Pros And Cons Of Reconstruction

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A. I believe Reconstruction was a combination of success and failure. America was in the process of trying to put back together the broken pieces of Civil War. It was successful in its ways of trying to build America back up, but had failures that will not be forgotten. A big success was that the 13th Amendment went into effect and legally freed all black slaves, but now there was this large population of people who did not know how to live a normal life, and were still not seen as free people. I believe Reconstruction was a failure in the many ways slaves were not protected the way they should have been. Even though the slaves were now free, so many white people continued to feel this unbelievable hatred towards African Americans and found ways to segregate and dismiss them as people. Whites found ways to not allow black men to vote that were unfair. Another heavy failure was the first ever assaination of the President of the United States. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated after he left many hopeful for change. His murderer, advocate of the Southern cause, John Wilkes Booth, shot him in the head while Lincoln was attending a play. His plans for a relatively easy peace between the split United States were shattered. The next president, Andrew Johnson was not a fan of freed slaves and was unwilling to support any plans that guaranteed them civil equality. He once stated, “White men alone must manage the South.” Another success was the approval of the 14th Amendment, stating

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