In what ways did some white Southerners resist Reconstruction?
Some white Southerners refused to adjust to slavery's end, and resisted Reconstruction. Lincoln and Johnson's initial leniency toward the former Confederate states may have encouraged this resistance. Some white Southerners expected that the U.S. government was content merely to reconstruct the Union and would not attempt to remake race relations in the South. Many Southern states passed Black Codes, laws that restricted the freedoms of black Southerners. A typical Black Code required black men and women to sign work contracts, which spelled out where and for whom they worked. These contracts had to be valid for an entire year, after which they had to be replaced with a new contract. These laws were designed to restrict black Southerners' mobility by preventing them from moving in search of better conditions. Violators were charged with vagrancy and fined.
Some white Southerners also used violence and terror to intimidate blacks, so that they would be afraid to exercise their new freedoms. In 1866, a former Confederate general, Nathan Bedford Forrest, founded the Ku Klux Klan in Tennessee. The Klan, a secretive organization whose members wore white hoods, engaged in violence to frighten black Southerners and preserve white rule now that slavery had been ended.
In two of the worst, and most widely publicized instances of racial violence, white mobs went on rampages in 1866. In May, a mob of policemen and civilians killed 46 residents (most of them black) of Memphis, Tennessee, and destroyed nearly one hundred homes, along with churches and schools. In July, a mob in New Orleans rioted, killing 38 residents of that city.