ed oaths pledging allegiance to the Union. Until the late 1870s, many local governments in the South were run by educated Blacks and several localities elected Blacks to represent them in Congress. Most other Southern governments were run by Northern Whites, usually sent down by the Republican-controlled federal government.
Corruption, however, was rampant and a violent backlash developed. Violence and terror directed at Blacks became endemic, resembling some sort of bizarre White uprising against Black "oppressors." As the 1870s waned, the Republicans began losing some of their control over Congress, and abolitionist Republicans began losing their control over the Republican party. In 1877, Reconstruction was declared "completed" by Congress and the last vestiges of federal control over the South were withdrawn. Whites returned to official power in Southern governments, and Reconstruction was literally undone over the next decade. By the turn of the Century, Blacks in the South found themselves in a position not at all dissimilar to that of the ante-bellum period.
Reconstruction has remained one of the most controversial periods in American history. Southern Whites regarded it as a shameful chapter in the history of the nation, with Blacks and Northern Whites as oppressors. Northern abolitionists, on the other hand, viewed Reconstruction as a process necessary for the restoration of the Union. Blacks saw Reconstruction as a well-meaning but incomplete attempt by the White abolitionists to reverse the effects of slavery; only during this short period did they experience the full rights of citizenship.
Historians have also been divided in their interpretations of the Reconstruction period. Until the 1930s, most historians adopted the view of the White South, that Reconstruction had been a punitive program pushed through Congress and implemented by radical Republicans, motivated by hatred and a desire to dominate th...