USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Southerners defended these laws as honest attempts to restore order in the South. They also said these codes protected blacks from the results of their own “laziness and ignorance.” Southerners thought the 14th Amendment had been passed to punish them for starting the Civil War, and they refused to ratify it.

Detailed explanation-2: -") With the exception of Tennessee, the Southern states refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. The Republicans then passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, which set the conditions the Southern states had to accept before they could be readmitted to the union, including ratification of the 14th Amendment.

Detailed explanation-3: -Southern states also resisted, but Congress required them to ratify the 13th and 14th Amendments as a condition of regaining representation in Congress, and the ongoing presence of the Union Army in the former Confederate states ensured their compliance.

Detailed explanation-4: -Southern politics would turn violent as Democrats and Republicans clashed over the right of former slaves to enter civic life. White supremacist vigilante groups like the Ku Klux Klan gained strength as many whites refused to accept blacks as their equals.