Reconstruction A Success Essay

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Reconstruction Reconstruction was considered a success in that slavery was officially ended for all time in the United States, former slaves were granted citizenship, and they were given the right to vote. This was accomplished with the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution which were ratified in between 1865 and 1870. The main goal of Reconstruction was to bring the rebel states back into the Union and to help the freedmen become a part of society. Of course, after the slaves served during the war, they were promised their freedom. I believe reconstruction was a success, but it took a little longer than expected for everything to fall into place than originally thought. The old-fashioned southerners did not want things …show more content…

They could move around as they pleased in search of better work or to look for long lost family members that had been sold off by former masters. Many blacks became landowners which were the key to long-term economic stability Education was one the biggest successes of Reconstruction. With the Freedmen’s Bureau, most of this was possible. The Freedmen’s Bureau helped educate and aid freed slaves, negotiate labor contracts, and reunite families. Schools appeared across the South catering to the freedmen and often all ages attended with their overall literacy rate greatly improving after the Civil War. Their need for education was great and endured in spite of the hardships inflicted on them by hostile elements in the local populations. Strangely enough, the greatest successes during Reconstruction were also its greatest failures. Slavery reappeared under a variety of different names, as local officials attempted to replicate the results of the war. Black codes served as the basis for later Jim Crow laws which exiled blacks to second-class citizenship. They were shut out of many land sales, were prevented from serving on juries where whites were on trial, and even found that voting would become difficult bordering on impossible. The Democratic Party ran on a platform of white supremacy and little else with violence and intimidation being their primary campaigning tools. Politically active blacks were targeted and many times killed while their white allies suffered the same

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