Thinking Through the Past - Exercise 1.
Wilson reveals a disdain for the "carpetbaggers" and connects this to justification as why the white men of the south had to take the law into their own hands. His words give nothing as far as integrity and effectiveness to the new "masters of the blacks". He sites out of control taxes, land forfeitures, and enormous debts incurred by "carpetbaggers" in Mississippi alone. This seems enough to him to justify the instincts of self-preservation that is the beginning of the Ku Klux Klan. His description of the Ku Klux Klan history seems a bit romantic to me, almost likening. I feel that there is an implication at the end of this passage, before Grant's term was up, that the southern white got "their governments out of the hands of the men who were preying upon them" because of the work of the Ku Klux Klan.
Carter Woodson definitely has many thoughts on the contributions of blacks in the period of reconstruction. He sites the increasing literacy of Negro's since reconstruction began to support that many of the higher government offices obtained by blacks were as educated as their white constituents. The lack of numbers of the blacks in all major offices, held primarily by southern whites and others that came from the north to profit, and their education provides Woodson with justification that the blacks did not contribute towards the rampant corruption. He in fact mentions that many black had honorable records. Discussing Burgess and Dunning as principle generators of "history to order" was quite bold! Especially during the time this was written. He seems to have the sense of someone who has done the ground pounding and went out to talk to actual common people. White southerners get the blame put on the "carpetbaggers" , which then had as he stated the "desired effect among the poor and ignorant whites". The beginning of the formation of the terrorists of the Ku Klux Klan is now at hand.