In the 1960s, the historiography of the Reconstruction period underwent a tectonic shift. Scholars like Kenneth Stampp, Eric McKitrick, and John Hope Franklin began dramatically to revise the story of the era just after the Civil War. Inspired by the civil rights movement then underway, they successfully challenged accounts of Reconstruction by adherents of the “Dunning school” (named after William Archibald Dunning, a Columbia University historian and political scientist).

Dunning’s disciples had portrayed Reconstruction as a shameful period when congressional Radicals vindictively imposed a harsh and punitive peace on the poor, downtrodden South. Radicals subjected the gallant Confederate states to rule first by the military and then by state governments which grossly abused their supposed constituents. These new legislatures were manned by an unholy alliance of ignorant, easily manipulated blacks; greedy Northern carpetbaggers; and uncouth native white outcasts (scalawags). Congress trampled the Constitution underfoot, unjustifiably impeaching the statesmanlike President Andrew Johnson for attempting to implement the generous, humane, and merciful Reconstruction plan that Abraham Lincoln had launched during the war. Eventually the oppressed, overtaxed, and demoralized Southern whites rose up and restored honest government to their region.

The revisionists

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