.") The Scarecrow (farmer)
wants the Wizard to give him a brain. The Wicked Witch of the East symbolizes the large industrial
corporations and eastern finance. Like Coxey's Army, the small group heads toward the Emerald City
where the Wizard, hiding behind a papier-mache facade, rules. As they enter the throne room, each
member of the group sees something different in the Wizard--like all good politicans, he can be all things
to

all

people.

Later, however, they confront the Wizard directly. They see he is nothing more than "a little man, with a
bald head and a wrinkled face."
"I thought Oz was a great Head," Dorothy said. "And I thought Oz was a terrible Beast," said the Tin
Woodman. "And I though Oz was a Ball of Fire," the Lion said. The Scarecrow thinks he sees a gossamer
fairy.
"No, you are all wrong," the man said. "I have been making believe." When Borothy asks him who he is,
really, he replies, "I'm just a common man." The Scarecrow adds, "You're more than that...You're a
humbug."
The Wizard admits: "It was a great mistake my ever letting you into the Throne Room. Usually I will not
see even my subject, and so they believe I am something terrible." Those were the days before
presidential candidates campaigned among the people. They stayed home and "recieved" delegations.

Bryan broke the tradition in 1896--he traveled through the country and roared. This was Baum's Populist
message. The powers-that-be can only remain at the throne through deception, people's ignorance and
credulity allow the powerful to manipulate and control them.
The Wizard--a former ventriloquist and circus balloonist, a common man from Omaha--is disarmed.
Dorothy returns to Kansas with the magical help of her Silver Shoes, but when she gets to Kansas she
realizes her shoes "had fallen off in her flight through the air, and were lost forever in the desert."
She didn't need the shoes after all to find happiness, safe at home with Aumt Em And Uncle Henry, simple
farmers.
(Baum even displayed an early sympathy for native Americans of the plains, symolized in the story of the
Winged monkeys in the West, whose leader tells Dorothy, "Once..we were a free people, living happily in
the great forest, flying from tree to tree, eating nuts and fruit and doing just as we pleased without calling
anybody master... This was many years ago, before Oz came out of the clouds to rule over this land.")
Baum realized perhaps that the silver issue had been lost, but that silver was not the crucial issue anyway.
The eal question was that of power. With the Wizard of Oz detroned, the Scarecrow (the farmer) rules
Emerald City,
the Tin Woodman (the industrial worker) rules in the West and the Lion (Bryan) protects smaller beasts in
"a small old forest." In Baum's vision, farm interests gain political power, industry moves West, and
Bryan, perhaps, returns to Congress. Baum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz is at once a children's fantasy and an
angry political statement.
7/ 1873: money supply becomes limited.
US dollar used to have gold and silver as basis for value
now it only uses gold
this makes money more valuable to lenders/banks, more expensive (inflation) for farmers
farmers group together to form Granges: cooperative wholesale stores for farmers' supplies.
farmers also started Farmers Alliances for political influence
Alliances work like Unions, but for Politics instead; they have negotiating power to vote for the
candidates who support their causes
Government develops a policy to control interstate (between states) commerce rates

Government reasons at this time that States are in control of intrastate (within the same state) commerce,
but interstate commerce needs to be regulated by the Federal Government.