What was the Reconstruction Act?

Question:

What was the Reconstruction Act?

This should connect to the Civil War.....I believe that it was Post-Civil War.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Because of the American culture; our teaching methods and the fact, the winner holds the reins few if any one realizes that the South is still under reconstruction; is still at war and still at the mercy of the North. A very famous Southerner before he died said, ??Surrender means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy that our youths will be taught by Northern School teachers learn from Northern school books THEIR version of the war??.

If you do not believe Reconstruction is still in place look at the differences in the manner voting is handled; there are still active segregation cases where the Federal Government is unhappy with the method we are using to comply with their laws. Look at transportation and manufacturing taxation there too you will find inconsistencies between what the rest of the country faces and we here in the South. The Federal Government contends that the ICC removing the punitive discriminatory freight rates from Georgia commerce in 1952 was the last act of Reconstruction. When You confront any Government representative with these additional facts, they always say they have no control over it.

In December 1865, an estimated 500,000 white people in three states of the lower South were without the necessities of life, and some of them even starved. . . . Fifteen years after the war only the frontier states of Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Florida had as many acres under cultivation as in 1860. . . . The spirit of vengeance was strong in the victorious North at first. . . . Because Southerners refused to be friendly, the federal army of occupation resorted to irritating retaliations. Women required to go to military headquarters for any favor were forced to take ironclad oaths of national loyalty. The wearing of Confederate uniforms was forbidden and when this order was enforced among men who had no other clothes, scenes of unforgivable humiliation resulted. . . . Church buildings were seized and turned over to Northern denominations, and ministers were not allowed to preach unless they agreed to conduct "loyal services, pray for the President of the United States, and for Federal victories." Direct refusal of Protestant Episcopal clergymen to substitute in their liturgy the name of the President of the United States for that of the President of the Confederate States resulted in the closing of churches and the dispersal of congregations. In addition, there was the burden of discriminatory war taxes and the confiscation laws of Congress. Federal Treasury agents threaded their way through the occupied areas seizing 3 million out of the 5 million bales of cotton which had not been destroyed. They corruptly enriched themselves. "I am sure," said the Secretary of the Treasury, "that I sent some honest agents South; but it sometimes seems very doubtful whether any of them remained honest for very long." A special tax of from 2.5 to 3 cents a pound on cotton yielded the federal treasury $68,000,000. Because of its effects on the economy of a prostrate region, this levy was called by the United States Commissioner of Agriculture "disastrous and disheartening in the extreme." As soon as the federal troops got a foothold in the South, property was seized and sold for nonpayment under the Direct Tax Act. In conclusion, I hope that in this article I have provided some balance to the common, and I believe inaccurate and unfair, descriptions of the antebellum South, of the Confederacy, and of the events that led to the Civil War. When judged by any fair, reasonable comparison, the South was just as deserving of its independence as were the original thirteen colonies. Similarly, the South had just as much right as did the North to be governed by a government of its choosing. The Confederacy had just as much right to exist as did any other nation of its day. It's been said that those who fail to learn from the mistakes of history are bound to repeat them. But how can we learn from history if our version of history is markedly one-sided and incomplete? Sometimes the facts of history can be unsettling, especially when those facts have been widely suppressed. Robert Catlett Cave expressed my feelings about discussing such facts: I acknowledge . . . the obligation to heal dissensions, allay passion, and promote good feeling; but I do not believe that good feeling should be promoted at the expense of truth and honor. I sincerely desire that there may be between the people of the North and the people of the South increasing peace and amity, and that, in the spirit of genuine fraternity, they may work together for the prosperity and glory of their common country; but I do not think the Southern people should be expected to sacrifice the truth of history to secure that end.
One of the latest possible reasons for the war was Northern big business it seems that recent findings might hold that they desired the war to free blacks as a cheaper work force then what they had to deal.

God Bless You and Our Southern People.