Reconstruction governments were being inaugurated throughout the South.
This was due in part to the lack of wisdom displayed by Southern legislatures
under the Johnson governments, -- a "disposition on the part
of the Southern States to claim rights instead of submitting to conditions,"
and harsh laws of Southern legislatures concerning the freedmen.
It must be confessed that the extreme men of the South were in some localities
as rash, unreasonable, and impracticable as the radicals of the North.
The magnanimous spirit of Lincoln and the heroic, chivalric spirit of Lee
could not prevail in the two sections; hence followed a direful period
in American history. As E. L. Godkin said, "That the chapter which tells
the story of reconstruction should have followed in American history
the chapter which tells the story of the war and emancipation,
is something over which many a generation will blush."
Again it must be said, as was said of the effect of the war on the South,
that reconstruction was something more than excessive taxation,
grinding and unjust as that was, something more than
the fear of black domination, as unthinkable as that is.
There was the uncertainty of the situation, the sense of despair that rankled
in the hearts of men, with the knowledge that nothing the South could do
could have any influence in deciding its fate. It was the closing
of institutions of learning, or running them under such circumstances
that the better element of the South could have nothing to do with them.
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