Reconstruction in the United States: A Failure?

Support or oppose, citing evidence with explanation, the following statement. “Reconstruction was a failure in the United States.” Reconstruction after the United States Civil War was a substantial failure. This time period was supposed to be an era of positive reform and improved civil liberties yet was plagued with corruption and lack of steady change overall. Reconstruction did have significant improvements including the new infrastructure implemented by the Northerners such as the public schools, orphanages, railroads and the ability for African-Americans to hold political office for a duration of time. These advancements were shadowed by the massive deficiency of Reconstruction. The social opinion was degraded after the federal government

This new fear of the voting freedman angered many southern democrats. A war of intimidation began in the south in which the Ku Klux Klan was established that focused on murdering freedmen. There were even openly operating paramilitaries such as the White League who concentrated their attacks upon Republicans. In some towns the entire southern adult male population was engaged in a war against Reconstruction at one point. Reconstruction had done little to redistribute the wealth and land throughout the south. Likewise it did very little to alter the power structure of the region because the Southerners knew that when restrictions were to loosen things would return back to the ordinary conditions. All of the promises from the federal government such as “Forty acres and a mule” by General Sherman were lost and hardly anything was done to guarantee land rights to the

Throughout the 1860’s and 1870’s the Supreme Court often restricted the scope of the fourteenth and fifteen amendments. In the Slaughter-House cases, the court ruled that the 14th Amendment applied only to the federal government, not to state governments. Another way reform was restricted was through the implication of new voting restrictions. In United States v. Reese, the court cleared the war for poll taxes, literary tests, property requirements, and other restrictions. It would be another 100 years when the 24th Amendment was adopted in which the poll tax was abolished for elections. These newly imposed limits indirectly barred freedmen from voting and effectively rendering the south the same as it was before Reconstruction. By 1876, Southern Democrats had regained control of the southern