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Reconstruction during the american civil war
Reconstruction american civil war
Reconstruction during the american civil war
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Shenton, James P. The Reconstruction: A Documentary History of the South after the War: 1865 1877. New York: Capricorn, 1963. Print. Book Review I read the book The Reconstruction: A Documentary History of the South after the War: 1865-1877 by James P. Shenton. James P. Shenton arrived at the University of Columbia at the age of 21 as a college freshman on the G.I. Bill. He finished his B.A. in three years and continued to finish his M.A. in 1950. In 1954 he finished his Ph. D all his accomplishments are in the subject of history. Professor Shenton arrived at Columbia University and never transferred anywhere else and eventually became a Professor on their campus. The context of this book is the years 1865 through 1877 which are the years after the civil war. This book made it a bit difficult to understand the order of the reconstruction of the south after the war but it did contain interesting and accurate information. In the book The Reconstruction there were three main ideas that the North wanted to address during the reconstruction after the disaster caused by the Civil War. The first act brought to motion was the restoration of the Union in which Abraham Lincoln created the Ten-Percent Plan. The Ten-Percent Plan meant that each Southern state would be each allowed back to the Union only after 10 percent of the voting population pledged their future loyalty to the United States, also all Confederates excluding high-ranking government and military officials would be forgiven although Radical Republicans wanted it to be 50 percent of the voting population to pledge loyalty to the United States. President Lincoln and Andrew Jackson as well as congress agreed that the Southern states had to get rid of all slavery in their new st... ... middle of paper ... ...oes from a witness’s diary to a government document and later on could go back again. I found it a little difficult to keep up. It also included interviews with senators as well as information for news reports, the information provided bounces around quite a bit, the organization is a bit challenging to keep up with. Personally I would not recommend this book to a friend because it is a difficult read and could be a little confusing. However; if they want something specific with lots of information and evidence I most certainly would recommend this book to them. This would be a great book to use for a history report about the aftermath of the Civil War and what were the goals of the North and the South. In a personal matter I would not recommend this book to a friend but in an educational setting I certainly would because this book is very informative and accurate.
What The South Intends. THE CHRISTIAN RECORDERS August 12, 1865, Print. James, Edward, Janet James, and Paul Boyer.
Heidler, David Stephen, and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds. Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: a
McPherson, James M.; The Atlas of the Civil War. Macmillan: 15 Columbus Circle New York, NY. 1994.
The social history regarding reconstruction has been of great controversy for the last two decades in America. Several wars that occurred in America made reconstruction efforts to lag behind. Fundamental shortcomings of the reconstruction were based on racism, politics, capitalism and social relations. The philosophy was dominant by the people of South under the leadership of Lincoln. Lincoln plans were projected towards bringing the states from the South together as one nation. However, the efforts of the Activist were faded by the intrusion of the Republicans from the North. Northerners were capitalists and disapproved the ideas that Lincoln attempted to spread in the South (Foner Par 2).
America has gone through many hardships and struggles since coming together as a nation involving war and changes in the political system. Many highly regarded leaders in America have come bestowing their own ideas and foundation to provide a better life for “Americans”, but no other war or political change is more infamous than the civil war and reconstruction. Reconstruction started in 1865 and ended in 1877 and still to date one of the most debated issues in American history on whether reconstruction was a failure or success as well as a contest over the memory, meaning, and ending of the war. According to, “Major Problems in American History” David W. Blight of Yale University and Steven Hahn of the University of Pennsylvania take different stances on the meaning of reconstruction, and what caused its demise. David W. Blight argues that reconstruction was a conflict between two solely significant, but incompatible objectives that “vied” for attention both reconciliation and emancipation. On the other hand Steven Hahn argues that former slaves and confederates were willing and prepared to fight for what they believed in “reflecting a long tradition of southern violence that had previously undergirded slavery” Hahn also believes that reconstruction ended when the North grew tired of the 16 year freedom conflict. Although many people are unsure, Hahn’s arguments presents a more favorable appeal from support from his argument oppose to Blight. The inevitable end of reconstruction was the North pulling federal troops from the south allowing white rule to reign again and proving time travel exist as freed Africans in the south again had their civil, political, and economical position oppressed.
One of the first goals of Reconstruction was to readmit the Confederate states into the Union, and during the debate in Congress over how to readmit the states, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were ratified. The United States had three different presidents between 1865 and 1877, who all had different opinions as to how the actions of readmitting the states should be carried out. President Lincoln devised the Ten Percent Plan in an effort to get the Confederate states to rejoin the Union. In Lincoln's plan, all Confederates, other than high-ranking officials, would be pardoned if they would swear allegiance to the Union and promise to obey its laws. Once ten percent of the people on the 1860 voting lists took the oath of allegiance, the state would be free to form a state government, and would be readmitted to the Union. Many of the Republicans in Congress were angered by this plan, because they believed that it was too lenient. After President Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency with a new plan, which became known as Presiden...
Perman Michael, Amy Murrell Taylor. Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction. Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2011.
When looking at the period of Reconstruction there were many plans put into action to try to unify the country together again. All three plans put into action were different and similar in some aspects of them. The first plan was Lincolns Reconstruction plan or ten percent plan. It consists of citizens of the South had to take an oath of loyalty, and once 10% of the state had taken the oath the state could rejoin the Union. The next plan was Johnson's Reconstruction Plan. It was similar to Lincoln's but military officials and the person with property worth more than $20,000 had to apply directly to the President for a pardon. The last plan was Radical Republican plan. The Southern States had to approve the 13th Amendment. Then Southern states
The Civil War marked a defining moment in United States history. Long simmering sectional tensions reached critical when eleven slaveholding states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. Political disagreement gave way to war as the Confederates insisted they had the right to leave the Union, while the loyal states refused to allow them to go. Four years of fighting claimed almost 1.5 million casualties, resulting in a Union victory. Even though the North won the war, they did a horrible job in trying to win the peace, or in other words, the Reconstruction era. Rather than eliminating slavery in the South, the Southerners had a new form of slavery, which was run by a new set of codes called "Black Codes”. With the help of President Johnson, the South continued their plantations, in essence becoming exactly what they were before the war. Overall, the South won Reconstruction because in the end they got slavery (without the name), they got an easy pass back into the Union, and things reverted back to the way they had been prior the war.
America faced many problems after the civil war, including the political re-entry of the formerly rebellious states, how to revive the economy of the South, and how to support the 4 million freed slaves. In the beginning of reconstruction, Lincoln believed it was his responsibility to solve these problems. He came up with the 10% plan; this plan entitled amnesty to the Confederates by taking an oath and if 10% or more took the oath than statehood would be re-established. This
Reconstruction began throughout the nation, but mostly in the South following the civil war in 1863. It had many widely positive and negative consequences within the period. These consequences were felt both short term and long term, for the North and the South. This in return would ultimately lead to the end of the Reconstruction period, with many questioning its success. In this essay I will compare and contrast the many sides of the Reconstruction period felt for both the North and the South.
There were many factors that contributed to the withdrawal of Reconstruction after the Civil War, but whose fault really was it? Controversy was created multiple times disputing the fact whether the North or South were responsible for the downfall of Reconstruction. The main idea of Reconstruction was to create a fair relation with the South as well as rebuild the South’s devastation as a result of the Civil War. The year of 1876 marked an important date for many; one being the Election of 1876 which advanced the conclusion of Reconstruction. At the time, the fear of a new civil war was clear and was prioritized to avoid the circumstance. Therefore, an informal agreement was created called “The Compromise of 1877” which presidency to Robert B. Hayes, the republican candidate running against the democratic candidate, Samuel J. Tilden. Hence, the end of Reconstruction was the fault of the North because of scandals having to be primarily dealt with, and the dilemma between the black americans’ incompetence towards political duties as seen in documents C
After the great battle of the American Civil War was fought, and the North won, a bigger battle still had to take place; reconstruction. Reconstruction after the war was not going to be easy, and it was not. What was the primary goal? What should be done to ex-confederates? Free Blacks? How should this reconstruction take place? Many of these questions were solved by the government, but how well? Reconstruction could have gone very differently, and that is what I intend to show. I will develop my own reconstruction policy for the United States after the American Civil War, dealing with several critical points, and the overall re-integration of the south into the Union. My policy is based on equality for the South and North, and making sure that a political balance and a balance of economic power was restored as much as possible.
During Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proposed the Ten Percent Plan. Not finding Lincoln’s plan good enough, many Republicans of Congress came together and proposed the Wade-Davis Bill. Neither were taken as the initial reconstruction policy. When the Civil War ended, the responsibility of discovering a policy was now in the hands of President Andrew Johnson. This being, Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan came to be. Under this plan, in order to be readmitted into the Union, a Confederate State had to take an oath of loyalty to the Union and Constitution. All former military and civil officers of the Confederacy and those who owned property worth $20,000 or more had to make their estates liable to confiscation. They had to abide by the 13th Amendment and abolish slavery. By the end of 1865, the Confederate states expect for Texas where readmitted to the Union. This was a great accomplishment, because of Johnson’s Reconstruction policy, The U.S stood together once
Imagine a historian, author of an award-winning dissertation and several books. He is an experienced lecturer and respected scholar; he is at the forefront of his field. His research methodology sets the bar for other academicians. He is so highly esteemed, in fact, that an article he has prepared is to be presented to and discussed by the United States’ oldest and largest society of professional historians. These are precisely the circumstances in which Ulrich B. Phillips wrote his 1928 essay, “The Central Theme of Southern History.” In this treatise he set forth a thesis which on its face is not revolutionary: that the cause behind which the South stood unified was not slavery, as such, but white supremacy. Over the course of fourteen elegantly written pages, Phillips advances his thesis with evidence from a variety of primary sources gleaned from his years of research. All of his reasoning and experience add weight to his distillation of Southern history into this one fairly simple idea, an idea so deceptively simple that it invites further study.