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How Far Was Reconstruction A Success Or Failure Essay

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How far was the Reconstruction 1865-1877 a failure? The American Reconstruction was a failure right from the beginning, when Andrew Johnson was elected states were given a choice as to who they let vote. This was a terrible idea as no southern states granted blacks the vote. This unravelled all the work President Lincoln had done previously by outlawing slavery to help start to give blacks equal rights. The new legislatures passed ‘black codes’ from 1865-66, which basically made slavery legal again but didn’t call it slavery. Those in power in the north disagreed with how lenient Johnson was being with the south, this created a divide in the American government system. Congress began to attack Johnson and put forward the 14th amendment, …show more content…

This led to the 15th amendment in 1869, which meant any us citizen, could not be discriminated against due to their race or colour. The south was then under the control of the army and ‘carpet baggers’ from the north. This shows that the reconstruction wasn’t a failure as blacks gained new rights during this period. However grant wasn’t a very good president. He gave his friends riles in his cabinet despite their lack of skills. Grant was also associated with the ‘Black Friday’ and ‘Whiskey Ring’ scandals. But despite this Grant did put in place the Force Act that enforced heavy penalties on those trying to deter voters and the KKK was outlawed in 1871. From 1872-1876 president Grant did little else to help the reconstruction. But overall from this evidence we can see that the reconstruction didn’t …show more content…

In this election a deal was struck meaning Hayes would be President and in return the federal troops would withdraw from the South. This removal of the troops ended the Reconstruction. So despite the Republicans gaining control, giving them the potential to help improve the Reconstruction, no more progress was made. After this election the white Democratic Governments in the South seized control of the Confederate states. They then began to restrict the rights of blacks to vote, vagrancy laws returned and the Jim Crow laws began to be put in

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The Reconstruction Era (1865-1876) was a time of great healing for the United States after the American Civil War (1861-1865). The newly emancipated African-Americans in the former Confederate States of America were given new freedoms that included the right not to be enslaved (13th Amendment, citizenship under the 14th Amendment and the right to vote (15th Amendment). Even though these rights were guaranteed by Constitutional law, the South continued to oppress the African-Americans by implementing Jim Crow Laws in an attempt to intimidate and prevent them from exercising these new privileges. Many former Confederate veterans were still hurting emotionally and physically from the war, and by being readmitted into the Union meant giving up

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The lives of African Americans regressed to their Antebellum states due to a combination of violence and legal action following the end of Reconstruction bringing about a period of violence and anarchy. During the Reconstruction Period, it seemed that Congress and the presence of Federal troops would be enough to rebuild and reform the decimated South. Lincoln’s plan to reintegrate the South was considered lenient and focused on bringing the South back into the Union as quickly as possible. After Lincoln’s death, Congress implemented a series of harsher regulations know as Congressional Reconstruction, which came to an end with the election of President Rutherford B. Hayes in the 1876 election (“America’s” Par. 3).

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Ruther B. Hayes, the Republican candidate, and Samuel J. Tilden, the Democrat candidate, were both running for president. The 1876 election was the most controversial election America has ever seen. Millions of African-American lives were crushed by the election of 1876. In order to win the election, Ruther Hayes created the Compromise of 1877 and in return, pulled the soldiers out the South who were there for Reconstruction. Reconstruction means to rebuild the South and introduce them back into society.

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Reconstruction: Was it really a success? America has gone through many challenges throughout its life. Leaders come and go, with goals in mind for their future. But history takes its course, and the profound movements come to an end like Reconstruction. The Reconstruction started in the year 1865, the period after the Civil War with the idea to reunite the nation.

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In that span, blacks paid their debt to Abraham Lincoln, their Great Emancipator, by loyally voting for his party in local, state, and national elections. During Reconstruction, Republicans rewarded that loyalty by pressing for civil rights legislation and other protections for black citizens. They secured passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which sought to protect blacks’ access to public accommodations; and it was President Grant who successfully – although only temporarily – destroyed the Ku Klux Klan and its efforts to intimidate and disfranchise black voters. However, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Republican enthusiasm for black causes appeared to wane.

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Reconstruction was a failure in many ways. Although Reconstruction did abolish slavery, African Americans did not truly gain their freedom and the nation was not unified. The Emancipation Proclamation that President Lincoln issued in 1863 to end slavery was unsuccessful. In a petition of black residents of Nashville sent to the delegates in 1865, they demanded slavery to be thoroughly abolished and for the right to vote (3). However, not only did many slave owners ignore Lincoln’s order, the Emancipation Proclamation did not eliminate slavery in the Union border states and states under control of the Union.

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Positive gains from the Reconstruction Era include: Freedmen’s Bureau: food, Medicare, and legal advice granted to newly freed African Americans; 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment which abolished slavery, granted citizenship to everyone born in the U.S, and granting everyone the right to vote. Negative effects from the Reconstruction Era include: the KKK: a group of whites who threatened blacks so they wouldn’t vote, and killed many; Black Codes: laws that limited the freedom from U.S citizens. The effects of the Reconstruction, which linger in our society nowadays, are the three amendments passed by congress, the Civil Rights act of 1866, and black schools and universities were established; most importantly, we are once again a unified

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Under the Compromise of 1877, the government could no longer intervene with state affairs. Also, there was nothing to keep the southerners from taking advantage to disobey the law. In fact, many southerners made up their own laws or black codes that put restrictions of African Americans. Even though protection laws were in place, they didn’t have much force behind them. I guess when you ask the question, was the Reconstruction a success or a failure?

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The reconstruction period was a failure because African Americans, mainly males, were not treated with equality although the constitution said that the they were free and had the right to vote, be educated and had the right to liberty, life and the pursuit to happiness. Organizations, like the KKK, were created to harm freed slaves and their families. Laws were created such as the Black Codes restricting former slaves from their rights. African Americans endured a lot of violence over the years. “In Grayson, Texas, a white man and two friends murdered three former slaves because the wanted to ‘ thin the niggers out and drive them to their hole’”.

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In what became known as the Compromise of 1877, Republican Senate leaders worked with the Democratic leadership so they would support Hayes and the commission’s decision. The two sides agreed that one Southern Democrat would be appointed to Hayes’s cabinet, Democrats would control federal patronage in their areas in the South, and there would be a commitment to generous internal improvements. More importantly, all remaining federal troops would be withdrawn from the South, a move that effectively ended Reconstruction. Hayes believed that Southern leaders would obey and enforce the Reconstruction-era constitutional amendments that protected the rights of freed people; however, his trust was soon proved to be misguided, and he devoted a large

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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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1464 Words | 6 Pages

Although many attempts were made to prioritize freedom and equality for all, these values were undermined by racist Southerners who wouldn’t accept equality. In the end, Reconstruction had failed and former slaves endured another hardship akin to slavery. However, Reconstruction still could have prospered. There are multiple events that, if they had occurred, Reconstruction would not have failed. For example, had the government continued to fund the Freedmen’s Bureau, then the South would have legislated their discriminatory laws much later, if not at all.

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As the Era of Reconstruction began in the latter half of the 1860s, the Union was forced to confront the following question: Who is an American? Would Southerners be rewarded for their treason, or would African Americans finally be able to bask in the glory of freedom? Following the war, the Radical Republican government made its post-war intentions clear: to reunite the country and to bestow full rights to blacks. “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as G-d gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation 's wounds” (Lincoln). Reconstruction culminated in 1877 due to economic crisis and a lack of Northern will.

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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 had started in 1865, by 1877 it really made its way to uniting the United States as a nation. With that being said, the reconstruction involved the states to come to an agreement about the rights and federalism, it was a debate that had been going on since the 1790s. The reconstruction had of course its benefits but it also had its downfalls, for example it didn’t protect slaves from white people torturing them and taking their lives. Lincoln, our once president died in the time where he was wanting to end the Civil War; for blacks and whites to be able to live with each other and not to worry if one is wanting to kill one another… There was a time where blacks could not even vote in their own country, very few people at

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