The Pros And Cons Of The Reconstruction Era

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The Reconstruction period was a brutal time period for America in order to fix the things destroyed during the Civil War, but it was overall worth it. There were many good things about Reconstruction, but also bad. I personally believe that there were more good things than bad. One negatives is that the slaves weren’t really free meaning they didn’t have completely equal rights, but this was the start of the Civil Rights movement that shaped our country. One of the things that all started movement towards Civil Rights was the 13th Amendment. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments state that all slavery within the United States must be abolished, they must have citizenship, and they must have the right to vote.. This tied the hands of plantation owners, and they were forced to let them go. The problem is that the former slaves didn’t have money and had to go into sharecropping, which ended up being very similar to slavery and they ended up going in debt and having to work more, but they still gained some freedom such as getting there own house, clothes, and food in return for their sharecropping. Another positive that came out of Reconstruction was former slaves could hold office. Since the new amendments allowed equal rights, the former slaves were able to hold office, and many of them did. This allowed the government to incorporate a former slave's perspective and input when …show more content…

The Klu Klux Klan was a savage group of people that would go out and threaten African Americans into not using their new right like voting. They would kill and hang former slaves and hang them from a tree to warn others. Eventually, Ulysses S. Grant sent troops to put an end to this madness, and he helped give the former slaves the rights they deserved, and he helped fix the patches that Andrew Johnson left