Failure on a Grand Scale - Essay Example

Overall, the effort itself was a failure because of the way the objectives were carried out. Rampant corruption instilled enmity in the people unnecessarily, the focus on political rather than economic restructuring was vengeful as well as counterproductive, and the naivet of the new electorate set the stage for their unwitting participation in a process that would establish segregation and second-class citizenship for the next nine decades. Corruption. Under the methodology employed by the framers of Reconstruction, there were four demographic groups which emerged in the South: The white southerners, the Freedmen (former slaves), the Scalawags (southerners loyal to the North), and Carpetbaggers (Northerners who moved to the region) (Wikipedia 1).

The white southerners were largely excluded from power by the military governors, and the Scalawags joined with the Carpetbaggers to restructure the governmental and economic systems. As in any case where there is absolute power and a vengeance mentality, exploitation became the norm. In the political processes, the Scalawags and Carpetbaggers engaged in collusion to reform every office from state governors to local commissioners. Using the power of the military and the consent of the new electorate, the entire area was destabilized to the point of requiring martial law for the majority of the period; and that didn't even stop the violence against both blacks and whites.

In terms of the economic corruption, the situation was even worse as the economic resources of the South were siphoned off into corporations run by Northerners. The Northern commercial interests formed links with their like-minded political associates and created, under color of law, one of the biggest lootings in history. Seeing the homeland violated by the Carpetbaggers and their corporate lackeys, the predictable response of the southern whites was anger, resentment, violence and, ultimately, institutional segregation.

Political Focus. A second contributor to the failure of reconstruction was the fact that legislators in Washington chose to focus their attention on the political infrastructure of the states as well as the voting rights of the Freedmen. This approach reflected the political environment in the newly-reunited nation's capitol, where there was a power struggle between those who wanted a moderate implementation of Reconstruction and those who took a more radical view. The radicals won the fight handily, and the result was a political restructuring that disenfranchised almost every office holder in the South along with their former constituency.

Rather than taking an economic development approach, which would have resulted in a stabilization of southern society, the top-down reformation only addressed the issue of who was in charge. Unfortunately, those newly elected officials were much more concerned with punishing the South than with transitioning it back into the Union. Had Congress undertaken policies of self-determination and economic development, Reconstruction might have succeeded in bringing the states back together without the socialized hatred between the southern whites and everyone else.

Nave Electorate. A final consideration in the