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Effects of the reconstruction period
Historical interpretations on the reconstruction period
Historical interpretations on the reconstruction period
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From 1863-1877, the federal government undertook a monumental task to heal a broken nation torn by war. The policy of reconstruction would take a strong leader, determined to maintain the rights of the individual states, and heal the Union. While Lincoln’s original plans outlined his goals and views for reconstruction, following Lincoln’s assassination, his successor Johnson didn’t share the same resolve and was more swayed by radical factions within Congress and the current economic state of the country to forge his own political agenda. On December 8, 1863, approximately 16 months before the Union defeated the Confederacy, Lincoln issued a proclamation that laid out his vision of Reconstruction. Lincoln proposed a more lenient program …show more content…
(Rutherford pg.1) After northern voters rejected Johnson’s policies in the congressional elections in late 1866, Republicans in Congress took firm hold of Reconstruction in the South. The following March, again over Johnson’s veto, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, which temporarily divided the South into five military districts and outlined how governments based on universal male suffrage were to be organized. The law also required southern states to ratify the 14th Amendment, which broadened the definition of citizenship, granting “equal protection” of the Constitution to former slaves, before they could rejoin the Union. In February 1869, Congress approved the 15th Amendment (adopted in 1870), which guaranteed that a citizen’s right to vote would not be denied “on account of race, color, or previous condition of …show more content…
African American participation in southern public life after 1867 was unlike that of any other society following the abolition of slavery. (Rutherford pg.1) Blacks won election to southern state governments and even to the U.S. Congress during this period. Among the other achievements of Reconstruction were the South’s first state-funded public school systems, more equitable taxation legislation, laws against racial discrimination in public transportation and accommodations and ambitious economic development programs. Though federal legislation passed during the administration of President Grant in 1871 took aim at the Klan and others who attempted to interfere with black suffrage and other political rights, white supremacy gradually reasserted its hold on the South after the early 1870s as support for Reconstruction waned. Racism was still a potent force in both South and North, and Republicans became more conservative as the decade continued. In 1874–after an economic depression plunged much of the South into poverty–the Democratic Party won control of the House of Representatives for the first time since the Civil War. (Rutherford
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.
“The best way to predict your future is to create it” (Lincoln). President states the principal of Reconstruction, where to unite the United States, there must be an authoritative action to carry it out. The Reconstruction Era (1863-1877) is a period where Lincoln sought to restore the divided nation by uniting the confederates and the union and to involve the freedmen into the American society. The main objectives were to initially restore the union, to rebuild the South and to enact progressive legislation for the rights of the freed slaves. Thus, the executive and legislature branches had enacted a series of polices to “create the future” for the United States. Although the policies tied down to the Reconstructive motive, there was controversy
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,
Following Lincoln’s tragic assassination, President Andrew Johnson took on the accountability of making Reconstruction a reality. Andrew Johnson wanted to use Lincoln’s ideas of reconstruction but in a modified form. Since Congress would be in recess for eight more months Johnson decided to go ahead with his plan. Johnson's goal in reconstruction was to grant amnesty to all former Confederates (except high officials), the ordinances of secession were to be revoked, Confederate debts would repudiate, and the states had to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment. Once the states swore to a loyalty oath to abide by the conditions they would be allowed to return to the Union. After swearing to the oath Confederate States would be allowed to govern themselves. With this power the states implemented the creation of a system of black codes that restricted the actions of freed slaves in much the same way, if not exactly the same way, that slaves were restricted under the old law. The end result of his plan was a hopeless conflict with the Radical Republicans who dominated Congress, passed measures over Johnson's vetoes, and attempted to limit the power of the executive concerning appointments and removals.
Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States during the beginning era of Reconstruction, had plans to free slaves and grant them freedoms like never before. In 1863, before the war had ended, Lincoln had issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction for the areas of the South that the Union armies occupied. This proclamation was also called the 10 percent plan. It suggested that a state could reenter the Union when 10 percent of that state’s 1860 vote count had taken an oath of allegiance to the United States and pledge to abide by emancipation. Although this policy was put into place to help shorten the war, it also forced governments to further Lincoln’s emancipation policies and abolish slavery. Radical Republicans opposed this plan because they feared it was too lenient towards the South, fearing that his moderate plan would leave in place the political and economic structure that permitted slavery in the South. Many Congressmen believed that only until the South could be dismantled and rebuilt with more Northern philosophies, slaves would never be able to enjoy the benefits of freedom: social, political, and economic freedom.
The fifteenth amendment was proposed to congress on February 26, 1869 and was ratified a year later. After the Civil war, the confederate states were forced to ratify the reconstruction amendments in order to be reinstated into the union.3 Charles Sumner, an advocate for equal rights, refused to vote as he believed that the amendment did not take necessary steps to prevent the development of various state laws that could disenfranchise black voters.4 Sumner was correct, by the 1890s many states had adopted legislature designed to keep blacks from voting. The Poll Taxes and Literacy Tests may be the most emblematic legislation of the period. These laws were passed in order to ke...
The reconstruction of the south after the Civil War was one of the biggest struggles of nation because of the turmoil and dramatic change in the country. The South was faced with the issue of black citizens and that they will have equal rights that the whites have. Additionally, the emancipation of slaves caused many riots and conflicts because the white citizens did not approve of the fact that their society is integrated. The biggest issue that the South faced was trying to incorporate the newly freed slaves into the society because they are uneducated and are unable to sustain themselves economically. The death of Abe Lincoln proved harmful to the nation because the Congress and Johnson were not able to agree on a reconstruction plan and they had different opinions. The emancipation of slaves was a major milestone in the history of the United States, but it caused more problems than solutions in the beginning of reconstruction.
The Reconstruction Era that followed the Civil War was created to represent a period of political, economical, and social reconstruction of the Northern Union and the eleven Confederate states of the South. Though the conclusion the Civil War and commencement of the Reconstruction Era represented the conclusion of slavery throughout the United States, it did not guarantee African Americans racial equality and freedom from prejudice and segregation in Southern states of the U.S. The few advancements during the Reconstruction Era, such as the establishments of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments failed to out weigh the extreme segregation caused by the early Black Codes and Jim Crow laws , gruesome violence derived from lynching
The memory of massive death was still in the front of everyone’s mind, hardening into resentment and sometimes even hatred. The south was virtually non-existent politically or economically, and searching desperately for a way back in. Along with these things, now living amongst the population were almost four million former slaves, who had no idea how to make a living on their own. They had been freed by the 13th amendment in 1865, and in the future became a great concern to many political leaders. Still, it was no secret that something had to be done. So, as usually happens, political leaders appeared on the stage, each holding their own plan of Reconstruction, each certain their ideas were the correct ones. One of the first people who came up with a blueprint for Reconstruction was the president at the time, Abraham Lincoln. The “Lincoln Plan” was a very open one, stating that after certain criteria were met a confederate state could return to the union. To rejoin, a state had to have ten percent of voters both accept the emancipation of slaves and swear loyalty to the union. Also, those high ranking officers of the state could not hold office or carry out voting rights unless the president said
The governments established under Congressional Reconstruction made notable and lasting achievements. One positive outcome that resulted was the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which extended citizenship to African Americans and listed certain rights of all citizens such as the right to own property, bring lawsuits, and testify in court. Another major outcome was the Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibited the states from denying the right to vote because of a person’s race or because a person had been a slave. This finally granted African Americans the right to vote and marked an important change in the history of our country. A negative outcome resulted politically from congressional Reconstruction. Many of the federal laws concerning reconstruction led to the strengthening of the federal government at the expense of the states. These new laws often placed significant restrictions on state actions on the ground that the rights of national citizenship took precedence over the powers of state governments leading to an increase in sectional bitterness, an intensification of the racial issue, and the development of one-party politics in the South. Stemming from this “infringement” of states’ rights and intensified by the election of 1868 was another negative outcome. Fierce activities were stirred up by groups such as the KKK- violence became prominent, and terrorists and mobs attacked many people- mostly Republicans and blacks.
The 15th Amendment states that “The right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude”. This gave African Americans the right to vote. The amendment seemed to signify the fulfillment of all promises to African Americans. The 15th Amendment is also categorized as one of the three constitutional amendments. In the beginning thirty-seven states ratified the 15th Amendment. The first of these states to ratify the 15th Amendment was Nevada. To disenfranchise African Americans, devices were written into the constitutions of former confederate states. In 1869, when the New Year began, the republicans were anxious to introduce a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the black man’s right to vote. Congress considered the amendment that was proposed for two months. When congress approved a compromise, the amendment did not specifically mention the black man. The struggle for and against ratification hung on what blacks and other political interests would do. The Republican-dominated Congress passed the First Reconstruction Act. This act divided the South into five military districts and outlining how ...
After the Civil War, the victorious Union enacted a policy of Reconstruction in the former Confederate states. Reconstruction was aimed at creating as smooth a transition as possible for the southern states to re-enter the Union as well as enacting economic and social changes. However, several factors brought about its failure, and as a result the consequences can be seen in the race problems we still have today. In 1862, President Lincoln had appointed temporary military governors to re-establish functional governments in occupied southern states. In order for a state to be allowed to re-enter the Union, it had to meet the criteria, which was established to be that at least 10 percent of the voting population polled in 1860 must denounce the Confederacy and swear allegiance to the Union again. However this was not good enough for Congress, which at the time was dominated by Radical Republicans who fervently called for social and economic change in the south, specifically the rights of blacks. They were especially concerned with guaranteeing black civil and voting rights, and criticized Lincoln for excluding this in the original plan for Reconstruction.
As a result of the failure of Johnson's Reconstruction, Congress proposed its own plan. The 14th amendment was one of the many things implemented under this plan. Among other things, this amendment forbade ex-Confederate leaders from holding political office, and gave freedmen their citizenship. The Southern rejection of this amendment, largely as a result of the actions of their former Confederate leaders then in state office, paved the way for the Reconstruction Act of 1867. This dismantled all Southern governments and established military control over the South. It guaranteed freedmen the right to vote under new state constitutions, and required the Southern states to ratify the 14th amendment. With the inclusion of African-American votes in southern elections, and with the help of Northerners known as "Carpet Baggers" and other white Southerners known as "Scalawags," the Republican Party gained almost complete control over the American South.
Reconstruction, the policy that attempted to reconstruct the South after the Civil War, officially ended in 1877. This policy was developed to bring back the 11 states that left the Union and give “freedmen”- African Americans who were freed from slavery - civil rights. The failure of Reconstruction was ironical since it happened during the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It also happened during a time when everything appeared to be going smoothly for the country, with railroads being built at a rapid rate, hopes and dreams as dreamed by Thomas Jefferson were being pursued, and African Americans were gaining more freedom and equal rights (Roden). The South was responsible for its death
With the end of the Civil war in 1865, the new nation of the United States now faced challenges on restoring peace within the Union. The North, having won the civil war, now faced the task to implement reconstruction of the South. They came in contact with the questions of: What should happen to the freed slaves, should the freed slaves have rights, what should be done to the Confederate leaders, and how should the South be reconstructed? There were many different ideas and views on how Reconstruction should be handled, but only one succeeded more successfully than the other. Although they bear some superficial similarities, the difference between presidential and congressional reconstruction are clear. The president believed that Confederate