The Civil War is one of the United State’s most bloodshed wars. With the North and South against each other, many American’s lives were lost in battle as well as simply being affected by illness. After the North’s triumph, the South was in great destruction. The war was fought on Southern turf, so with the Civil War being 4 years long, one can imagine what the outcome of the war would look like. The South relied on agriculture as their way of making it economically, so this left the South in debt, with many poor freed African Americans, along with a high percentage of poor whites. All this destruction and remaining division between the Union led the Reconstruction to begin. In 1863, President Lincoln had a plan for the Reconstruction of the United States. He wanted to commence the Ten Percent Plan, which required ten percent of people in the Southern states to swear allegiance to the Union. Before he could carry out this plan, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theater in Washington. He died shortly …show more content…
Obviously, the beginning of the Reconstruction was when the United States was at it’s lowest point, with no new amendments regarding slavery, with lots of destruction and death, and a lot of work to do ahead. Once things began to progress, things started to look up, especially for African Americans. The United States was becoming a more equalized environment, until the later events from 1870-1877, with the Ku Klux Klan ordeal, and the removal of federal protection in the South. Clearly, this twelve year Reconstruction period had made the US become a better and more controlled place than it was before, but the ending events caused damage to the minorities living in the South which would last for a very long time until the Martin Luther King Jr. era. If it were up to me, I would have kept protection in the South for a longer period of time, until the US was a guaranteed place of
The reconstruction was an era when African Americans tried to fit in and to rebuild the South. The reconstruction started in 1876. Some troops started to leave the South. The KKK was also starting to rebel against the government. The North took their focus of reconstruction and focused on scandals. This essay is trustworthy because I used primary sources. The South was the cause for the end of the reconstruction because the KKK was killing people, KKK was forcing people to vote democratic ticket, and South did nothing about the KKK.
The end of the Civil War in 1865 was a very conflicting time for the United States. On one hand, the sanguinary struggles of the war had finally come to a close. On the other hand, the desperate desire to rebuild the damage in the South quickly became very popular. This was called Reconstruction, an era focused on changing the ethos of resisting Southerners and installing equal civil rights for all citizens. Despite how important Reconstruction was for rebuilding the American economy, this desire ultimately came to an end in 1877. Although both the North and the South played roles in this nation defeat, Northern neglect primarily killed the
Lincoln’s main goal for his presidency was to unify the Union after the Civil War had torn the North and the South apart. In Lincoln’s “Second Inaugural Address” he says, “While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war...” (Lincoln 68). When Lincoln was elected for his first term, he wanted to unify the Union even before the war had
The Civil war could very easily be known as one of the greatest tragedies in United States history. After the Civil War, the people of The United States had so much anger and hatred towards each other and the government that 11 Southern states seceded from the Nation and parted into two pieces. The Nation split into either the Northern abolitionist or the Southern planation farmers. The Reconstruction era was meant to be exactly how the name announces it to be. It was a time for the United States to fix the broken pieces the war had caused allowing the country to mend together and unite once again. The point of Reconstruction was to establish unity between the states and to also create and protect the civil rights of the former slaves.
After the war, the government tried to solve key problems facing the nation. The 10% Plan was proposed by Abraham Lincoln and its purpose was to end Reconstruction quickly. It pardoned all Ex-Confederates in the South as long as they apologized, it would only need ten percent of the voters in each state to swear allegiance to the Union, and did not offer any type of equality to the Freedmen. The 10% Plan was a short-term effect because Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in 1865, and after he was killed and Vice President Andrew Johnson took over the idea of the 10% Plan disappeared. Another attempt to end Reconstruction by the government was proposed by the Radical Republicans in congress and was the complete
Government had brought the seceded Southern states back into the Union, and they ended slavery and they tried their best to protect newly emancipated the slaves. But they rebuilt the nation after a lot more four years of fighting. The reconstruction occurred in 2 phases, the Presidential Reconstruction was very lenient in order Southern states to rejoin the Union quickly, this was initiated by President Lincoln but was carried out by President Andrew Johnson. The Congressional Reconstruction was stricter and protected rights from former slaves and they kept Confederate leaders from regaining power. But, before the Civil War Lincoln proposed his 10% Plan, which was lenient and allowed the Confederate states could re-enter the Union when, 10% of their population had sworn an Oath of Loyalty and they ratified the 13th Amendment ending all slavery. But, the Radicals in Congress had rejected his plan because, it did not protect ex-slaves and didn’t keep them from regaining power, they also wanted to have 50% of the population to swear to an oath of loyalty. But, the states could come back once they ratified the 13th amendment. But, the southern passed black codes in order to keep African- Americans from getting any land, jobs, voting rights, and also protection under the law. Finally, in 1865, the Freedmen's Bureau had been established and offered assistance to former slaves and to protect their new
The Civil War sparked a new era of Reconstruction in America. This era was meant to change the everyday life of America and to allow African Americans to become a part of America. Though reconstruction started out with good intentions, it is considered a massive failure in almost every area. As a result of the Civil War and Reconstruction, American society experienced drastic political change in participation government while keeping social and economic structures the same.
In hindsight it is sometimes claimed that Reconstruction was a failure. Although there was some good that came out of the Reconstruction it was mostly just a relentless uphill battle against Southerners and immoral politicians that were here to delay change and keep racism alive. Reconstruction brought the Ku Klux Klan who displayed great resistance, and poverty that swept the South once the blacks were freed. The freedom of these black slaves led to discriminatory legislatures such as the Black Codes and the Jim Crow laws to keep the blacks constrained from actually being free. The South was then encountered with corruption and high property taxes, as a rebuild was in order to reestablish the war torn part of the nation.
I feel that the Reconstruction failed to give African Americans equal rights. They were not able to vote in any public event and without that ability they had no voice to attain what they desired. Additionally, the Reconstruction lacked a clear structure to help African Americans develop any means to earn a living on their own. Many turned to sharecropping as a means to survive, which gain them no true independence. The African American had to continue to rely on the white southerners or large groups of one another to earn a living and it some cases just survive. The Reconstruction failed to provide a steady direction for African Americans and it did not protect them from abuse the white southerners could enact similar to slavery. For these
Lincoln's main goal was to reunite the Union after the North had won and demolished most of the South. Lincoln wanted to reunite the North and South but the South didn't want to join a slave free north. Lincoln came up with the 10 percent plan which required 10 percent of the state’s population to vote to be loyal to the North and then that state would have to create a new government. The southern states combated this plan with the Wade-Davis Bill which stated that reconstruction would be handed over to congress and the Southern States
Reconstruction was a time of great change for the now-unified United States. It started in 1865, coinciding with the Union win of the Civil War. Reconstruction is defined as ‘the process by which the states that had seceded were reorganized as part of the Union after the Civil War.” This means that the Northern states were given the task of trying to decide what to do with the states that left the Union before the war. Deciding what to do with these states sparked lots of debate. So much debate that it split the northern population into different groups. Radical Republicans fought for the rights of freedmen and believed that South should pay for the damage they caused. The Radicals were not interested in taking the South back with open arms. One of the Radicals’ proposed laws was to take large chunks of ex-confederate land and sharing it with freed slaves and non-wealthy whites. With that being said, the majority of the Northern population were Moderate in their stance on Reconstructing. Moderates were not for the distributing of land to African-Americans in the South because they believed that blacks would get complacent and not want to contribute to the economy in their various states. They thought that blacks would eventually become socially equal to whites given time. Moderates assumed that going strongly against what the Southern Majority wants would hinder the Reconstruction of the U.S. The Confederate ideals were
The Civil war was the most momentous and crucial period of time in the history of America. Not only did this war bring an end to slavery but also paved way for numerous social and political changes. The country had already been torn by the negative trend in race relations and the numerous cases of slave uprisings were taking their toll on the country 's political and social structure. The country was predominately divided up into 3 sections, the North, the South, and the West. Each of these groups had different fundamental interests. The North wanted economies depending on farming, factories and milltowns, while the West relied on expansion and development of land for farming and new towns. The South mainly relied on agriculture like
The Civil War was a massive milestone in American History. This war started in 1861 and lasted four years. It was between the Union and the Confederacy over their differences and problems they created. The consequences the nation faced due to the demolition of the Civil War, was terrifying. Then the Reconstruction era was born to restore, reinstate, and unite the United States as one. During the Reconstruction of 1865 through 1867, African American lives were impacted economically because they were given few rights and their resources were limited, socially because they wanted to be given an ordinary lifestyle, and politically because they weren’t allowed to be joined or linked with the government.
The Civil War was a troubling time for America. The Union was struggling to identify how it would deal with states’ rights, taxation and law. Although the US had established its self as a Union of states under a central government, the concept of individual governing bodies and rebellion was still fresh in the minds of American States. While many compromises were offered to settle differences between the industrial North and agrarian South, Compromise failed and Southern States left the union; succession caused a bloody war that look many lives, destroyed the economy of the South and rather than enhancing the value of the Black man, placed him in a powerless place in society. Although defeat of the south forced the states to rejoin the union and freed the slaves, the human cost of the survivors, the staggering number of deaths and the lack of progress to equality makes The Civil War a depressing waste of life and industry
The Civil War left a country divided not only by property lines and borders but by beliefs as well. Not just religious beliefs, moral beliefs also. It left both sides, north and south struggling, trying to figure out what their next move towards reuniting the divided America was going to be. The period following the end of the Civil War would become known as the “Reconstruction Era.” An era that raised just as many questions as it did answers. A reconstruction of America that seems to carry on many decades later.