Civil War And Reconstruction Dbq Analysis

DBQ #3: Civil War and Reconstruction
In the decade preceding the Civil War, tensions between the North and the South intensified. The Compromise of 1850, which freed California, implemented a more rigorous version of the Fugitive Slave Act, and made several other points was the last true attempt to peaceably resolve the tensions revolving around slavery. Starting in about 1854, the South began to accuse the North of refusing to comply with the Fugitive Slave Act, and at one point the Act was ruled unconstitutional by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 also contributed greatly towards the Civil War, as it triggered what later would become known as “Bleeding Kansas”. The Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed popular sovereignty

The questions at hand were complex, and involved citizenship and government aid, and had to take the public’s varied opinions into account, as well as the political makeup of Congress. The 13th Amendment freed the slaves, but gave the slaves nothing except their freedom. The 14th amendment defined citizenship, then not only made discriminatory legislation (such as black codes) illegal, but provided consequences for states that did not comply. The Reconstruction Acts, although too broad and expensive to be applied in their entirety, required that the former Confederate States ratify the 13th and 14th amendments, as well as submit redrafted state Constitutions in order to be readmitted to the Union. The 15th Amendment made it possible for people to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”, making it a radical, although certainly not selfless, act that granted African-Americans political power

Grant was very submissive to Congress, believing that its will was entirely representative of the will of the American people as a whole. Grant seemed to be almost naïve, despite his military background. The amount of corruption that existed during his presidency was high, including the Whiskey Ring affair, and the economic state of the country was poor, resulting in an almost universal contempt for his ability to run the country. His own party split and tried to elect Horace Greeley as president because they disliked his lack of civil service reform. The Democrats disliked Grant because he pushed for fair elections as well as because he was for the 15th amendment morally as well as politically. Conservatives much preferred Hayes, who ended Reconstruction by recalling the last troops from South Carolina and Louisiana, and for the most part allowed the South to return to its prewar state (Document five,