Long Term Effects Of Reconstruction Essay

The Effects Of Reconstruction

Reconstruction was the period that closed the rift between the North and South after the Civil War. Many attempts were made to redress the inequities of slavery and its political, social, and economic legacy and to solve the problems arising from the readmission to the Union of the eleven states that had seceded during the war. Many changes were made, to both lifestyle, and The Constitution. Reconstruction began with President Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan. Under it, when one-tenth of a state’s voters took an oath of loyalty, they could establish a new state government. It was put into operation in parts of the Union-occupied Confederacy, but none of the new governments achieved broad local support. Following Lincoln’s

By the middle of the 1870s people were tired of Reconstruction. The South were not happy with the government. They saw it as a group of people who did nothing but tax the citizens and then spend the money. At the same time, the Federal army was leaving the South. Whites were gaining back the power they lost right after the war ended. The effort to help the South was not a total failure. The Union had also been saved. By the 1870s, all of the Southern states were part of the Union again. The South was rebuilding its cities. They were growing quickly. People who had left were coming back to start their lives over again. As farms were rebuilt, people in the South grew crops that weren't food. Some of these products were tobacco and sugar. Farmers began to earn good money again. But this meant that they were growing less food to feed the people who lived there. Much of the food was shipped in from other parts of the country. Blacks had gained more rights. The Thirteenth Amendment banned slavery in the country. The Fourteenth Amendment said that blacks in the country were now citizens. Blacks also had gained the right to vote. That was given in the Fifteenth Amendment. and influenced them to spend state money unwisely, which caused large state debts. White southerners soon looked for a way to rid themselves of corrupt politicians and Republican control. The first step was to prevent the blacks from voting. White Southerners wanted to regain control of their states and knew they had to restore the Democratic Party to power. The ex-slaves usually voted for the Republican Party, which controlled the government; therefore, ending the black vote was important. To promote these ends, secret societies were formed. The most notorious of these secret societies was the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan members, dressed in sheets and hoods, appeared at homes at night and warned the African Americans not to vote. As the Klan