Redemption (United States history)

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Redemption, in the history of the United States, was a term used by white Southerners to refer to the reversion of the U.S. South to conservative Democratic Party rule after the period of Reconstruction (1865-1877), which in turn followed the U.S. Civil War.

During Reconstruction, the South was under occupation by federal forces and the state governments were dominated by the Radical Republicans. These Republicans pressed for the granting of political rights to the newly-freed black slaves. The Thirteenth Amendment banning slavery, Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing black civil rights, and Fifteenth Amendment prohibiting the denial of the right to vote on racial grounds enshrined such political rights into law. Some blacks even attained positions of political power under these conditions. However, the Reconstruction government was enormously unpopular with white Southerners, who continued to try to prevent black political activity at all costs. The early Southern Democrats (later Dixiecrats), exercised their power through such bands as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and paramilitary organizations such as the White League.

By the mid-1870s, the interest of the Northerners in reforming the South had shriveled and Southern Democratic influence had begun to return to Southern states. By the time of the presidential election of 1876, only three states of the South — (Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida) remained unaffected, or "unredeemed", by Southern Democratic rule (hence the name, Redemption). The disputed election between Republican governor of Ohio Rutherford B. Hayes and Democratic governor of New York Samuel J. Tilden was finally resolved by the Compromise of 1877, in which Hayes became President in exchange for numerous favors to the South, one of which was the removal of Union troops from the remaining "unredeemed" Southern states. With the removal of these forces, Reconstruction came to an end.

The control of southern states by the Democratic Party in the South not only signaled the end of Reconstruction, but also the end of most of the civil rights that African-Americans had gained during that period. Especially during the 1890s, Redeemer governments across the South passed Jim Crow laws which segregated blacks in virtually every regard, and also imposed poll taxes, literacy requirements, and whites-only primaries on the black populace, intended to prevent them from voting. Because they had introduced these measures, this wing of the Democrats would have control and a firm electoral hold on the Southern U.S. for about another century, until the 1960s, a phenomenon known as the Solid South).

[edit] References

• Perman, Michael. The Road to Redemption: Southern Politics, 1869-1879. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. ISBN 0-8078-4141-2