How Far Was Reconstruction A Success Or Failure Essay

Reconstruction is during which the United States began to rebuild the Southern society after they lost to the civil war. It lasted from 1865 to 1877, and it was initiated by President Lincoln until his assassination in 1865. President Johnson continued Lincoln’s agenda to continue the Reconstruction. Throughout the process of Reconstruction, one of its main purpose was to guarantees for equal rights for all people, especially for the African Americans. Even though slavery was abolished after the civil war, many Southerners were still against the idea of equal rights for all black people, such as the Republicans.

The Reconstruction Era (1865-1876) was a time of great healing for the United States after the American Civil War (1861-1865). The newly emancipated African-Americans in the former Confederate States of America were given new freedoms that included the right not to be enslaved (13th Amendment, citizenship under the 14th Amendment and the right to vote (15th Amendment). Even though these rights were guaranteed by Constitutional law, the South continued to oppress the African-Americans by implementing Jim Crow Laws in an attempt to intimidate and prevent them from exercising these new privileges. Many former Confederate veterans were still hurting emotionally and physically from the war, and by being readmitted into the Union meant giving up

Since the end of the Reconstruction era, scholarship over the question of why Reconstruction was considered a failed experiment for social change has been argued and debated. From the arguments by William Dunning, who argued that Radical Republicans in the aftermath of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination enacted a plan of Reconstruction that was full of scorn and humiliation for those southern states that had to be reincorporated back into the Union, to a revisionist school that argued Reconstruction was progressive in enacting social change for African American freedman, the arguments for why Reconstruction failed are endless. However, with this plethora of scholarship that has emerged, it can be argued that the primary reason in the failure of

Did the North of South kill the Reconstruction of the South? Grant was too wrapped up in his reputation, he didn’t even notice or care about what was going

Within the history of the United States, the term “Reconstruction Era” has two different meanings: the first meaning is the entire coverage of the history of the Reconstruction era from 1865 to 1877; the second meaning focuses on the the transformation of the Southern states that goes from 1863 to 1877. In between 1863 and 1865, President Abraham Lincoln and Vice President Andrew Johnson took fairly moderate positions that were mainly designed to bring the Southern states back to normal as quickly as possible. For the Radical Republicans, they used Congress to block the President and Vice Presidents moderate stance, impose harsher punishments and provide better rights for the freedmen. Johnson’s interpretations of the policies Lincoln created

In that span, blacks paid their debt to Abraham Lincoln, their Great Emancipator, by loyally voting for his party in local, state, and national elections. During Reconstruction, Republicans rewarded that loyalty by pressing for civil rights legislation and other protections for black citizens. They secured passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which sought to protect blacks’ access to public accommodations; and it was President Grant who successfully – although only temporarily – destroyed the Ku Klux Klan and its efforts to intimidate and disfranchise black voters. However, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Republican enthusiasm for black causes appeared to wane.

The United States encountered numerous issues during the Reconstruction that involved the creation of the Ku Klux Klan, and poverty. Despite all the failures, the Reconstruction was only a success in that it restored the United States as a unified nation. The Reconstruction consisted of many failures, and one of them was the establishment of the Ku Klux Klan. It was an

Reconstruction was a failure in many ways. Although Reconstruction did abolish slavery, African Americans did not truly gain their freedom and the nation was not unified. The Emancipation Proclamation that President Lincoln issued in 1863 to end slavery was unsuccessful. In a petition of black residents of Nashville sent to the delegates in 1865, they demanded slavery to be thoroughly abolished and for the right to vote (3). However, not only did many slave owners ignore Lincoln’s order, the Emancipation Proclamation did not eliminate slavery in the Union border states and states under control of the Union.

In what became known as the Compromise of 1877, Republican Senate leaders worked with the Democratic leadership so they would support Hayes and the commission’s decision. The two sides agreed that one Southern Democrat would be appointed to Hayes’s cabinet, Democrats would control federal patronage in their areas in the South, and there would be a commitment to generous internal improvements. More importantly, all remaining federal troops would be withdrawn from the South, a move that effectively ended Reconstruction. Hayes believed that Southern leaders would obey and enforce the Reconstruction-era constitutional amendments that protected the rights of freed people; however, his trust was soon proved to be misguided, and he devoted a large

Positive gains from the Reconstruction Era include: Freedmen’s Bureau: food, Medicare, and legal advice granted to newly freed African Americans; 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment which abolished slavery, granted citizenship to everyone born in the U.S, and granting everyone the right to vote. Negative effects from the Reconstruction Era include: the KKK: a group of whites who threatened blacks so they wouldn’t vote, and killed many; Black Codes: laws that limited the freedom from U.S citizens. The effects of the Reconstruction, which linger in our society nowadays, are the three amendments passed by congress, the Civil Rights act of 1866, and black schools and universities were established; most importantly, we are once again a unified

Although many attempts were made to prioritize freedom and equality for all, these values were undermined by racist Southerners who wouldn’t accept equality. In the end, Reconstruction had failed and former slaves endured another hardship akin to slavery. However, Reconstruction still could have prospered. There are multiple events that, if they had occurred, Reconstruction would not have failed. For example, had the government continued to fund the Freedmen’s Bureau, then the South would have legislated their discriminatory laws much later, if not at all.

One of reasons the confederacy failed was because the U.S. Congress, with Lincoln’s support, proposed the 13th amendment which would abolish slavery in America. Although the confederate peace delegation was unwilling to accept a future without slavery, the radical and moderate Republicans designed a way to takeover the reconstruction program. The Radical Republicans wanted full citizenship rights for African Americans and wanted to implement harsh reconstruction policies toward the south. The radical republican views made up the majority of the Congress and helped to pass the 14th amendment which guaranteed equality under the law for all citizens, and protected freedmen from presidential vetoes, southern state legislatures, and federal court decisions. In 1869, Congress passed the fifteenth amendment stating that no citizen can be denied the right to vote because of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Reconstruction caused prejudice and inequality. To elaborate, the creation of the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Codes were both in the time period of reconstruction, which caused chaos and violence throughout the Union. One of the goals of reconstruction was to repair the economy in the South, because it depended on slavery, which was now illegal, due to the thirteenth amendment. The South’s economic system now depended on Sharecropping, which caused former slaves to be in constant debt and was unjust to the black society. The reconstruction time period, was a time of dispute between the Union.

The reconstruction period was a failure because African Americans, mainly males, were not treated with equality although the constitution said that the they were free and had the right to vote, be educated and had the right to liberty, life and the pursuit to happiness. Organizations, like the KKK, were created to harm freed slaves and their families. Laws were created such as the Black Codes restricting former slaves from their rights. African Americans endured a lot of violence over the years. “In Grayson, Texas, a white man and two friends murdered three former slaves because the wanted to ‘ thin the niggers out and drive them to their hole’”.

Under the Compromise of 1877, the government could no longer intervene with state affairs. Also, there was nothing to keep the southerners from taking advantage to disobey the law. In fact, many southerners made up their own laws or black codes that put restrictions of African Americans. Even though protection laws were in place, they didn’t have much force behind them. I guess when you ask the question, was the Reconstruction a success or a failure?