Charles Darwin’s ideas of natural selection were applied by some to society, culture, and economics. This was often used to explain and justify economic and political inequalities.
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Tag Archives: 1880s
An Attack on African American Voting Rights
H. H. Chalmers, in this essay from 1881, after the end of Reconstruction, lays out many of the criticisms southerners had of African American voting rights. Attitudes such as Chalmers’s laid the groundwork for post-Reconstruction suppression of black voters throughout the former Confederacy.
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Reconstruction
From 1865-1877, the federal government attempted to reintegrate the southern states into the united States following their secession and subsequent Civil War. There were several aspects of southern existence that the government needed to address. First was the basic re-formation of the state governments to purge them of Confederate influence. Second was the question of integrating former slaves into the social, political, and economic life of the southern states.
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