Was Reconstruction A Success Or Failure Essay

The Failures of the Reconstruction Amendments
The Reconstruction Era was a period of time after the Civil War in which the U.S. Government took measures to “reconstruct” the South by readmitting the former Confederate States into the Union. During this period of time, the Radical Republicans, those who supported Congress’s active role of reconstruction in the South, in Congress passed amendments to help the newly freed slaves adjust to their new lives. Two of these amendments included the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, and the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted them the right to vote. However, these amendments were not entirely successful in “freeing” the slaves. Although, some improvements were made, the Thirteenth and Fifteenth

Ratified on December 6, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment stated that, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The purpose of this amendment was clear: to free the slaves. However, due to black codes, the Thirteenth Amendment was unable to truly free the slaves. Black codes were laws that limited the freedoms of African Americans, specifically by stripping away their rights as American citizens. An example of a black code would be, which stated that “every civil officer shall, and every person may, arrest and carry back to his or her legal employer any freedman, free negro, or mulatto who shall have quit the service of his or her employer before the expiration of his or her term of service without good cause.” Even if the slaves were freed, they were still forced to work for their previous “employer”, pushing them back into the same exact conditions that they were in previously. The slaves were still bound to their masters, even if they were not necessarily slaves. Due to these reasons, the Thirteenth Amendment was clearly not successful in freeing the

The Fifteenth Amendment, which was ratified February 3, 1870, states that 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.” By dodging around the Amendment, people still found ways to disclude African Americans from voting. According to Document L, “Denying black men the right to vote through legal maneuvering and violence was a first step in taking away their civil rights. Beginning in 1890s, southern states enacted literacy tests... The laws proved very effective. In Mississippi, fewer than 9,000 of the 147,000 voting-age African americans were registered after 1890. In Louisiana, where more than 130,000 black voters had been registered in 1896, the number had plummeted to 1,342 by 1902.” These literacy tests were intended to only fail African Americans though the rigging of these tests. These tests were rigged to fail any African American who took the test in order to vote. Even though there was an amendment in place to prevent this, people still found ways to get past these laws and prevent equality. The Fifteenth Amendment clearly did not fulfill its purpose to let African Americans vote due to the creation of literacy