Reconstruction has been brutally murdered! For a little over a decade after the Civil War, the victorious North launched a campaign of social, economic, and political recovery in South. Martial law was also implemented in the South. Eventually, the North hoped to admit the territory in the former Confederacy back into the United States as states. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments freed the African Americans, made them citizens, and gave them the right to vote. Despite this, Reconstruction was unfortunately cut short in 1877. The North killed Recosntruction because of racism, negligence, and distractions.
After the Civil War, the South needed to rejoin the North to become a United States. President Abraham Lincoln was very lenient with the idea of restoring the states with the Union. He developed a plan called the Ten-Percent Plan, which proclaimed that ten percent of the southern states’ population needed to pledge to be loyal to the United States. After Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson took over. He was much more lenient towards the South than Lincoln was, giving the South the right to regulate their actions. For example, African Americans could be controlled, but still couldn’t be bought nor sold. Slavery technically ended, but the new sharecropper sy...
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
This survey paper will explore the early events of Reconstruction during and immediately after the Civil War. The topics that will be addressed in this survey paper will be the Thirteenth Amendment, the Freedmen's Bureau, the Black Code, the Fourteenth Amendment and finally some political and social achievements of Reconstruction. Reconstruction to African Americans began as a feeling of joy and triumph for their freedom which was taken away quicker than it took to receive but it just wasn't called slavery anymore.
Lincoln led our nation through one of the most important times in our country’s history. The Civil War generated political and social changes that altered the course of the United States of America. While successful in gradually abolishing the institution of slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation failed to eliminate racial discrimination against the African Americans. Despite gaining their independence, the racial habits and policies of the southern states continued to impact the freed slaves’ quality of life. Through the use of intimidation and segregation, even after the abolition of slavery, white southerners stripped black citizens of many of the rights that were granted to them in the American Constitution as well as the Fourteenth
In conclusion, the Reconstruction was overall ineffective for giving real rights to African Americans. In effect, all of these outcomes only gave the white an advantage and gave African Americans a difficult way of life. As for the social structure in the south, they ended up getting things their way, winning themselves back into domination of southern state control. There wasn’t really a successful social structure that accomplished to teach southern states a lesson, which only made things worse for African Americans when there was a tiny ounce hope for them. At last, the south did anything they could to impede the rights for African Americans and to neglect a social structure, and as far as the Reconstruction-era, the south was successful. The Republicans did a lot of great things for African Americans, but something always backfired.
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.
It was a hot, sunny day in the army when Union soldiers heard the exciting news of winning the Civil War. They went to Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia to surrender. After the Civil War slaves were free but there was a lot of racism still in the country, next came Reconstitution in the South. At the announce of the Civil War ending and slaves being free men now the KKK and several other people were not happy with this and even Reconstruction in the South. Reconstruction means to rebuild something such as equality or industry. Southern Resistance killed Reconstruction because of the KKK and the Southern Resistance didn’t encourage it enough to where the Northern Neglect could have done anything.
Reconstruction is known as the period after the Civil war. The whole country was separated in two, people didn’t know what to do, the south was completely destroyed, and there were a lot of decisions to be made by the president. It lasted four years, and there was over half a million casualties between the union (North) and the confederate states (South). The north was declared the winner of the war after General Lee surrender in the Appomattox court house on April 9, 1865. The causes of the war was the secession of several southern states, they argued that it was up to them and it was in their rights to decide whether they should make slavery legal or illegal in their own boundaries. But the Union had other things in mind, the union wanted to decide whether or not the states were going to have slaves. This was just to make sure the country was equal on slavery and non-slavery on both sides, but states thought the union was abusing their power and being too strict on them, and that is when they decided to secede. The first state to secede was south Carolina, then they were followed by six other states, among those states were Florida, Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. These states got together and created the confederate states of America in February 4, 1861, and the president was Jefferson Davis, they also made a government similar to the one of the U.S. Constitution.
... and slavery left millions of newly freed African Americans in the South without an education, a home, or a job. Before reconstruction was put in place, African Americans in the South were left roaming helplessly and hopelessly. During the reconstruction period, the African Americans’ situation did not get much better. Although helped by the government, African Americans were faced with a new problem. African Americans in the South were now being terrorized and violently discriminated by nativist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Such groups formed in backlash to Reconstruction and canceled out all the positive factors of Reconstruction. At last, after the Compromise of 1877, the military was taken out of the South and all of the Reconstruction’s efforts were basically for nothing. African Americans in the South were back to the conditions they started with.
... The cause was forfeited not by Republicans, who welcomed the African-American votes, but to the elite North who had concluded that the formal end of slavery was all the freed man needed and their unpreparedness for the ex-slaves to participate in the Southern commonwealth was evident. Racism, severe economic depression, an exhausted North and troubled South, and a campaign of organized violence toward the freed man, overturned Reconstruction. The North withdrew the last of the federal troops with the passing of The Compromise of 1877. The freed slaves continued to practice few voting rights until 1890, but they were soon stripped of all political, social and economic powers. Not until the civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s were the freedoms that were fought for by our Republican forefathers nearly 100 years before, finally seen through to fruition.
After the Civil War ended in 1865, it was followed by an era known as Reconstruction that lasted until 1877, with the goal to rebuild the nation. Lincoln was the president at the beginning of this era, until his assassination caused his vice president, Andrew Johnson to take his place in 1865. Johnson was faced with numerous issues such as the reunification of the union and the unknown status of the ex-slaves, while compromising between the principles of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. After the Election of 1868, Ulysses S. Grant, a former war hero with no political experience, became the nation’s new president, but was involved in numerous acts of corruption. Reconstruction successfully reintegrated the southern states into the Union through Lincoln and Johnson’s Reconstruction Plans, but was mostly a failure due to the continued discriminatory policies against African Americans, such as the Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, and sharecropping, as well as the widespread corruption of the elite in the North and the Panic of 1873,
Reconstruction was intended to give African-Americans the chance for a new and better life. Many of them stayed with their old masters after being freed, while others left in search of opportunity through education as well as land ownership. However this was not exactly an easy task. There were many things standing in their way, chiefly white supremacists and the laws and restrictions they placed upon African-Americans. Beginning with the 'black codes' established by President Johnson's reconstruction plan, blacks were required to have a curfew as well as carry identification. Labor contracts established under Johnson's Reconstruction even bound the 'freedmen' to their respective plantations. A few years later, another set of laws known as the 'Jim Crow' laws directly undermined the status of blacks by placing unfair restrictions on everything from voting rights all the way to the segregation of water fountains. Besides these restrictions, the blacks had to deal with the Democratic Party whose northern wing even denounced racial equality. As a result of democratic hostility and the Republican Party's support of Black suffrage, freedmen greatly supported the Republican Party.
William Howard Russell once said, "Little did I conceive of the greatness of the defeat, the magnitude of the disaster which it had entailed upon the United States. So short-lived has been the American Union, that men who saw it rise may live to see it fall.” At one point in History, the United States was not one nation. The Civil War had created many issues for the United States and the country was desperate for a solution. This solution was thought to be reconstruction. Reconstruction was the attempt from the early 60's until the late 70's to resolve the issues of the war after slavery was dismissed and the Confederacy was defeated. Reconstruction also attempted to address how states would again become part of the Union, the status of Confederate leaders, and the status of African Americans across the United States.
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