How Do You Account for the Failure of Reconstruction

After the Civil War, the southern soldiers were going back to devastated cities, destroyed railroads, and many cities were burned to the ground as a result of Sherman’s march from sea to sea. After the Civil War occurred, the slaves were given freedom from their owners, and slavery was banned. That attempt at reconstruction was not a complete fail, but it took a little bit of time for America to give social and economic equality to slaves. There were many attempts made by several different presidents, but not all seemed to work due to the South’s stubbornness.

The failure of reconstruction later did not bring social and economic equality to former slaves in the south because of things like the Jim Crow laws and the South’s strong disproval of the outcome of the war. After the Civil War, several amendments were passed which granted black Americans the right of citizenship and the abolishment of slavery. The south eventually came up with ways around slavery like sharecropping, Jim Crow Laws, and white supremacist like the KKK. After the civil war was over the southern farmers had to come up with a way of producing their crops at a very low price, so they began sharecropping.

Sharecropping was basically a step ahead of slavery, but the new freed slaves still could not make enough money to support themselves. Another reason as to why the African Americans could not socially be integrated with the whites is because of the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws segregated the whites and the blacks. There were laws that said that whites and blacks couldn’t be in the same school or share the same bathroom. Another set of laws that the south put on the African Americans was the black codes.

The black codes consisted of curfews, vagrancy laws, labor contracts, and land restrictions. No blacks were aloud out after sunset or else they would be arrested. The vagrancy laws said that if any black was not working could be finned or whipped and sold into labor. Finally, the African Americans can only rent land or worked in rural areas, and they would be jailed if they were found there. Besides all of these laws that prevented the blacks from becoming socially apart of the union, there were groups like the KKK.

The KKK was a group of confederate soldiers who met weekly to discuss their issues. They then began bringing it to the next level and started to kill blacks. Because of all of these harsh restrictions, the African Americans soon began to believe that being free was worse then when they were in slavery. This all happened because reconstruction failed to make sure everything was intact throughout the union. As a result of the civil war, the south was really mad at the union. When Lincoln was inaugurated for a second term he put the 10% plan into use.

This plan allowed the south to come back into the union if 10% of its voters pledged an oath of allegiance back into the union. Soon after this plan was put into use, Lincoln is assassinated and President Johnson is sworn into office. He ultimately favored Lincoln’s 10% plan and freely let the south back into the economy. All the African Americans wanted was to have freedom and get paid for the work they did. Due to the fact they were not paid a lot of money, they could not support themselves economically.

Since they couldn’t support themselves, the North enacted the Freedmen’s Bureau. The Freedmen’s Bureau ultimately educated freed black slaves so that they could have an education. Eventually, then Freedmen’s Bureau was abolished because of whites in the south that despised the African Americans greatly. Even though reconstruction tried to bring equal rights to the African Americans, it ultimately failed and they were actually had worse of a life then when they were in slavery. During these years of radical reconstruction, the African Americans were going through some very tough times.

The laws that were put on them were harsh and unreasonable. All they wanted to do was becomes socially and economically apart of the United States. Groups like the KKK were unfair towards the blacks and made their lives miserable by holding rallies and killing them. As a result of reconstruction, the blacks were not given social or economic equality because of laws like the black codes and Jim Crow laws, and the rebellious whites in the south. These African Americans struggled just to support themselves, but whites eventually accepted them at the end of the 1800s.