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Chapter 18 the reconstruction era
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The book “Redemption; The Last Battle of The Civil War,” written by Nicholas Lemann focuses on one major politician during the reconstruction time period. Lemann illustrates the life of people in the south and the trials that the “Negros” faced. The conclusion of the civil war was supposed to be the end of racism and slavery, but white southerners continued to find ways to get around the new laws that were put into place. They created and passed “black codes” which, as the author says, “…legislated the freed slaves into a condition as close to their former one as it was possible to get without actually reinstituting slavery. ”(34)
The Reconstruction was unsuccessfull because of some important reasons. First, the South was still aracist part of the United States because they created the Jim Crow Laws, what means that the people who lived and administratedthe South were not intelligent. The second example is that Abraham Lincoln, who started and incentivated the Reconstruction, was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, so it made the Reconstruction process to be less efective. Finally, the last problem was the Solid South, it is a name that the South recieved because it was a solid white, solid racist and solid Democrat, what means that they were not able to support black people. Concluding, all of these examples shows why the Reconstruction was unsuccessfull
A few days after the civil War ended, President Lincoln was assassinated and never had the chance to implement his Reconstruction plan. The Reconstruction Era occurred in the period of 1865 to 1877 under the reign of President Andrew Johnson who was the predecessor of President Lincoln. Congress was not scheduled to convene until December 1865, which gave Johnson eight months to pursue his own Reconstruction policies. Under his Reconstruction policies, the former Confederate states were required to join back into the Union and heal the wounds of the nation.
In the early years of Reconstruction, whites found ways to control black labor using Black codes sanctioned in Mississippi. The Black codes did not give complete freedom to African Americans, instead it made them work extensive hours in labor economy. This document, “Black Codes Enacted in the South”, is written by A.H. Clark in 1865. The author explains the obstacles the African Americans faced to achieve their freedom.
There are three primary purpose of Reconstruction. First, bring former confederates states back (reintegrate). Second, rebuilding the country because the South was destroyed because of the Civil War. Then the last one is to bring the freedom to the society. There are two main phases of Reconstruction.
The Capacity of Reconstruction Does a country ever feel guilty? To what extent will powerful individuals come together to quell their guilty conscience and their hypocrisy, or will they atone by superficial means? A country divided, the Republican president Abraham Lincoln sought to unify the United States that had become the Union States and the Confederate States. One-half of the country set on unifying the split country, abolition, and more industrial practices.
Sources Analysis Freedom During the Reconstruction era, the idea of freedom could have many different meanings. Everyday factors that we don't often think about today such as the color of our skin, where we were born, and whether or not we own land determined what limitations were placed on the ability to live our life to the fullest. To dig deeper into what freedom meant for different individuals during this time period, I analyzed three primary sources written by those who experienced this first hand. These included “Excerpts from The Black Codes of Mississippi” (1865), “Jourdan Anderson to his old master” (1865), and “Testimony on the Ku Klux Klan in Congressional Hearing” (1872).
April 12, 1961, marked one of the most historical events that have ever occurred in the United States -the Civil War. This war was fought by the Union (Northern states) and the Confederates (Southern states). Several factors contributed to the clash of both sides, such include: trades, tariffs, states’ rights, and the idea of slavery. After four years of fighting, the Southern states lied under complete destruction. On May 9, 1865, the fighting was over -the Union had won the war.
For most blacks, life under early Reconstruction didn’t seem all that different from slavery. They had no land to call their own and they continued to work on the land of their previous owners. Some states passed laws that were particularly intended to limit the flexibility of African-Americans. These laws, known as the “black codes,” restricted ex-slaves from owning weapons, from traveling without a pass, from serving on juries or
The reconstruction was said to have brought a change. However, Newly free slaves faced many challenges, and whites in the south saw blacks as way less than they did before. Black codes were introduced as a way to give people of color freedom in a constitutional form. They were unique to southern states and they each had their own variation of them. It was a way to restrict the black labor force and freed people as much of slave status as possible.
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’”.
Exacerbating the situation, a notoriously racist President, Andrew Johnson had been actively avoiding the Reconstruction issue of black rights, believing that African Americans had no roles to play in the era (Foner, 2008). Arousing the strongest opposition in Johnson’s reign were the Black Codes, a series of laws designed to control black life. And although former slaves were granted some rights - legal marriage, some access to the courts and property ownership (to an extent), but they imposed restrictions too,
The American civil war led to the reunion of the South and the North. But, its consequences led the Republicans to take the lead of reconstructing what the war had destroyed especially in the South because it contained larger numbers of newly freed slaves. Just after the civil war, America entered into what was called as the reconstruction era. Reconstruction refers to when “the federal government established the terms on which rebellious Southern states would be integrated back into the Union” (Watts 246). As a further matter, it also meant “the process of helping the 4 million freed slaves after the civil war [to] make the transition to freedom” (DeFord and Schwarz 96).
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.
Laws were formed to support People of Color 's rights, but none were actually applied. Rights or opportunities for minorities to be equal did not exist (Segregation1). It took years and years for people of color to have the rights they were born with. With more hatred between races, hate groups form, constricting the communication between groups. Many schools in the south are Examples such as the KKK and the Jim Crow laws became to form as so in a way, remind minorities that they were not equal (Segregation2).
