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Reconstruction Dbq Essay

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he Reconstruction Era was the process of reunifying the country and reconstructing the South after the ruins the Civil War had left it in. This era was substantial in history because it encouraged to protect the rights of former slaves and African Americans as citizens of America. However, it was ineffective in settling the nation’s social, monetary, physical, and political dilemmas. The inadequacy of political focus, decline to bring about long-term racial integration, and authorizing the passing of black codes, voter qualifications, and other anti-progressive legislation to repeal the rights that blacks had gained, emphasizes the disappointment of what the focus of the Reconstruction Era was all about but the infrastructure it had established …show more content…

In document 1, it expresses “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment of a crime wherof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist in the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” This section of the 13th amendment alone provides us a coherent view of how the South was greatly flawed. Despite the Constitution stating “all men are created equal,” racial discrimination continued to take a part of society in this era and limited, sometimes even violated, the rights of these former slaves and African Americans. The 15th Amendment also sets forth, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Like Document 1, this segment of the Amendment supports how African Americans proceeded to be regarded and looked upon as indifferent to the whites, lessening their rights as citizens in the process. Although this was not efficient during the Reconstruction Era, this contributed to women being granted their rights in 1920, just a few years …show more content…

They manipulated the laws against slavery for their benefit and their benefit only. They continued to believe that African Americans were much lesser than they were. Document 8 states, “the Southland laws are all on the side of the white, and they do just as they like to the negro, whether in the right or not.” This supports the claim that Southern politicians continued to believe in the inferiority of African Americans following the abolishment of slavery. Document 10 also states, “for over 50 years, the states of the American Soutj enforced a policy of separate accommodations for blacks and whites on buses and trains, and in hotels, theaters, and schools. On May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in the Plessy vs. Ferguson law case that separate-but-equal facilities on trains were constitutional.” It is deplorable that such laws were created by Southern Republics to ensure that African Americans would maintain to be treated inferior to them. This includes making segregation a law. Blacks and whites could no longer dine together, sit on the bus together, get an education together,

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The Revolutionary Reconstruction After America was devastated by the Civil War, several critical developments were instituted into the general idea of revolutionizing the future of America in constitutional and social aspects. In the reconstruction period of 1860-1877, several of these conflicting proposals, such as the additions of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments and the essential compromises to balance governmental powers, loomed amongst the future of black citizens and the future of America. Although it is argued that these acts did not contribute long or short term benefits to the overall betterment of our developing nation, I believe that the majority of the implicated concepts provided concret reasonings to perhaps provoke the greatest

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The thirteen amendment to the constitution was passed January 31, 1865 and ratified by the state on December 6, 1865, in which declare that slavery or involuntary servitude should not exist in the United States (Schleicher, 1998) while in the fourteen amendment was ratified on July9, 1868 and granted citizenship to “ all persons born on naturalized in the United States” including slaves, these amendment expanded the protection of civil right to all Americans and is named in more litigations than any other amendment(Hudson, 2002). Finally third and last of the reconstruction amendments, in which was not fully realized in our country until a century later. The fifteen amendment provided suffrage for black men, declaring that “The right of citizen of the United States to vote shall not be denied for abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude’ African were deterred from exercising their right to vote thought a measures like the poll taxes and literacy test (William, February 27, 18690) The U.S. has a long history of discriminatory voting laws.

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“I might sign to be killed. I believe the white people is trying to fool us (Source 1).” The Reconstruction was an era after the civil war for rebuilding the United States. Colored people were telling the whites that they were free and could go where they pleased and work for whoever they wanted (Source 1). A few years after the Civil War, there were Black Codes passed restricting the rights of African American men and women (Source 2).

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Since the end of the Reconstruction era, scholarship over the question of why Reconstruction was considered a failed experiment for social change has been argued and debated. From the arguments by William Dunning, who argued that Radical Republicans in the aftermath of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination enacted a plan of Reconstruction that was full of scorn and humiliation for those southern states that had to be reincorporated back into the Union, to a revisionist school that argued Reconstruction was progressive in enacting social change for African American freedman, the arguments for why Reconstruction failed are endless. However, with this plethora of scholarship that has emerged, it can be argued that the primary reason in the failure of

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Although slavery was declared over after the passing of the thirteenth amendment, African Americans were not being treated with the respect or equality they deserved. Socially, politically and economically, African American people were not being given equal opportunities as white people. They had certain laws directed at them, which held them back from being equal to their white peers. They also had certain requirements, making it difficult for many African Americans to participate in the opportunity to vote for government leaders. Although they were freed from slavery, there was still a long way to go for equality through America’s reconstruction plan.

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The post civil war era was an extremely complicated time for the United States: the Radical Republicans, Democrats, and newly freed blacks were all influential groups at the time, and the Southern states were attempting to recover both socially and governmentally after their defeat in the civil war. Due to the complex nature of the period, historians have long debated what Reconstruction truly incorporated. In the Article ‘New View of Reconstruction,’ the author Eric Foner evaluates historians ever-changing view on the topic of Reconstruction; criticizing the traditional interpretation and questioning its scholarly legitimacy. Foner instead asserts that Reconstruction was a failure: not due to black political dominance thrust upon the southern

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Keeping African Americans segregated and not treating their condition’s equal led to a even more discrimination resulting in a lack of rights. In the 1896, Plessey vs Ferguson case, the Supreme Court stated that all facilities could be segregated, but they had to be equal. “Requiring railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in that state to provide equal, but separate accommodations for the white and [African Americans] races, by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train.” (Document F). This quote shows that the train compartments were required to be kept separate but equal.

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After the war ended in 1865, the US government faced the major problem of re-combining confederate states into one union (Foner, 2016). Reconstruction programs between 1865 and 1877 were meant to rebuild the southern economy that had collapsed and integrate the African Americans and freed slaves into full USA citizens (Boyer, 2005). The success of the reconstruction period is however questionable because of corruption claims, a president who was incompetent and the backlash witnessed in the southern culture. Perceiving the reconstruction period in terms of culture indicates that progress was made to bring normalcy in the US. In this paper, it will be argued that the reconstruction after the civil war was a failure since little was changed.

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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’”.

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The primary objective of the Reconstruction was to reunite the North and the South; however the South gave backlash to the integration of African Americans into their society. They viewed it as a compromise of their ideology. The reconstruction failed to reunite the nation because of the nation’s differences in opinion towards integration. This proved to be a large enough obstacle for the Reconstruction to not achieve its goals and be deemed ineffective. The era of the Reconstruction was a struggle for integration where legislation promoting persecution of African-Americans, polarizing the nation and increasing tensions in the south.

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It shows that the Reconstruction was much more a period of tension and violence than a period of growth and stability. This article also taught me that blacks held considerable power during the years of the Reconstruction such as: Having a voice in government, admission to citizenship, labor for wages, and so much more. This article is extremely important because it reveals the rapid change in the US government during this period as a result of black enfranchisement. It also gives us an idea of how far we have come as a nation from the times of hatred, discrimination, and

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The end of the Civil War was one of the greatest turning points in the United States history that changed the way the nation ran politically, socially and economically. The Union defeating the Southern Confederacy put forth an interracial democracy, united all states into a single nation and most importantly - abolished slavery. This gave birth to Reconstruction, a period that followed the Civil War focusing on the integration of African Americans into a society that was previously dominated by white people. Reconstructionopened a pathway to educational and economical opportunities, citizenship and freedom, and the establishment of beneficial laws and amendments for equal rights. However, the unsettling years that followed turned out to be

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Reconstruction in 1865 through 1877 was terminated by Southern men due to their lack of acceptance of African Americans in restricting their political rights, not following the North’s precedence of equality, and the assassination of many a men by their ever so popular Klan. Reformation began after the Civil War which was fought over sectional differences and heavy slavery in the South. Southerns had always been pro slavery which contributed to their low treatment of African Americans as a whole. Once the South lost the War they could no longer legally enslave African Americans, but that did not change their persona in the eyes of the rich white men. Equality was a concept for white men according to the South, especially considering that

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