Reconstruction Argumentative Analysis

The resulting outcome of Reconstruction has been labeled as both a success and a failure. At the end of the four-year Civil War, and nearly 250 years of slavery, President Lincoln’s intentions were to unify a shattered nation. Thus, began the Reconstruction era. Reconstruction succeeded in the installation of the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery, the 14th Amendment defining citizenship and protecting all Americans under the law and extending suffrage to all men in the 15th Amendment. The Freedman’s Bureau and Civil Rights Act also sought to help African Americans to participate equally in government, in society and in the economy. Black men were elected to political office in every level of government and all Southern states drafted new constitutions and ratified Reconstruction amendments.

It seemed as though black people were finally starting to be recognized as actual people. According to the article “Reconstruction” on the website ushistory.org it says, “Under federal bayonets,blacks, including those who had recently been freed, received the right to vote, hold political offices, and become judges and police chiefs.” African Americans were finally able to hold some type of power in political offices and could have jobs of importance, however, many Southerners were angered by black people having this new sense of freedom. From the same article it says, “Many Southern whites could not accept the idea that former slaves could not only vote but hold office. It was this era that the Ku Klux Klan was born.” Douglass’s dream of equality was starting to slip away with white supremacists discriminating against black people. To this day, there is still racism and discrimination among not only African Americans but all races and this goal of equality has yet to be reached and may not be achieved ever.

Reconstruction was like ice cream on a hot day because it is cold and refreshing . Similarly, from 1865 to 1870 the United States passed three Amendments, the 13th, 14th and 15th, to help end slavery. As stated in the 13th amendment,“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Then, three years later, the government passed the fourteenth amendment which said, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction

Arguably one of the greatest contributions during the reconstruction era was the thirteenth amendment. This is the amendment that formally abolished the cruel and unjust acts of slavery in 1865. The thirteenth amendment states “"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction" (Primary documents in American History). “The ratification came eight months after the end of the war, but it represented the culmination of the struggle against slavery. When the war began, some in the North were against fighting what they saw as a crusade to end slavery. Although many northern Democrats and conservative Republicans were opposed to slavery 's expansion, they were ambivalent about outlawing the institution entirely” (13th amendment ratified). This statement is proof that although the North was opposed to slavery they were not

The Reconstruction Period I think is a problem for the African Americans back then. They were treated unfairly during this period, when it was to being them a new started and hope of change. Don’t get me wrong there were some people who were for them to e happy, but not many. So, let start at the being; where it all happened. In January of 1865, Union General William T. Sherman issued a special field order Number 15, which temporary granted each freed family 40 acres of land off the region of Georgia in the islands and coastal area. Also the Union Army donated mules to them after the war was over. In the summer of 1865 when President Andrew Johnson was in office, his first act of Reconstruction was to give back all the federal control land back to its previous owner. When the land was giving back to the owners, freed men and women could sign a labor contracts with the planters or they could leave the land they occupied this was called Freedman’s Bureau. Soon after when the land was giving back, the former Confederate state stated “Black Codes”. Black Codes would deny African Americans to legal have equality and political rights. Also it would require then to sign yearly labor contracts with the planters. When this happen, Congress made the Reconstruction Act in the 1867, when the 14th (June 13, 1866) and the 15th (February 26, 1869, ratified on February 3, 1870) Amendments. These two amendments granted African Americans the right to vote, and equality before the law and

At the end of the Civil War, America faced the difficult task of uniting not only two separated territories of the United States, but also two races long separated by racism and culture. Devastated and embittered by the damage of the war, the South had a long way to go in order to achieve true equality between the former slave owners and former slaves. The majority of the South remained set in racist behavior, finding post-Civil War legal loopholes to diminish African American rights (Tindall & Shi, 2010, pp. 757-758). Southerners continued to marginalize Blacks in their behavior toward ex-slaves and the later African American generation,

In Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War, Nicholas Lemann describes how reconstruction failed because of the violent strategies and intimidation of white southerners to African Americans, which took place mainly in Southern states like Mississippi and Louisiana. Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation to free slaves in the south in 1863. Later on, the thirteenth amendment was ratified to abolish slavery in 1865. Even though these documents were completed, African Americans were still fighting for their rights and went through hardships to keep their rights with the help of a few leaders. White Southerners believed that racial hierarchy was the natural order and that’s the only order they will go by.

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.

The civil war ended in 1865 but that wasn’t the end of their struggle. Slavery had been discontinued, and with it southerners were obligated to ratify the 14th amendment. Lots of changes happened between 1865 and 1877 mostly revolving around black equality. This period of time was called reconstruction. It altered they way we view blacks today, and at the time was a major event, especially for previous slave owners. A large portion of America was democratic and opposed slavery, many of them forming leuges aganist it. And when black people were freed there were 4 million people without jobs, and landowners without money to pay for workers. There were some of the many reasons why Congress’ Reconstruction was a sucessful one. Congress’ Reconstruction efforts failed because of the democrats whos appossed slavery, the men who created white leagues, and the scarcity of jobs.

In the 1870s, after the civil war, somehow, America was still at war. Americans disagreed over the topic of letting former slaves become citizens and reuniting a divided North and south. This was called reconstruction. When Andrew Johnson was in office in 1865 , congress passed an amendment declaring all the slaves in America free. The 13th amendment was disputed by many and a lot of people were extremely angry about it. The American government had a plan in include african americans in society. After the civil was, a lot of the American lands were literally in ruins. Farms and plantations and were trampled and destroyed. Also, Southerners were in despair because their currency was now useless after the Southern government was demolished.

During the time of reconstruction, the 13th amendment abolished slavery. It was one of the influential amendments passed in the constitution. It officially abolished and prohibited slavery and forced an ending to slavery all over the South. The Southern states that

Many parts of the Reconstruction were successful like all the amendments that were passed to help keep the nation at peace. The Thirteenth Amendment, which was ratified by 18 states some of which were ex-confederate, abolished slavery in the US. The Fourteenth Amendment gave ex-slaves citizenship and their natural rights. The Fifteenth Amendment gave all male citizens no matter the race the right to vote.

Congressional Reconstruction included the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution which extended civil and legal protections to former slaves. Congress abolished slavery in the District of Columbia in 1862, and President Abraham Lincoln’s Proclamation ended the practice of slavery in 1863, at war’s end in 1865 but the question of slavery had not been resolved at the national level.

The Union victory after the Civil War in 1865 may had given roughly 4 million slaves their freedom, however the process of rebuilding the South during the Reconstruction period introduced a new set of significant challenges. In order to reconstruct the country following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, the federal government and Republican-controlled state governments in the southern regions made efforts to rebuild the Southern economy and advance conditions of freedom. Following the Civil War, majority of white Southerners opposed Reconstruction and the Republican Party's support of black civil and political rights. However, Reconstruction ultimately failed due to violence against African Americans, the Compromise of 1877 and the

The attempt of reconstruction after the civil war was put in shambles by terrorism and violence led by whites. The ratifying of “formed for the white, not the black man” boiled in the South. Police would brutally beat black Americans. The black American’s rights and their well being were targeted by society. (The case for Reparations 2015) The government provided limited help as they took a blind eye only to focus on the economy instead of the conditions that were happening in the south (Painter 151). We can still see how police and government still lean one-sided in today’s age. In this current event, in particular, they spoke of taking legal actions for the hate crime but no further actions were actually put into place. We can see how