<P> When Reconstruction died, so did all hope for national enforcement of adherence to the constitutional amendments that the U.S. Congress had passed in the wake of the Civil War . As the last Federal troops left the ex-Confederacy, two old foes of American politics reappeared at the heart of the Southern polity--the twin, inflammatory issues of state rights and race . It was precisely on the ground of these two issues that the Civil War had broken out, and in 1877, sixteen years after the secession crisis, the South reaffirmed control over them . </P> <P> "The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery", wrote W.E.B. Du Bois . The black community in the South was brought back under the yoke of the Southern Democrats, who had been politically undermined during Reconstruction . Whites in the South were committed to reestablish its own sociopolitical structure with the goal of a new social order enforcing racial subordination and labor control . While the Republicans succeeded in maintaining some power in part of the Upper South, such as Tennessee, in the Deep South there was a return to "home rule". </P> <P> In the aftermath of the Compromise of 1877, Southern Democrats held the South's black community under increasingly tight control . Politically, blacks were gradually evicted from public office, as the few that remained saw the sway they held over local politics considerably decreased . Socially, the situation was worse, as the Southern Democrats tightened their grip on the labor force . Vagrancy and "anti-enticement" laws were reinstituted . It became illegal to be jobless, or to leave a job before the required contract expired . Economically, the blacks were stripped of independence, as new laws gave white planters the control over credit lines and property . Effectively, the black community was placed under a three-fold subjugation that was reminiscent of slavery . </P> <P> In the years immediately following Reconstruction, most blacks and former abolitionists held that Reconstruction lost the struggle for civil rights for black people because of violence against blacks and against white Republicans . Frederick Douglass and Reconstruction Congressman John R. Lynch cited the withdrawal of federal troops from the South as a primary reason for the loss of voting rights and other civil rights by African Americans after 1877 . </P>

Who were the redeemers and how did they change society and policies in the new south