Reconstruction Dbq

The Civil War was fought hard and caused mass destruction not just physically but socially. After the South failed to be victorious, the North immediately acted upon reconstructing what was lost. Reconstruction began very strong and promising until Abraham Lincoln died and the new president Andrew Johnson overrode his 10% plan. A turn in the original plan failed to achieve the political, economic, and social effects it originally intended.

One of the many outputs in the change of plans resulted in the addition of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment stated that all people born in the United States are declared citizens of the United States. The amendment included all former slaves no matter if they were born in the South. Although the amendment would have benefited most of the slaves, it’s not as if the slaves had control over ratifying the amendment. The Southerners refused to ratify it, which led to the Reconstruction Act of 1867. In order to be readmitted to the union, ratifying that amendment was necessary. Since secession was illegal the confederates had really never left the union. Again,

reconstruction did not attain its desired social or political effects. After all, there was no need to attempt ratifying or passing any acts, these actions only led to more problems and a continued argument.

Another output is what seems to be very similar to slavery before it was abolished.

Black Codes were created and didn’t seem to be very useful as the freedmen were right back to where they had left off. As soon as a person attained certain age, they were required to service for the whites. Although the freedmen would benefit from the Black Codes, they were still enforced to do work. Nothing had changed just their label and the fact that they weren’t allowed to be physically abused, but what’s it say they weren’t mentally abused. The codes were so strictly enforced that even if a persons age was not known, evidence would’ve been used in order to attain an age. The war was fought, Lincoln died, all to be back to where everything originally stood. The whites continued to overthrow the freedmen and the freedmen were under contracts for certain

years.

Peter Cooper sends a letter to Andrew Johnson regarding reconstruction. In the letter Peter expresses how thankful he is towards the freedmen. He acknowledges that they’ve done great amounts for the South and have been of great use during times of destruction and failure. Peter also says that the Southerners want to make the community believe that giving freedmen rights and privileges will result into a race between the white and black race. In reality, our nation will continuously run in fear and danger for the problem will always be unequal rights and partial laws. Cooper basically explains to Johnson that his plan of reconstruction is not going to get the nation anywhere and definitely wont fix the beef between the North and the South.

A letter written in 1870 by Horace Greeley to Josephine Griffing during reconstruction can also promote the idea that reconstruction failed to achieve its intended social goals. In the letter Horace explains that there will always be a problem with the freedmen. The freedmen will never learn to be independent, but depend on others for their own success. They have to be able to change in not be afraid to change directions and take risks. Since time the freedmen have been born slaves, there’s no fighting that it’s a condition they’re born with in addition to their weakness. The problem is freedmen will continue to depend on whites so they will continue to be treated as slaves. You could conclude that a black person from the North could make a point like this towards a freedman from the South. The South got nowhere socially during reconstruction.

A political cartoon called The Constitutional Amendment is one of the many racist cartoons advocating freedmen voting and against freedmen voting. The black men seem to be surrounding a poll room where they are excited about voting. On one side you have some whites that are very disappointed talking about how hard they fought in the war to at the end have to deal with black people voting. A man in the cartoon encourages the men to vote, saying they’ve fought for it and they deserve their vote to count. On the other side you have two other white people who are saying how disappointed they are. Since freedmen are allowed to vote they no longer want to vote for freedmen have taken over and they no longer have a chance. This cartoon demonstrates how the reconstructions political and social effects failed to be what they originally intended to be.

Lastly, the Freedmen’s Bureau was created in order to support black slaves. It helped by opening many learning opportunities that help with those blacks wanting to vote. Since learning to read books was illegal during slavery, many freedmen didn’t risk it. Now that they had the chance they took advantage of it and teach their children to read etc. Although educating blacks didn’t wasn’t negative, the white southerners saw it unfair. When the freedmen began to go out and about whites had a very hard time accepting the fact that freedmen were everywhere now and now more than ever they had more reason to hate them. Regardless of the freedmen’s new lives the whites, according to the descriptions of attitudes seem to take it very negative and will continue to treat the freedmen as what when they were slaves.

In conclusion, Andrew Johnson really sucked as a president. He failed to reconstruct the South as originally planned. Before Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, the 10% plan was going to ultimately slowly but surely dominate slavery fro good. Many people can view reconstruction as something positive, but it nearly got the freedmen anywhere. In fact, the freedmen were hated even more as the attempts to reconstruct the South continued. Therefore, reconstruction didn’t achieve its economic, social, or economic effects it intended.