“The slave went free: stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back into slavery.” This quote by Web Dubois refers to a period in American history called reconstruction in which the South was rebuilt and remitted into the union after the civil war. During this time African Americans gained many rights including citizenship and suffrage. However, many of those rights were lost after the compromise of 1877 brought an end to reconstruction. The south was solely responsible for killing reconstruction through its use of intimidation tactics by scalawags and carpetbaggers, the purposeful reversal of reconstruction policies, and the refusal to work together. The South killed reconstruction through intimidation of scalawags and carpetbaggers. A
However, all acts of reconstruction were cut short when the South ultimately killed it. People like the Ku Klux Klan helped to ensure that reconstruction would be stopped and the South would regain its power. The Ku Klux Klan was one of the main groups of people that destroyed reconstruction because of their extreme ways. They used violence as a way to achieve their goal of destroying reconstruction. They killed many people just because of the color of their skin.
The Southern Resistance killed Reconstruction because of the KKK's actions and resistance against assistance from the North. Both sides of this argument are to blame but the Southern Resistance is more at fault for ending
In addition, Document B states, “[the Klansmen] broke my door open, took me out of bed, took me to the woods and whipped me three hours or more.” This shows more intimidation tactics that white southerners used in order to keep Republicans out of office. This prevented Southern governments from helping African Americans. To sum it up, resistance in the form of aggression in the South killed Reconstruction by preventing the governments from helping African
In history growing up I learned that slavery ended when president Lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation. After this law was passed, African Americans were embarking a new journey, Radical reconstruction. The end of slavery was only the beginning. It was the beginning of and unjust, corrupted system. Reconstruction was a brief period following the Civil War in which an attempt was made by the federal government to disenfranchise the former slaveholding oligarchy and to improve the economic, educational, political, and human rights conditions of poor whites and blacks in the South (Feagin, Feagin 2011).
As the Civil War represented the fight between labor systems and the shift of power, Africans Americans weren’t really free. As an immediate result after the war, they were subjugated to several laws and racism swept the
When the union won the civil war in 1865 it gave millions slaves their freedom but there was a bigger process in rebuilding the south. As Andrew Johnson in 1865 new southern state leaders passed “Blacks Codes” to control the behavior of former slaves and blacks. Many people in the north were very upset about these codes. since the North was very upset with this indecent that happened. It wore away their supporter known as the presidential reconstruction and led to victories of the radical parts of the republican party.
Did the North of South kill the Reconstruction of the South? Grant was too wrapped up in his reputation, he didn’t even notice or care about what was going
DuBois, "The slave went free, stood a brief moment in the sun, and then moved back again towards slavery" summarizes the situation of the former slaves during reconstruction quite well. The slaves had a moment of glory with the 14th and 15th amendment to the constitution, granting them rights. But the federal government and the Northern white quickly lost interest in the "black issue" and did not push it further. At the end of Reconstruction, the freedmen were still exploited, treated badly and unfairly and still economically dependent on the whites. Reconstruction was "a splendid failure" (W.E.B. DuBois) in granting former slaves freedom and equal rights; but then, the war had not been about freeing
After the Civil War, African Americans were free from slavery. The Reconstruction era that followed the war helped to piece the fragmented America back together into one unified country. While this period assisted in the bonding of the North and South, the newly freed slaves did not receive enough protection or help from the government to get them on their feet after essentially starting a new life with literally nothing to their name. Due to the negligence of the U.S. government, the white supremacist south created a series of loopholes known as Jim Crow Laws that severely limited the rights that had been given to African Americans. This racial segregation and discrimination of African Americans continued for decades until they began
Who killed Reconstruction: The North or South? Following the civil war, the south killed the reconstruction of the United States. (Reconstruction was putting the country back together after the Civil War) There are many reasons why, the south slowed down the reconstruction of the United States, the main reason was freedmen were not seen as equals to the white.
While racial attitudes and “Reconstruction weariness” contributed to the collapse of Reconstruction efforts, the use of violence against whites and blacks combined with the belief in white supremacy played the
The American civil war led to the reunion of the South and the North. But, its consequences led the Republicans to take the lead of reconstructing what the war had destroyed especially in the South because it contained larger numbers of newly freed slaves. Just after the civil war, America entered into what was called as the reconstruction era. Reconstruction refers to when “the federal government established the terms on which rebellious Southern states would be integrated back into the Union” (Watts 246). As a further matter, it also meant “the process of helping the 4 million freed slaves after the civil war [to] make the transition to freedom” (DeFord and Schwarz 96).
Reconstruction caused prejudice and inequality. To elaborate, the creation of the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Codes were both in the time period of reconstruction, which caused chaos and violence throughout the Union. One of the goals of reconstruction was to repair the economy in the South, because it depended on slavery, which was now illegal, due to the thirteenth amendment. The South’s economic system now depended on Sharecropping, which caused former slaves to be in constant debt and was unjust to the black society. The reconstruction time period, was a time of dispute between the Union.
The reconstruction period was a failure because African Americans, mainly males, were not treated with equality although the constitution said that the they were free and had the right to vote, be educated and had the right to liberty, life and the pursuit to happiness. Organizations, like the KKK, were created to harm freed slaves and their families. Laws were created such as the Black Codes restricting former slaves from their rights. African Americans endured a lot of violence over the years. “In Grayson, Texas, a white man and two friends murdered three former slaves because the wanted to ‘ thin the niggers out and drive them to their hole’”.
Racism’s Impact on Reconstruction While the issue of slavery evidently contributed to the divide that resulted in the American Civil War, it is debated whether prevailing ideals of racism caused the failure of the era following the war known as Reconstruction. With the abolishment of slavery, many of the southern states had to reassemble the social, economic, and political systems instilled in their societies. The Reconstruction Era was originally led by a radical republican government that pushed to raise taxes, establish coalition governments, and deprive former confederates of superiority they might have once held. However, during this time common views were obtained that the South could recover independently and that African Americans