The Reconstruction Era Essay

Directly following the Civil War, the country entered a time period known by historians as the “Reconstruction Era”. The Reconstruction Era, established by Abraham Lincoln, was the arrangement of bringing the nation back together as quickly as possible by requiring the Constitution to prohibit slavery in order to create a interracial democracy. While the Union victory in 1865 may have granted millions of freed slaves the facade of freedom, African-Americans still faced a new set of significant challenges during the process of reestablishing the South even years after their emancipation which are still present to this day. New freedoms African Americans enjoyed during this period were the opportunities for education, the opportunity to work

Created as a reaction to the great success of black political involvement, the KKK became “a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party’s Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for blacks.” With the creation of the KKK combined with white Democrats who wanted to revive the social order of the antebellum South, the Republicans lost their control of congress along with African Americans newly won political power and protection there were promised as citizens under the

In exchange, Hayes pledged, among other things, to withdraw federal troops from South Carolina and Louisiana, thereby ensuring the de facto transfer of power in all the Southern states into the hands of the former slaveholders.” Are there parallels between the political landscape of today and the effects of the comprise of 1877? Yes, I believe so. For instance, we can compare this period of time to the Obama and Trump presidency. Barack Obama represents the reconstruction era. He is the educated, successful black politician that republicans do not want in office. With Obama being in office, came the backlash and the rise of white