Why did Reconstruction fail PDF

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This is one of the mandatory essays that we had to write. Grade received: B...

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Khang Lam History 202 - 11 Why did Reconstruction fail? Reconstruction in America was the period that followed the Civil War as a way for the United States government to literally “reconstruct” or to repair the North and South of the country back together again. To many historians and revisionists however, the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877) was an almost complete failure with very little success in reforming early America. The Reconstruction of the 19th century were believed to have failed due to various reasons; the lack of political focus on the effort to rejoin sectional parties, and the newly gained civil liberties for slavery which also wasn’t entirely effective in terms of long-term social integration. The war between North and South of the United States was devastating in many ways, and the Union realized that they needed recover their country to a stable footing, both politically and economically. The federal government at the time of war was not steady and as the result, division in political parties played a major role in the failure of the Reconstruction. When Lincoln was still in office, he proposed a 10% plan to offer more lenient ways to rejoin the Southern States with the North. However when he was assassinated on April of 1865, his vice president Andrew Johnson became president and initiated his own plan regarding the Reconstruction. Johnson’s plan for the Reconstruction wasn’t entirely a failure at first, however being the former Southerner that he is, Andrew Johnson’s plan was also to seat more and more Confederates in Congress. Republicans however did not like the idea and dominated United States Congress and refused to allow Southerners to be elected as part of the Union government. Even within the Republicans there were splits in power between the Conservatives and Radical Republicans. Conservatives readily accepted Lincoln’s plan to readmit the Southern

Khang Lam History 202 - 11 states whereas Radicals are much more extreme and are willing to use federal government power to punish and uproot the Southern traditions before taking them in as part of Union. To sum up, these tensions occurring within sectional political parties in Congress sidetracked the Union from the sole purpose of Reconstruction; from completing any progress in reuniting and makes the United States whole again. Moreover, there was a major economic improvement in the North when the age of machines and factories arrived that left the ideal plans for the Reconstruction tedious and uninteresting to Northerners. Aside from the political disputes, another major issue that contributed to the failure of the Reconstruction was the short-term integration of freed blacks and the whites in the South. Although this part however was probably one of the very few constructive times that the Reconstruction permanently offered; which was the introduction of the 13 th, 14th and 15th amendment into the constitution. The three amendments finally legalized the African Americans rights and liberties in America. However the initiation of civil liberties for freed blacks clearly had very little effects in the South for reasons that it could not stop white racists from establishing groups (Ku Klux Klan) that use extreme violence to renounce African Americans liberties. In addition to violent groups, Southern white supremacies also formed laws such as the Jim Crows Law and Black Codes in order to aid the South in segregating the freed blacks from their white superiors. Furthermore, the sharecropping and especially the crop-lien systems were introduced with the intention to forever indebted the majority of black plantation workers to white officials. As the result, in combination of murderous groups, make-believe laws and the plantation systems that the white supremacy oppressed was all in the effort to reminisce African Americans of their dependence on slavery.

Khang Lam History 202 - 11 In summary, the effort of Reconstruction was a for the most part a failure. The North was not only concerning themselves with the potential split in their political, but was also overly-distracted by the sudden boom in their economy when the industrial revolution hits. Not only to mention the weak-presidency at the time, such as the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson by Congress due to his Southern favoritisms and the governmental corruptions when President Ulysses S. Grant was serving his terms. These major factors alone could prove that the North already had too much problems on their hands to be drowning themselves in the complications of the South. Furthermore, even though for a time did the freed blacks appeared to be on an equal level with the whites, racism deteriorated and persisted its way through the restrictions that the North laid on the Southern whites. As the result, not only did the Reconstruction failed to reunite the country, but it also failed to permanently desegregate African Americans from white racists and the use of public facilities....