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Is Reconstruction A Success Or Failure Essay

1254 Words6 Pages

Within the history of the United States, the term “Reconstruction Era” has two different meanings: the first meaning is the entire coverage of the history of the Reconstruction era from 1865 to 1877; the second meaning focuses on the the transformation of the Southern states that goes from 1863 to 1877. In between 1863 and 1865, President Abraham Lincoln and Vice President Andrew Johnson took fairly moderate positions that were mainly designed to bring the Southern states back to normal as quickly as possible. For the Radical Republicans, they used Congress to block the President and Vice Presidents moderate stance, impose harsher punishments and provide better rights for the freedmen. Johnson’s interpretations of the policies Lincoln created …show more content…

I do disagree with this quote because of the main argument the author of this quote is trying to get across, which is that African Americans are incapable of doing anything that a Anglo-American can do, just because he or she is black. In Eric Foner’s book A Short History of Reconstruction, he discusses throughout his book how African Americans are more than capable in being politically active. For example, Foner mentions that “The meteoric rise of the Union League reflected and channeled this political mobilization...By the end of 1867, it seemed, virtually every black voter in the South had enrolled in the Union League or some equivalent local political organization” (Foner, pg. 125). Although all, if not the majority of African Americans wanted to continue being politically active, the Reconstruction era did not prove itself …show more content…

In Eric Foner’s book A Short History of Reconstruction, the author goes on to describe that “...all the loyal slave states, slaveholders had dominated antebellum politics...its political leaders dominated the state, thanks to an archaic system of legislative appointment” (Foner, pgs. 17-18) Their own declaration of the Civil rights act of 1875 as deemed unconstitutional and then removed added tools that were made in an effort to guard the rights of

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Although reconstruction brought essential changes for African American slaves it ultimately failed its purpose of unifying the nation. However, in order to comprehend why reconstruction failed it is important to understand the two phases it underwent. In addition, it is also crucial to look at the different plans that were propose in order to reunify the nation and if they were successful or not. First, phase one the presidential reconstruction was very complex due to the fact that it was carried out by two very divergent presidents and lacked unification. On one hand we had Abraham Lincoln 's plan which consisted of reconstructing and unifying the nation again.

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1533 Words | 7 Pages

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645 Words | 3 Pages

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