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The Success And Failure Of The Reconstruction Movement After The Civil War

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The Reconstruction Movement after the Civil War was a flawed plan from the beginning. When the Union won, the former Confederacy became the elephant in the room. The Union had a decision on their hands, and from that decision came the Reconstruction Movement, which was the plan to integrate the South back into a slave-free United States. However, improper surgery of this delicate decision would have caused a downward spiral that could, at worst, have caused a second Civil War. The Republicans of the Union at the time failed to deliver on Reconstruction, later giving it up, due to a variety of unaccounted factors and screw-ups. Because of this, racial relations would be kept stagnant for the greater part of the next century. The Reconstruction Movement had many fumbles and failures. From Andrew Johnson’s initial betrayal of the movement, to the rise of organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, and then the Republican’s sacrifice to secure Rutherford Hayes as the 19th President of the United States, Reconstruction Movement failed to deliver what it …show more content…

President Abraham Lincoln was poised to have a solution, but he was assassinated before he could ever deliver. His Vice President, Andrew Johnson, became the new president and took a knife to the delicate procedure of southern reintegration. While he banned former Confederate officers and government officials from ever taking part in U.S. government, he turned around and pardoned them back into the country almost instantly. Congress was rightfully angry with the President’s betrayal of the Reconstruction Movement, crippling it before it even had a chance to begin. For the next few years, Congress was fighting against their own president to get reconstructive efforts passed, fighting veto after veto. All the while Johnson was throwing wrench after wrench into the gears of the

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Reconstruction was not a success. Although it was a short solution when soldiers were there to enforce the laws, it was not a permanent fix like it was meant to be. Some main reasons reconstruction was a failure are sharecropping and circle of debt rose, the Ku Klux Klan, white capping, black codes, and racism was still prominent in the government. One large cause of reconstruction’s failure was sharecropping, and the circle of debt that formed and created a legal form of slavery, known as sharecropping.

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The Reconstruction was unsuccessfull because of some important reasons. First, the South was still aracist part of the United States because they created the Jim Crow Laws, what means that the people who lived and administratedthe South were not intelligent. The second example is that Abraham Lincoln, who started and incentivated the Reconstruction, was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, so it made the Reconstruction process to be less efective. Finally, the last problem was the Solid South, it is a name that the South recieved because it was a solid white, solid racist and solid Democrat, what means that they were not able to support black people. Concluding, all of these examples shows why the Reconstruction was unsuccessfull

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The failure of Reconstruction led to over ninety years of struggle for the rights of African Americans and caused major setbacks in the South. Reconstruction was the time from 1865 to 1877 when the United States attempted to rebuild the nation following the Civil War. Reconstruction was a struggle for many Americans, and it became known as the ‘Second Civil War’. Its main goals were to readmit the former Confederate states and its people back into the Union and to introduce African Americans into society. Who killed reconstruction: North or South?

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The North took the main cause of why the Reconstruction was failed in the South. I believed it was failed in the south because the North was not focused on South and all its problems. The Second reason was the North was very focused on the South not having political power that they didn’t focus on other problems in the South like the KKK. The KKK affected a big part on how the reconstruction failed, it was there there plan to kill the reconstruction. The North lost interest and focused on government issues.

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Many historians claimed that Reconstruction was a failure. Despite the efforts of American Americans many Radical Republicans, Reconstruction ended without any real progress in the battle against racial discrimination. Federal and state governments failed to secure the rights guaranteed to former slaves by constitutional amendments. Although radical republicans wanted to help the former slaves, they made several serious mistakes. First, they assumed that extending certain civil rights to freed persons would enable them to protect themselves through participation in government, especially in lawmaking.

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To repair a country that has been split in half requires making significant strides that will create harmony between both sides. After the American Civil War multiple phases were required in order to mend the broken country. These phases were Presidential Reconstruction and Radical Republican Restoration. Presidential Reconstruction was the reconstruction plan put in place by President Johnson who had to step into the role of the man who would fix the country after Lincoln’s assignation. While Johnson’s reconstruction plan did not anger the southerners whom he was trying to get to support, his methods were too lenient towards the south as he allowed for mostly states rights.

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Which in this case had been at eleven of the Confederate States of Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana and Virginia. Each of those states of United States had been seceded from the Union far before the start of the Civil War and had hoped to be solved in the readmission from each of those states. The creation of the Reconstruction had been during the years when Abraham Lincoln had planned for the Reconstruction be during the Civil War and had been announced at the first comprehensive Reconstruction. Abraham Lincoln had hoped that this would be accomplished in his Reconstruction plan that was to have an end or to weakened the Confederacy and to bring the Nation back together before the start a postwar for the southern states. However Abraham Lincoln had been unable to set his plans in action before his assassination that was after his speech in the state of Louisiana about the Reconstruction and that had been to free african americans in April the eleventh, of the year

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In 1863, Reconstruction became apparent, officially starting in 1865. Because of Reconstruction, several things in the USA went wrong. The negatives of reconstruction were enormous. Several ideas, such as Johnson’s plan, Lincoln’s plan, and the Radical Republican plan (“Reconstruction”). Because of the plans crashing and burning, the USA was continuously getting worse, and more and more and more separated.

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The period following the Civil War, known as Reconstruction, was a time of great challenge for the federal government as it sought to rebuild and reunite a divided nation. The task of reconstructing the South presented a number of significant challenges, including the rebuilding of physical infrastructure, the protection of the rights of newly freed slaves, and the reintegration of former Confederate states into the Union. Thesis Statement: Despite facing significant challenges in the areas of political, social, and economic reorganization, as well as addressing the rights and status of newly freed slaves, the federal government's efforts towards reconstructing the South after the Civil War were ultimately successful in laying the foundations for a more equitable and just society.

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Reconstruction a Failure or Success? Throughout the years, America has gone through many different political changes. Many presidents selected with different plans for our future. Sadly, many of those objectives have failed or came to an end.

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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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While racial attitudes and “Reconstruction weariness” contributed to the collapse of Reconstruction efforts, the use of violence against whites and blacks combined with the belief in white supremacy played the

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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).

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Although many attempts were made to prioritize freedom and equality for all, these values were undermined by racist Southerners who wouldn’t accept equality. In the end, Reconstruction had failed and former slaves endured another hardship akin to slavery. However, Reconstruction still could have prospered. There are multiple events that, if they had occurred, Reconstruction would not have failed. For example, had the government continued to fund the Freedmen’s Bureau, then the South would have legislated their discriminatory laws much later, if not at all.

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Reconstruction caused prejudice and inequality. To elaborate, the creation of the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Codes were both in the time period of reconstruction, which caused chaos and violence throughout the Union. One of the goals of reconstruction was to repair the economy in the South, because it depended on slavery, which was now illegal, due to the thirteenth amendment. The South’s economic system now depended on Sharecropping, which caused former slaves to be in constant debt and was unjust to the black society. The reconstruction time period, was a time of dispute between the Union.

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