“White Democrats opposed Reconstruction not because it was a failure, but because it was working. Today almost all historians of Reconstruction hold that view.”

— James W. Loewen

2010s, 2014, How Two Historians Responded To Racism In Mississippi (December 2014)

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James W. Loewen 17

American historian 1942

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“Jeff Davis did his best when he fled from Richmond to make out of himself a reconstructed woman. He made such a bad failure, however, that he deems the work simply impossible.”

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“There are no Reconstruction reenactors. And who would want to be? Reconstruction is the disappointing epilogue to the American Civil War, a sort of Grimm fairy tale stepchild of the war and the ugly duckling of American history. Even Abraham Lincoln was uneasy at using the word "reconstruction"--he qualified it with add-ons like "what is called reconstruction" or "a plan of reconstruction (as the phrase goes)"--and preferred to speak of the "re-inauguration of the national authority" or the need to "reinaugurate loyal state governments." Unlike the drama of the war years, Reconstruction has no official starting or ending date. Although we usually bookend the period with the Confederate surrender in 1865 and the withdrawal of federal occupation troops in 1877, people had been talking about "reconstruction" even before the shooting began in 1861, and the federal occupation troops who were withdrawn in 1877 were by that time little more than a corporal's guard. In some sense, Reconstruction ended when Democrats managed to regain control of the House of Representatives in 1874; other parts of it spluttered on…”

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“[A]lthough my attempted reconstruction of the view of Whitehead and Russell overcomes, I think, many of the difficulties, it is impossible to regard it as altogether satisfactory.”

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“In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired the restoration of white supremacy. It aimed to destroy the Republican party’s infrastructure, undermine the Reconstruction state, reestablish control of the black labor force, and restore racial subordination in every aspect of Southern life.”

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“The treatment of the period of Reconstruction reflects small credit upon American historians as scientists. We have too often a deliberate attempt so to change the facts of history that the story will make pleasant reading for Americans.”

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“The ideas survived and they can now be said to be in agreement with reason. They survived because prejudice, passion, conceit, errors, sheer pigheadedness, in short because all the elements that characterize the context of discovery, opposed the dictates of reason and because these irrational elements were permitted to have their way. To express it differently: Copernicanism and other "rational" views exist today only because reason was overruled at some time in their past. (The opposite is also true: witchcraft and other "irrational" views had ceased to be influential only because reason was overruled at some time in their past.)”

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“White Democrats opposed Reconstruction not because it was a failure, but because it was working. Today almost all historians of Reconstruction hold that view.”

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James W. Loewen 17

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