----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Dawson" <MDawson at pdx.edu> -Nathan also views Reconstruction too narrowly -- as being just a matter of -"turning slaves into voters." Of course, what Reconstruction was really -about was turning slaves into voters AND landowners. The latter half of -that formula never got off the ground. Grant's troops started giving -slavemasters "their" plantations back before the dust from the war had even -settled.
Reconstruction was what it was-- which was a civil rights and voting rights victory. Many people wanted more in the economic sphere, but that's not what happened. And the question is why Reconstruction as it was, not what people wished it was, was destroyed by Klan violence in the South.
And when the Supreme Court declared that the Klan and its sister organizations could not be prosecuted under federal law, it gave them full freedom to end Reconstruction. That was what caused the destruction of Reconstruction and led to another century of Jim Crow subjugation in the South.
Nathan Newman