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Consequences of the reconstruction after civil war
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There is little doubt that the period from 1865 to 1896 was one of the most significant in American History. The Civil War divided the country on the issue of slavery, but in many ways slavery was not the main issue of the war. The main goal of the war from President Abraham Lincoln’s standpoint was to preserve the Union. The Emancipation Proclamation and freeing of the slaves was a secondary outcome. Either way, following the war the country had roughly 4 million people freed from slavery. Policies regarding their rights and freedoms became the dominant political controversy in the time period of reconstruction. Individuals like Ida B. Wells, Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglas spoke out against society and government for the prejudice against freed slaves. They also believed that the destruction of slavery alone was not enough to consider former slaves free. During the era of Reconstruction the meaning and experience of the freedmen was in some ways the same as it had been when they were enslaved, but in other ways it was much worse than before their freedom. The lack of opportunity, institutional racism and violence in society limited the liberties of the freedmen who essentially gave them nothing but freedom from slavery.
For many freedmen the only thing they had after gaining their freedom was their freedom itself. For the most part they had no jobs, no money and no homes. Former slaves also had little to no formal skills, were mostly illiterate and therefore found it difficult to better their situations. Countless freedmen went back to work on their former master’s plantations for a low wage and essentially remained enslaved. Though there were successes for freedmen during the era of reconstruction like the Civil R...
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...he institutional racism and unspeakable violence that African American slaves were subjected to. Of course the country has made great strides against racism and granted civil rights to African Americans since the Civil War. Yet still there was a period of time when freed slaves were in many ways not free at all. The former slaves experience was in some ways the same as when they were slaves and in others much worse. There was widespread racism and despicable crimes committed against them. The government was either unable or unwilling to give freedmen land and equal opportunities in society and even when they were given rights they were often undermined or reversed. It is fair to say that the history of slavery in America is a complicated one and its effects were felt long after the Emancipation Proclamation. The freedmen essentially had nothing but their own freedom.
In The Wife of His Youth by Charles Chesnutt, he shows many predicaments of post-emancipation life. One of these predicaments is that the social status of freedmen compared to white men left little room for improvement and made it hard for them to survive. The freedmen were illiterate and not used to being out on their own, because as a slave all they had to do was work in the fields. They were still viewed as inferior, but had little to no jobs to provide money for the necessities in life. Another predicament shown in the story was how when they were slaves they were sold to different plantation owners and separated from their family and people they care about. This caused many of them to search for years after they were released, with the hope that they would one day find their loved ones.
Abraham Lincoln became the United States' 16th President in 1861, delivering the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy in 1863. If there is a part of the United States history that best characterizes it, it is the interminable fight for the Civil Rights. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg: "that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. The Declaration of Independence states “All men are created equal”. Even when the Amendment abolished slavery in 1865, and the black people embraced education, built their own churches, reunited with their broken families and worked very hard in the sharecropping system, nothing was enough for the Reconstruction to succeed.
After abolition of slavery, new challenges became present; one of them, the readmission of the Southern states was required into the Union. " The goal of Reconstruction was to readmit the South on terms that were acceptable to the North-full political and civil equality for blacks and denial of the political rights of whites who were the leaders of the secession movement" (Wormser, 2002). Easier said than done, reconstruction, in the sense originally though by President Lincoln took many years to become a reality due to a series of issues. The "Black codes" permitted, although dubious, displayed the resistance of the South, this and the lack of opportunities for blacks to owe land, as well as the obstacles they encountered to vote were the most prominent issues to overcome during reconstruction. After these problems were ironing out, equality in education, voting rights, and land ownership were established for blacks. Many historical figures defended the rights of those marginalized. Among them President Abraham Lincoln, who instituted the abolition of slavery in 1865 and set the basis for reconstruction in 1862, Frederick Douglas, a former slave who spoke for slave's freedom and after emancipation, for the rights of the newly freed, and Susan B. Anthony, a Quaker abolitionist, whom together with others started the suffrage movement.
Slavery was demeaning to the victims. Slaves were declined the right to an education because reading brought visions, and visions led to dissatisfaction. Many states passed laws stating slaves didn't have a right to an education. At the beginning of the Civil War, perhaps 9/10 of the slaves were illiterate. Also, black slave’s marriages were rarely legally recognized, due to the ineluctable separation that would come at the slave auctions. Slaves didn't have the right to vote. Lastly, slaves didn't have the ability to testify in court. This is shown in a petition by Arthur Lee Freemen. Freemen begs the General Assembly of Virginia (audience) to let him stay in the same state with his wife and four children. He doesn't want to seek a new living in a new country away from his wife and kids. Freemen’s petition most likely was ignored by the General Assembly of Virginia, because slaves weren't able to testify in court. Virginia’s General assembly wanted to kick out Freemen because he was a free black, and free blacks were physical examples of what could be accomplished by emancipation and hence were begrudged and abominated by supporters of the slave system. Free blacks were still enchained to slavery because even after they established their lives, they were forced to move to other states due to slavery. The former slave owners still saw the free black as a slave,
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 Civil War era divided the United States of America to a point that many Americans did not foresee as plausible throughout the antebellum period. Generating clear divisions in even the closest of homes, the era successfully turned businessmen, farmers, fathers, sons, and even brothers into enemies. Many historians would concur that the Reconstruction Era ushered in a monumental turning point in the nation’s history. The common rhetoric of what the Reconstruction Era was like according to historians is that it was a euphoric era. Those same historians often write about the Reconstruction Era as a time of optimism and prosperity for African Americans. Attempting to illustrate the era in a favorable light, they often emphasize the fact that African Americans had gotten the emancipation that they were fighting for and they were free to create a future for themselves. Jim Downs, author of Sick From Freedom African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction, is not like those historians at all. Downs takes a completely different approach in his book. He asserts that both the Civil War Era and
The Civil War was period of change in American history. Following the warfare, congress established a federal agency named the Freedmen’s Bureau to facilitate the freed people’s transition from slavery to freedom. Southern blacks encountered the worst chaos, displacement, illnesses, poverty and epidemics, which were limiting to the bureaus successes during reconstruction (Finley 2013, 82). During the war, lack of basic needs and medicine hindered the efforts of improving economic social and political freedom. As a result, the Freedmen’s Bureau was designed to help black southerners transition from slavery to freedom. The challenges faced during this transition were enormous, as the civil war had ruined the region completely. The farms faced destruction during the war and huge amounts of capital depleted in the war. When the civil war ended, the social order of the region was chaotic and slave owners as well as their former slaves were forced to interact socially in a different way than before (Finley 2012, 82). The Freedmen’s Bureau was a unique effort by the federal government to improve the social wellbeing of the American nation. Major General Oliver Howard headed the Free...
In conclusion, Reconstruction failed for the freedmen for a variety of reasons. I believe the main reason for this failure was the inability for the two political parties to agree on what they wanted to achieve. Did they want total freedom for the freed slaves, only partial freedom, or just the rebuilding that issue coupled with unpopularity, the freedman’s culture being rooted in the south, and the freed slaves’ inability to find work outside of the south resulted in a process that took over a century to work successfully. I feel that it is very unfortunate that President Lincoln was killed so shortly after the end of the Civil War. I believe that since Reconstruction was Lincoln’s idea he would have carried it out more successfully than his successors did.
In the words of President Abraham Lincoln during his Gettysburg Address (Doc. A), the Civil War itself, gave to our Nation, “a new birth of freedom”. The Civil War had ended and the South was in rack and ruin. Bodies of Confederate soldiers lay lifeless on the grounds they fought so hard to protect. Entire plantations that once graced the South were merely smoldering ash. The end of the Civil War and the abolishment of slavery, stirred together issues and dilemmas that Americans, in the North and South, had to process, in hopes of finding the true meaning of freedom.
Since the beginning of the Market Revolution, the institution of slavery became the leading factor that intensified the relations between the North and the South. Regarding the geographic differences between the North and South, the South was primarily agrarian and the North was mainly urban. Therefore, the North rapidly industrialized while the South remained relatively rural and cotton-slave based. As a result, the Market Revolution economically separated the North and the South and created a second party system. Thus, the issues of pro-slavery and anti-slavery arose between the Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans in the 1850s. The North desired to halt the expansion of slavery into western territories while the South strongly opposed. These two opposing parties led to radical abolitionism in the North, William Henry Seward and John Brown, and extreme secessionism in the South, James Henry Hammond, and South Carolina Ordinance of Secession. Due to their strict ideologies regarding slavery, both parties could not compromise on the issue of the expansion of slavery. Therefore, according to Americans in the years prior to the Civil War, conflict was inevitable.
By this time, the mindset of people who owned slaves, thought of ex-slaves as if they were still objects and property to be owned. The inequality and treatment of ex-slaves were ridiculous. Even some objects were more valuable than the life of an ex-slave, or any colored person. Leary, Hammond, and Davis stated in the “Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome” article, “Being reminded that our ancestors were treated as property and only as humans when it was profitable to their owners stirred our emotions… The author details how blacks were counted as 3/5 of a person… American slaves had no legal rights as property, but interestingly enough, slaves outside of the United States did have rights and could even buy themselves out of slavery under certain conditions” (Leary, Hammond, and Davis, “Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome”). This played a major role into Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome making a lasting effect throughout generations and generations to come. There were people who believed in the great plan of equality and fairness, but those people were very few. Even when President Lincoln passed the emancipation proclamation, people still did not want slaves to be free or even wanted to acknowledge them as people. This started to cause the Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome because there was no closure on the situation and the pain that came out of it. To this day,
The majority of speculations regarding the causes of the American Civil War are in some relation to slavery. While slavery was a factor in the disagreements that led to the Civil War, it was not the solitary or primary cause. There were three other, larger causes that contributed more directly to the beginning of the secession of the southern states and, eventually, the start of the war. Those three causes included economic and social divergence amongst the North and South, state versus national rights, and the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case. Each of these causes involved slavery in some way, but were not exclusively based upon slavery.
Prior to the Civil War, African Americans were treated as second class individuals. They lacked the freedom and equality they sought for. To the African Americans, the Civil War was a war of liberation. Contrary to what African Americans perceived, Southerners viewed the war as an episode of their journey to salvation. Southern lands may have been destroyed and depleted, but the South was persistent that their racial order would not be disrupted. To most, the goals of the Reconstruction era were to fully restore the Union, and to some, grant emancipation and liberty to former slaves. Although the newly freedmen gained various rights and liberties, their naïve dreams of complete equality and liberation collapsed due to the immense resistance of the South.
On one hand the slaves were free, and on the other hand they were not given equal rights, and they were discriminated for the color of their skin tone. In other words, Reconstruction was a mixed success, which combined both positive and negative impacts. By the end of the era, the North and South were once again reunited, and all southern state legislatures had abolished slavery in their constitutions. However, it some sense, Reconstruction was a failure because blacks were not provided equal rights and opportunities. Racism and segregation did not end at all. On the other hand, there was a huge change to the country as the US was completely in a chaos stage during the civil war. Despite some obstructions, it can be concluded that the Reconstruction was somewhat beneficial for African American. As time passes, many schools and colleges were founded for blacks, and many other doors were opened to uplift their life. Overall, all these outcomes can be considered as a huge
The Civil War has been viewed as the unavoidable eruption of a conflict that had been simmering for decades between the industrial North and the agricultural South. Roark et al. (p. 507) speak of the two regions’ respective “labor systems,” which in the eyes of both contemporaries were the most salient evidence of two irreconcilable worldviews. Yet the economies of the two regions were complementary to some extent, in terms of the exchange of goods and capital; the Civil War did not arise because of economic competition between the North and South over markets, for instance. The collision course that led to the Civil War did not have its basis in pure economics as much as in the perceptions of Northerners and Southerners of the economies of the respective regions in political and social terms. The first lens for this was what I call the nation’s ‘charter’—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the documents spelling out the nation’s core ideology. Despite their inconsistencies, they provided a standard against which the treatment and experience of any or all groups of people residing within the United States could be evaluated (Native Americans, however, did not count). Secondly, these documents had installed a form of government that to a significant degree promised representation of each individual citizen. It was understood that this only possible through aggregation, and so population would be a major source of political power in the United States. This is where economics intersected with politics: the economic system of the North encouraged (albeit for the purposes of exploitation) immigration, whereas that of the South did not. Another layer of the influence of economics in politics was that the prosperity of ...