Failure Of Reconstruction Essay

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Although reconstruction brought essential changes for African American slaves it ultimately failed its purpose of unifying the nation. However, in order to comprehend why reconstruction failed it is important to understand the two phases it underwent. In addition, it is also crucial to look at the different plans that were propose in order to reunify the nation and if they were successful or not. First, phase one the presidential reconstruction was very complex due to the fact that it was carried out by two very divergent presidents and lacked unification. On one hand we had Abraham Lincoln 's plan which consisted of reconstructing and unifying the nation again. The way he wanted to accomplish this was by making ten percent of qualified voter take the loyalty oath to the union in order to organize the state government. In addition, his plan gave African Americans very significant right as he wanted the state constitution to abolish slavery. This was latter achieved in 1865 …show more content…

This was mostly due to the racism and hate that the south had towards African Americans specially after the civil war. For example, some people from the south blamed all the misery that the war had brought upon them on African Americans. One North Carolina innkeeper expressed his discontent by saying “To hate ‘em. I got up at half-past four in the morning, and sit up till twelve at night, to hate ‘em” (334). Although his opinion does not represent how all southerners felt it did represent a majority of them during that time of reconstruction. In addition, another reason reconstruction failed was because of the very different approaches both presidents took. In a time when they wanted to unify the nation it would have been beneficial for them to have the same mind set. Finally, although reconstruction ultimately failed its main purpose of unifying the nation it did bring much needed changes to the African American