Essay About The Failure Of Reconstruction

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

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