After a bloody Civil War, the Union arose less enthralled than expected. It was now time to clean up the mess coming forth from 624,000 casualties. Reconstruction, occurring from 1865 to 1877, was a challenge. President Abraham Lincoln, President Andrew Johnson, and Congress had devised plans, but none were able to be agreed upon. The radical views of the Senate were viewed as too harsh for the two mellow Presidents. Attempts were made at industrializing the previously dilapidated South, but the defiance of the South remained. Reconstruction proved to be a failure because racial violence broke out, Laws endangering Africans’ rights were created, and Southern Economy remained hurt. Violence against blacks spread like a wildfire due to Confederate …show more content…
stubbornness. Despite the South rejoining the Union and the creation of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments "protecting" Africans, southern democrats went to extremes to undo the Emancipation Proclamation devised by Lincoln in 1863 that freed slaves in the South. Africans were beaten, tortured, and slaughtered by people and terror groups. One of the most infamous terror groups is the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), formed as a social group in Tennessee in 1865. Soon, they used their anger to morph into an organization against blacks and Republicans. Standout traits of the KKK is wearing white robes and masks, putting burning crosses on victims' lawns, and claiming to be the ghosts of ex-Confederate soldiers. According to the Klansman's Manual, the code of the KKK, "The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is the chivalrous response of red-blooded, true-hearted American manhood to the cry of American womanhood"(Klansman’s Manual). The government created the Enforcement Act of 1870, which banned acts terror and obliterated the KKK for only a year. This did not end the violence, though. Lynching became a popular activity in the South, which involves hanging Africans, generally in public for entertainment purposes. Was this disturbing? Yes it was. Was it illegal? No it was not. Surprisingly, nobody conducting lynching was charged for crime or arrested. All of this violence enraged the Republican North. The more irritated one group was at another, the less useful reconstruction is. Neither group got to agree or negotiate on civil rights. Freedmen now faced the government's wrath.
Southern States had brought forth Black Codes, designed to tame the supposedly wild Africans. Black codes were slavery in a mask. They gave Africans curfews, travel restrictions, and harsh behavioral punishments. Obviously Reconstruction was just renaming social issues. They were “obviously designed to circumvent the Thirteenth Amendment, the codes outraged the Republicans, who formed a Committee of Reconstruction that soon heard tales of violence and cruelty toward freed slaves” (Davis 245). From all of the violence came segregation. White sections and colored sections arose everywhere, infuriating non-whites until the mid 1900s. Homer Plessy, a man that is 7/8 white and 1/8 black, sat in a white train car. Plessy was arrested, tried, found guilty then appealed. The Supreme Court then fabricated "the concept of 'separate but equal', meaning states could legally segregate races in public accommodations"(Davis 280). This began the reign of the Jim Crow Laws. Jim Crow, a symbol of a white man in blackface and another word for "negro", emphasized segregation until Civil rights were brought back up in the 1960's with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. Separate but equal was not so separate but equal, however. White institutions were 10 times more funded than colored …show more content…
institutions. Not only was Freedmen hurt by Reconstruction, but the South as an entirety.
Its economy went down the drain due to frivolous spending and lack of workers. Also, "the South lacked the institutional base for sustained economic development"(Reader's Companion to American History - -II. Economic and Social Aspects). Because most battles were fought in the South, more money went into repairing the land, but not all was used for fixing. Builders would pocket some of the money provided for supplies, hurting the economy overall. Because of this, the nation was taxed heavily and Southern farms had to grow cash crops. Crops such as tobacco and cotton were grown to sell, and food was imported. With slavery no longer officially existing, farmers lost their workforce. Now smaller farmers became bankrupt and moved west and larger farmers used the sharecropping system, which created a cycle of debt. Through sharecropping, a system where a farmer gave a portion of land and supplies for a share of the crop and money, this year's payment paid last year's debt. The fear of black economic power drove this sharecropping
system. Because of poor economy, violence, and racist laws, Reconstruction was a failure. Historians may argue that because slavery ended and secession was brought to a halt, but every beneficial action was paired with a negative effect. Despite the fact that Southern cities were rebuilt, the creation of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments occurred, and public schools in the South were invented, but nothing was valid enough to outshine the racism apparent amongst the Republicans. The absence of racism prevention carried on until the 1960’s with the Civil Rights Movement and even present day with police brutality being an American issue. If Reconstruction were to be successful, racism would not have been such a prominent issue currently, proving its failure.
The North’s neglect and greediness caused the reconstruction to be a failure.The corrupt government, terrorist organizations, unfocused president, and ignorance were also part of the ending of the reconstruction. President Lincoln didn’t want the civil war he wanted to keep the nation together. When Lincoln went into office he wasn't planning on getting rid of slavery nor starting a civil war. Before the reconstruction era was the civil war. Many good things and bad things came from the civil war. The civil war was a war between the North and the South. The war for the north was to end slavery, but for the south it was about rights and liberty. It wasn’t until afterwards that Americans started to notice the good and the bad. Not as many people
As stated many historians have begun to describe the Reconstruction Era as a “Splendid Failure”, given the intricate circumstances in the political and economic issues in America following the effects of the Civil War, it is not a complete revelation that the Reconstruction Era was going to face difficult and most challenging obstacles throughout the era. The Reconstruction Era provided success of many different business and began a series of small and large business in which contributed to the Industrialization Era. As new industrial businesses were establishing, advertising came as a vital component. In the chapter, describes the many opportunities that were created through Thomas Edison’s light bulb invention allowing employees to work longer
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.
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,
The social history regarding reconstruction has been of great controversy for the last two decades in America. Several wars that occurred in America made reconstruction efforts to lag behind. Fundamental shortcomings of the reconstruction were based on racism, politics, capitalism and social relations. The philosophy was dominant by the people of South under the leadership of Lincoln. Lincoln plans were projected towards bringing the states from the South together as one nation. However, the efforts of the Activist were faded by the intrusion of the Republicans from the North. Northerners were capitalists and disapproved the ideas that Lincoln attempted to spread in the South (Foner Par 2).
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.
The south was in economic and social chaos after its defeat in the war. 1865-1877 was a time period of reconstructing the south, however, it left an everlasting impression that kept the south behind for years to come. The political apprehension the south felt was due to the fact that there was no more authority and the new states had to deal with the northern states. The question was how the newly reelected Lincoln was going to bring these states back to the Union.
As a country, America has gone through many political changes throughout her lifetime. Leaders have come and gone, all of them having different objectives and plans for the future. As history takes its course, though, most all of these “revolutionary movements” come to an end. One such movement was Reconstruction. Reconstruction was a time period in America consisting of many leaders, goals and accomplishments. Though, like all things in life, it did come to an end, the resulting outcome has been labeled both a success and a failure. When Reconstruction began in 1865, a broken America had just finished fighting the Civil War. In all respects, Reconstruction was mainly just that. It was a time period of “putting back the pieces”, as people
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.
William Mason Grosvenor believes that Reconstruction should be harsh. Grosvenor has two main arguments to support this belief, manifest destiny and the potential for the reoccurrence of a similar event to the war if Reconstruction was carried out in a lenient manner. Grosvenor argues that the country, pre-Civil War, was never truly a single unified country, but rather a group of peoples with vastly different values held together by a constitution which they had outgrown, saying, “[n]o chemical union had ever taken place; for that the white-hot crucible of civil war was found necessary.” Furthermore, Grosvenor believes that the succession of the South demonstrated this divide while simultaneously violating the doctrine of manifest destiny through
Reconstruction was the time period following the Civil War, which lasted from 1865 to 1877, in which the United States began to rebuild. The term can also refer to the process the federal government used to readmit the defeated Confederate states to the Union. While all aspects of Reconstruction were not successful, the main goal of the time period was carried out, making Reconstruction over all successful. During this time, the Confederate states were readmitted to the Union, the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments were ratified, and African Americans were freed from slavery and able to start new lives.
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.
Reconstruction failed because of the North’s and South’s inability to come together on political, economic, and cultural issues during the rebuilding process in the post-war years. Though the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments abolished slavery and permitted rights for African Americans in the South, the establishment of such laws as the Black Codes by Southern State Governments inhibited African American’s freedom. Among regulating their right to vote, marry, and own property, the codes affected African American’s ability to earn jobs, which eliminated the black workforce, so it did not pose a threat of competing with white individuals who were seeking jobs. Economic progression in the South proved to be a failure during Reconstruction, due to the inability of the two sides’ coming together to an agreement on how the South should rebuild. Industrialization in the South only progressed as a stipulation from the Compromise of 1877, in which the Federal Government agreed to take the steps to help implement the
William Howard Russell once said, "Little did I conceive of the greatness of the defeat, the magnitude of the disaster which it had entailed upon the United States. So short-lived has been the American Union, that men who saw it rise may live to see it fall.” At one point in History, the United States was not one nation. The Civil War had created many issues for the United States and the country was desperate for a solution. This solution was thought to be reconstruction. Reconstruction was the attempt from the early 60's until the late 70's to resolve the issues of the war after slavery was dismissed and the Confederacy was defeated. Reconstruction also attempted to address how states would again become part of the Union, the status of Confederate leaders, and the status of African Americans across the United States.
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