Is 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.

African Americans weren’t actually free during Reconstruction because they were initially not accorded the full rights of citizenship under the constitution, they were forced into submission by violence and intimidation, and were abridged the rights they had later gained by Black Codes. Despite the fact that African Americans were liberated from slavery, during the early years of Reconstruction, they were not equal citizens under the law. Even though blacks had fought loyally for the union, they were initially denied the right to vote (Doc a). The President of the United States, President Johnson, regarded black suffrage as something to radical that would “change the entire structure and character of the State governments,” (Doc b).

Although reconstruction brought essential changes for African American slaves it ultimately failed its purpose of unifying the nation. However, in order to comprehend why reconstruction failed it is important to understand the two phases it underwent. In addition, it is also crucial to look at the different plans that were propose in order to reunify the nation and if they were successful or not. First, phase one the presidential reconstruction was very complex due to the fact that it was carried out by two very divergent presidents and lacked unification. On one hand we had Abraham Lincoln 's plan which consisted of reconstructing and unifying the nation again.

After the Civil War the era of the Reconstruction began with the 13th Amendment which President Abraham Lincoln's announced as the Emancipation Proclamation in 1883. The 13th Amendment was a huge deal because it eliminated slavery and obligatory servitude. After Lincoln's assassination in April 1865 his successor Andrew Johnson became the 17th president. He also was the first president to be impeached, but he was not removed from office he only served one term from 1808-1875. Despite the initiation of the reconstruction president Andrew Johnson was not a supporter of the Republican Party which most of them come from the northern states.

During the Reconstruction Era, the South found loopholes in the legislature passed by the north that worked in their favor and complicated people's views on Reconstruction. For example, Sharecropping put black field workers into an endless circle of debt, essentially making them slaves again (Document D). The 13th amendment outlawed slavery, but Sharecropping was just a little sneaky idea that white plantation owners uses to get their labour back. Things like the grandfather clause, poll taxes, and the literacy test prevented blacks from being able to vote, a right guaranteed in the 15th amendment (Document H). These things were directed at blacks, and were rarely given to whites, and were only legal because there were no laws against them.

What were the goals of Reconstruction? Why weren 't all of these goals achieved? Was Reconstruction a failure? Support your answers with details and examples. Reconstruction - the federal government plan to solve the issues formed from the end of the Civil War – can be divided into 2 parts: physically rebuilding the South and reconstructing the Southern Society.

The American civil war led to the reunion of the South and the North. But, its consequences led the Republicans to take the lead of reconstructing what the war had destroyed especially in the South because it contained larger numbers of newly freed slaves. Just after the civil war, America entered into what was called as the reconstruction era. Reconstruction refers to when “the federal government established the terms on which rebellious Southern states would be integrated back into the Union” (Watts 246). As a further matter, it also meant “the process of helping the 4 million freed slaves after the civil war [to] make the transition to freedom” (DeFord and Schwarz 96).

The American Civil War that was started due to the controversy over slavery in 1861, was won by The Union supported by President Lincoln against the Confederate states. President Lincoln’s original goal during the civil war was to reunify the nation as quickly as possible and help both sides come to an understanding. After the Civil War ended in 1865, the newly formed United States’ reconstruction era began. The Reconstruction era was put into effect by the Congress in 1866 and lasted until 1877. The Union’s victory in the Civil War had given African Americans a new sense of hope, devastated the southern economy, and eased the history of disunity in American political life.

The Reconstruction Era occurred in 1865, it was was a period after the Civil War in which America was focused on rebuilding the broken South. In 1867, the Radical reconstruction gave former slaves a voice in government. During this era, formers slaves gained a platform in the government, with some blacks as Congressmen. However, not everyone supported the idea of Reconstruction. Less than a decade after the Reconstruction period, a small group composed of democratic ex-confederate veterans, white farmers and white southerners sympathetic to white supremacy joined forces together to form the Ku Klux Klan.

Reconstruction is the time period after the Civil War, where the country attempted to improve the Union. There were many successes, but what also comes along with success is failure. During the reconstruction many failures were present; such as the lack of racial equality and blatant racism towards blacks, a failing economy in the South, and tense relations between the North and the South. This created a very intense and challenging period of time for the Union.

The Reconstruction failed to bring social and economic equality to former slaves for many reasons. The primary reason was because people said they wanted the blacks to have equality, but the laws enacted to give them equality were poorly enforced. White southerners heavily oppressed the black population and caused the failure of the Reconstruction. During the Reconstruction many white southerners were very angry about their slaves being freed.

They found each others company comforting a new way rather than the idea of fear bring them together. African Americans also, “enthusiastically participated in politics”. Black happily voted and became equal, by law, to whites because their voices were heard when it came to the

Racism’s Impact on Reconstruction While the issue of slavery evidently contributed to the divide that resulted in the American Civil War, it is debated whether prevailing ideals of racism caused the failure of the era following the war known as Reconstruction. With the abolishment of slavery, many of the southern states had to reassemble the social, economic, and political systems instilled in their societies. The Reconstruction Era was originally led by a radical republican government that pushed to raise taxes, establish coalition governments, and deprive former confederates of superiority they might have once held. However, during this time common views were obtained that the South could recover independently and that African Americans

Reconstruction a Failure or Success? Throughout the years, America has gone through many different political changes. Many presidents selected with different plans for our future. Sadly, many of those objectives have failed or came to an end.

The post civil war era was an extremely complicated time for the United States: the Radical Republicans, Democrats, and newly freed blacks were all influential groups at the time, and the Southern states were attempting to recover both socially and governmentally after their defeat in the civil war. Due to the complex nature of the period, historians have long debated what Reconstruction truly incorporated. In the Article ‘New View of Reconstruction,’ the author Eric Foner evaluates historians ever-changing view on the topic of Reconstruction; criticizing the traditional interpretation and questioning its scholarly legitimacy. Foner instead asserts that Reconstruction was a failure: not due to black political dominance thrust upon the southern