Reconstruction: The Primary Reasons For Reconstruction

1. For some, the primary motive in the Reconstruction was revenge, however I believe that for the majority the primary motives was to help the African Americans. A few radical did want to get revenge on the South for seceding but others wanted equality for African Americans. Proof of this can be seen by the variety of laws and constitutional amendments that are passed. The 13th Amendment eliminated slavery but then the 14th Amendment established national citizenship for persons born or naturalized within the United States. This made sure African Americans were citizens. Furthermore, the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 gave enslaved citizens citizenship and also gave them equal protection and rights of contract along with full access

The Congress was even willing to go against the president to fulfill their primary motives, as seen by impeachment of Andrew Johnson. Also, we can see that many did not want to revenge on the Confederacy as Lincoln had proposed the Ten Percent Bill, which was an extremely lenient way of allowing Confederate States back into the Union. In general the North was very lenient in their negotiating with the

To begin with, the worldwide depression in 1873 destroyed the South’s already fragile economy. This led to their public credit to collapse, their debts to mount and their economic growth to completely stop growing. This also would lead to the collapse of the Republican party. As we can see, the Union failed to successfully integrate and remake the South and its economy. Furthermore, the Reconstruction failed to adequately integrate freedmen into society. Even though the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were passed, supposedly giving freedmen some more rights, the emergence of groups such as the Ku Klux Klan limited the civil liberties of the freedmen and also committed several atrocities against them. Moreover, freedmen were usually in terrible economic situations and they were forced in sharecropping because they did want to be wageworkers which might have been similar to slavery. However, sharecropping would lead them into an endless circle of debt which would put them in position similar to when they were slaves. Therefore a majority of the freedmen were in poverty and massive amounts of racism still existed in society. Overall, we can see that Reconstruction was a not a complete failure because of the passing of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments which still remain in our Constitution