Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
14th amendment and the effects today
how does the 14th amendment affect us today
14th amendment and the effects today
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: 14th amendment and the effects today
With the end of the Civil war in 1865, the new nation of the United States now faced challenges on restoring peace within the Union. The North, having won the civil war, now faced the task to implement reconstruction of the South. They came in contact with the questions of: What should happen to the freed slaves, should the freed slaves have rights, what should be done to the Confederate leaders, and how should the South be reconstructed? There were many different ideas and views on how Reconstruction should be handled, but only one succeeded more successfully than the other. Although they bear some superficial similarities, the difference between presidential and congressional reconstruction are clear. The president believed that Confederate …show more content…
Aside from the presidential reconstruction, the Congressional Reconstruction was also taking place. The Congressman disagreed with both Lincoln and Johnson’s plans for Reconstruction. Their main two goals was to integrate African Americans into society by granting them citizenship and the right to vote, and the second goal was to destroy the political powers that former slaveholders had in the South. They first implemented these ideas by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 gave African Americans citizenship and forbade states from passing discriminatory laws. Although the black codes came about and Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill, Congress had the power to override his veto. This shows that even though the President is the leader of the nation, the Constitution guarantees that Congress has some measure of influence over the President and may chose to block his procedures, Check and Balances. With success, Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment, which states that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the country. All citizens were entitled to equal protection under law and be given their rights. The Congress agreed that if the Confederate states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment they could come back into the Union. Having not followed the Congress request, Congressed passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867. This forced the Confederate states to undergo Reconstruction as the Congress wanted. To ensure that Southerners could not change their state constitution in the future, they passed the Fifteenth Amendment and the last congressional Reconstruction law, another Civil Rights
The North’s neglect and greediness caused the reconstruction to be a failure.The corrupt government, terrorist organizations, unfocused president, and ignorance were also part of the ending of the reconstruction. President Lincoln didn’t want the civil war he wanted to keep the nation together. When Lincoln went into office he wasn't planning on getting rid of slavery nor starting a civil war. Before the reconstruction era was the civil war. Many good things and bad things came from the civil war. The civil war was a war between the North and the South. The war for the north was to end slavery, but for the south it was about rights and liberty. It wasn’t until afterwards that Americans started to notice the good and the bad. Not as many people
“The best way to predict your future is to create it” (Lincoln). President states the principal of Reconstruction, where to unite the United States, there must be an authoritative action to carry it out. The Reconstruction Era (1863-1877) is a period where Lincoln sought to restore the divided nation by uniting the confederates and the union and to involve the freedmen into the American society. The main objectives were to initially restore the union, to rebuild the South and to enact progressive legislation for the rights of the freed slaves. Thus, the executive and legislature branches had enacted a series of polices to “create the future” for the United States. Although the policies tied down to the Reconstructive motive, there was controversy
After the great battle of the American Civil War was fought, and the North won, a bigger battle still had to take place; reconstruction. Reconstruction after the war was not going to be easy, and it was not. What was the primary goal? What should be done to ex-confederates? Free Blacks? How should this reconstruction take place? Many of these questions were solved by the government, but how well? Reconstruction could have gone very differently, and that is what I intend to show. I will develop my own reconstruction policy for the United States after the American Civil War, dealing with several critical points, and the overall re-integration of the south into the Union. My policy is based on equality for the South and North, and making sure that a political balance and a balance of economic power was restored as much as possible.
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.
Although Lincoln and Johnson both passed Reconstruction plans that helped reunite the north and the south, ultimately Congress was not satisfied and passed its own plan. Lincoln passed a rather forgiving Reconstruction plan because in his opinion, the Confederate states had never seceded from the Union. The Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction included a ten percent plan, which “ would recognize them as people of the states within which they acted, and aid them to gain in all respects full acknowledgement and enjoyment of statehood, even though the persons who thus acted were but a tenth part of the original voters of their states” (W...
Following Lincoln’s tragic assassination, President Andrew Johnson took on the accountability of making Reconstruction a reality. Andrew Johnson wanted to use Lincoln’s ideas of reconstruction but in a modified form. Since Congress would be in recess for eight more months Johnson decided to go ahead with his plan. Johnson's goal in reconstruction was to grant amnesty to all former Confederates (except high officials), the ordinances of secession were to be revoked, Confederate debts would repudiate, and the states had to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment. Once the states swore to a loyalty oath to abide by the conditions they would be allowed to return to the Union. After swearing to the oath Confederate States would be allowed to govern themselves. With this power the states implemented the creation of a system of black codes that restricted the actions of freed slaves in much the same way, if not exactly the same way, that slaves were restricted under the old law. The end result of his plan was a hopeless conflict with the Radical Republicans who dominated Congress, passed measures over Johnson's vetoes, and attempted to limit the power of the executive concerning appointments and removals.
In 1866, the Civil Rights Bill was proposed in Congress. At the time, it was referred to as, “one of the most important bills ever presented to the House for its action.” (Foner 603). The Civil Rights Bill stated that each person born in the USA would be a citizen. It also proposed equality in the eyes of the law and would prohibit individual states from formulating legislature similar to the Black Codes. The ratification of the Civil Rights Bill would make it virtually illegal to discriminate against any person based on their race. In essence, the bill would enhance upon the Thirteenth Amendment that only abolished slavery; it did not make the African Americans equal to whites in the eyes of the law. In response to the bill, Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Bill. He claimed that blacks should not be citizens and that Congress was trying to infringe on the States’ rights with the bill. Johnson strongly opposed large aspects of the Reconstruction due to his stubbornness and bigoted tendencies. As an immediate result of the executive action, Congress voted to override the veto and make the Civil Rights Bill law in
The reconstruction of the Union began under President Lincoln before the end of the war, and carried on by President Johnson after the assassination of President Lincoln. After Lincoln’s death, the leadership of the nation bestowed upon Andrew Johnson of Tennessee. According to A. Brinkley (pg. 375), Johnson revealed his plan for reconstruction or “Restoration”, as he preferred to call it, soon after he took office and implemented it during the summer of 1865 when Congress was in recess. Like Lincoln, he offered some form of amnesty to Southerners who would take a pledge of loyalty to the Union. In most other respect, however, his plan resembled the Wade-Davis Bill. The next phase of reconstruction, known as the Congressional Plan or "Radical" modernization had begun, which undid everything started by Presidents Lincoln and Johnson. These radicals, mostly republicans, motivated by three main factors revenge, concern for the freedmen, and political concerns. The Radicals in Congress pushed through a number of measures designed to assist the freedmen, but also demonstrate the supremacy of Congress over the president. These events included the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the 14th Amendment, the Tenure of Office Act, and the Army Appropriations Act. The Radical Republicans prepared an effort in Congress to impeach the president Johnson as a payback for resisting their platforms. The vote in the Senate was 35-19 for conviction, one vote short of the necessary two-thirds. This was in turn to a few Republicans that had crossed over and voted with the Democrats, thus refuting the ultimate retaliation to the Radicals. If the removal of President Johnson had gone thru, it might have permanently weakened the executive branch. Congr...
After the Civil War, America went through a period of Reconstruction. This was when former Confederate states were readmitted to the Union. Lincoln had a plan that would allow them to come back, but they wouldn’t be able to do it easily. He would make 10% of the population swear an oath of loyalty and establish a government to be recognized. However, he was assassinated in Ford’s Theater and Andrew Johnson became the president; Johnson provided an easy path for Southerners. Congress did their best to ensure equal rights to freedmen, but failed because of groups who were against Reconstruction, white southern Democrats gaining control within the government and the lack of having a plan in place for recently freedmen.
The governments established under Congressional Reconstruction made notable and lasting achievements. One positive outcome that resulted was the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which extended citizenship to African Americans and listed certain rights of all citizens such as the right to own property, bring lawsuits, and testify in court. Another major outcome was the Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibited the states from denying the right to vote because of a person’s race or because a person had been a slave. This finally granted African Americans the right to vote and marked an important change in the history of our country. A negative outcome resulted politically from congressional Reconstruction. Many of the federal laws concerning reconstruction led to the strengthening of the federal government at the expense of the states. These new laws often placed significant restrictions on state actions on the ground that the rights of national citizenship took precedence over the powers of state governments leading to an increase in sectional bitterness, an intensification of the racial issue, and the development of one-party politics in the South. Stemming from this “infringement” of states’ rights and intensified by the election of 1868 was another negative outcome. Fierce activities were stirred up by groups such as the KKK- violence became prominent, and terrorists and mobs attacked many people- mostly Republicans and blacks.
After the Civil War, the victorious Union enacted a policy of Reconstruction in the former Confederate states. Reconstruction was aimed at creating as smooth a transition as possible for the southern states to re-enter the Union as well as enacting economic and social changes. However, several factors brought about its failure, and as a result the consequences can be seen in the race problems we still have today. In 1862, President Lincoln had appointed temporary military governors to re-establish functional governments in occupied southern states. In order for a state to be allowed to re-enter the Union, it had to meet the criteria, which was established to be that at least 10 percent of the voting population polled in 1860 must denounce the Confederacy and swear allegiance to the Union again. However this was not good enough for Congress, which at the time was dominated by Radical Republicans who fervently called for social and economic change in the south, specifically the rights of blacks. They were especially concerned with guaranteeing black civil and voting rights, and criticized Lincoln for excluding this in the original plan for Reconstruction.
The Reconstruction implemented by Congress, which lasted from 1866 to 1877, was aimed at reorganizing the Southern states after the Civil War, providing the means for readmitting them into the Union, and defining the means by which whites and blacks could live together in a nonslave society. The South, however, saw Reconstruction as a humiliating, even vengeful imposition and did not welcome it.
America has gone through many hardships and struggles since coming together as a nation involving war and changes in the political system. Many highly regarded leaders in America have come bestowing their own ideas and foundation to provide a better life for “Americans”, but no other war or political change is more infamous than the civil war and reconstruction. Reconstruction started in 1865 and ended in 1877 and still to date one of the most debated issues in American history on whether reconstruction was a failure or success as well as a contest over the memory, meaning, and ending of the war. According to, “Major Problems in American History” David W. Blight of Yale University and Steven Hahn of the University of Pennsylvania take different stances on the meaning of reconstruction, and what caused its demise. David W. Blight argues that reconstruction was a conflict between two solely significant, but incompatible objectives that “vied” for attention both reconciliation and emancipation. On the other hand Steven Hahn argues that former slaves and confederates were willing and prepared to fight for what they believed in “reflecting a long tradition of southern violence that had previously undergirded slavery” Hahn also believes that reconstruction ended when the North grew tired of the 16 year freedom conflict. Although many people are unsure, Hahn’s arguments presents a more favorable appeal from support from his argument oppose to Blight. The inevitable end of reconstruction was the North pulling federal troops from the south allowing white rule to reign again and proving time travel exist as freed Africans in the south again had their civil, political, and economical position oppressed.
After Andrew Johnson’s veto, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act, which temporarily divided the South into five military districts and outlined how governments based on universal (male) suffrage were to be organized” (Reconstruction History.com) These laws required all southern states to ratify the 14th Amendment. The 14th amendment stated, ”All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” (Chrisman, Jerry, and Stanbery Foster III). This granted “Equal Protection” to former slaves before they could rejoin the Union. Radical Republicans thought blacks should be entitled to the same rights and opportunities as whites. Reconstruction achieved many ideal things that people did not think would happen. “Among the other achievements of Reconstruction were the South’s first state-funded public school systems, more equitable taxation legislation, laws against racial discrimination in public transport and accommodations and ambitious economic development programs (including aid to railroads and other enterprises)” (“Reconstruction” History.com). By these achievements of Reconstruction, it created a better life for many people in the
The 14th Amendment was purposed to grant citizenship to freed slaves to protect their civil liberties. During Reconstruction era, blacks were also able to vote and participate in political matters, helped to write new laws, and some got involved in politics and ran for political offices and got elected. For example they had official government positions such as U.S. Senators, U.S. Representatives, and governors. Shortly after, the African Americans were also given the right to vote through the 15th Amendment which gave the right to vote to any citizen without the fact of their race, color, or previous condition. Congressional reconstruction also created military districts in the south and authorized the military to enforce the federal law, so African Americans found themselves with many opportunities such as education, and to direct their own economic live. However, racism, class and cultural struggles, the rise of the myth of the lost cause caused the Reconstruction to fail. Racism is a “belief that all members of each