After the Civil War, America went through a period of Reconstruction. This was when former Confederate states were readmitted to the Union. Lincoln had a plan that would allow them to come back, but they wouldn’t be able to do it easily. He would make 10% of the population swear an oath of loyalty and establish a government to be recognized. However, he was assassinated in Ford’s Theater and Andrew Johnson became the president; Johnson provided an easy path for Southerners. Congress did their best to ensure equal rights to freedmen, but failed because of groups who were against Reconstruction, white southern Democrats gaining control within the government and the lack of having a plan in place for recently freedmen. One of the first things that happened was that groups organized to intimidate people into going against Reconstruction. One such group was the Ku Klux Klan who went around anonymously to commit acts of atrocity to those who supported Reconstruction and equal rights for African Americas. Document 2 proves that they were totally against it; it says their purpose was to “establish a nucleus around which “the adherents of the late rebellion might safely rally”.” This just shows that they were not going to accept the reformation of the South and they wanted to find as many supporters as they could. As it is known, they threatened people at polls into voting for the groups that supported their views and that caused the elections to be swayed. Document 4 is another proof of the fact that some people refused to accept Reconstruction. “Let there be White Leagues formed in every town….time to meet brute-force with brute-force….it is time for us to organize.” These groups terrorized the people and made them afraid to show their... ... middle of paper ... ... not provide anything for them. This would prove to be the sucker punch to their futures and any equal rights they needed. With the combination of the above mentioned, the freedmen had many basic rights stripped away from them. They couldn’t vote, were killed and preyed upon mercilessly and many other terrible matters. White Southern Democrats took advantage of their over whelming power in Congress and didn’t pass rights to protect the freedmen; groups such as the KKK and White Leagues intimidated and killed freedmen and those who supported them; and Congress didn’t have a plan for the slaves when they freed them. With all of these events together, the freedmen had far from equal rights. They were ‘separate but equal’. With the mixture of these incidents, the consequence was that Congress ultimately failed in their efforts to provide equal rights for freedmen.
This began a chain of events that led to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the end of the biracial democracy in the south. Johnson put pro-Union Southern political leaders into power, even though many had aided the Confederacy during the war. These men, with Johnson's support, attempted to restore a sense of the “Old South”, essentially trying to force blacks down as low in the class system as they legally could in light of the 13th and 14th Amendments-second class citizens. In 1866 the Radical Republicans stood up to President Johnson, and a battle for control of Reconstruction ensued.... ... middle of paper ...
Free blacks from the south were facing many situations from the whites from the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws were to prevent free blacks and other non-whites from being able to vote and have a voice within the government. Laws and statements were established such as the Grandfather Clause, which would prevent anyone whose grandfather could not vote from voting. Since the majority of blacks grandfathers did not vote and was not even free, free blacks in the south were denied the right to vote. Free blacks were now being denied any privilege that non slaves (whites) already had. Their "freedom" was only from slavery, now they realized that they were still a slave to the world. Also during this time blacks were being discriminated against and the lynchings of blacks were occurring. Blacks were becoming endangered and feared for their lives.
After a war that claimed the lives of more men than that of all other wars combined, much of the country was left in ruins, literally and figuratively. Dozens of towns in the South had been burned to the ground. Meanwhile, the relations between the North and South had crumbled to pieces. Something needed to be done so that the country could once again be the United States of America, not the Divided States of America. The years from 1865 to 1877 were a time of rebuilding – the broken communities and the broken relations. This time period was known as Reconstruction. Reconstruction was a failure on the basis that the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments that were passed should have given protection and freedom to the African American people, instead, it actually hurt them because the laws were not enforced, and eventually lead to the organization of white supremacy terrorist groups.
After the Civil War ended in 1865, it was followed by an era known as Reconstruction that lasted until 1877, with the goal to rebuild the nation. Lincoln was the president at the beginning of this era, until his assassination caused his vice president, Andrew Johnson to take his place in 1865. Johnson was faced with numerous issues such as the reunification of the union and the unknown status of the ex-slaves, while compromising between the principles of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. After the Election of 1868, Ulysses S. Grant, a former war hero with no political experience, became the nation’s new president, but was involved in numerous acts of corruption. Reconstruction successfully reintegrated the southern states into the Union through Lincoln and Johnson’s Reconstruction Plans, but was mostly a failure due to the continued discriminatory policies against African Americans, such as the Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, and sharecropping, as well as the widespread corruption of the elite in the North and the Panic of 1873,
After the Civil War came the Reconstruction. The Reconstruction gave some power back to the states and eventually brought the states back together. It gave the state’s power by allowing them to govern themselves under military commanders from the Union. Although this brought the 14th amendment which gave former
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).
In particular, the political freedoms that were given to the freedmen were rigged to prevent them from properly using their rights, but they still retained a few political rights that they could still exercise. According to the chart in Document A, Black men in 10 out of 16 states could vote, though voting in half of those states was restricted due to requirements, like owning property. Also, all the states except Massachusetts did not allow Black men to do Jury duty (Doc. A). More than half the states allowed Blacks to vote, yet most of these freedmen could not due to the property requirements. They were given political rights, but could not use them because of their circumstances. But the free African Americans had some say in the government because a few of them could vote, and all it takes is one vote to change the world. In addition, it is stated in Document B that "...he shall not be free... to share with us the deliberations of the jury box- to attend us in our courts- to represent us in legislature" (Doc. B). This only proves that the white people are denying the blacks rights given to white men, and should also be allowed to them because they are americans. It caused d...
The era of Reconstruction had intended to mend the problems resulting from the American Civil War. Unfortunately, southern Radicalists made enormous efforts to prevent this as they believed in white supremacy. These Radicalists did not want to permit African Americans the ability to vote however they were forced to when accepting readmission into the Union under the Fourteenth Amendment. To counter this, these confederates created "Black Codes" to ensure racial segregation and even forged white supremacy organizations. All of these events along with Republican scandals led to the inevitable failure of the Reconstruction era.
Reconstruction is known as the period after the Civil war. The whole country was separated in two, people didn’t know what to do, the south was completely destroyed, and there were a lot of decisions to be made by the president. It lasted four years, and there was over half a million casualties between the union (North) and the confederate states (South). The north was declared the winner of the war after General Lee surrender in the Appomattox court house on April 9, 1865. The causes of the war was the secession of several southern states, they argued that it was up to them and it was in their rights to decide whether they should make slavery legal or illegal in their own boundaries. But the Union had other things in mind, the union wanted to decide whether or not the states were going to have slaves. This was just to make sure the country was equal on slavery and non-slavery on both sides, but states thought the union was abusing their power and being too strict on them, and that is when they decided to secede. The first state to secede was south Carolina, then they were followed by six other states, among those states were Florida, Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. These states got together and created the confederate states of America in February 4, 1861, and the president was Jefferson Davis, they also made a government similar to the one of the U.S. Constitution.
William Mason Grosvenor believes that Reconstruction should be harsh. Grosvenor has two main arguments to support this belief, manifest destiny and the potential for the reoccurrence of a similar event to the war if Reconstruction was carried out in a lenient manner. Grosvenor argues that the country, pre-Civil War, was never truly a single unified country, but rather a group of peoples with vastly different values held together by a constitution which they had outgrown, saying, “[n]o chemical union had ever taken place; for that the white-hot crucible of civil war was found necessary.” Furthermore, Grosvenor believes that the succession of the South demonstrated this divide while simultaneously violating the doctrine of manifest destiny through
Reconstruction was intended to give African-Americans the chance for a new and better life. Many of them stayed with their old masters after being freed, while others left in search of opportunity through education as well as land ownership. However this was not exactly an easy task. There were many things standing in their way, chiefly white supremacists and the laws and restrictions they placed upon African-Americans. Beginning with the 'black codes' established by President Johnson's reconstruction plan, blacks were required to have a curfew as well as carry identification. Labor contracts established under Johnson's Reconstruction even bound the 'freedmen' to their respective plantations. A few years later, another set of laws known as the 'Jim Crow' laws directly undermined the status of blacks by placing unfair restrictions on everything from voting rights all the way to the segregation of water fountains. Besides these restrictions, the blacks had to deal with the Democratic Party whose northern wing even denounced racial equality. As a result of democratic hostility and the Republican Party's support of Black suffrage, freedmen greatly supported the Republican Party.
Southern Resistance made the process of Reconstruction worse. They sent groups of terrorist into the North which caused the government to focus more on the safety of the people, than reconstructing the South. (Background Essay) The KKK was just one of the groups that the North was worried about other White Southerners and Carpetbaggers. The only reason the North was losing faith in their own government was because of the terrorists groups in the South. Also the KKK was attacking the government because they thought the government wasn’t legit. (Doc. B Para.2) The government gave everyone freedom of religion, speech, and equal rights. (Doc. B Para.1) President Grant was always trying to look out for everyone in both the North and South. “Weary of the ‘Negro Question’ and ‘sick of carpet-bag’ government, many Northern voters shifted their attention to such national concerns as the Panic of 1873.” (Gerald Danzer Doc. C) What he meant by this was the Northern Neglect was tired of the Southern Resistance acting like the 13th and 14th amendment was never made and they still had a lot of racism in the Southern Resistance.(Doc. C
After the Civil War, the South needed to rejoin the North to become a United States. President Abraham Lincoln was very lenient with the idea of restoring the states with the Union. He developed a plan called the Ten-Percent Plan, which proclaimed that ten percent of the southern states’ population needed to pledge to be loyal to the United States. After Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson took over. He was much more lenient towards the South than Lincoln was, giving the South the right to regulate their actions. For example, African Americans could be controlled, but still couldn’t be bought nor sold. Slavery technically ended, but the new sharecropper sy...
Reconstruction has been brutally murdered! For a little over a decade after the Civil War, the victorious North launched a campaign of social, economic, and political recovery in South. Martial law was also implemented in the South. Eventually, the North hoped to admit the territory in the former Confederacy back into the United States as states. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments freed the African Americans, made them citizens, and gave them the right to vote. Despite this, Reconstruction was unfortunately cut short in 1877. The North killed Recosntruction because of racism, negligence, and distractions.
The Civil war was possibly the greatest tragedy that this country had ever faced. Years of constant arguing, compromises and cynical ideas about slavery pushed this so called "United Nation" into an atrocious collision between the Northern abolitionists and the Southern proslavery farmers and plantation owners. The nation suffered enormous losses economically and went into a downward spiral. The reconstruction period began with many leaders stepping up to try and fix this crippled country, but it didn't turn out like everyone hoped. Slavery was still the largest issue and the reconstruction halted because of the disagreements the people faced. After many years of working, compromising and passing laws, the task proved itself to be impossible, as the country remained to be separated. The lack of unity was present because most of the amendments, laws and rules passed during reconstruction were created to protect and ensure the rights of African Americans. However the South continued to promote slavery and "putting blacks in their place" until the 1950's.