History

Reconstruction

Lo-An Lu

08 August 2019

The era post-civil years added to the reconstruction of America as a country. This led to the readmission of eleven southern states within the American Confederation. The era of Reconstruction is marked from 1865-1877. The American government had to make plans to unify the north and south, therefore reconstruction was sought as a solution. President Lincoln’s plan for the reconstruction held unifying the country was pardoning southerners and free slaves. However, the plan was rejected by the Republicans who introduced laws to suppress blacks, by holding the congress power in their favor.

The plan extended the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the freedmen; banning slavery, awarding citizenship, and right to vote. The freedmen bureau was established to provide shelter, food, and access to school and hospitals. Although slavery was established but farming persistent and the blacks were still not qualified enough for high end earning professions. Therefore, they worked hard on plantations and gave the owners their share. This created a new sense of inequality amongst the society known as sharecropping

Lincoln was assassinated by the time and the new President Andrew Johnson did not make any changes and followed Lincoln’s plan. The situation accelerated and the south was divided into carpetbaggers, blacks and scalawags. The carpetbaggers abused their privileges of rich, blacks were marginalized while the scalawags were republican whites who owned plantations.

The emerging inclusion of the African Americans was feared by the ex-confederate soldiers, who formed the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan was a covert force led by terrorist motives involved in bombing, lynching, murder, brutalizing rape and arson against the blacks. The group killed blacks and white sympathizer’s in order to contain the blacks from using their new rights.

The 1877 election dejected the reconstruction as the votes of four states remained disputed and the republicans got hold of the government by becoming the president. The northerners had already grown tired of accommodating the southerners who were persistent in denying the rights to blacks by voting against them regularly. Regardless of the amendments and laws, the reconstruction was not able to eradicate the stereotypes, prejudices, oppression, racism, segregation and discrimination, dehumanization and genocide against the blacks. It endorsed the concept of separate but equal citizens in the eyes of law.

End Notes

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bois, W. E. B. Du. n.d. "Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880 (1935)." http://ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/blackreconstruction.pdf.

Green, John Patterson. n.d. "Recollections of the Inhabitants, Localities, Superstitions, and Ku Klux Outrages of the Carolinas. By a "Carpet-Bagger" Who Was Born and Lived There (1880) ." https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/green/green.html .

History, Digital. n.d. Overview of Reconstruction. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraID=8&smtID=1.

n.d. "Select Freedmen's Bureau Documents (1865-1867)." https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/freedmens-bureau/highlights.html.