The reconstruction during the early 1860’s and 1870’s caused different reactions throughout the United States. The first two articles seem to have a positive viewpoint of the reconstruction and the actions being taken to allow African Americans to vote and become literate and more educated. The third article, The Ordeal of Reconstruction, expresses extremely negative points throughout the article and is almost satisfied with the actions of the Ku Klux Klan. The final article Unfinished Revolution’s article is broken down into sections and informs the audience of the events which she detonates as formal and neutral. It is critical to be informed over this period due to the impacts it had on the country in later years. In the article reconstruction …show more content…
He then goes into detail about the low percentages of the African American people who were in congress or in higher offices for the negro carpet bag rule. Although many African Americans that studied in the north returned to the south after the war, many were still illiterate and unprepared to participate in voting which lead to corruption. The author then reports Caucasian men were corrupt in a way that decreased the African Americans from being officials or testifying against a Caucasian and overthrowing them. The author concludes with the Ku Klux Klan which terrorized the African American with violence due to the increase of Caucasians not tolerating blacks as …show more content…
Bailey section Enfranchised Freedmen seems to be against the freedoms given to the African Americans he sets this tone by his belief that the election was tragic due to the sudden rights of the ex-slaves. He then precedes by calling the radicals selfish and idealistic. He says the confused African Americans were not prepared for the elections due to their lack of information which could be in his opinion because many of them are illiterate. In the second section Enthroned Ignorance he continues to criticize the African Americans and his tone continues to separate them from himself and his race. His ideas of corruption are against the people living in the southern states more specifically those of African American descent. The last section of the article The Rule of Night Riders he touches on his opinions about the Ku Klux Klan and expresses the beginning of this organization in a positive light and interprets it in an honorable way. He expresses their attacks as a positive and effective method to terrorize the African American
Stephanie McCurry, in her revolutionary book Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South, claims that her book is about “politics and the power in the Civil War South, about the bloody trial of the Confederacy’s national vision, and about the significance of the disfranchised in it.” Choosing to examine both yeoman/poor white women and enslaved African Americans in the Confederacy, McCurry’s book distances itself from the historiography focused on answering the question of “why the Confederacy lost the Civil War.” Instead, McCurry focuses more exclusively on the effects of the Civil War and how war changed both the United States and the world, most notably in Cuba and Brazil. Conjecturing as her primary thesis, McCurry argues that “the power that counts in politics, is often exercised brutally, and almost always wins, but that once in a long while – as in the Civil War South – history opens up, resistance prevails, and the usually powerless manage against all imaginable odds to change the
The Reconstruction Era was a fourteen-year period in which the South rejoined the Union after the Civil War and the abolishment of slavery. The Southern states’ dependency upon slave labor left their economy in ruins. In addition, the social constructs of The South were diminished as well; southern white society now had to interact with individuals they once oppressed. Charles Chestnut’s, “The Marrows of Tradition”, dives into southern aristocracy highlighting the unjust execution of the law and the twisted interpretations of “Impartiality”. Due to the fact the Wellington society dwelled on Impartiality, newly freed blacks had to encounter all types of prejudices, each one masked deeper by the newly constructed attitude towards African Americans.
After the Civil War, there was death and destruction everywhere. America was looking to pick up the pieces of their broken country. From this need to make America a functioning country once more, Reconstruction was born. The Reconstruction era was controversial at the time. African Americans were getting their first breath of freedom and being integrated into government and society (“America's Reconstruction”).
With reconstruction there were many doors opened for African Americans. They were able to be free, and to become a citizen, and male slaves over the age of 21 were able to vote. Also there was education for children and some adults, and there were marriages for former slaves. In the image drawn by A. R. Waud, he displays a male African American voting for the first time. This image shows how constitutionally this was groundbreaking for the former slaves.
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.
When the Civil War was finishing, the South was at a place where everything was a social disorder, and a horrible economic place. The Union had a war destroyed the southern crops, plantations, the cities, and many slaves were going to the Union while their chiefs to be in the Union army. The inflation became so horrible that when the war was finishing, just by buying a piece of bread cost so much money for the South. Thousands of Southern people suffered so much because they would either starve to death, lose their clothes, homes, lands, and even slaves. That is why, by 1865, Washington had a really difficult task of the Southern Reconstruction.
Sources Analysis Freedom During the Reconstruction era, the idea of freedom could have many different meanings. Everyday factors that we don't often think about today such as the color of our skin, where we were born, and whether or not we own land determined what limitations were placed on the ability to live our life to the fullest. To dig deeper into what freedom meant for different individuals during this time period, I analyzed three primary sources written by those who experienced this first hand. These included “Excerpts from The Black Codes of Mississippi” (1865), “Jourdan Anderson to his old master” (1865), and “Testimony on the Ku Klux Klan in Congressional Hearing” (1872).
Recently the country has been handed the decision of whether or not to end reconstruction. To find this answer, it must be determined whether or not the southern states fulfilled the requirements of the Reconstruction Act of 1867, if the states “in good faith” implemented the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments and if federal troops are still needed in the southern states. As of now, the southern states have proved themselves to have successfully fulfilled the requirements of Reconstruction Act of 1867 as evidenced by their significant steps towards racial equality regarding political power. After this act came into action, the African Americans were given real political power for the first time. This lead to public schools, enacted civil rights
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).
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.
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’”.
Through history Thomas Jefferson has always be shown as a national hero in his efforts to help create American during its early stages after the Revolutionary War. While this strong and beloved vision of Jefferson has been written down in textbooks for centuries, Jefferson to had a dark and negative side that is sometimes forgotten. In Gary Wills novel Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power displays the dark submissive side of Jefferson that few choose to focus on. Wills criticizes the historians as they fail to show the “slave power” that the South and its slaveholders influenced during Jefferson's time. Ultimately, Wills main focus in his novel is how slavery in America during 1790-1848 affected America as a nation, but its own leaders
Racism’s Impact on Reconstruction While the issue of slavery evidently contributed to the divide that resulted in the American Civil War, it is debated whether prevailing ideals of racism caused the failure of the era following the war known as Reconstruction. With the abolishment of slavery, many of the southern states had to reassemble the social, economic, and political systems instilled in their societies. The Reconstruction Era was originally led by a radical republican government that pushed to raise taxes, establish coalition governments, and deprive former confederates of superiority they might have once held. However, during this time common views were obtained that the South could recover independently and that African Americans
Abraham Lincoln’s vs Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan Lincoln shared the uncommon belief that the confederate states could still be part of the union and that the cause of the rebellion was only a few within the states which lead him to begin the reconstruction in December of 1863. This resulted in plans with lenient guidelines and although they were challenged by Wade-Davis Bill, Lincoln still rejected his ideas and kept his policies in place. Lincoln also allowed land to be given the newly freed slave or homeless white by distributing the land that had been confiscated from former land owners however this fell through once Johnson took office. After Lincoln’s death when Johnson was elected many things started to turn away from giving blacks equal rights and resulted in many things such a black codes which kept newly freed slaves from having the same rights as whites. When Lincoln first acted after the civil war, he offered policies that would allow the confederate slaves to become part of the union again and would allow a pardon for those states.
African-American historian W.E.B Dubois illustrated how the Civil War brought the problems of African-American experiences into the spotlight. As a socialist, he argued against the traditional Dunning interpretations and voiced opinions about the failures and benefits of the Civil War era, which he branded as a ‘splendid failure’. The impacts of Civil War era enabled African-Americans to “form their own fraternal organizations, worship in their own churches and embrace the notion of an activist government that promoted and safeguarded the welfare of its citizens.”