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Reconstruction era after the civil war
A reflection on reconstruction era
Reconstruction era after the civil war
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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. 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... ... middle of paper ... ...hing, and mob action, the South eventually wore down the political will of the North, allowing the South to go back to their old ways of life. The South won in Reconstruction in many ways. Rebuilding the South was one of its major focuses. Several canals, bridges, and railroads were rebuilt with Reconstruction funds. The Republicans in Congress agreed with southern legislatures on how important business was. For this, a large amount of money was gathered to help the South’s reconstruction. Even though slavery was abolished with the passing of the 13th Amendment, it still existed in the South in the forms of “Black Codes” and cults like the Ku Klux Klan. In conclusion, Lincoln won the war for the North, but President Johnson won Reconstruction for the South by allowing them to create their own laws to keep the former slaves down and keeping their Southern lifestyles.
“... the slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.” W.E.B. Dubois explains this in his essay North or South: Who Killed Reconstruction? Reconstruction occurred in the eleven states that seceded from the Union. Reconstruction began in 1865 to help bring the eleven states that left the Union this ended in 1877. How exactly did the North or the South make Reconstruction end? Reconstruction occurred in the 12 years after the civil war and was to help bring back the eleven states that seceded from the Union. Both Southern resistance and Northern neglect contributed to the death of Reconstruction. However, Southern resistance was the greater problem.
The Civil War, beginning in 1861 and ending in 1865, was a notorious event in American history for many influential reasons. Among them was the war 's conclusive role in determining a united or divided American nation, its efforts to successfully abolish the slavery institution and bring victory to the northern states. This Civil War was first inspired by the unsettling differences that divided the northern and southern states over the power that resided in the hands of the national government to constrain slavery from taking place within the territories. There was only one victor in the Civil War. Due to the lack of resources, plethora of weaknesses, and disorganized leadership the Southern States possessed in comparison to the Northern States,
“Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” George Santayana stated what happens if we do not learn from our past. After the Civil War the United States wanted to build itself back up. The nation was in rubble because half of the country was fighting the other. That left it in a sad and fallen state. The issue of slavery was a long debated topic. They thought they could get over this and start anew. Reconstruction means the actions or process of rebuilding what has been damaged or destroyed. Did the North or the South kill Reconstruction? That issue is still up for debate. In my opinion, the South killed Reconstruction and stopped it dead in its tracks. The South did not respect the African American’s right to vote and would terrorize
Readmission to the union was a dividing factor between Republicans in politics. Lincoln advocated for the "Ten Percent Plan". This demanded that only ten percent of voters in a state take an oath to uphold the values presented in the constitution in order to rejoin the union. Lincoln would then pardon all but Confederate government figures and rights of citizenship would be readmitted. Radical Republicans opposed this plan, claiming that it was too lenient. They then passed the Wade Davis Bill. This bill required that a majority of the population take an oath stating that they had never supported the Confederacy. The Wade Davis Bill also required more rights for freedmen including the right to vote, hold office, own property and testify in court. Lincoln, wanting an easy transition into a unified country, used a pocket veto so he could continue with his plan. Lamentably, Lincoln was assassinated months after his decision and his successor, Andrew Johnson, took on the role of president. Johnson, having grown up in a poor southern household, sympathized with the south yet, abhorred the planter class. In his Reconstruction plan he issued a blanket pardon to all southerners except important confederate figures who would have to personally meet with the pres...
"If wars are won by riches, there can be no question why the North eventually prevailed." The North was better equipped than the South, with the resources necessary to be successful in a long term war like the Civil War was, which was fought from 1861 1865. Prior, and during the Civil war, the North's economy was always stronger than the South's, boasting of resources that the Confederacy had no means of attaining. Compared to the South, The North had more factories available for production of war supplies and larger amounts of land for growing crops. Its population was several times of the South's, which was a potential source for military enlistees. Although the South had better naval leadership and commanders, such as Robert E. Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson, they lacked the number of factories and industries to produce needed war materials. Therefore, the North won the American Civil War due to the strength of their industrialized economy, rather than their commanders and strategies.
Although Lincoln and Johnson both passed Reconstruction plans that helped reunite the north and the south, ultimately Congress was not satisfied and passed its own plan. Lincoln passed a rather forgiving Reconstruction plan because in his opinion, the Confederate states had never seceded from the Union. The Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction included a ten percent plan, which “ would recognize them as people of the states within which they acted, and aid them to gain in all respects full acknowledgement and enjoyment of statehood, even though the persons who thus acted were but a tenth part of the original voters of their states” (W...
Reconstruction is the period of rebuilding the south that succeeded the Civil War (1861-1865). This period of time is set by the question now what? The Union won the war and most of the south was destroyed. Devastation, buildings turned into crumbles and lost crops. The South was drowning in poverty. To worsen the situation there were thousands of ex-slaves that were set free by the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13 Amendment. "All these ex-slaves", Dr. Susan Walens commented, "and no place to put them," The ex-slaves weren't just homeless but they had no rights, unlike white man. The government and congress had to solve the issues present in the south and the whole nation in order to re-establish the South. These issues were economical, social and political. The United States had presidential and congressional reconstruction. Reconstruction was a failure, a great attempt to unify the nation. It was a failure due to the events that took place during this period.
First, the South couldn’t have won the civil war because state’s rights prevented unification of the South. The very issue that created the Confederacy helped to destroy it. In waging war, the South faced problems of politics and government that greatly complicated its problem of economic mobilization. No one would deny the troublesome effect of the conflict generated by differing ideas of how best to protect liberty and to organize southern society for the war effort. Southern people insisted upon retaining their democratic liberties in wartime, which proved fatal for the South. They had to struggle with a “confederacy formed by particularistic politicians [that] could hardly be expected to adopt promptly those centralists polices which victory demanded” (Donald, p. 26). Individual state governors fought bitterly with Jefferson Davis to prevent him from consolidating power to fight the war. They withheld troops and supplies while the Confederate Congress spent its time arguing over the rights of the states instead of prosecuting a war of national survival. Many internal conflicts within the South were acquiring and weakening the South’s unity. Internal conflicts caused confederate officials to choose between moving troops from the coasts and strengthening their armies, or leaving the...
As President, Johnson decided to follow Lincolns plans by granting amnesty to almost all former confederates; establishing a Provisional government; and ratifying the thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery. However, Johnson was not the same man as Lincoln for he was quite unpopular, especially with Congress. As the south was in a transitional period, its politics were changing as well. First, the Reconstruction Act allowed blacks to v...
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.
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...
The Civil War was an important war over the freedom of slaves in the U.S.. The Civil War is well known for being caused by the issue of slavery, but it is really a combination of different events and actions that caused tensions to rise throughout the country. The economic and political issues in the U.S., along with certain actions caused the Civil war, which is one of the United States’s worst wars. All in all, the Civil War was one of the most devastating wars for our country as a whole, and the process of rebuilding would take years and is no easy job.
The Civil war could very easily be known as one of the greatest tragedies in United States history. After the Civil War, the people of The United States had so much anger and hatred towards each other and the government that 11 Southern states seceded from the Nation and parted into two pieces. The Nation split into either the Northern abolitionist or the Southern planation farmers. The Reconstruction era was meant to be exactly how the name announces it to be. It was a time for the United States to fix the broken pieces the war had caused allowing the country to mend together and unite once again. The point of Reconstruction was to establish unity between the states and to also create and protect the civil rights of the former slaves. Although Reconstruction failed in many aspects such as the upraise in white supremacy and racism, the reconstruction era was a time the United States took a lead in the direction of race equality.
There is an issue that followed the Civil War that can only really be addressed in retrospect. Who won the Civil War? Not necessarily the war itself, but who won the peace. There is not really a single or definitive answer because the effects and the outcomes of the war are still being determined. This question is nebulous in the fact that certain aspects can be attributed to the South winning some aspects of the war and the North others. Also, do we include the impacts on former slaves as a Northern victory or do consider them to be their own side during this conflict. Many people will say that the North undoubtedly won the war, but the South's social hierarchy did not really change that much after the war. The former slaves went on many times to work for their former owners achieving not much more than when they were slaves. The South implemented many unjust laws to still allow the whites to stay ahead and to keep the blacks poor and dependent. Overall, though, I believe that the North and the former slaves won because of the outcome of the Civil War. Although the effects of the war were not immediate for the slaves and abolition did not automatically mean freedom and equality for slaves, the war and the legislation that followed it set the groundwork for the advancement of black people. The thirteenth through the fifteenth amendments helped to pave the way for blacks to enjoy the same opportunities as whites. Obviously the North achieved its objective of reuniting the country and preserving the Union. There are many factors to which one can say that the North actually won the peace.
The American Civil War, also known as the War Between the States, or simply the Civil War in the United States, was a civil war fought from 1861 to 1865, after seven Southern slave states declared their secession and formed the Confederate States of America . The states that remained in the Union were known as the "Union" or the "North". The war had its origin in the fractious issue of slavery, especially the extension of slavery into the western territories. Foreign powers did not intervene. After four years of bloody combat that left over 600,000 soldiers dead and destroyed much of the South's infrastructure, the Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and the difficult Reconstruction process of restoring national unity and guaranteeing rights to the freed slaves began.