Reconstruction Pros And Cons

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1. A Broken Beginning In the wake of the Civil War, the nation wrestled with the purpose and implementation of Reconstruction. A Virginia freedman, recalling generations of slavery and more recent sacrifices of service in the Union army, declared the United States “now our country ‒ made emphatically so by the blood of our brethren.” In this spirit, Radical Republicans sought to create a new multiracial democracy based on the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. In contrast, southern conservatives worked to limit the effects of Union victory while restoring, or “redeeming,” the South, specifically its economy and social hierarchy, to their standings before the outbreak of civil conflict. Informal restrictions on the freedoms of African Americans, known as Black Codes, were passed and implemented in order to weaken the social transformations of Reconstruction and its amendments to the United States Constitution. These laws, along with measures to restrict ballot access, spread state by state throughout the South, accompanied by intimidation and violence aimed at the associated minority groups. Court cases like Plessy …show more content…

Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the “segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law.... We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” The following year, the Court issued its guidance for southern states to integrate their public schools “with all deliberate speed,” and governors across the South responded with a call for “massive resistance.” and updated their state flags with Confederate symbols, while the federal government intervened to force

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