Foner adopts a problem-solving approach, asking productive questions of state archives and generating and assessing alternative possibilities to assess the views of the Dunning School in a much wider context. Eric Foner's great work reverses those judgements. It ended in frustration, disillusionment and also violence, with individual southern states denying rights to freed slaves, preventing them from voting, and largely forcing them back into roles that exploited their labor and prevented them from gaining access to education.įor much of the 20th century, the predominant view of the Reconstruction period was that of the Dunning School, which argued that former slaves were unprepared for the responsibilities of voting and holding office, and that it was their incapability of handling such responsibilities - and not the racist actions of whites - that was largely responsible for the failures of the Reconstruction period. 'Reconstruction' is the name given to the period that, beginning shortly before the end of the American Civil War and running until 1877, saw the frustration of federal government's attempts to integrate the newly freed slaves into the American political and economic system.
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