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How Did Reconstruction And Reconstruction

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African Americans and Reconstruction Shayna Fink
Before the Civil War most African Americans were slaves. Slaves were people who were considered property and were sold to other plantation owners as a source of labor. They worked on plantations and were treated very poorly. Slaves had no rights. They couldn't vote, they couldn’t own property and they couldn’t become educated. Slavery was legal in the United States until the Civil War. The Civil War was fought because of the growing differences in the North and South, the opposing views on slavery, and the Union’s desire to preserve the United States. The North won and slavery was abolished. After the war, slaves were considered people and had achieved legal rights including the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments put in place by the Congress. The 13th amendment was a change in the Constitution stating that slavery was abolished. The 14th amendment stated that if you were born in the U.S. you were a citizen. The 15th amendment said that the right to vote cannot be denied. Although established in the Constitution, African Americans still felt restricted from these amendments for these 3 reasons: Black Codes were put in place by the Confederacy, slaves were poor and uneducated, and they felt threatened by different violent groups.
To start off, Black Codes were laws put in place by Southerners to limit the rights of slaves and to continue to keep them unequal from others. President Johnson believed that slaves should have rights

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