The Election of 1876 and the Aftermath of Reconstruction

Many white Southerners cheered the end of Reconstruction, which they considered an unjust military occupation. Some of the most famous accounts of this era, such as D.W. Griffith's 1915 film The Birth of a Nation and Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone With the Wind (which became a hit film three years later), depicted the Civil War and Reconstruction as vindictive Northern meddling in Southern race relations.

Reconstruction, while not without its faults, was an earnest, important effort to remake race relations and the Southern economy after the Civil War. Reconstruction was defeated by some white Southerners, who used state governments, economic power, and terror to deprive black Southerners of the opportunity to vote, gain property, or otherwise exercise their rights.

Because Reconstruction was defeated and failed, black Southerners were forced to endure decades of segregation, terror, and grinding poverty. Not until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965--a full century after the Civil War--would the United States at last accomplish what Republicans tried, but failed to achieve during Reconstruction.