Reconstruction Dbq Essay

The United States has emerged from a civil war, North versus South. The North ended up winning and the United States. went into reconstruction. The Reconstruction era from 1865-1877 was centered around restoring the land and mostly unifying the people and the states of the United States. For Radical Republicans and freedmen, Reconstruction was a chance to grant civil rights themselves. This made a big goal of this time to ensure African Americans are giving social, political, and economic rights. These rights have once been denied and had these rights protected. Even though early efforts granted Black Americans constitutional rights, Reconstruction was ultimately unsuccessful to protect Black Americans ' social, political, and economic rights.

This was due to literacy tests and poll taxes. In 1870, the 15th Amendment was ratified. This amendment gave all Americans the right to vote regardless of race (Document C). However, after the amendment was passed, Southern states passed a series of laws designed to restrict African Americans voting rights. First, they added the grandfather clause. The grandfather clause was if your grandfather could vote then you could vote, but African American grandfathers could not vote so they were forced to pay poll taxes and pass the literacy test. The problem with this was before the freedmen were free, education was illegal for African Americans. They would have to pay the poll tax and take the literacy which is very confusing. Some of the questions are, “1. Draw a line around the number or letter of this sentence. 2. Draw a line under the last word in this line. 3. Cross out the longest word in this line” (Document G). These were added to restrict the amount of Black Americans voting in the government. Most Black Americans couldn’t afford the poll tax, but even if they did then they would have to pass the literacy test which almost all Black Americans weren’t educated before they were freed. This shows how Reconstruction failed because, despite the 15th amendment, Black Americans were really not able to actually exercise their right to vote. Therefore, Reconstruction did not grant African Americans

Sharecropping is where the landowner provides land and seeds to grow in exchange for half the crop's profit. Then the sharecropper buys food and clothing on credit from the landowner's store. After the sharecropper grows all the crops he gives the landowner to sell. After the landowner sells, he tells the sharecropper that he owes more money than he earned. To pay the debt the sharecropper must promise more share of the next year's crop (Document F). So the sharecropper is living in and circling debt for the rest of their lives unless they get enough money. This shows how reconstruction failed because the sharecroppers were mostly African Americans because they just came out of slavery. The government told them that they should still work from the landowners but get paid. The landowners are doing sharecropping which is just slavery under a different