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Failure Of The Reconstruction Era

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The Reconstruction era was a period of time after the civil war of 1865-1877. The President and later the Congress would both put forth ideas and initiatives. Legislative responses and shifts in political power would mark this era with moderate success but in the end, a failure. One of the events that best expresses the reconstruction period has to be the abolishing of slavery through Congress's ratifying of the Thirteenth Amendment on December 18, 1865. After years of civil war and struggle throughout the entire nation, finally a progress had been made on a human level. While at the same time the animosity would still be felt as "Black Codes" were adopted by midwestern states to regulate or inhibit the now freed african americans ability …show more content…

This duality, this mixture of something wonderful and something equally terrible really captures for me the state of the country during the Reconstruction period. A lot of pulling and pushing. The african-americans had been freed but to what purpose? Even when granted the Fifteenth amendment allowing black males the right to vote, they were still disenfranchised through state laws which kept them from voting through legal loopholes and to top it off, none of this did much in the way of women's suffrage. Again, back to the pulling and pushing struggle. Sort of like "two steps forward but three steps back." When thinking of the Reconstruction era one must also remember the violence that lingered on. The formation of the Ku Klux Klan was birthed in that era and from that violence. Such a prolific group full of hate and detestable rhetoric that lingers on to this day. One good example of that violence is given in our text when it describes the events of Hamburg, South Carolina on July 4th, 1876. The violence of one-thousand armed white men obliterating one-hundred african amercan men. I would be remiss not to recall the freedmen bureau, the many charities towards education as well as the government …show more content…

This was largely in part due to the north growing weary of the cause and its struggles. The disappearance of the radical republicans along with the granting of amnesty to former confederates, the conservatives resort to terror tactics and a loss of interest by the north made Reconstruction difficult to say the least. These issues were only complicated even more by the african americans lack of economic power as well as the problem of Johnson going as far as to return to lands occupied by freedmen back to their original white owners. These items coupled with the fact that the northern republicans were changing their perceptions and aligning their racial views with those of white southerners surely meant the reconstruction era was on the raid to failure, and sure enough, that failure would come in 1877. After the above mentioned act of violence in Hamburg, South Carolina in 1876, along with violence all across the state, the federal government did not offer any real support. The election of 1876 and the Compromise of 1877 would be the end of the Reconstruction Era with Rutherford Hayes would remove federal support from the remaining southern republican governments thus giving them control over every state government, and they would give him the needed electoral votes to grasp the presidency. Thus, the reconstrucon era was

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