Reconstruction Dbq Essay

Imagine working really hard, super hard, getting stuff done, feeling so proud of yourself. Knowing that’s going to be a great paycheck on payday next week. Now take away the check- and the feeling proud part- welcome to slavery. Slavery started in 1619, 12 years after our first living colony was founded. Long after that in 1865, the civil war dividing the country between the Union and the confederacy was finally over with the surrendering from the Confederate army. The Confederacy, or now just the South of the Union, was half destroyed and had to say goodbye to their precious slaves. Thus leading to reconstruction, the suffering of thousands of kidnapped African Americans was finally over, over 200 years too late. Reconstruction gave, now freed

“The first winter was unusually severe in consequence of the high prices of food; but even during that time we probably suffered less than many who had been free their whole lives,” (Document F). Most already free African Americans had beared enough. In Reconstruction, half the country wanted to lock the freed slaves up, and all freed slaves were faced with inequality and poverty. Winters were even worse since no one had money for shelter or warm clothing. In the image from Document E, there is a family of nine on the plantation fields. They are all wearing ragged clothing, sad expressions and carrying a lot of cotton. After the war, most of the slaves were very broke. They’ve had jobs their whole lives without getting paid and now they quit. Now free with no money, the African Americans had no clue what to do since all they know is farming, but didn’t have any money to buy any land. Most became tenant farmers, or people who rented land from others to farm, but since they have a shortage of money they all died in

Before the war in the Northwest Territory, slaves had to be returned to their owner. Even if they had been running for thousands of miles, even if they weren’t even slaves, just freed Africans, if a white testified that they were a slave, back to the plantations they go. In the image from Document B, there are two groups opposing each other on the two different sides of the drawing. More specifically, one white group and one African American group with one man in the middle attempting to stop the fighting. These two classes don’t associate with the other, and were like this for most of Reconstruction. The Southern whites did not like the African Americans, because the freed slaves don’t work for them anymore, busting the South’s whole