Trying to Stabilize the South

After the government realized that black Americans were being brutally treated in the South, they set up a system called the Freedmen's Bureau. This group was responsible for protecting the rights of black Americans. The bureau was set up in the South, where they dealt with civil rights violations and established schools for black children. The assistance that was being given to blacks was met with backlash. Race riots broke out across the South. Hundreds of people were killed, property was looted, and Freedmen's Bureau's were burned down. The violent situation in the South was just horrible, but as always, money and politics get in the way of everything. The Panic of 1873 and the Compromise of 1877 shifted the nation's focus to the failing economy and disputed election results. In the Compromise of 1877, a couple Southern states submitted two different sets of results for the national election. They tell the federal government that if Reconstruction is ended, we'll fix the voting problem. The president at the time withdrew the federal troops and other aid for the black Americans. These resources had been there for over a decade after the Civil War, and now the government was taking them away because a few states were being petulant. Now, the black Americans were basically left to fend for themselves in a society where whites were literally out to trap them into sharecropping and take advantage of their lack of education. And this all happened because some states refused to just be honest. The persuasive power of money and politics is disgusting at times.