Reconstruction will continue to be one of the most hotly contested periods of time in US history. It is a time the still young country was trying to slowly mend the wounds torn open by the War of the Rebellion, or the Civil War. It was these moments that would determine the fate of the freedman in the south, and all over. The article “The New View of Reconstruction” by Eric Foner sheds brilliant new light on an age-old opinion.
It was a commonly held belief that Reconstruction was the time when the radical northerners, or the Vindictives, enforced black supremacy upon the helpless south, while the carpetbaggers made a fortune amid the chaos. Eric Foner’s article highlights that this interpretation of Reconstruction was fostered by anti-Reconstruction propaganda and adopted academically by William Dunning around the turn of the century. He further brings out that films like Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind spread the myth-like idea of the years after the Civil War. Foner explains that this view of Reconstruction was widely accepted because it fit with the political and social mentalities of the time that allowed white southerners to vehemently oppose integration and true black suffrage. Despite the convenience of the traditional view of Reconstruction it would soon lose prominence. The original opinion was that Lincoln was ready to accept the South with little reprimands and that Johnson tried to fulfill Lincoln’s policies, the current opinion, as stated by Foner, is “President Lincoln did not have a coherent plan’ for Reconstruction, but at the time of his assassination he had been cautiously contemplating black suffrage. Andrew Johnson was a stubborn, racist politician who lacked the ability to compromise”. Foner further explains that the Radicals were exonerated of their vindictive moniker and realized as true idealist. The radicals Sumner and Stevens