The Black Codes Dbq

The Emancipation Proclamation had declared all slaves in the Confederacy to be free, but in reality, the freedom of these individuals was not guaranteed. Many former Confederate states passed "Black Codes" that restricted the rights of African Americans, limiting their ability to vote, own property, and work. The federal government was responsible for ensuring that the rights of newly freed slaves were protected, and it passed legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution to do

Throughout history, African Americans have been physically and emotionally degraded as human beings by the whites. Even after the Civil War, a vast number of Southern whites refused to accept African Americans as freed individuals and continued to treat them with great hatred. As seen through the Black Codes and the Ku Klux Klan society, it revealed whites’ attempt to re-establish regional dominance over the black community. During 1865 and early 1866, many state legislatures in the South passed the Black Codes.  These new set of laws continued to oppress African Americans and prevented them from living freely.

Lincoln’s plan for reconstruction as one of his many goals was to regain representation by abolishing slavery. (Reconstruction Power Point). “…a state could be reintegrated into the Union when 10 percent of its voters… had taken oath of allegiance to the United States and pledged to abide by emancipation.” (Piehl 353). After having the Ten Percent plan introduced and Lincolns assassination, the Thirteenth Amendment freed the slaves, weakening the south.

After oppression, government across the south started laws identified as black codes. These laws approved legal rights to blacks, the right to marriage, own land, and prosecute in court, but the codes also, made it prohibited for blacks to attend on juries, testify in contradiction of whites, or assist in state militias. The codes also, made it mandatory for black sharecroppers and renter farmers to sign yearly employment agreements with white property-owners; if they rejected they might be under arrest and appointed out for labor. Majority of southern black Americans, freedmen, survived in despairing rural poverty. Ex-slaves being deprived of schooling and salaries under slavery, ex-slaves remained frequently vital by the want of their economic conditions to lease property from previous white slaveholders.

In the spring of 1865, the Civil War came to a close with the North victorious, but that was not an end to the country’s problems. The question that was now at hand and on everyone’s mind was how to rebuild the broken and shattered nation. Lincoln during the Civil War had introduced the Ten Percent plan in which states that were in rebellion against the federal government could rejoin the union if ten percent of the state’s population took an oath of allegiance to the U.S and agreed to the emancipation of slaves.

What were the Black Codes? Answer: Black Codes were a tactic created and supported by Southern states to restrict African American freedmen from gaining enough wages to support their families. Although it granted them the right to marriage and owning their own property, they could not testify against whites or even vote. Punishments against African Americans were ridiculously unfair compared to the ones white landowners received for far greater offenses.

The Black Codes were legal codes set into place, primarily by the Southern states, in the interest of opposing the reality of free colored slaves. Essentially, the Black Codes were passed as a means of dealing with the situation regarding the emancipation of slaves. The Black Codes dealt with vagrancy, apprenticeship, labor contracts, and civil & legal rights. In regards to the laws of vagrancy, each state expressed their definition of the word “vagrant.” These definitions, as well as other laws, sometimes specifically applied to colored people, or as most of the time, they were stated in general terms that were intended to fit the “Negro’s condition” and to be enforced with regard to colored people.

Unit 7: DBQ Essay Introduction In 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation applied to Southern states only, it politically would not apply to the Northern and Border States; so to have another try at abolishing slavery; in 1864, congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery everywhere, including in the South. Of course this still was not enough for the South, their whole economy is based off of Slavery. Finally, in 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment was passed, now all the slaves that are free, had to be treated like citizens (1). To avoid giving freedmen full citizenship, southern states began to pass a series of discriminatory state laws collectively known as black codes.

After the Civil War, Congress attempted to address how to incorporate recently freed slaves into American society and ensure that it gave them the same rights and liberties as white Americans. To guarantee equal rights for African Americans and limit the growth of white supremacist organizations in the South, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the 15th Amendment, and the Ku KLUX Klan Act of 1871 laws. Despite these efforts, the histories of slavery and racism in America proved challenging to overcome, and failing to successfully put these laws into practice increased the Jim Crow system of state-enforced segregation and discrimination against African Americans. The Black Codes were state laws that were established to restrict the

Black Codes The Black Codes were a set of rules and regulations adopted by the southern states that restricted the freedoms of the newly emancipated African Americans during the Reconstruction Era. African Americans faced such an injustice that even though they were free individuals, they were forced to abide these new laws, and ultimately, these laws made them free to continue the laboring work that they had been doing. Although their legal status may have changed, African Americans were still facing constant struggles of that when they were slaves.

After four years of war between the Union and the Confederacy, the Union succeeded in winning the war. But after such a brutal war, half of the nation was in ruins. Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, wanted to make the nation one again. To do this, he first thought of the Ten Percent Plan. This plan stated that once 10% of a state’s voters swore an oath pertaining to being loyal to the United States of America, they could form a new state government, and that state government would have to declare an end to slavery.

The amendment was intended to grant citizenship to and protect the civil liberties of freed slaves. This Amendment prevented states from not allowing African American citizens to live their lives like any other free citizen in the United States including equal protection of the laws. Black codes were embraced by mid-western states to control or limit the relocation of free African-Americans to the mid-west. Coldblooded and extreme black code laws were embraced by southern states after the Civil War to control or impose the old social structure. Southern congress passed laws that confined the social equality of the liberated previous slaves.

He had plans to reunify the North and the South. Lincoln’s speech ‘The Ten-Percent Plan’ identifies his ideas about the Reconstruction period. Lincoln believed that the South never legally seceded from the United States, so his plan was based on forgiveness. During his speech, he claimed that if Southern states could get 10% of their voters to swear an Oath of Allegiance to the Union, they could be admitted back into the Union. He also claimed that the Southern states would have to abide by the new laws regarding the newly-freed citizens.

It voided the Three-Fifths Compromise which meant that the population of a state went from all “free people” and three-fifths of “other people” (slaves), to all people. This increased the once slave-holding states’ number of Representatives which increased their political power. In response to the freeing of slaves, the Southern states passed laws that were known as Black Codes because the amendment still permitted labor as punishment for criminals. Historian Douglas A. Blackmon called the Black Codes: "an array of interlocking laws essentially intended to criminalize black life." Colored people could be sentenced to forced labor under these Black Codes for things like selling cotton after sunset or using obscene language.

Finally, he came to a conclusion, and Lincoln, in his last speech in 1865, proclaimed that African-Americans in the United States, and its claimed Confederate territory, deserved the right to vote. This plan was put into place to support Lincoln’s Ten Percent plan which relied heavily on the support of Southern political supporters. This speech sparked anger in the hearts of loyal Southerners, so much so that only three days later, Lincoln was assassinated due to his remarks in his speech. Now, with Lincoln’s ideals stapled into the minds of the nation, the job was left to President Johnson to pull the nation through the pains of reconstruction. Johnson fulfilled Lincoln’s goals of forgiveness by pardoning every Confederate soldier, except the highest ranking leaders of the rebellion, and pardoning wealthy plantation owners.