Reconstruction Dbq

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“War was easy. The hard part was cleaning up afterward.”- Evan Meekins. Ensuing the Civil War, the era of Reconstruction was a burdensome time in the south. Their land was destroyed, the economy was in transition, and their society was in cataclysm. Reconstruction was the endeavor to rebuild and reform the South politically, economically and socially after the Civil War. The Reconstruction was followed with accomplishments. The first accomplishment of the Reconstruction was the three drafted amendments. By 1877, each state in the South had a new draft of their state constitution. As stated by William Hoar, “Meanwhile, emancipation of the slaves was formalized as the now-occupied Southern states ratified the 13th Amendment” (Hoar). The new amendments- the thirteenth, …show more content…

On the other side of the Reconstruction, it was filled with missteps. While the Reconstruction gave the slaves their freedom, the idea of it was pessimistic. To begin with, the Southern whites rejected all forms of equality and the African Americans wanted nothing but freedom and land to call their own. The differences between the two races led to inevitable riots. The Reconstruction failed when the states adopted the Black Codes. According to William Hoar about the Black Codes, “In an attempt to bring order, a number of states legally adopted Black Codes prohibiting the often uneducated and illiterate Blacks from sitting on juries, carrying weapons, committing adultery, being vagrants, and violating curfew and segregation laws”. John Alexander Carroll and Odie B. Faulk in Home of the Brave, “That blacks had to have a steady occupation and they carried heavy penalties for violations of labor contracts.” Eventually the codes effectively made racism legal (Hoar). The next misstep of the Reconstruction was the Ku Klux Klan. The Black Code gave the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan more aim and opportunity to