Was Reconstruction A Success Or Failure Essay

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It is generally assumed that the Reconstruction period of the United States failed. This era, which lasted from the end of the Civil War to the election of Rutherford B. Hayes, saw three amendments to the Constitution, two Civil Rights Acts, and the “enfranchisement of the black man”. (Frederick Douglass, 1865) Reconstruction was necessary to rebuild the South’s economy, and welcome states back into the Union. While it succeeded in legally uniting all the states, civil matters were not so easily influenced. Slavery, for example, was abolished during the Civil War due to Abraham Lincoln’s war powers. Over the next decade, three amendments were passed through Congress to protect the rights of these freedmen. Congress, at this time, was held …show more content…

After the war between the states came to a close, the ex-slaves started searching for jobs on plantations. They sought out these jobs because it was work the African Americans knew how to do. Unfortunately, workers were soon required to enter annual labor contracts that they weren’t allowed to terminate without good reason, and were often beaten just like they had been in the past. Though the Freedmen’s Bureau was helpful in situations of abused labor, the fact that these circumstances even existed proves that the freedmen were not truly allowed to exercise their citizenship, which was given to them by the 14th amendment. As previously stated, this amendment was passed primarily by radical republicans of the North, and the South did not endeavor to see the amendment …show more content…

Once more, the southern states found a way around another seemingly airtight amendment passed by the radical republicans. Ex-confederate states placed an apparently harmless poll tax on their citizens, and required each and every voter to pass a literacy test before approaching a ballot. African Americans were uneducated and dirt poor, making the large majority of eligible colored voters unable to complete the literacy test nor pay the tax. Helpless against the South’s tyranny, the average African American man was disenfranchised, not by the law, but by his surrounding

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