Here's What's So Jarring About Hillary Clinton's Thoughts On Reconstruction

[Art_from_Ark]

2. I actually agree with Hillary on this

Reconstruction might have started out as something positive, but in a lot of cases it degenerated into little more than Northerners taking advantage of a bad situation. The bulk of Reconstruction was handled under the Grant administration, which was the most corrupt administration that had existed up to that time, and there were cases where the "Union army (that) was (supposedly) used to assure that the elections would be honored" actually made sure that Republicans would be elected. Look at the 1874 "Brooks-Baxter War" in Arkansas as an example of a corrupt electoral process that was set up to ensure that the Republican won the race.

Republicans weren't satisfied with stealing local elections, though. In 1876, they went for the biggest prize of all-- the Presidency. The theft of that election, in which another former Union general, Rutherford Hayes, was installed as President, was so glaringly obvious that the Washington Post took to referring to Hayes as "His Fraudulency". But the South accepted the theft on the condition that Reconstruction end and Union troops withdraw. And when the Union troops pulled out after more than a decade of "reconstruction", what kind of economy did the South have?