<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> <P> But by the turn of the 20th century, white historians, led by the Dunning School, saw Reconstruction as a failure because of its political and financial corruption, its failure to heal the hatreds of the war, and its control by self - serving Northern politicians, such as those around President Grant . Historian Claude Bowers said that the worst part of what he called "the Tragic Era" was the extension of voting rights to freedmen, a policy he claimed led to misgovernment and corruption . The freedmen, the Dunning School historians argues, were not at fault because they were manipulated by corrupt white carpetbaggers interested only in raiding the state treasury and staying in power . They agreed the South had to be "redeemed" by foes of corruption . Reconstruction, in short, was said to violate the values of "republicanism" and all Republicans were classified as "extremists". This interpretation of events, the hallmark of the Dunning School, dominated most U.S. history textbooks from 1900 to the 1960s . </P>

Who were the redeemers what strategy did they follow and how successful were they