Essay On Black Codes

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Slaves were imported and used on big plantations during the Civil War. After a four year battle, President Lincoln set free hundreds of thousands of uneducated slaves. Lincoln then set out a plan to educate as many slaves as possible from free classes, but after he died, the racist vice president decided to twist things as much as possible by instituting black codes. What are the black codes and how were they used?
For my main source, I used a website called United States History in the section, The Black Codes. I think it’s credible because it says basically the same ideas about how blacks were treated during the Reconstruction Era, but with a bit more depth and detail about the laws only for blacks and a lot of information about what people’s views were back then. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find who it was written by, or who published it, but the website also took me to a lot of other websites that had good information, like other good articles on “Radical Republicans.”
In 1865, Congress reinforced what was …show more content…

Former plantation owners “let” them rent out a piece of their property, but because the renters had no money, they had to pay the former plantation owners with a share of the crops they grew. Often, the owner would take most of their crops so the renters barely got any money from selling. Some of the Black Codes forced former slaves to sign contracts, making them to work for long hours for small wages, while some even required them to work on chain gangs in the fields in the plantations that they just came from.
Over all, the Black Codes were formed by the all white government because they felt like the blacks should still be at the bottom of society, and as close to what the South had before (slavery) as possible. People were angry they still had to follow the amendments that were placed by Lincoln before he was dead. The Black Codes were used to keep black people in their

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