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Effects Of Reconstruction

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All Americans are familiar with the Civil war: its purpose, impact, and how it shaped the country. One may wonder, however, was this the necessary path in reshaping the United States? In closer examination, the war and the Reconstruction were quite brutal and messy. Pre-war, the North and South were distinctly divided into the ambitious and modernized North, and the old fashioned and plantation-dependent South, in which both sides radically believed in different values. In fact, many issues, especially slavery, were precariously balanced until everything finally collapsed after the 1950s. America was surely transformed by the Civil War and the Reconstruction and the leaders and ideas during that time, but the positive effects scarcely outweigh …show more content…

Fortunately for the US, President Lincoln had a plan for Reconstruction. The country was unstable as a result of the flourishing North and their functioning industry, economy, and pretty much all aspects of life were going better than those in the South. The emancipation of African Americans mostly just destroyed the Southern economy and generated even more chaos as the plantation system collapsed without the cheap labor. The very broke southerners were not content with the new conditions, to say the least, and their visceral fear of change had made them unwilling to compromise. The main issue with the Reconstruction process was that it did not catalyze America’s journey to equality at the speed one might have hoped. In theory, the African Americans were given rights, but in practice, not really. For example, laws were passed to protect Black male suffrage; although many whites made it too difficult for them to vote and in some instances they were never even given the right to vote, meaning the laws protected nothing. Also Black codes were put in place, adding to the social tension and inequality between the races. In fact, the healing period after the war was unable to deliver just a fraction of the equality that America was built on, and therefore its citizens deserved. Even northerners who morally wanted to abolish slavery did not want them to have equal rights and were not about to give them their 40 mules and an acre. The slaves were technically no longer slaves, but their minimal opportunity held them back from becoming successful and functional members of US society. Sharecropping prevented them from ever actually moving up in economically and socially. As for the big picture, the Reconstruction was a solid attempt in healing the divisiveness, yet it never brought America the justice it deserved, and

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