"Reconstruction was significant for expanding the authority and purpose of the federal government, which adopted policies that considered equal rights for all races in America." These were at once devoted as remorselessly to the extinction of black preponderance as they had been before to the repression of the whites. The school was named after Columbia University professor William Archibald Dunning (1857–1922), whose writings and those of his PhD students comprised the main elements of the school. Their generalized adoption of deprecatory terms such as scalawags for southern white Republicans and carpetbaggers for northerners who worked and settled in the South, have persisted in historical works. This interpretation of Reconstruction placed it firmly in the category of historical blunder. And the following year, volume 8 of A History of the South, entitled The South During Reconstruction, 1865-1877, offered an interpretation that did not essentially differ from that of the Dunning school. The term Dunning School is a shorthand for the interpretation of Reconstruction that dominated historical writing and public consciousness for much of the twentieth century. Although "Dunningite" historians did not necessarily endorse those extralegal methods, they did tend to palliate them. Similarly, Rogin has influentially linked Wilson’s view of Reconstruction with those of Griffith and Thomas Dixon, Jr. Rogin bases his argument on Wilson’s alleged praise after the screening of The Birth of a Nation in the White House: “It is like writing history with lightening,” Wilson reportedly said. the "Dunning School," which held that northern politicians and freedmen hurt the South politically and economically during Reconstruction. The Dunning School refers to a historiographical school of thought regarding the Reconstruction period of American history (1865–1877), supporting conservative elements against the Radical Republicans who introduced civil rights in the South. Historian Eric Foner’s course on Reconstruction was videoed a few years ago and posted on-line. It was quickly demonstrated, however, that the time for this procedure had gone by. The other faction, alarmed at the prospect of almost certain defeat, availed itself of the opportunity presented by the providential advent of a circus in the neighborhood, and the posters announced that poll-tax receipts would be accepted for admission. Led by historian William Dunning (Reconstruction, Political and Economic, 1907), this interpretation can be summarized as: “When the Civil War ended, the white South genuinely accepted the reality of military defeat, stood ready to do justice to the emancipated slaves, and desired above all a quick reintegration into the fabric of national life. The Republicans insisted that these officials and troops were essential to enable the negroes to vote and to have their votes counted. For a long time it was an intellectual straitjacket for much of the white South, and historians have a lot to answer for in helping to propagate a racist system in this country.[2]. “Whenever,” he said,—“and the time is not far distant,—political issues arise which divide the white men of the South, the negro will divide, too … The white race, divided politically, will want him to divide.” Incidentally to the conditions which produced the Populist party, the whites of South Carolina, in the years succeeding 1890, became divided into two intensely hostile factions. At its core, the Dunning school of thought is a period of racist history which affected historical interpretation and methodologies. When, in 1885, a Democratic administration assumed power, this basis for continued existence was very seriously weakened, and the decline of the party was much accelerated. 1.) No attention was paid to the claim that the manifest inefficiency and viciousness of the Republican governments afforded a partial, if not a wholly adequate explanation of their overthrow. The phrasing of the franchise clause may not have been actually determined with reference to this matter; but it is obvious that the application of the Fourteenth Amendment is, to say the least, not facilitated by the form used. Kevin Welborn marked it as to-read Oct 24, 2013. Along with this deterioration in the white element of the party, the negroes who rose to prominence and leadership were very frequently of a type which acquired and practiced the tricks and knavery rather than the useful arts of politics, and the vicious courses of these negroes strongly confirmed the prejudices of the whites. were building rapid progress towards recovery before the congress's interference. Or if an untraceable rumor that trouble was impending over the blacks was followed by the mysterious appearance of bodies of horsemen on the roads at midnight, firing guns and yelling at nobody in particular, votes again were lost, but no crime or misdemeanor could be brought home to any one. The action of Mississippi in 1890 throws a rather interesting light on the value of political prophecy, even when ventured upon by the most experienced and able politicians. Grant is not their idea of a model President, nor are the Southern carpetbag governments worthy of their unqualified praise. Public sentiment in the North, outside of Congress, manifested considerable hostility to the project, and its adoption as a party measure probably played a role in the tremendous reaction which swept the Republicans out of power in the House in 1890, and gave to the Democrats in 1892 the control of both houses of Congress and the presidency as well. Reconsidering the Views of John W. Burgess, William A. Dunning, and Eric Foner on Congressional Reconstruction,". The generation-long discussions of the political conditions in the South have evoked a variety of explanations by the whites of the disappearance of the black vote. William Archibald Dunning (12 May 1857 – 25 August 1922) was an American historian and political scientist at Columbia University noted for his work on the Reconstruction era of the United States.He founded the informal Dunning School of interpreting the Reconstruction era through his own writings and the Ph.D. dissertations of his numerous students. He supported the idea that the South had been ruined by Reconstruction. This last motive had a plausible and widely accepted justification in the view that the rights of the negro and the “results of the war” in general would be secure only if the national government should remain indefinitely in Republican hands, and that therefore the strengthening of the party was a primary dictate of patriotism. In Mississippi appeared the “shoestring district,” three hundred miles long and about twenty wide, including within its boundaries nearly all the densest black communities of the state. From 1875 to 1889 neither of the great parties was at any one time in effective control of both the presidency and the two houses of Congress. There was in those days no prescription of uniformity in size and general character of the ballots. But the patronage in the hands of the administration party under these laws was enormous. Philip R. Muller, while acknowledging the widespread charges of racism against Dr. Dunning personally, laid much of the perception on Dunning's "methodological weakness" in one particular work, Reconstruction, Political and Economic 1865-1877. The operations of the registration laws and Negro suffrage in the South. This contrast suggests what has been involved in the undoing of reconstruction. And at the North, public opinion, accepting with a certain satirical complacency the confession of the Southerners that their earlier explanations of conditions had been false, acknowledged in turn that its views as to the political capacity of the blacks had been irrational, and manifested no disposition for a new crusade in favor of negro equality. Reflect and Discuss. When the Supreme Court of the United States was required to consider the new clause of Mississippi's constitution, it adopted the views of the convention on these points, and sustained the validity of the enactment. The permanence of white dominion in the South seemed, in view of the past, to depend as much on the exclusion of the Republicans from power at Washington as on the maintenance of white power at the state capitals. In view of the questions which have been raised by our lately established relations with other races, it seems most improbable that the historian will soon, or ever, have to record a reversal of the conditions which this process has established. Since the action of South Carolina, two other states, Louisiana and North Carolina, have excluded the blacks from the suffrage by analogous constitutional amendments; and in two others still, Alabama and Virginia, conventions are considering the subject as this article goes to press (August, 1901). The Dunning School argued that Reconstruction was the most calamitous and corrupt period in the nation’s history because imperialistic Radical Republicans empowered riotous, sub-human blacks to rule over the respectable white South. As compared with the Mississippi device for evading the Fifteenth Amendment, the “grandfather clause” has the merit of incorporating the discrimination in favor of the whites in the written law rather than referring it to the discretion of the election officers. Expertly introduced by John David Smith, these essays trace the careers and contributions of William Archibald Dunning himself and eight of his students, as well as those of Dunning's own mentor, John W. Burgess. Blacks were "as credulous as children, which in intellect they in many ways resembled. There was a strong sentiment in Mississippi, as there is throughout the South, that a reduction of representation would not be an intolerable price to pay for the legitimate extinction of negro suffrage. The tendency in this direction was greatly promoted by conditions within the Republican party itself. the "Dunning School," which held that northern politicians and freedmen hurt the South politically and economically during Reconstruction. In the convention which framed this amendment, the sentiment of the whites revealed very clearly, not only through its content, but especially through the frank and emphatic form in which it was expressed, that the aspirations of the negro to equality in political rights would never again receive the faintest recognition. But exploitation of the poverty, ignorance, credulity, and general childishness of the blacks was supplemented, on occasion, by deliberate and high-handed fraud. "The Dark and Bloody Ground of Reconstruction Historiography,", Williams, T. Harry. The situation of the polls was changed without notice to the negroes, or, conversely, the report of a change was industriously circulated when none had been made. It was, indeed, through their exclusive and carefully maintained control of the voting and the count that the whites found the best opportunities for illegal methods. As a consequence, no partisan legislation could be enacted. The second period, lasting till 1890, presented conditions so different from the first as entirely to transform the methods by which the process was continued. From start to finish, they argued, Congressional Reconstruction—often dubbed "Radical Reconstruction"—lacked political wisdom and legitimacy.[1]. By the elections of 1888, however, the Republicans secured not only the presidency, but also a majority in each house of Congress. By acts of 1871 and 1872, every polling place, in any election for Congressmen, might be manned by officials appointed by the federal courts, with extensive powers for the detection of fraud, and with authority to employ the federal troops in the repression of violence. Between 1872 and 1876 the Republican party split in each of the states in which it still retained control, and the fusion of one faction with the Democrats gave rise to disputed elections, general disorder, and appeals by the radical Republicans to the President for aid in suppressing domestic violence. Moreover, Du Bois pointedly remarked on the prevailing racial bias of the historical inquiry up to that moment, “One fact and one alone explains the attitude of most recent writers toward Reconstruction; they cannot conceive of Negroes as men.” Du Bois’s indictment s… “And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true” (Rogin 151). Du Bois rejected white supremacy throughout his career. The Undoing of Reconstruction The historian who gave his name to the Dunning School, a group of scholars who decried Reconstruction, explained his objections to … Few revisionists would claim that the Dunning interpretation of reconstruction is a pure fabrication. The Republican party organization was maintained almost exclusively through the holders of federal offices in the postal and revenue service. Already, however, the courts had manifested a disposition to question the constitutionality of the most drastic provisions of the earlier Enforcement Acts. see review. This school emphasized the questionable practices of Reconstruction leaders and celebrated the rise of the South's old guard In putting his criticism in proper context, Stampp wrote: Few revisionists would claim that the Dunning interpretation of reconstruction is a pure fabrication. The views of the Dunning School dominated scholarly and popular depictions of the era from about 1900 to the 1930s. The situation had arisen which Mr. Lamar had foreseen, but the result was as far as possible from fulfilling his prediction. Meanwhile, the wholesale removal of political disabilities by Congress in 1872 brought many of the old and respected Southern politicians again into public life, with a corresponding improvement in the quality of Democratic leadership. [16] Representative Dunning School scholars. If nothing else the Dunning School is important to know and at least understand just because it was dominant for so long and was what people were taught in school up until relatively recently. These segments look at the influence of the Dunning School on how Americans understood, and misunderstood, the Reconstruction Era. William Archibald Dunning (12 May 1857 – 25 August 1922) was an American historian and political scientist at Columbia University noted for his work on the Reconstruction era of the United States.He founded the informal Dunning School of interpreting the Reconstruction era through his own writings and the Ph.D. dissertations of his numerous students. Mr. Lamar gravely maintained, in a famous controversy with Mr. Blaine, that the original Republican theory as to the educative influence of the ballot had been proved correct by the fact that the enfranchised race had come to recognize that their true interests lay with the Democratic party; the Republicans were estopped, he contended, by their own doctrine from finding fault with the result. Their aspirations, if mentioned at all, were ridiculed, and their role in shaping the course of events during Reconstruction ignored. Muller, Philip R. "Look Back Without Anger: A Reappraisal of William A. Dunning". The result was the overthrow of black government in that state. [8] Historian John Hope Franklin wrote of Coulter: No sooner was revisionism launched, however, than E. Merton Coulter insisted that "no amount of revision can write away the grievous mistakes made in this abnormal period of American history." It was part of the edifice of the Jim CrowSystem. The act was therefore held unconstitutional. They recognize the shabby aspects of the era: the corruption was real, the failures obvious, the tragedy undeniable. It was an explanation for and justification of taking the right to vote away from black people on the grounds that they completely abused it during Reconstruction. In July of 1870, when the law declaring Georgia entitled to representation in Congress was finally enacted, the process of reconstruction was, from the technical point of view, complete. In the meantime, a process had been instituted in the Southern states that has given the most distinctive character to the last period in the undoing of reconstruction. The victims of murder, bulldozing, and other violence were represented as of bad character and socially dangerous, and their treatment as merely incident to their own illegal and violent acts, and expressive of the tendency to self-help instead of judicial procedure, which had always been manifest in Southern life, and had been aggravated by the demoralization of war time. Through the vigorous policy thus instituted by the national government the movement toward the resumption of control by the whites in the South met with a marked though temporary check.The number of convictions obtained under the Ku Klux Act was not large, and President Grant resorted in but a single instance—that of certain counties in South Carolina, in the autumn of 1871—to the extraordinary powers conferred upon him. In Mississippi the corresponding decrease was from 164,000 to 120,000; in Louisiana, from 160,00 to 108,000. Thousands of respectable whites, who viewed the Ku Klux outrages with horror,turned with equal horror from the projects of the governments to quell the disturbances by a negro militia. More important, the concentration of "evidence" in this single scantily researched volume suggested that Dunning's "racist" generalizations were more unexamined than "inflexible. The statute books of the states, especially of those in which negro rule had lasted the longest, abounded in provisions for partisan—that is, race—advantage. One rather ingenious scheme is recorded which presents a variation on the old theme. The North was deeply moved by what it considered evidence of a new attack on its cherished ideals of liberty and equality, and when the Fifteenth Amendment had become part of the Constitution, Congress passed the Enforcement Acts and the laws for the federal control of elections. Also, some encyclopedias, including Encarta, no longer contain information on Dunning. Their school was Columbia University in New York City, and their teacher was Professor William Archibald Dunning (1857–1922), one of the most important figures in developing and legitimizing southern history and the Reconstruction era as research fields. Thus the last vestige disappeared of the system through which the political equality of the blacks had received direct support from the national government. This was a case from Tennessee, in which a band of whites had taken a negro away from the officers of the law and maltreated him. They understood that the radical Republicans were not all selfless patriots, and that southern white men were not all Negro-hating rebels. "The Dunning School provides important, groundbreaking studies of the authors of the first scholarly histories of Reconstruction in the southern states. This decision finally disposed of the theory that the failure of a state to protect the negroes in their equal rights could be regarded as a positive denial of such rights, and hence could justify the United States in interfering. Dunning believed that allowing blacks to vote and hold office had been "a serious error". But at the same time that the incapacity of the party in power to administer any government was becoming demonstrable, the problems with which it was required to cope were made by its adversaries such as would have taxed the capacity of the most efficient statesmen the world could produce. With these events of 1877 the first period in the undoing of reconstruction came to an end. Smith, John David and J. Vincent Lowery, eds. Contributions by Shepherd W. McKinley, James S. Humphreys, William Bland Whitley, John David Smith, Michael W. Fitzgerald, John Herbert Roper Sr., J. Vincent Lowery, Fred Arthur Bailey, Paul Ortiz and William Harris Bragg The progress in the acceptance of this idea in the North has measured the progress in the South of the undoing of reconstruction. Through the operation of these various motives, successive and simultaneous, the completion of the reconstruction showed the following situation: (1) the negroes were in the enjoyment of equal political rights with the whites; (2) the Republican party was in vigorous life in all the Southern states, and in firm control of many of them; and (3) the negroes exercised an influence in political affairs out of all relation to their intelligence or property, and, since so many of the whites were disfranchised, excessive even in proportion to their numbers. In one case given by the Senate investigating committee, through whose action on the elections of 1878, in South Carolina, the theory and practice of the tissue ballot were revealed to an astonished world, the figures were as follows:—. The Dunning school still casts a shadow over America’s popular understanding of Reconstruction. They were prepared, it was said, in order to enable the blacks who wished to vote the Democratic ticket to do so secretly, and thus to escape the ostracism and other social penalties which would be meted out to them by the majority of their race. The court held that, under the last three amendments to the Constitution, Congress was authorized to guarantee equality in civil rights against violation by a state through its officers or agents, but not against violation by private individuals. [13], Stampp then noted that "Dunningites overlooked a great deal", and revisionists rejected "the two-dimensional characters that Dunning's disciples have painted. The Dunning school, named for the Columbia University professor William Archibald Dunning, has not always been held in such low esteem. 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