Introduction
The Effects of Social Darwinism on the social trends of the 19th century.
“As a world view, Darwinism cannot of course be refuted, since Faith is, always has been, and always will be, stronger than facts. “ - Francis P. Yockey

Social Darwinism is a theory that competition among all individuals, groups, nations or ideas drives social evolution in human societies. The term draws upon Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, where competition between individual organisms drives biological evolutionary change through the survival of the fittest. The term was popularized in 1944 by the American historian Richard Hofstadter, and has generally been used by critics rather than advocates of what the term is supposed to
Following the end of the civil war era, the states, had a lot of making up to do for the mistakes they made during the war. Destroyed and hurt, the nation had to figure out new ways into reforming society to fix all the damages of the war.
Reconstruction took place for most of the decade following the Civil War. During this era, the "Reconstruction Amendments" were passed to expand civil rights for black Americans. Those amendments included the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment that guaranteed citizenship for all people born or naturalized within U.S. territory, and the Fifteenth Amendment that granted the vote for all men regardless of race. While the Civil Rights Act of 1875 forbade discrimination in the service of public facilities, the Black Codes denied blacks certain privileges readily available to whites . In response to Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan emerged around the late 1860s as a white-supremacist organization opposed to black civil rights. Increasing violence by white racists like the Klan influenced an 1883 Supreme Court decision nullifying the Civil Rights Act of 1875 ; the Court interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment as regulating only states' decisions regarding civil rights.
The Reconstruction era was followed by the Gilded Age which included influential figures such as John D.