Was Reconstruction A Success Or Failure Essay

Reconstruction Essay Was Reconstruction more of a failure or a success during it’s era? Reconstruction was the time of restoration that trailed after the American Civil War. The North and South were in desperate need of mending financially, politically, and socially. It was likewise to incorporate the South over into the union once again because it had withdrawn amid the Civil War. President Lincoln sought to let the South return to the union and tried to influence them to pay for it. However, the radical republicans felt the need to absolutely make the South pay for leaving in any case and causing the union every one of their issues. Reconstruction was a shady period in the government's endeavors to make society a true democratic system;

This may sound like a grand and positive accomplishment, nonetheless these changes were soon overlooked indefinitely in the South. With that being said, racism was not completely gone in the North either, but it was nowhere near the oppressiveness like the South. “In 1875, a former Freedmen’s Bureau agent and Georgia legislator, John E. Bryant learned how profoundly Northern Republican thought had changed when he wrote for the New York Times a discussion of the political situation in his adopted state. Bryant’s analysis rested on a classic free labor premise: “The laboring man should be as independent as the capitalist”.” (Foner, 222). So, was Bryant’s analysis outdated compared to the new Reconstruction politics? The text poses the question, “Did the Republican North still believe that the laborer should be “as independent as the capitalist”?” (Foner, 222). It is stated in the text that one of Bryant’s friends warned him, ““there was to believe” that the attitude toward “the labor question” and the “general view of society and government” held by the South’s “old ruling class” were now “substantially shared by a large class in the North”.” (Foner, 222). It was only a matter of time before racial disputes became prominent again. Black males were viably stripped from the privilege to vote in 1890. The Mississippi Plan or, “The Disenfranchisement Plan first

For example, in 1891, Congress “relieved” the Mission Indians, that were at the time residing in California, of their water. What this actually meant was that, under section two of this act, the Mission Indians, only had a specific piece of land they could live on, called a reservation. In addition to the Whites telling them where to live, they gave them a limitation on how many acres they could own; giving them no more than 640 acres, but no less than 160 acres. Only to further the oppression, section three states that construction was allowed for a major “flume, ditch canal, pipe, or other appliances for the conveyance of water over, across, or through such reservations for agricultural, manufacturing, or other purposes…” (Blum, Gjerde, and Hoffman, 47). Even though the section goes on to say that if an Indian is occupying the said construction area, they will “be supplied with sufficient quantity of water for irrigating and domestic purposes,” I still don’t believe that it is fair because the construction is disrupting their daily lives; they also didn’t have a say in if they wanted a pipe there in the first place (Blum, Gjerde, and Hoffman, 47). All in all, I believe this act during the Reconstruction period was a failure in the sense of inconsideration. Although I believe that the Reconstruction era had many failures, it would be biased to say