Reconstruction After the Civil War Essay

To the Radical Republicans, Johnson's plan seemed no better than Lincoln's because it failed to address the needs of former slaves in three prominent areas: land, voting rights, and protection under the law. Confederates states, however, readily committed to the conditions put forth in the Presidential Reconstruction plan, and were readmitted to the Union. A few years later, the Reconstruction Act of 1867 was passed, which did not recognize the governments formed under Lincoln and Johnson's plans. Through the Reconstruction Act, Tennessee was the only former Confederate State recognized as having been readmitted to the Union because it had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. In order for the rest of the former Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union through the Reconstruction Act, each state had to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, also. The Republicans introduced the Fifteenth Amendment after the election of 1868 because they feared that Pro-Confederate Southern whites might try to place limits on black suffrage. In order to prevent this, the Fifteenth Amendment states that no one can be kept from voting because of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Through the different plans that were proposed by the three different Presidents in office during the Reconstruction period, the Thirteenth,

After the conclusion of America’s Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln pitched the idea of “Reconstruction,” which would bring the southern states back into the Union. President Lincoln, according to many radical Republicans, was too gentle on the south. The government was divided on how to solve the issue of readmitting the southern states back into the Union. In addition to that, the government was not certain on what rights to enumerate to the newly emancipated slaves. These issues became more difficult to solve after President Lincoln was murdered. Lincoln’s successor, Vice President Andrew Johnson, was a Tennessee Democrat that lacked respect of the Republican Congress. The legislative and executive branches of the American government

Reconstruction was a period of time after the Civil War (1865-1877) that was supposed to be the rebuilding of America. It was also the process used to readmit all the Confederate states back into the Union. There was controversy, however, on how to go about rebuilding the nation. Abraham Lincoln proposed a lenient plan. After he was assassinated, Andrew Johnson proposed a very similar plan. The Radical Republicans, a group of legislators that were in favor of freedmen’s rights, were opposed to both plans under “Presidential Reconstruction”. They initiated “Congressional Reconstruction”. Because of the conflicting views, there was little cooperation between the Executive and Legislative branches. This lead to many unsuccessful

During the time period of 1860 and 1877 many major changes occurred. From the beginning of the civil war to the fall of the reconstruction, the United States changed dramatically. Nearly one hundred years after the Declaration of Independence which declared all men equal, many social and constitutional alterations were necessary to protect the rights of all people, no matter their race. These social and constitutional developments that were made during 1860 to 1877 were so drastic it could be called a revolution.

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.

America: “The land of the free, and the home of the brave” (Key 7-8). When our forefathers overcame the colonial reign of the British Empire, they formed the United States of America based on the premise of enlightened ideals promoting life, ownership of land, and liberty. But after the revolution, the country’s problems were far from solved. The country’s post-revolution issues sparked a Civil War, which was followed by a reconstruction. In some ways, the Civil War and Reconstruction helped the United States accomplish its original goals, but in many ways, that was not the case.

A revolution is a dramatic and sudden change in an organization in the social order that is replaced by a new, more favorable system. When Historian Eric Foner called the Reconstruction period “America’s Second Revolution”, his characterization was correct. Reconstruction can be viewed as a revolution because the previous social order, slavery, was replaced suddenly by a more favorable one, freedom for African-Americans. There was a long period of politicization for incorporating free African-Americans into white society. Reconstruction also revolutionized the preconceived notion that the states had autonomous power.

Reconstruction was the time between 1863 and 1877 when the U.S. focused on abolishing slavery, destroying the Confederacy, and reconstructing the nation and the Constitution and is also the general history of the post-Civil War era in the U.S. between 1865 and 1877. Under Abraham Lincoln, presidential reconstruction began in each state as soon as federal troops controlled most of the state. The usual ending date is 1877, when the Compromise of 1877 saw the collapse of the last Republican state governments in the South

Due to the gradual elimination of African-American rights and the withdrawal of Federal troops from the South to enforce such rights, the end of Reconstruction surfaced in 1877. In the eyes of blacks, Reconstruction was a point in history where they could see their civil rights expanding before their very own eyes. On the contrary, whites were deeply disturbed at the way their once “white supremacy” government was dwindling in the rear-view mirror behind them. This fourteen year period known as Reconstruction houses the memories of temporary freedom, scandal, backdoor deals, and the unresolved social, political, and economical issues of our country.

Reconstruction has been brutally murdered! For a little over a decade after the Civil War, the victorious North launched a campaign of social, economic, and political recovery in the former Confederacy and to readmit the land in the former Confederacy back into the United States as states. Reconstruction yielded many benefits for African Americans. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments freed African Americans, made them citizens, and gave them the right to vote respectively. The Freedmen’s Bureau also provided African Americans and poor whites with education, jobs, and supplies. Despite this, Reconstruction was cut short in 1877. The North killed Reconstruction because of racism, negligence, and distractions.

1. The war in 1862 was only more than a year old and the people in both the Union and Confederate sides didn’t anticipate it would last that long, but it is going to go on. Close to the end of the summer in this same year, the Union has made huge progress in claiming confederate lands, winning some major battles. They have put the confederacy in the defensive. They have taken over New Orleans, with even black troops major on the ground of New Orleans. They have taken Missouri and are working hard to take over the Mississippi Valley and maybe even Richmond itself. Bruce Catton puts it this way in The Civil War, “Except for guerrilla activity, Kentucky and Missouri has been swept clear of armed confederates, Western Tennessee had been reclaimed, there was a Yankee army in Cumberland Gap, another one was approaching chattanooga, and a third was sprawled out from Memphis to Corinth, preparing to splice down through Mississippi and touch hands with the Union occupation forces in Baton Rouge and New Orleans” (85) So not only that they Union had taken over regions, they are advancing as well, but they did not win the way this year for some reason. Firstly, because they did not have generals and army heads capable of taking them to victory. General Halleck, chief of the Union Armies and Pope in charge of one of the Union armies in Virginia, were major examples of this.

“In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it is perhaps not surprising that historians turned renewed attention to home-grown American terrorism. Recent books on Reconstruction…have infused their subjects with drama by focusing on violent confrontations,” Eric Foner notes in the introduction of the updated edition to his 1988 publication Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. Up until now, Foner’s revisionist historiography of Reconstruction was the only alternative offered to the Dunning School’s account of the important historical era. In recent years a neo-revisionist interpretation of Reconstruction has emerged in works by a younger generation of historians such as Gregory Downs, Carole Emberton, Hannah Rosen, Megan Kate Nelson and Jim downs. This new scholarship pays close attention to violence, the body, language, and gender—how these important themes directly relate to power, struggle, and political status of freedpeople in the postbellum nation—and either rethink or are completely uninterested in Foner’s revisionist narrative of Reconstruction.

After four years of fighting between the Union and the Confederacy in the American Civil War, it was finally decided in 1864 that the 11 southern states that seceded from the nation would be restored into the Union once again. However, the problems of reconstructing the Union were just as difficult as the war itself had been. Because most of the war was fought on Southern ground, the South had been devastated both physically and economically. Helping former slaves and making state governments loyal to the Union also presented various problems that would take years to resolve.

The aftermath of the Civil War shook the nation. A new way of life was beginning for the people of America. A way of life that was beautiful and free to some and absolutely devastating to the rest. The country had changed and nobody did a better job at documenting this change than the authors. The authors used this new world to explore new and unique stories as well as capturing what it was actually like living in the post-Civil War times. This paper will examine post-Civil War Literature and its importance to documenting this period in history.

and in reality it was a demonstration of the failure to make a dependable political