Reconstruction America's Unfinished Revolution

A. Dr. Eric Foner calls Reconstruction “America’s unfinished revolution.” Was it? Defend your response.

This essay will examine why Dr. Eric calls Reconstruction “America’s unfinished revolution.” At the end of the Civil War, America faced difficult choices regarding the restoration of the defeated South and the future of the freed people. President Lincoln committed ending slavery and he was persuading southerners (mostly white plantation owners) to abandon Confederacy. However, most white southerners were believed that blacks would never be superior as white folks. This result in most white’s southerners expected to keep African Americans in a subordinate role and initially used black codes and violence towards that end. Such as the Ku Klux

However, it never applied in Union States, slavery remained legal in Delaware and Kentucky. In order to hundred percent destroy the existence of slavery, the Congress in January 1865 approved the Thirteenth Amendment; “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Then 27 of 36 states ratified this amendment, but only 19 of the 25 Union States had ratified the amendment. This amendment seems like a light for black communities in general, they were able to create their own independent life. African Americans developed social institution, for example: family ties, when joyful families reunited after years of separation caused by the trading/sale of a spouse or children. Furthermore, they were able to establish black churches to bring the African American communities together without any white supervisions, this is an important social institution for the black communities. Taking advantage, African American saw that education was the first step to change from slave to

For example, the Dred Scott Case. Dred Scott, a slave once owned by army surgeon, sued for his freedom. Scott’s attorney argued that Dred Scott’s owner had taken Scott with him during various military postings to where the Missouri Compromise banned slavery, making Scott a freeman. However, the court rejected this arguments, because slaves were not people but property. This is important factor because freedom for African Americans did not also mean equality. The court’s decision declared that no state at the time that the Constitution was ratified had included African Americans as citizens, then no one of African descent could become a citizen of the United States. Furthermore, the slaveholders actually moved into the Kansas territory did nothing to deter proslavery leaders to draft a state constitution favoring slavery. When the Lecompton constitution was submitted for voter’s approval, antislavery protested by refusing to votes, Kansas remained a territory. Because of different point of views, these 2 problems created a huge tension between the North and the South, it would take the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution to remove the racism and inequality, but even these did not reverse the racism underlying the decision. Slavery played an important role in America’s history. African American fought for their rights with flesh and blood. To the fact that African American were not only fighting