Failure Of Reconstruction Essay

Kelsey Maynard

Professor

HIST-1309-ONL2

14 January 2018

The Failure of Reconstruction

The Failure of Reconstruction in American history, the Civil War helped preserved the Union and helped free the slaves. During the Reconstruction, there was a loss of focus on politics and failure for freed slaves to gain civil liberties.

After the Civil War, the Union needed to bring the South back into the country. They wanted to also make sure that the South was on equal footing meaning that the South’s economy was revived and also help build their landscape back up. Abraham Lincoln came up with an idea known as the 10% plan. It was an easy way for the Southern states to join the Union again. When Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson, a former owner of slaves, became president and later created his own plan for Reconstruction. His plan worked at first, but after his election, former Confederates eventually worked their way into the government and were elected to the United States Congress. After all of the movement into the Congress, the dominated Republican part of Congress had refused to sit with the Southerners.

The Congress became more divided and due to this, there were tensions rising and it led to little progress of Reconstruction as well as the impeachment of Andrew Johnson.
The Northern states argued so much that it had postponed the Union from really any progress and unfortunately didn’t help to bring the South back into Union.

Another cause that helped create a failure in Reconstruction besides the lack of focus on politics was the economic prosperity in the North followed by the Civil War. The Northern states had failed to effectively build the South back up into the Union during Reconstruction. The South and the Northeast are similar to for example, Russia and Germany. Russia was at the time was one of the poorest nations in Europe and Germany was one of the wealthiest. “Long into the twentieth century, the South remained a one-party region under the control of a reactionary ruling elite...” (Couvares, 410) In fact, up until the 1940’s Tennessee was one of the only Southern States to observe Lincoln’s birthday as a

holiday.
Another failure of reconstruction was the integration of freed slaves into society. There were several times during Reconstruction when progress was made for freed African Americans. The first was the 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments that guaranteed African Americans certain liberties in their daily lives. When these amendments were made, fourteen African Americans were elected to Congress and several others had served in state and local governments. Also, during this time, the rise of the Klu Klux Klan and other groups of white supremacy groups, began to scare freed slaves and try to push back black civil liberties.
Reconstruction after the Civil War ended up being a failure. The North was too distracted and at odds over how the effort should be addressed and that didn’t effectively rebuild the South and bring it back into Union. Although, for a time it appeared as if the slaves that were freed would become equal with whites, and racism to end, there were too many ineffective efforts to bring the South back into the Union.

Works Cited
History.com Staff. “Reconstruction.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009, www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/reconstruction.
“Interpretations of American History Vol. I.” Google Books
books.google.com/books/about/Interpretations_of_American_History_Vol.html?id=DVNhXPy6suoC.
“Reconstruction.” Ushistory.org, Independence Hall Association, www.ushistory.org/us/35.asp.