Editing Reconstruction era (section)

==Legacy and historiography==
[[File:Map of Reconstruction in the United States 1861 to 1877.jpg|thumb|Map of Reconstruction in the United States 1861 to 1877]]
Besides the election of Southern black people to state governments and the United States Congress, other achievements of the Reconstruction era include "the South's first state-funded public school systems, more equitable taxation legislation, laws against racial discrimination in public transport and accommodations and ambitious economic development programs (including aid to railroads and other enterprises)."<ref>{{cite web |title=Reconstruction |url=https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/reconstruction |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210121184529/https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/reconstruction |archive-date=January 21, 2021 |access-date=January 24, 2021 |website=[[History (American TV network)|History.com]]}}</ref> Despite these achievements the interpretation of Reconstruction has been a topic of controversy because nearly all historians hold that Reconstruction ended in failure, but for very different reasons.

The first generation of Northern historians believed that the former Confederates were traitors and Johnson was their ally who threatened to undo the Union's constitutional achievements. By the 1880s, however, Northern historians argued that Johnson and his allies were not traitors but had blundered badly in rejecting the Fourteenth Amendment and setting the stage for Radical Reconstruction.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Green |first=Fletcher M. |date=November 1936 |title=Walter Lynwood Fleming: Historian of Reconstruction |journal=[[Journal of Southern History]] |volume=2 |issue=4 |pages=497–521 |doi=10.2307/2192035|jstor=2192035 }}</ref>

The Black leader [[Booker T. Washington]], who grew up in [[West Virginia]] during Reconstruction, concluded later that: "the Reconstruction experiment in racial democracy failed because it began at the wrong end, emphasizing political means and civil rights acts rather than economic means and self-determination".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Harlan |first=Louis R. |title=Booker T. Washington in Perspective |date=1988 |publisher=University Press of Mississippi |isbn=9780878053742 |editor-last=Smock |editor-first=Raymond |location=Jackson |pages=164}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Taylor |first=A. A. |date=January 1938 |title=Historians of the Reconstruction |url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.2307/2714704 |journal=[[The Journal of Negro History]] |volume=23 |issue=1 |pages=16–34 |doi=10.2307/2714704|jstor=2714704 |s2cid=150066533 }}</ref> His solution was to concentrate on building the economic infrastructure of the Black community, in part by his leadership and the Southern [[Tuskegee Institute]].

===Dunning School, 1900s–1920s===
The [[Dunning School]] of scholars, who were trained at the history department of [[Columbia University]] under Professor [[William A. Dunning]], analyzed Reconstruction as a failure after 1866 for different reasons. They claimed that Congress took freedoms and rights from qualified Whites and gave them to unqualified Blacks who were being duped by what they called "corrupt carpetbaggers and scalawags". As [[T. Harry Williams]] (who was a sharp critic of the Dunning School) noted, the Dunning scholars portrayed the era in stark terms:{{sfnp|Williams|1946|p=473}}
{{blockquote|1=Reconstruction was a battle between two extremes: the Democrats, as the group which included the vast majority of the whites, standing for decent government and racial supremacy, versus the Republicans, the Negroes, alien carpetbaggers, and renegade scalawags, standing for dishonest government and alien ideals. These historians wrote literally in terms of white and black.}}

===Revisionists and Beardians, 1930s–1940s===
In the 1930s, [[historical revisionism]] became popular among scholars. As disciples of [[Charles A. Beard]], revisionists focused on economics, downplaying politics and constitutional issues. The central figure was a young scholar at the University of Wisconsin, [[Howard K. Beale]], who in his PhD dissertation, finished in 1924, developed a complex new interpretation of Reconstruction. The Dunning School portrayed freedmen as mere pawns in the hands of northern whites. Beale argued that the whites themselves were pawns in the hands of Northern industrialists, who had taken control of the nation during the Civil War and who Beale felt would be threatened by return to power of the Southern Whites. Beale further argued that the rhetoric of civil rights for Blacks, and the dream of equality, was rhetoric designed to fool idealistic voters, calling it "claptrap", arguing: "Constitutional discussions of the rights of the Negro, the status of Southern states, the legal position of ex-rebels, and the powers of Congress and the president determined nothing. They were pure sham."<ref>{{cite book |last=Beale |first=Howard K. |url=https://archive.org/details/criticalyearstud0000beal/page/n5/mode/2up |title=The Critical Year; A study of Andrew Johnson and reconstruction |publisher=F. Ungar |year=1958 |place=New York |page=147 |oclc=458675179 |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Hugh |last=Tulloch |title=The Debate on the American Civil War Era |year=1999 |publisher=Manchester University Press |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AVD1-qcknywC&pg=PA226 |page=226 |isbn=978-0-7190-4938-5}}</ref> The Beard–Beale interpretation of Reconstruction became known as "revisionism", and replaced the Dunning School for most historians until the 1950s, after which it was largely discredited.<ref>{{cite book |last=Charles |first=Allan D. |title=Twentieth-century American Historians |date=1983 |publisher=Gale Research |isbn=9780810311442 |editor-last=Wilson |editor-first=Clyde N. |location=Detroit |pages=32–38 |chapter=Howard K Beale}}</ref>{{sfnp|Williams|1946}}{{sfnp|Stampp|Litwack|1969|pp=85–106}}{{sfnp|Montgomery|1967|pp=vii–ix}}

The Beardian interpretation of the causes of the Civil War downplayed slavery, abolitionism, and issues of morality. It ignored constitutional issues of states' rights and even ignored American nationalism as the force that finally led to victory in the war. Indeed, the ferocious combat itself was passed over as merely an ephemeral event. Much more important was the calculus of class conflict. As the Beards explained in ''The Rise of American Civilization'' (1927), the Civil War was really a:<ref>{{cite book |last1=Beard |first1=Charles A. |url=https://archive.org/details/riseofamericanci02bear |title=The Rise of American Civilization |last2=Beard |first2=Mary R. |publisher=Macmillan |year=1927 |volume=2 |place=New York |page=54 |name-list-style=amp |via=Archive.org}}</ref>
{{blockquote|1=social cataclysm in which the capitalists, laborers, and farmers of the North and West drove from power in the national government the planting aristocracy of the South.}}

The Beards were especially interested in the Reconstruction era, as the industrialists of the Northeast and the farmers of the West cashed in on their great victory over the Southern aristocracy. Historian [[Richard Hofstadter]] paraphrases the Beards as arguing that in victory:<ref>{{cite book |first=Richard |last=Hofstadter |title=Progressive Historians |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=iLdMzbv2IDQC&pg=PT458 |orig-year=1968 |date=2012 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday |page=303 |isbn=978-0-307-80960-5}}</ref>
{{blockquote|1=the Northern capitalists were able to impose their economic program, quickly passing a series of measures on tariffs, banking, homesteads, and immigration that guaranteed the success of their plans for economic development. Solicitude for the freedmen had little to do with Northern policies. The Fourteenth Amendment, which gave the Negro his citizenship, Beard found significant primarily as a result of a conspiracy of a few legislative draftsmen friendly to corporations to use the supposed elevation of the blacks as a cover for a fundamental law giving strong protection to business corporations against regulation by state government.}}

[[William B. Hesseltine]], a [[socialist]] politician and historian, adhered to the point that there were Northeastern businessmen wanting to control the Southern economy before and after the war, implying that they did by owning railroads.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Hesseltine |first=William B. |date=1935 |title=Economic Factors in the Abandonment of Reconstruction |journal=[[Mississippi Valley Historical Review]] |volume=22 |issue=2 |pages=191–210 |doi=10.2307/1898466 |jstor=1898466}}</ref> In his book, ''A History of The South 1607-1936'', he wrote "when the war closed, Northern business men looked to the South as a colony into which business might expand". Further in the same book, he wrote: "Moderates, Liberals, and Democrats continued to deplore Southern conditions until the Northern business man was persuaded that only a restoration of native white government would bring the peace necessary for economic penetration into the South."<ref name="Hesseltine1936">{{cite book |last1=Hesseltine |first1=William B. |title=A History Of The South 1607 1936 |date=1936 |pages=578, 640 |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.153241/page/n597/mode/2up?view=theater}}</ref>

The Beard–Beale interpretation of the monolithic Northern industrialists fell apart in the 1950s when it was closely examined by numerous historians, including Robert P. Sharkey, Irwin Unger, and Stanley Coben.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Coben |first=Stanley |date=1959 |title=Northeastern Business and Radical Reconstruction: A Re-examination |journal=[[Mississippi Valley Historical Review]] |volume=46 |issue=1 |pages=67–90 |doi=10.2307/1892388 |jstor=1892388}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Pressly |first=Thomas J. |date=1961 |title=''Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction'' (review) |journal=[[Civil War History]] |volume=7 |pages=91–92 |doi=10.1353/cwh.1961.0063 |s2cid=144355361}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |jstor=20089450 |title=Radical Republicanism in Pennsylvania, 1866–1873 |journal=The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography |volume=85 |issue=4 |pages=439–457 |last=Montgomery |first=David |date=1961}}</ref> The younger scholars conclusively demonstrated that there was no unified economic policy on the part of the dominant Republican Party. Some wanted high tariffs and some low. Some wanted greenbacks and others wanted gold. There was no conspiracy to use Reconstruction to impose any such unified economic policy on the nation. Northern businessmen were widely divergent on monetary or tariff policy, and seldom paid attention to Reconstruction issues. Furthermore, the rhetoric on behalf of the rights of the freedmen was not claptrap but deeply-held and very serious political philosophy.{{sfnp|Stampp|Litwack|1969|pp=85–106}}{{sfn|Foner|1983|pp=39-40}}{{sfnp|Montgomery|1967|pp=vii–ix}}

===Black historians===
The Black scholar [[W. E. B. Du Bois]], in his ''[[Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880|Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880]]'', published in 1935,<ref>{{cite book |last=Du Bois |first=W. E. B. |url=https://archive.org/details/blackreconstruc00dubo/ |title=Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 |date=1935 |publisher=Harcourt, Brace and Company |isbn= |location=New York |author-link=W. E. B. Du Bois |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref> compared results across the states to show achievements by the Reconstruction legislatures and to refute claims about wholesale African American control of governments. He showed Black contributions, as in the establishment of universal public education, charitable and social institutions and [[universal suffrage]] as important results, and he noted their collaboration with Whites. He also pointed out that Whites benefited most by the financial deals made, and he put excesses in the perspective of the war's aftermath. He noted that despite complaints, several states kept their Reconstruction-era state constitutions into the early 20th century. Despite receiving favorable reviews, his work was largely ignored by White historians of his time.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Jones |first=Martha S. |date=January 7, 2022 |title=Nine decades later, W.E.B. Du Bois's work faces familiar criticisms |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/nine-decades-later-web-du-boiss-work-faces-familiar-criticisms/2022/01/07/9f926968-6445-11ec-8ce3-9454d0b46d42_story.html |access-date=February 2, 2024 |newspaper=Washington Post |issn=0190-8286}}</ref>

===Neo-abolitionists===
In the 1960s, [[Neoabolitionism (race relations)|neo-abolitionist]] historians emerged, led by [[John Hope Franklin]], [[Kenneth Stampp]], [[Leon Litwack]], and [[Eric Foner]]. Influenced by the [[civil rights movement]], they rejected the Dunning School and found a great deal to praise in Radical Reconstruction. Foner, the primary advocate of this view, argued that it was never truly completed, and that a "Second Reconstruction" was needed in the late 20th century to complete the goal of full equality for African Americans. The neo-abolitionists followed the revisionists in minimizing the corruption and waste created by Republican state governments, saying it was no worse than [[William M. Tweed|Boss Tweed]]'s ring in New York City.{{sfnp|Williams|1946|p=469}}{{sfnp|Foner|1988|p=xxii}}

Instead, they emphasized that suppression of the rights of African Americans was a worse scandal, and a grave corruption of America's [[Republicanism|republicanist]] ideals. They argued that the tragedy of Reconstruction was not that it failed because Blacks were incapable of governing, especially as they did not dominate any state government, but that it failed because Whites raised an insurgent movement to restore White supremacy. White-elite-dominated state legislatures passed disenfranchising state constitutions from 1890 to 1908 that effectively barred most Blacks and many poor Whites from voting. This disenfranchisement affected millions of people for decades into the 20th century, and closed African Americans {{em|and}} poor Whites out of the political process in the South.<ref name="Glenn Feldman 2004, pp. 135–136">{{cite book |last=Feldman |first=Glenn |title=The Disfranchisement Myth: Poor Whites and Suffrage Restriction in Alabama |date=2004 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=9780820326153 |location=Athens |pages=135–136}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |url=https://ssrn.com/abstract=224731 |first=Richard H. |last=Pildes |title=Democracy, Anti-democracy, and the Canon |journal=Constitutional Commentary |volume=17 |date=2000 |page=27 |access-date=March 15, 2008 |archive-date=November 21, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181121211213/https://ssrn.com/abstract=224731 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Re-establishment of White supremacy meant that within a decade African Americans were excluded from virtually all local, state, and federal governance in all states of the South. Lack of representation meant that they were treated as second-class citizens, with schools and services consistently underfunded in segregated societies, no [[jury service|representation on juries]] or in [[law enforcement]], and [[bias]] in other legislation. It was not until the [[civil rights movement]] and the passage of the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]] and the [[Voting Rights Act]] of 1965 that segregation was outlawed and suffrage restored, under what has in retrospect been referred to as the "Second Reconstruction".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=McPherson |first=James M. |date=1978 |title=The Dimensions of Change: The First and Second Reconstructions |journal=The Wilson Quarterly |volume=2 |issue=2 |pages=135–144 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Codrington III |first=Wilfred |date=2020-07-20 |title=The United States Needs a Third Reconstruction |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/united-states-needs-third-reconstruction/614293/ |access-date=2024-03-03 |website=The Atlantic |language=en}}</ref>

In 1990, [[Eric Foner]] concluded that from the Black point of view "Reconstruction must be judged a failure."{{sfnp|Foner|1990|p=255}}<ref>{{harvnb|Foner|1990|p=256}}: Foner adds: "What remains certain is that Reconstruction failed, and that for blacks its failure was a disaster whose magnitude cannot be obscured by the accomplishments that endured."</ref> Foner stated Reconstruction was "a noble if flawed experiment, the first attempt to introduce a genuine inter-racial democracy in the United States".<ref name="Foner 2009" /> According to him, the many factors contributing to the failure included: lack of a permanent federal agency ''specifically'' designed for the enforcement of civil rights; the [[Morrison R. Waite]] Supreme Court decisions that dismantled previous congressional civil rights legislation; and the economic reestablishment of Whiggish white planters in the South by 1877. Historian [[William McFeely]] explained that although the constitutional amendments and civil rights legislation on their own merit were remarkable achievements, no permanent government agency whose specific purpose was civil rights enforcement had been created.{{refn|group="lower-roman"|Although Grant and Attorney General Amos T. Akerman set up a strong legal system to protect African Americans, the Department of Justice did not set up a permanent Civil Rights Division until the [[Civil Rights Act of 1957]].{{sfnp|McFeely|2002|pp=372–373; 424, 425}}}}

More recent work by Nina Silber, [[David W. Blight]], Cecelia O'Leary, Laura Edwards, LeeAnn Whites, and Edward J. Blum has encouraged greater attention to race, religion, and issues of gender while at the same time pushing the effective end of Reconstruction to the end of the 19th century, while monographs by Charles Reagan Wilson, Gaines Foster, W. Scott Poole, and Bruce Baker have offered new views of the Southern "[[Lost Cause of the Confederacy|Lost Cause]]".<ref name="whatreconstructionmeant">{{cite book |last=Baker |first=Bruce E. |title=What Reconstruction Meant: Historical Memory in the American South |date=2007 |publisher=University of Virginia Press |isbn=9780813926605 |location=Charlottesville}}</ref>{{sfnp|Brown|2008|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}}

===Dating the end of the Reconstruction era===
At the national level, textbooks typically date the era from 1865 to 1877. Eric Foner's textbook of national history ''Give Me Liberty'' is an example.<ref>{{cite book |last=Foner |first=Eric |year=2017 |title=Give me liberty! : an American history. volume 2, From 1865 |place=New York |publisher=W.W. Norton & Company. C |edition= Brief 5th |isbn=9780393603408 |oclc=1019904631}}</ref> His monograph ''Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877'' (1988) focusing on the situation in the South, covers 1863 to 1865. While 1877 is the usual date given for the end of Reconstruction, some historians such as [[Orville Vernon Burton]] extend the era to the 1890s to include the imposition of segregation.<ref>{{cite book |author=Burton |first=Orville Vernon |title=The Age of Lincoln |publisher=Hill and Wang |year=2007 |isbn=9780809095131 |edition=1st |place=New York |page=312 |author-link=Orville Vernon Burton}}</ref>

The year 1877 is also commonly used as a dividing point for two-semester survey courses and two-volume textbooks that aim to cover all of U.S. history.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Locks |first1=Catherine |last2=Mergel |first2=Sarah |last3=Roseman |first3=Pamela |last4=Spike |first4=Tamara |last5=Lasseter |first5=Marie |title=History in the Making: A History of the People of the United States of America to 1877 |journal=History Open Textbooks |date=1 October 2013 |url=https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/history-textbooks/1/ |access-date=21 August 2022 |archive-date=December 9, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221209075238/https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/history-textbooks/1/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Locke |first1=Joseph L. |last2=Wright |first2=Ben |title=The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook |date=2022 |publisher=Stanford University Press |url=https://www.americanyawp.com/ |access-date=21 August 2022 |archive-date=August 21, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220821215427/https://www.americanyawp.com/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Watson |first1=Harry L. |title=Building the American Republic |date=2018 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |url=https://press.uchicago.edu/sites/buildingtheamericanrepublic/index.html |access-date=21 August 2022 |archive-date=August 20, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220820022856/https://press.uchicago.edu/sites/buildingtheamericanrepublic/index.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

===Economic role of race===
Economists and economic historians have different interpretations of the economic impact of race on the postwar Southern economy. In 1995, Robert Whaples took a random survey of 178 members of the [[Economic History Association]], who studied American history in all time periods. He asked whether they wholly or partly accepted, or rejected, 40 propositions in the scholarly literature about American economic history. The greatest difference between economics PhDs and history PhDs came in questions on competition and race. For example, the proposition originally put forward by [[Robert Higgs]], "in the post-bellum South economic competition among Whites played an important part in protecting blacks from racial coercion", was accepted in whole or part by 66% of the economists, but by only 22% of the historians. Whaples says this highlights: "A recurring difference dividing historians and economists. The economists have more faith in the power of the competitive market. For example, they see the competitive market as protecting disenfranchised blacks and are less likely to accept the idea that there was exploitation by merchant monopolists."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Whaples |first=Robert |author-link=Robert Whaples |journal=[[The Journal of Economic History]] |volume=55 |issue=1 |pages=139–154 |jstor=2123771 |title=Where Is There Consensus Among American Economic Historians? The Results of a Survey on Forty Propositions |date=March 1995 |doi=10.1017/S0022050700040602|s2cid=145691938 }}</ref>

===The "failure" issue===
Reconstruction is widely considered a failure, though the reason for this is a matter of controversy.
* The [[Dunning School]] considered failure inevitable because it felt that taking the right to vote or hold office away from Southern Whites was a violation of republicanism.
* A second school sees the reason for failure as Northern Republicans' lack of effectiveness in guaranteeing political rights to Blacks.{{citation needed|date=February 2018}}
* A third school blames the failure on not giving land to the freedmen so they could have their own economic base of power.{{citation needed|date=February 2018}}
* A fourth school sees the major reason for the failure of Reconstruction as the states' inability to suppress the violence of Southern Whites when they sought reversal for Blacks' gains. Etcheson (2009) points to the "violence that crushed black aspirations and the abandonment by Northern whites of Southern Republicans".<ref>{{cite book |first=Vernon |last=Burton |chapter=Civil War and Reconstruction |editor-first=William L. |editor-last=Barney |title=A Companion to 19th-century America |date=2006 |pages=54–56}}</ref> Etcheson wrote that it is hard to see Reconstruction "as concluding in anything but failure". Etcheson adds: "W. E. B. DuBois captured that failure well when he wrote in ''Black Reconstruction in America'' (1935): 'The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.{{'"}}<ref>{{cite journal |first=Nicole |last=Etcheson |title=Reconstruction and the Making of a Free-Labor South |journal=Reviews in American History |volume=37 |issue=2 |date=June 2009|pages=236–242 |doi=10.1353/rah.0.0101 |s2cid=146573684 }}</ref>
* Other historians emphasize the failure to fully incorporate Southern Unionists into the Republican coalition. Derek W. Frisby points to "Reconstruction's failure to appreciate the challenges of [[Southern Unionism]] and incorporate these loyal Southerners into a strategy that would positively affect the character of the peace".<ref>{{cite book |last=Frisby |first=Derek W. |title=The Great Task Remaining Before Us: Reconstruction as America's Continuing Civil War |date=2010 |publisher=Fordham University Press |isbn=9780823232024 |editor-last=Cimbala |editor-first=Paul |location=New York |page=9 |chapter=A Victory Spoiled: West Tennessee Unionists During Reconstruction}}</ref>

Historian Donald R. Shaffer maintained that the gains during Reconstruction for African Americans were not entirely extinguished. The legalization of African American marriages and families and the independence of Black churches from White denominations were a source of strength during the [[Jim Crow laws|Jim Crow]] era. Reconstruction was never forgotten within the Black community and it remained a source of inspiration. The system of [[sharecropping]] granted Blacks a considerable amount of freedom as compared to slavery.{{sfnp|Zuczek|2006 |loc=Vol. 1 pp. 20, 22}}

Historian [[Eric Foner]] argues:<ref>{{harvp|Foner|1988|p=604}} reprinted in: {{cite book |editor-first= Francis G. |editor-last= Couvares |display-editors= etal |title= Interpretations of American History Vol. I Through Reconstruction |edition= 7th | url= https://books.google.com/books?id=DVNhXPy6suoC&pg=PA409 |date= 2000 |page= 409 |publisher= Simon and Schuster |isbn= 978-0-684-86773-1}}</ref>
{{blockquote|1= What remains certain is that Reconstruction failed, and that for Blacks its failure was a disaster whose magnitude cannot be obscured by the genuine accomplishments that did endure.}}

Historian [[Annette Gordon-Reed]] described in an October 2015 article for ''[[The Atlantic]]'' magazine the effects if Reconstruction had not failed.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Gordon-Reed |first1=Annette |title=What If Reconstruction Hadn't Failed? |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/what-if-reconstruction-hadnt-failed/412219/ |access-date=May 5, 2024 |publisher=The Atlantic |date=October 26, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231114185238/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/what-if-reconstruction-hadnt-failed/412219/ |archive-date=November 14, 2023}}</ref> However, in 2014, historian Mark Summers argued that the "failure" question should be looked at from the viewpoint of the war goals; in that case, he argues:{{sfnp|Summers|2014|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=2-1wBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA4 4]}}
{{blockquote|1=If we see Reconstruction's purpose as making sure that the main goals of the war would be fulfilled, of a Union held together forever, of a North and South able to work together, of slavery extirpated, and sectional rivalries confined, of the permanent banishment of the fear of vaunting appeals to state sovereignty, backed by armed force, then Reconstruction looks like what in that respect it was, a lasting and unappreciated success.}}

===Historiographical Interpretations===
Historians have long debated the legacy of the Reconstruction era, with interpretations evolving significantly over time. One of the most influential and contested narratives was advanced by the Dunning school, which characterized Reconstruction as a misguided experiment that led to widespread corruption and social disorder. This view marginalized the experiences and achievements of African Americans during Reconstruction and perpetuated myths of white Southern victimhood. Contemporary scholars, including Hannah Rosen, have challenged these interpretations by emphasizing the era's transformative potential and highlighting the efforts of freedmen and their allies to establish civil rights and social equality.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Pierce |first=Jennifer L. |date=2014 |editor-last=Morning |editor-first=Ann |title=Why Teaching About Race as a Social Construct Still Matters |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43653942 |journal=Sociological Forum |volume=29 |issue=1 |pages=259–264 |doi=10.1111/socf.12079 |jstor=43653942 |issn=0884-8971}}</ref> Rosen argues that understanding Reconstruction requires acknowledging both its profound advancements in racial justice and the systemic backlash that sought to undermine them. This historiographical shift has underscored the importance of accurate and inclusive narratives, illustrating how public memory has been shaped by political and cultural forces, and how these narratives continue to influence contemporary discussions on race and justice.

===In popular culture===
[[File:Gone With The Wind 1967 re-release.jpg|thumb|right|A poster for the 1939 epic film ''[[Gone with the Wind (film)|Gone with the Wind]]'', which is set during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras]]
The journalist [[Joel Chandler Harris]], who wrote under the name "Joe Harris" for the ''Atlanta Constitution'' (mostly after Reconstruction), tried to advance racial and sectional reconciliation in the late 19th century. He supported [[Henry W. Grady]]'s vision of a [[New South]] during Grady's time as editor from 1880 to 1889. Harris wrote many editorials in which he encouraged Southerners to accept the changed conditions along with some Northern influences, but he asserted his belief that change should proceed under White supremacy.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor=40580412 |title=Joel Chandler Harris, the Yeoman Tradition, and the New South Movement |journal=The Georgia Historical Quarterly |volume=61 |issue=4 |pages=308–317 |last=Mixon |first=Wayne |date=1977}}</ref>

In popular literature, two early 20th-century novels by [[Thomas Dixon Jr.]]&nbsp;– ''[[The Leopard's Spots]]: A [[Romanticism|Romance]] of the White Man's Burden – 1865–1900'' (1902), and ''[[The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan]]'' (1905)&nbsp;– idealized White resistance to Northern and Black coercion, hailing vigilante action by the [[Ku Klux Klan]].<ref>{{cite journal |first=Maxwell |last=Bloomfield |title=Dixon's ''The Leopard's Spots'': A Study in Popular Racism |journal=American Quarterly |volume=16 |issue=3 |date=1964 |pages=387–401 |doi=10.2307/2710931 |jstor=2710931 |url=http://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1864&context=scholar |access-date=February 7, 2017 |archive-date=April 29, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190429095029/https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1864&context=scholar |url-status=live }}</ref> [[D. W. Griffith]] adapted Dixon's ''The Clansman'' for the screen in his anti-Republican movie ''[[The Birth of a Nation]]'' (1915); it stimulated the formation of the 20th-century version of the KKK. Many other authors romanticized the supposed benevolence of slavery and the elite world of the antebellum plantations, in memoirs and histories which were published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; the [[United Daughters of the Confederacy]] promoted influential works which were written in these genres by women.<ref name="Gardner">{{cite book |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=-xG7Dfsxya8C |first=Sarah E. |last=Gardner |title=Blood and Irony: Southern White Women's Narratives of the Civil War, 1861–1937 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |date=2006 |pages=128–130 |isbn=9780807857670}}</ref>

Of much more lasting impact was the story ''Gone with the Wind'', first in the form of [[Gone with the Wind (novel)|the best-selling 1936 novel]], which enabled its author [[Margaret Mitchell]] to win the [[Pulitzer Prize]], and an award-winning [[Gone with the Wind (film)|Hollywood blockbuster with the same title]] in 1939. In each case, the second half of the story focuses on Reconstruction in Atlanta. The book sold millions of copies nationwide; the film is regularly re-broadcast on television. In 2018, it remained at the top of the [[list of highest-grossing films]], adjusted in order to keep up with inflation. The ''New Georgia Encyclopedia'' argues:<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |first1=Hugh |last1=Ruppersburg |first2=Chris |last2=Dobbs |title=''Gone With the Wind'' (Film) |url= https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/gone-wind-film |encyclopedia=New Georgia Encyclopedia |date=2017}}</ref>
{{blockquote|1=Politically, the film offers a conservative view of Georgia and the South. In her novel, despite her Southern prejudices, Mitchell showed clear awareness of the shortcomings of her characters and their region. The film is less analytical. It portrays the story from a clearly Old South point of view: the South is presented as a great civilization, the practice of slavery is never questioned, and the plight of the freedmen after the Civil War is implicitly blamed on their emancipation. A series of scenes whose racism rivals that of D. W. Griffith's film ''The Birth of a Nation'' (1915) mainly portrays Reconstruction as a time when Southern whites were victimized by freed slaves, who themselves were exploited by Northern carpetbaggers.}}

=== In education ===
The "[[Dunning School]]" dominated white scholarship about Reconstruction during most of the 20th century. Black scholarship on the Reconstruction era was mostly ignored until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, though the racist interpretations of the Dunning School continue to this day.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Greene |first=Robert II |date=2019-08-13 |title=Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the Long Arc of Reconstruction |url=https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/henry-louis-gates-jr-and-the-long-arc-of-reconstruction/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220308184045/https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/henry-louis-gates-jr-and-the-long-arc-of-reconstruction/ |archive-date=March 8, 2022 |access-date=2022-03-08 |journal=The Nation |issn=0027-8378}}</ref>

Historian [[Eric Foner]] said, "for no other period of American history does so wide a gap exist between current scholarship and popular historical understanding, which, judging from references to Reconstruction in recent newspaper articles, films, popular books, and in public monuments across the country, still bears the mark of the old Dunning School."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Foner |first=Eric |date=2016 |title="Epilogue" in The Reconstruction Era: Official National Park Service Handbook |journal=Eastern National Publishing}}</ref>

As reported in a January 2022 ''Time'' magazine article:<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Waxman |first=Olivia B. |date=January 12, 2022 |title=Why It Matters That U.S. Schools Are Failing to Teach the Reconstruction Period |url=https://time.com/6128421/teaching-reconstruction-study/ |access-date=2022-03-08 |magazine=Time}}</ref><blockquote>In social studies standards for 45 out of 50 states and the District of Columbia, discussion of Reconstruction is "partial" or "non-existent", according to historians who reviewed how the period is discussed in K-12 social studies standards for public schools nationwide. In a report produced by the education nonprofit Zinn Education Project, the study's authors say they are concerned that American children will grow up to be uninformed about a critical period of history that helps explain why full racial equality remains unfulfilled today.</blockquote>The Zinn Education Project's report, ''Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle: How State Standards Fail to Teach the Truth About Reconstruction'',<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Rosado |first1=Ana |last2=Cohn-Postar |first2=Gideon |last3=Eisen |first3=Mimi |date=2022 |title=Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle: How State Standards Fail to Teach the Truth About Reconstruction |url=https://www.teachreconstructionreport.org/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220308184047/https://www.teachreconstructionreport.org/ |archive-date=March 8, 2022 |access-date=2022-03-08 |website=Teach Reconstruction Report}}</ref> highlights the historical connections to Reconstruction that surround us today and examines Reconstruction's place in state social studies standards across the United States and the barriers to teaching effective Reconstruction history.

According to a ''[[Facing South]]'' article entitled "The South's schools are failing to teach accurate Reconstruction history":<ref>{{Cite web |last=Barber |first=Benjamin |date=2022-02-17 |title=The South's schools are failing to teach accurate Reconstruction history |url=https://www.facingsouth.org/2022/02/souths-schools-are-failing-teach-accurate-reconstruction-history |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220308184055/https://www.facingsouth.org/2022/02/souths-schools-are-failing-teach-accurate-reconstruction-history |archive-date=March 8, 2022 |access-date=2022-03-08 |website=Facing South}}</ref><blockquote>"It is our hope that states and districts will adopt these guidelines for their own educational standards, curricula, and professional development," the report states. "In so doing, they will be better equipped to teach students the true history of Reconstruction, help students understand its significance and make connections to the present day. And they will empower teachers to educate their students and themselves about ongoing Reconstruction scholarship."</blockquote>