Reconstruction after the civil war even though worked years later, at the time was a complete failure at the attempt to fix the country. During this time the North while trying to help bring the economy back up in the south tried to fight for the rights of the African Americans in the South as well as to bring rights to the colored. People will argue and try to justify that it was successful because it passed the 3 main amendments of the time (which will be discussed later). Today yes those amendments today have a gigantic effect on the lives of our colored youth.
During this time though these amendments meant nothing to the South, their only source of income came from the backs of the slaves. When the North took that income away the South decided to fight back take matters into their own hands. During this time the colored society would suffer for years to come, and all from the one decision to pass these amendments, and not provide another source of income for the south. The South refused the rule of the North, during this time the north tried to impose amendments and laws that the south refused to follow.
In response, the KKK was born to discriminate against these laws as well as the colored. As this went on the colored got no closer to making peace with us, as the KKK tortured, raped, robbed, and murdered during this time of struggle we got no closer to reconstruction. This split us apart more than anything, it shows even today that we have come no closer together than we were. The government didn’t do much to help to the right of the African Americans, they were free but out of work, this left them with nothing but sharecropping.
The owners would pay nothing and they would have to grow the owner’s crops. This, in turn, solved nothing for the rights of the African Americans. To add to the mix president Andrew Johnson the democratic southern leaning president was impeached for radical actions. This would come to bring to question the authority in the US as the south would repeatedly mock the power of the government. They would come to challenge, manipulate, side step, and resist the authority of the North, but also the constitution as well.
Then came the corrupt government, the self-serving government officials who would come to use the system for their own gains and their own profit. In the same effect, though, the government did nothing to help to south reconstruct its government. As the south was crumbling the north just ignored the ruins of the south and acted as if they were fixing it. No land reforms were made leaving the African Americans leaving them with nothing. They were left to sharecropping with past owners, bringing them back to the abuse they were trying to get away from.
Racial statements were extremely visible in the newspaper editorials article of the time, as a result of the forced occupation that South had to encounter during this period of Reconstruction. The problem of protection of African Americans in the South came as violence arose towards the people who had been informing them off politics and their new god gave rights. We saw reconstruction as a period of great advancement socially and racially, both were made worse.
An uprising of supremacy among the two main discriminated races black and white still clash to this day, bringing along ties all the way back from the period of reconstruction. Now that we have this period of racism when we do anything with other countries and the job goes sour it ends up being racist thanks to our past. In the end, we come to see that our history tend to repeat itself, no matter how gory, gruesome, long or terrible it was, it all comes back in the end whether we like it or not.
First, southern Democrats, made up of political leaders of the Confederate and other ealthy southern white men and who controlled most of the south, saw to end what they had seen to be future of the northern domination over the southerners living there. We Southern Democrats sought to limit the rights of blacks to vote, travel and change jobs, which like slavery, would provide a cheap labor supply for plantations. Second, the Moderate Republican party wanted to guarantee a policy of reconciliation between the north and the south, but during this time period for the main goal to make sure slavery was terminated.
Third radical Republicans, which was made up of north political leader, who strongly opposed slavery and unsupportive of the south and merely wanted to protect newly freed slaves and their newly found god given rights. A fourth element were various other groups of people, like abolitionists and Quakers, who were strongly motivated and pushed by principle and the belief in equality in which blacks needed this equality in American society, although they differed in what the nature of that should be and which manner it should be given in. In this case, there are much more reasons why reconstruction failed but that’s all for now.
