Term Papers on Reconstruction

Term Paper Title	Reconstruction
# of Words	1016
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	4.06

Reconstruction

Perspectives on History

1/4/03

Chapter 2

            The civil war is over; the Union army defeats the militant, defiant Confederacy. Our agenda at this time was to embrace the citizens of the south back into our country, the way it was before the war. Even though the northern forces won, they felt obligated to rebuild what has been destroyed physically, economically and culturally. Reprobation’s came though in what is called reconstruction. Northerners could send money to finance their economy, send men to rebuild their homes, however the problem of what too do with the former Afro-American slaves was a more complicated issue. Many ideas where being thrown around; educated a percentage of them; train them to learn a task; send them back to Africa; boycotts and other militant thinking, even though the subject was being looked at from many angles controversy followed as well.

            Ida Bell Wells was born as a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi, after emancipation her parents raised enough money too sends her to a Freedman’s school. Her ideas on Afro-American’s during reconstruction were too hit the white southern population in their economy though railroad boycotts . “The white man’s dollar is his god, and to stop this will be to stop the outrages in many localities.”(36) She also stated a slightly more radical approach of stockpiling firearms; these would be used in the threat of lynching which was rampant at the time. “A Winchester rifle should have a place of honour in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.”(38) Her idea of boycotting the railroads was the more civil, hence logical approach. This created a huge loss for the RR corporations at the time. However, preaching of gun ownership will do nothing but create more violence, also would perpetuate and justify the ignorance and senseless lynching of the times.

            “No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing poetry”(40). Booker T Washington stated this quote in the company of many important business leaders and politicians during the Atlanta exposition address. Booker starting at the age of seventeen worked his way through the Hampton Institute as a Janitor. He believed Afro-American’s should learn a trade such as carpentry, metal work, or farming. He thought his people should have to start at the bottom and work their way up to the top. His ideas where very practical; the south at the time required a lot of skilled laborer’s since so many young men have died or lost limbs detrimental to manual labor. Selling the point of learning a trade for Afro-Americans was a way of flooding the southern labor force with his people, creating economic opportunity will give later generation’s of African American’s chances for higher education or elected office. However the down side to this would be exploitation, whites might see an opportu...

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