Reconstruction was brutally murdered! For just over a decade after the Civil War, the victorious North launched a campaign of social, economic, and political recovery in the South. Martial law was also enforced in the South. Ultimately, the North hoped to admit the territory of the former Confederacy into the United States as states. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments freed African Americans, made them citizens, and gave them the right to vote. Despite this, Reconstruction was unfortunately stopped in 1877. The North killed Reconstruction due to racism, neglect, and distractions. One of the reasons the North killed Reconstruction was because it was racist. Freedmen politicians were described as corrupt “fat cats” and caused nothing but chaos and bedlam in the legislatures in which they served (Harper's Weekly, 1874). This showed that the North thought negatively about African Americans. Furthermore, the Boston Evening Transcript stated that “blacks need a [probation and education; a period…long enough for the black man to forget something of his condition as a slave and to learn much of the true method of obtaining an honorable subsistence and performing the duties of any position to which he might aspire” (Richardson, 2001). This quote demonstrated that the North was not ready to fully embrace African Americans as equals and that some racism still existed among Northerners. So if the North had not been racist, it might have been more positive about Reconstruction and, in turn, spent more time working on Reconstruction. Northern negligence also contributed to the demise of Reconstruction. The North had failed to notice the numerous racially motivated atrocities that occurred in the South during… half of the document… states that, “by the 1870s, Northern voters became indifferent to events in the South,” ( Danzer, 1998). This showed that the North was clearly distracted and began to shift its attention from Reconstruction, which occurred in the South, to its own problems in the North. If the North had not been so concerned, it might have focused on Reconstruction and perhaps extend its duration. In conclusion, the evidence from the documents shows that the North was racist, negligent and distracted, thus proving guilty of killing Reconstruction. Therefore, if the North had not been racist, negligent or distracted, the North would have been more enthusiastic of Reconstruction, would have been able to do Reconstruction properly and the North would have been able to focus more on Reconstruction. That's why the North killed Reconstruction.