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Essay About The Failure Of Reconstruction

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The Reconstruction’s mission was to pave the way for America’s recovery. The Reconstruction consisted of efforts to unite the differences between the North and the South. The two main goals of the Reconstruction were to create “new, loyal southern states and [make] their abolition of slavery a condition for reunion” (Oakes et al., 2017, p. 453). However, the abolition of slavery was not a short process. The Republican Congress had a different agenda than President Johnson on the approach to abolish slavery. The political scene was a fight that went back and forth hindering the process to unite the two sides. The newly freed slaves encountered new challenges and hardships that they never experienced before. Nevertheless, the Reconstruction was a great starting point. President Johnson leaned more …show more content…

These “Black Codes” aimed to limit the blacks’ newly gained autonomy. This increased crime and abuse of the blacks. Even if the whites were caught and taken to court, the judge favored the white over the newly freed. Hence, the proliferation of white-on-black crime continued. In turn, Congress passed the 14th Amendment, which made all men and women born in the American citizens and representation in Congress would now “be based on a state’s voting population” (Oakes et al., 2017, p. 460). However, it was rejected by 12 states. Hence, Congress passed two Reconstruction Acts, which utilized the army to put the ten ex-Confederate states under strict army supervision and force them to adopt the 14th Amendment. With this move by the Congress, Johnson felt his natural order of society was threatened, “where blacks were kept in subordination” (Oakes et al., 2017, p. 463). He passed his own interpretations of the Reconstruction Acts, which forced Congress a 3rd Reconstruction Act. Johnson impeded almost all of Congress’s Reconstruction

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Between the periods 1865 and 1877, Reconstruction took place, a time in which the North and South spent rebuilding after the Civil War. However, Reconstruction primarily took place in the South since all former slaves were now free, meaning that millions of people now required things such as jobs, a house, food, etc. Reconstruction was especially fundamental because this time would be spent attempting to grant African Americans social, political, and economic equality, something that had been withheld for many years. And while Reconstruction was successful in providing African Americans with political equality, it failed to establish social and economic equality. When it came to political equality for African Americans, Reconstruction was successful.

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The Reconstruction era had one utmost goal: to promote the relationship of our union. The goal of reconstruction is to bring our nation back together as a whole. The North and South were to both fully participate politically in the Union. The government thought that being united would assist with the issues of rights and relationships. For instance, the Whites could form relationships with the Blacks.

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After “Congress passed two laws to protect the economic and civil rights of the freedpeople” , Johnson quickly vetoed both. Republicans in turn overruled the President and ‘passed the Freedmen’s Bureau and Civil Rights bills” in both houses. From this a special committee formulated the 14th Amendment and submitted it to Congress. This amendment, among other things, required states to either enfranchise black men or lose a proportionate number of congressional seats and electoral votes. This amendment to the Constitution has been a key provision in “defining and enforcing civil rights.”

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Without congress controlling reconstruction President Johnson would have been able to do whatever he wanted and this could be a bad thing considering some of his

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The Reconstruction era of 1865 was an attempted unify the states of the United States of America after the Civil War. This proved to be terribly difficult and contentious process. The three main issues the federal government had to deal with included how to deal with states as they re-joined the Union, how Southern whites should be treated, and how to deal with the freed slaves. Furthermore, President Lincoln’s reconstruction plan included that states never truly seceded from the Union as this was not legally possible, and therefore they should not necessarily be punished. The plan had two major provisions: Pardons of Southerners who participated in the war if the took an oath of allegiance to the United States and Readmission of a state if 10% of white voters in that state took

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The year is 1865, the Civil War has concluded, slaves are now declared “free”, Lincoln is killed, and our nation continues to disband itself further and further. What was the nation’s response towards the situation? To create a program in which the U.S. would rebuild society and manage to eliminate conflicts within the government, the wealth of the nation, the relations between groups, and land. Reconstruction’s purpose was to bring the North and the South back, as one nation, but all that was accomplished were disputes, both opinionated or political, therefore; Reconstruction was unsuccess. Part of the reason behind the failure called the Reconstruction is Johnson’s focus on healing the nation rather than the justice.

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Also, the initial reconstruction plan for high-ranking government and military officers quickly dissolved. Johnson would also veto legislation that extended civil rights and financial support for the former slaves, but Congress was able to override only a few of his vetoes. This constant conflict would set the stage for hostility between Congress and the president. Johnson’s command of the military as President would mitigate Congress' control of the military Reconstruction policy.

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President Lincoln sought to let the South return to the union and tried to influence them to pay for it. However, the radical republicans felt the need to absolutely make the South pay for leaving in any case and causing the union every one of their issues. Reconstruction was a shady period in the government's endeavors to make society a true democratic system;

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It made sure blacks knew that they weren’t equal with whites. Some African Americans tried to resist these laws. They would protest, march, conduct boycotts, and many other things. And most of them would pay for their braveness with their

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At the end of the Civil War between the North and South arose the Reconstruction era. This was a time period of the late 1800s where the united states, specifically the North started to attempt the rebuilding of the South. Abolitionists were eager to see the end of slavery and Lincoln attempted to end slavery. President Lincoln attempted to put in place the Emancipation Proclamation which stated all slaves in confederate states would be free. This was to weaken the southern states; except, the confederate states did not obey.

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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).

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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The Reconstruction (1865-1877) was a period during which the life of the defeated South was to be returned to normal; it was also a time when the Black Americans attained some rights thanks to Lincoln and the Republican part of the Congress and despite Johnson’s intentions. An extremely violent time, it is sometimes called “the darkest period of American history”; still, it brought many important progressive changes to the US. Abraham Lincoln is known for proclaiming the black slaves Emancipation in 1863; he was convinced that it was necessary for the North to win the war. Lincoln believed that the Confederate states needed to be reintegrated back into the US while preserving the abolition of slavery; however, the 16th President wasn’t planning

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