Failure Of Reconstruction Essay

Essay prompt: How do you account for the failure of Reconstruction to bring about social and economic equality of opportunity to former slaves?

Reconstruction, a period during the US History where the Union government, who won the Civil War, reconstructs both political and social systems of the south so that the Northern industrialization will be assured its dominance over the south as the union restores. The southern economy, which depended upon cotton and various crops, had the necessity of “cheap labor” which led to the usage of black slaves. In fact, these “crop planters” who owned a vast amount of money and land became the industrial power of the South disabling the enaction of higher taxes in the south due to their political power. Moreover, the goal of reconstruction was to eliminate wealthy planters in the south to deconstruct the power of the agricultural industry in the federal government. As a matter of fact, because the “black slaves” had an immense effect on the growth and size of the agricultural economy, the reconstruction gave “fundamental human rights” to the black

Specifically, there were several white supremacist groups created during the reconstruction, such as the Ku Klux Klan, whose incentives were to inhibit the black Americans from voting. This fraternal organization had been terroristic, using murder, lynch, rape and arson to show and prove the white power over the black people. Moreover, it is evident that such white supremacist groups who target on the black people due to their ego and their ideals, a show of the ineffectiveness of the politics during the Reconstruction. In fact, the reconstruction period had failed to sustain the freedom of the former slaves, thus unable to execute the Union’s ultimate goal to create social equality to former