What caused violence in the South after the war?
Eric Foner: Violence is endemic in the South, from the end of the Civil War onwards. There’s sporadic local violence in 1865-65: contract disputes, disputes over etiquette. A black guy doesn’t tip his hat to a white and suddenly people are shooting each other. People refuse to get off the sidewalk to let someone else pass. All sorts of local incidents produce amazing outbreaks of violence. The Freedmen’s Bureau in Texas has a register of murders with over a thousand in 1865-66 — and they try to give the reason, you know. “Black man didn’t tip his hat so I shot him.” Things like that. And this is a sign of the instability of the whole racial system, and the fact that people are claiming new rights and others are resisting that. Then, with the radical Reconstruction, you get political violence… You get organized groups — the Ku Klux Klan and others, like the White League in Louisiana, the Knights of the White Camelia… whose purpose is to obstruct and destroy Reconstruction governme
