ShmoopTube

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:03

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by a civil war,

00:06

the most restrained and respectful of conflicts.

00:09

Actually, not really. The Civil War was nasty.

00:12

All right, check out this excerpt.

00:13

[ mumbles ]

00:17

[ mumbling continues ]

00:22

All right, and the question:

00:23

Why did the Reconstruction Acts fail to change Southern attitudes toward race?

00:28

And here are your potential answers.

00:30

[ mumbles ]

00:35

All right, well, the United States might have made it

00:37

through the long, bloody Civil War, but it struggled

00:39

to bring itself back together when the fighting ended.

00:42

Let's see how those good intentions

00:44

fell short on the road to reconciliation.

00:46

Did the Reconstruction Acts fail to change Southern attitudes

00:49

toward race because B -

00:52

the Republicans were more focused on building a political base

00:55

in the South? Hmm?

00:57

Well, actually, the Republicans wouldn't have a solid

00:59

political base in the South until Reagan was elected

01:02

in 1980. So B is still about a century away.

01:06

Did the Reconstruction Acts come up short because C -

01:09

the Southern states banned together and refused

01:12

to meet the Act's demands?

01:14

Well, if they could have, they probably would have.

01:17

Very few Southern leaders wanted to sign the Acts to begin with,

01:20

but they didn't have very much bargaining power being losers

01:23

in the War and all. So that knocks out C, as well.

01:26

Could the Acts have failed to make a difference in

01:28

racial attitudes because D - the Democrats in the South

01:32

made negotiations with Northern Democrats?

01:35

Well, Democrats in the North also opposed

01:37

granting Blacks the right to vote,

01:39

but Republicans were firmly in control during this period.

01:42

So Northern Democrats may have won the war, but they lost

01:46

this particular battle.

01:47

Which means that the Reconstruction Acts failed to change

01:50

Southern attitudes toward race because A -

01:53

the Southerners held on to determined attitudes

01:55

and were resistant to change.

01:58

Despite the best intentions of the requirements

02:00

to re-enter the Union following the Civil War,

02:02

the laws fell short of transforming Southern feelings about race.

02:06

That makes A the right answer.

02:08

In fact, Southern states were so resistant to racial equality,

02:12

that in the years following Reconstruction,

02:14

they passed laws restricting the very freedoms that

02:17

the Reconstruction Acts attempted to grant former slaves.

02:20

When changing the law doesn't work,

02:22

time is usually the best plastic surgery of the soul.

02:25

Ooh. That's kind of a Shmoop-y quote.

02:26

You can quote us on that. Pretty good.

02:29

[ crash ]

Full Transcript