Successes+of+Reconstruction

To many historians, reconstruction was a period in history when America readmitted the Confederate states back into the union after the Civil War.The federal governnment created various policies which affected all americans. They included many that were designed to incorporate former slaves into a free society. However, in 1865 Andrew Johnson put a reconstruction plan into effect. It gave the "white" south a free hand in establishing new governments, but many northerners were convinced that the government he had, threatened to reduce African Americans to something that had been similar to slavery.
 * __//Successes of Reconstruction//__



On the other hand, Congress had overturned Johnson's program. Between 1866 and 1869, Congress put laws into effect. Also, the fourteenth and fifthteenth ammendments were also put into the constitution. It guaranteed blacks civil rights, and gave black men the right to vote. Also, the term** //__"Forty Acres and a mule"__// **was an action that took place in the south and advanced it's way through. Tens of thousands of free slaves would have forty acres of land to farm and a mule to drag a plow so the land could be cultivated. The news spread quickly and many freed slaves thought of it as proof that the emancipation would give them the land that they had worked for as slaves for so long.

There were a lot of things that led up to this period in time such as the civil war itself. The civil war was caused by a lot of things such as slavery. Slavery was one of the major causes of the civil war.** **The civil war was a time of "racial reckoning". Reconstruction ended in the year of 1877 because of a variety of reasons. Reconstruction signaled an end to wahtever blacks were trying to make progress to do, and if you ask me, reconstruction really didint help much of anything, it only kept blacks from progressing to their standards. It had continued on America's path. Hardly anything changed. On the other hand. today there is freedom for blacks and whites.

On the other hand, reconstruction is a big part of history because it is important to know and has a lot of significance to it. I think that it is a really important thing to learn about in history because you should know about what the circumstances were in the days of the civil war. Reconstruction left significant legacies, including the 14th and 15th amendments which would be used 100 years later to protect rights. America could once again be called the United States. All of the southern states had drafted new constitutions, ratified the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and fifteenth Amendments, and pledged loyalty to the Union.

Together, the Civil War and Reconstruction settled the states' fights vs. federalism debate that had been going on since the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of the 1790 s and the Nullification Crisis of the 1830 s. The United States before the Civil War was  a country, but the United States after the war //was// a nation. Reconstruction had it's successes and also it had it's failures. Overall, reconstruction was not a sucess even though Lincoln was a good president. There were many slaves that were freed, but then again they were still denied basic rights such as voting and citizenship. To me reconstruction was a success, but also a failure.**

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 * //__Erica Kulp 7th period__//**