Page "Reconstruction Era of the United States" Paragraph 2

The deployment of the U. S. military was central to the establishment of Southern Reconstructed state governments and the suppression of violence against black and white voters.

Reconstruction was a remarkable chapter in the story of American freedom, but most historians consider it a failure because the region became a poverty-stricken backwater and whites re-established their supremacy, making the Freedmen second-class citizens by the turn of the century.

Historian Eric Foner argues, " What remains certain is that Reconstruction failed, and that for blacks its failure was a disaster whose magnitude cannot be obscured by the genuine accomplishments that did endure.