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Having endured the brutality of slavery and the uncertainty of war,
America’s blacks enjoyed a period of relative respite during the years
1863-1877. With slavery abolished, the South underwent reconstruction
within every component of its unsteady structure. However, one must
measure the success of this reconstruction with the criteria of
political, social and economic changes in mind. The amendments of the
1860s gave blacks greater political freedom, but were only upheld by
the military force of the Northern army; blacks developed their first
education and religious institutions, but only within a segregated
framework; and economically, the black population worked long, hard
hours- though in better conditions than slavery. Despite the
progressions, the promise of Reconstruction and the 13th-15th
amendments was far from fulfilled. It remained a tough life for the
ex-slaves.
The political influence of blacks was significantly enhanced by the
revolutionary amendments passed in the 1860s. The thirteenth,
fourteenth and fifteenth amendments expanded black rights to an
unprecedented extent, affording them rights equal to those of an
average white man. The 1868 fourteenth amendment, giving “all persons
born or naturalized” in the Union national citizenship, meant blacks
should be protected equally by law and stand on a jury; the 15th
amendment, giving them the vote, naturally followed in 1870. However,
such measures were only held up by the Reconstruction Governments of
the time, and it was clear that the states’ white citizens mostly
disagreed with the schemes, responding to them with a barrage of
cruelty and violence. However, fo...
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...ng of previously
well-taught slaves. Even with this taken into account, though, black
Civil Rights were extended most profoundly in the area of economics;
for the first time, black money was untainted by white supremacy.
Despite the expansion of black Civil Rights during the period 1863-77,
the benefits were limited by Southern white supremacy, and ‘white
trash’ intolerance. Ultimately, Reconstruction failed because
planters’ land was not redistributed, thus ensuring that blacks
remained dependent on their previous owners. By 1877, the blacks still
had very little. However, a small black economy, and several
institutions, had been developed independent of the whites’, thus
enhancing blacks’ standing in society. Nonetheless, the slaves who
dreamt of a post-War ‘promised land’ were severely and tragically let
down.
The first part of this book looks into African American political activity during the pre-Civil War and Civil War periods. He uses this part of the book to show that blacks, even while in slavery, used their position to gain rights from their slaveholders. These rights included the right to farm their own plots, sale of their produce, and to visit neighboring plantations. This was also the period
As an unabridged version of his other book, Eric Foner sets out to accomplish four main goals in A Short History of Reconstruction. These points enable the author to provide a smaller, but not neglectful, account of the United States during Reconstruction. By exploring the essence of the black experience, examining the ways in which Southern society evolved, the development of racial attitudes and race relations, and the complexities of race and class in the postwar South, as well as the emergence during the Civil War and Reconstruction of a national state possessing vastly expanded authority and a new set of purposes, Foner creates a narrative that encompasses some of the major issues during Reconstruction. Additionally, the author provides
While the formal abolition of slavery, on the 6th of December 1865 freed black Americans from their slave labour, they were still unequal to and discriminated by white Americans for the next century. This ‘freedom’, meant that black Americans ‘felt like a bird out of a cage’ , but this freedom from slavery did not equate to their complete liberty, rather they were kept in destitute through their economic, social, and political state.
Though the issue of slavery was solved, racism continues and Southerners that stayed after the war passed Black Codes which subverted the ideas of freedom including the actions of state legislatures (Hakim 19). Black Codes were a set of laws that discriminated blacks and limited their freedom (Jordan 388). Such restrictions included: “No negro shall be permitted to rent or keep a house within said parish...No public meetings or congregations of negroes shall be allowed within said parish after sunset…” (Louisiana Black Codes 1865). A solution to this was the 14th Amendment. It meant now all people born in America were citizens and it “Prohibited states from revoking one’s life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” This meant all states had to...
For the beginning, in the middle and in the ending of the Civil War in the United States, the Black Americans were central as soldier and civilian. At first, people tried hard to get around this fact. Even President Abraham Lincoln administration sent Black volunteers home with an understanding that the war was a ''White man's war". The policy was eventually changed not because of humanitarianism but because of the Confederation's battlefield brilliance. The South brought the North to a realization that it was in a real brawl that it needed all the weapons it could lay hands on.
After a war that claimed the lives of more men than that of all other wars combined, much of the country was left in ruins, literally and figuratively. Dozens of towns in the South had been burned to the ground. Meanwhile, the relations between the North and South had crumbled to pieces. Something needed to be done so that the country could once again be the United States of America, not the Divided States of America. The years from 1865 to 1877 were a time of rebuilding – the broken communities and the broken relations. This time period was known as Reconstruction. Reconstruction was a failure on the basis that the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments that were passed should have given protection and freedom to the African American people, instead, it actually hurt them because the laws were not enforced, and eventually lead to the organization of white supremacy terrorist groups.
The second phase of the Civil War was a victory for the south, for their political ideas of former slave owners stayed far after the war. The south was dependent on slave labor and with the slave population now free they had to forcibly change tactics to control this population. Southern whites used legal, political, and violent means to whip the black population into submission. Laws like the black codes were in the south to restrict the black population from becoming a strong community. Common practices like sharecropping crippled the black community’s only field in which they had experience in. Violence from southern whites increased the fear stricken society and crippled their potential for any civil liberties.
During the four decades following reconstruction, the position of the Negro in America steadily deteriorated. The hopes and aspirations of the freedmen for full citizenship rights were shattered after the federal government betrayed the Negro and restored white supremacist control to the South. Blacks were left at the mercy of ex-slaveholders and former Confederates, as the United States government adopted a laissez-faire policy regarding the “Negro problem” in the South. The era of Jim Crow brought to the American Negro disfranchisement, social, educational, and occupational discrimination, mass mob violence, murder, and lynching. Under a sort of peonage, black people were deprived of their civil and human rights and reduced to a status of quasi-slavery or “second-class” citizenship. Strict legal segregation of public facilities in the southern states was strengthened in 1896 by the Supreme Court’s decision in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case. Racists, northern and southern, proclaimed that the Negro was subhuman, barbaric, immoral, and innately inferior, physically and intellectually, to whites—totally incapable of functioning as an equal in white civilization.
The article, “The Negro’s Civil War in Tennessee, 1861-1865” by Bobby L. Lovett, can be found in "The Journal of Negro History. Lovett's article relates the importance of the contributions the black soldiers of Tennessee made during the Civil War. He portraits to the reader the determination of these black Tennesseans fight to gain their freedom under some extremely violent and racial conditions.
Reconstruction was needed and the period following the civil war, the reconstruction period, fostered many significant results and achievements especially for Constitutional amendments. While mending a broken country, the reconstruction period still left many fresh wounds. There was great successes and championships for former slaves and the blacks rights, but their was still lingering thoughts and acts of discrimination towards these groups. Reconstruction produced three amendments defending the people 's rights, yet discrimination towards blacks was peeking to new heights. Laws were not enough to change the hearts and minds of the people, which was at the core of the issue. With the unfortunate loss of the nation’s leader, it would be almost a hundred years later until America had leaders strong enough, in the nineteen sixties, that could change the ideas of racism and
Although the Fourteenth Amendment, when adopted in 1868, gave certain rights to blacks, including citizenship, equal protection of law and other freedoms, African-Americans were considered inferior by whites in this country. In 1896, Plessy v. Ferguson officially made segregation legal, and put “separate but equal” into effect. African-Americans were excluded from hotels, restaurants, theatres and schools. African-Americans had lower paying jobs than did whites. Accumulated frustration led blacks to call for dramatic social change. (Good, 8-10)
During the reconstruction period, African Americans benefited from the civil rights act of March 1866 and the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment. However, for African Americans in the former confederacy, opportunities were limited as in1865 and 1866 the former confederacy states passed black codes’ a replacement of the former slave codes, which once again forcibly cemented the second-class status of African Americans. The most oppressive of the codes was against vagrancy, ...
Slavery in America: The Beginning of the Civil War. Should humans be autonomous or responsible? In other words, should they follow the convictions of their own hearts or surrender their ideals to another power presumed to be superior in its wisdom? This dilemma between autonomy and responsibility presents itself constantly. The struggles over abortion, euthanasia, and drug legalization are perfect examples.
“Jim Crow must go!” was the slogan cry of our 33rd vice president, Henry A. Wallace. Equal rights that was all they wanted, that was the only reason why “Jim Crow” laws crushed the hopes of the black people of Southern America. If a black entered a “white only” area it would be a flagrant violation of “Jim Crow” laws but if a white entered the “colored only” area...nothing! This is what provoked the belligerence of many black people. Even though Henry A. Wallace was a white man he still supported the abolition of “Jim Crow” laws. Why? What was the need for these cruel laws? What was his reason for supporting the black people?
“War is at best barbarism….Its glory is all moonshine….War is hell. (Union General William Tecumseh Sherman) A wise quote by an even wiser man, The Civil War was agreed a “hell”. For four years (1862-1865) a war was fought between both Northern Union states and Southern Confederate states over the matter of slavery. During this time period many changes were happening in the United States; the election of an anti-slavery president, Southern states trying to secede to become their own independent country. These factors and many more including slavery were the main causes of The Civil War. To begin slavery was the main income for southern states.