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Failure Of Reconstruction Essay

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The nation was built on laws that were created to be equal to all its citizens. However, in America some were not considered citizens which means that equality didn’t apply to slaves. The nation remained divided among its citizens on issues such as slavery which created a war between the North and the South of the United States. In the 1800’s the nation began fighting a Civil War between the Union and Confederate army. After the Civil War the country was in total chaos which needed to be restored to a new country which included the newly freed citizens. The United States Reconstruction stage was intended to help rebuild a new South which included African American slaves as free citizens with legal rights. Instead, the Reconstruction of the south was a failure because it helps create a violent group known as the Ku Klux Klan who focused on intimidation and violence directed at freed African Americans who utilized their legal rights. …show more content…

However, those who chose to utilize their legal rights such as the right to vote were not protected by the government. As a result, the white supremacy organization called the Ku Klux Klan was created and began to use intimidation tactics directed toward freed slaves who decided to use their legal rights. During this time, African Americans were elected to hold local offices and able to vote in elections. The Ku Klux Klan began a campaign of terror on African Americans who held offices and voted in elections with violent threats. Based on a letter given to Allen, the “Ku Klux” threatened Allen’s life and tried intimidating him into convincing other African Americans to not cast a vote in an election in favor of the new constitution. (Allen) African American families were terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan because they wanted to use the rights that existed under the

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Reconstruction failed because freedman became their own group somewhere between slave and full citizen. They no longer had to serve their master for the rest of their life however they had nothing going for them: no land, no investments, no specialized skills, and no education. Freedman could not leave the plantation they grew up on because they had nowhere to go and no way of getting there. Planters could then take advantage of the situation and the freedman would then end up living in the same quarters and not able to make a profit due to the steep prices the planters sold grain and cheap prices they bought from the freedman, leaving freedman always in the debt of their former masters, just as their ancestors had been when they were indentured

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Reconstruction was socially unsuccessful because of the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow Laws, and Segregation. The Ku Klux Klan would threaten, beat, and murder blacks and republicans. They would burn crosses on their raids, and would throw little wooden caskets in the home of the Republican or African American who was being raided. Jim Crow Laws separated the population because, it make it so white people would always have the better out of black people such as, seats on a train, or there American rights would be discriminated on. Jim Crow Laws also made it so blacks would have to go to different schools, different public transportation areas, different schools, and different restaurants.

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As a result of this, racist organizations were founded to wreaked havoc on former slaves. Secret societies in the southern united states, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camellia used violence against the blacks. Their goal was often to keep blacks out of politics. Our textbook states, “In other states, where blacks were a majority or where the populations of the two races were almost equal, whites used outright intimidation and violence to undermine the Reconstruction regimes” (Brinkley 368). The people involved in such organizations were using violence to take away the fifteenth amendment right from the former slaves.

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This was a major shift in political power, as African Americans began exercising their right to participate in the democratic process. However, the Reconstruction Era faced significant challenges and resistance from white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, who sought to undermine the rights and progress of African Americans. Ultimately, Reconstruction policies fell short of their intended goals, and the rise of Jim Crow laws further entrenched racial segregation and discrimination in the United

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For example, a few African Americans were elected to Congress and others took seats in state and local governments. However, the unscrupulous nature of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy groups, in lieu with the Black Codes, began to threaten African Americans and steal back their equal rights . Also, in the Slaughterhouse Cases, the Supreme Court aided in brutally limit those equal rights of African Americans. Due to the malfunction of Reconstruction to grant ethnic egalitarianism, African Americans would be liberated but demoralized, middle-class citizens well into the 20th

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The Union victory during the Civil War may have given 4 million slaves their freedom but the reconstruction attempts was a flop in the 1860s. The reconstruction was meant to bring the United States back together as one nation but there were faults so ultimately the era of Reconstruction was a failure. The Reconstruction Era in the United States was a failure and included unsuccessful efforts to defend former slaves, thrust freedmen into crippling poverty, and industrialization in the South lasted too long. Reunification of the Union was taken aback when many reconstruction efforts were unsuccessful. Failure to protect former slaves from white persecution and to change the social society in the South did not end well for newly freed slaves.

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Before the Civil War, there were slaves, racism and white supremists, the U.S allowed it. Reconstruction was the era after the Civil War which was made to reconstruct the country but equally. Reconstruction has many factors that lead to its failure, and the solutions are impeaching the president and treating racism more seriously. Reconstruction failed because of the racist president after Lincoln.

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The goal of the reconstruction politically was to integrate Southern states/rebel states back into the U.S., and socially was to integrate the freed slave population to the society. However, ex-confederates of the South resisted this because of the fear of complete turnover of their lives, and to maintain the social hierarchy, where African Americans remained at the bottom by default due to their race. Several organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan were formed to resist reconstruction and preserve white supremacy. Congress responded to the resistance by establishing the Freedmen 's Bureau, whose aimed was to build public schools and universities, provide food and medical care, political equality between blacks and whites and equal access to the judicial system. Lincoln planned to be lenient

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This struggle for social status made African Americans even more vulnerable to hate crimes, which often went unnoticed and unpunished. The Ku Klux Klan targeted African Americans after emancipation due to the mobilization of black voters within the Republican Party. These dynamics were part of a more extensive system of racial capitalism where race determined social and labor hierarchies, keeping African Americans in a lower position. Despite the abolition of slavery, systemic racism and discrimination against African Americans and Native Americans persisted well into

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Reconstruction was a failure because even though the black community became free they were once again restricted by laws, prejudice, unequal standards. From 1865 to 1866, under President Andrew Johnson, southern state legislatures passed a collection of restrictive laws to legally control former black slaves and other African Americans. These laws were know as Black Codes. blacks did gain a voice in the government during 1867. But, the development and growth of the Ku Klux Klan, secret society dedicated to the supremacy of white people, throughout the southern states reverted any notion of Blacks equality.

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Frederickson argues African Americans simply did not have the time or preparation to oppose racist forces. Using paramilitary forces, southern redeemers easily made threats to reconstruction forces as seen through the emergence of the violent Ku Klux Klan during the election of 1866. The opportunity for African Americans to gain a stance in society was short lived by the racist efforts of democrats in the south and impartial ideals from

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Former slaves who “tried to vote or participate in politics [were] likely to be singled out for “punishment”” by a terrorist organization named as the Ku Klux Klan, until the Congress passed the Force Bill in 1871 that gave the federal authorities the right to arrest and pursue active members of the KKK. But, the bill appeared to be only figurative as not really much of the Klan’s members were prosecuted (Hazen

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As the Ku Klux Klan’s membership grew, organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which fought to end racial discrimination and segregation, grew as well. With these two growing groups pushing for opposite ideals, tensions continued to increase. The NAACP pushed for reform and rights for African Americans and the Ku Klux Klan combated their progress with lynching and

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The American Civil War that was started due to the controversy over slavery in 1861, was won by The Union supported by President Lincoln against the Confederate states. President Lincoln’s original goal during the civil war was to reunify the nation as quickly as possible and help both sides come to an understanding. After the Civil War ended in 1865, the newly formed United States’ reconstruction era began. The Reconstruction era was put into effect by the Congress in 1866 and lasted until 1877. The Union’s victory in the Civil War had given African Americans a new sense of hope, devastated the southern economy, and eased the history of disunity in American political life.

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