Following the prologue, Lemann focuses his research on Adelbert Ames, a Republican politician in Mississippi during the Reconstruction era, to detail the attempts to keep the south in accordance to Reconstruction policies issued by the Grant administration and federal government directly following the war. While he was initially appointed as provisional governor of Mississippi, Ames oversaw the 1869 election that passed the new Mississippi constitution, guaranteed rights for blacks and elected a heavily Republic legislature. While attempting to transform the political climate of the state, Ames listened to horrifying reports of his political enemies and observed the attitudes towards blacks which motivated him to campaign to be Governor: I
Firstly, from the listed documents above, “Black Codes of the State of Mississippi” is divided into four parts; Apprentice Law, Vagrancy Law, Civil Rights of Freedmen and Penal Codes. These laws were created by Mississippi, immediately after the American Civil War as a way to enforce and control the freedmen, negroes, and mulattoes. It hopes were to maintain white supremacy and provide cheap labor as feared that blacks would seek revenge for mistreatments. Ongoing, the “Address of the Colored Convention to the People of Alabama” states the
“Vagrancy acts were even more extreme efforts to control the mobility of labor” one such act Titled “AN ACT to amend the vagrant laws of the State” section seven this code states that, “Be it further enacted, That if any freedman, free negro, or mulatto shall fail or refuse to pay any tax levied according to the provisions of the sixth section of this act, it shall be prima facie evidence of vagrancy, and it shall be the duty of the sheriff to arrest such freedman, free negro, or mulatto, or such person refusing or neglecting to pay such tax, and proceed at once to hire for the shortest time such delinquent taxpayer to anyone who will pay the said tax, with accruing costs, giving preference to the employer, if there be one”. The Black Codes were written after the ending of the Civil War and Emancipation. The loss of labor that came about because of emancipation meant that there was no one to harvest the crop. This required a new system and new laws to keep former slaves tied to the
Since landowning men no longer had slaves to do their work, they now had to hire people to work for them. The employer could then choose the amount of money they would pay their employees which was usually very low. Black Codes limited freedom by enforcing labor contracts with a few job opportunities, refused to let freedmen buy
This deal could be considered a good thing for the southerners but many people were upset about having to pass the thirteenth amendment, which guaranteed certain freedoms for the African Americans in the south. To retaliate for this seven states passed the “black codes”. The black codes made it so that the African Americans had to work for very little money and ensured that they were landless and an extremely dependent labor force. Section 6 of the Mississippi Black Codes of 1866 are a perfect example of how controlling these codes were, the section states that when African Americans go to work for someone they must have a contract and if the contract isn’t upheld or if the laborer quits before the contract is up then they forfeit their wages for that year up to the time of quitting. Though the codes couldn’t directly block the thirteenth amendment, they could make parts of the amendment illegal, for example African Americans could marry each other but the black codes made it illegal for them to marry people of other races.
Black codes came into the picture after the civil war. Black codes were mainly used to put black people into a position as similar to slavery as possible. Later, Jim Crow laws came into America. They were used as a way to continue oppressing and separating black people. For hundreds of years, there have been countless laws made to justify devaluing black lives and protect the legality of slavery.
These codes varied based on the states, but included aspects such as denying African Americans the right to vote, serve on juries, testify in court against southern whites, own property, attend public schools, and also included a mandate where they were forced to work low income, non-desirable jobs. This was not at all a more desirable situation for the freedmen in the south than they had when they were enslaved, so they had to turn again to the Northern leadership for help. At a convention in Alexandria, Virginia, a group of black men urged the North to help because they stood side by side with each other and fought for the same things in the war, and that nothing but military protection would protect the freedmen from falling back into what southern whites believed to be “their rightful
The Republican nominee, Ulysses S. Grant, was elected president by a very slim margin in 1868 which led to Congress ratifying the Fifteenth Amendment only a year later. The third and final amendment of the era prohibited the state and federal governments from refusing any citizen the right to vote based on their race or prior condition of servitude. Although the law stated that any citizen had the right to vote, it failed to include women. Female rights advocates saw the Reconstruction Era as a time to claim their own emancipation, as the African-Americans were doing at the time. Women took advantage of the time and started to demand liberty for divorce laws, the recognition that they had control over their own bodies, and birth control.
At the end of the Civil War between the North and South arose the Reconstruction era. This was a time period of the late 1800s where the united states, specifically the North started to attempt the rebuilding of the South. Abolitionists were eager to see the end of slavery and Lincoln attempted to end slavery. President Lincoln attempted to put in place the Emancipation Proclamation which stated all slaves in confederate states would be free. This was to weaken the southern states; except, the confederate states did not obey.
The Reconstruction period lasted from 1865 to 1877. The thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendment were created during the twelve years of rebuilding the country. All of the amendments were made to protect former slaves and their rights but on paper they did not have any rights. The reconstruction period had its successes and failures.
The victory of the Union in the Civil War had given the freedom for most of the slaves. But the freed slaves’ now face a new injustice during the Reconstruction Period. The question of freed blacks’ status after the war in South still maintained unresolved even they passed the Thirteenth Amendment, the abolition of slavery. Later on, in the control of president Andrew Johnson, white southerners reestablished the civil authority in the former Confederate states. They then enacted “Black Codes”-a series of restrictive laws.
24 November 2015 The Real Death of Reconstruction There is no easy way to decide who can be held accountable for the end of the Reconstruction Era. Attempts to rebuild the South ceased to exist in 1877, just over ten years after the Confederacy surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in Appomattox Court House, Virginia. It seemed as though everything was on the right track in 1876, the one hundred year anniversary of The United States. That was, however, until the South waged conflict against black and white citizens of The United States.
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).
Directly following the emancipation of the slaves, most southern states enacted “black codes”, or laws that discriminated against blacks in order to control every aspect of their lives ("Black Codes"). Although the codes varied state to state, they were unified in their success to create a subservient and dependable labor force after the loss of slave labor ("Black Codes"). In South Carolina, African Americans were confined in their choice of occupation to either a farmer or servant ("Black Codes"). All over the south, blacks were forced to sign labor contracts that would result in massive fines if broken ("Black Codes"). Since most African Americans were unable to pay the astronomical price of the fines, which could amount close to their earnings in one year, they were faced with unpaid labor to pay back the fine, imprisonment, or beatings ("Black Codes").
In the period of reconstruction, there was a lack of racial equality and racism towards blacks. The 13th amendment abolished slavery, with the exception of allowing it as a punishment for a crime (“Thirteenth Amendment” 19). Although it abolished slavery, there was still a lack of equality towards blacks. The Black Codes were state laws in the south, that were implemented in 1866. These laws limited the rights of African Americans and were
