Was reconstruction a success? I think not, nothing good came from the reconstruction in the slightest. The president wanted to be easy on the south so that they would be a little less upset about the loss of the war and slaves. This caused many issues that soon appeared shortly after the initiation of the southern reconstruction. These issues were the Jim Crow laws that still controlled the lives of freed slaves. The actual presidential reconstruction plan, which was a total bust because it gave the south to much moving space. And at then end of it all it still didn’t bring the union back together both sides hated each other still.
First i want to talk about the Jim crow laws that haunted the south plus the follow of the KKK. Right after the union started taking the southern states back into the union they started enacting these laws to hinder what the just freed slaves could do. This gave them curfews and segregated the two races as a whole. Blacks weren’t even allowed to live in the cities if a white family lived there. After the Jim crow laws started to kick into full effect a group of white supremacists started something that would forever change the south. As a group of masked men they would come to the houses of the black and kidnap them and beat them till death. This lasted all the way up into the mid 1900s.
The presidential reconstruction plan didn’t make things any better it was way too lenient on the south and they pretty much got to do whatever they wanted as long as the “accepted” the 13 14 and 15 amendment. Which did nothing it still gave them all the rights to completely discriminate against the newly freed blacks that should have been left alone the federal troops that were there should have been ordered to protect them from the viciousness of the the white supremacists. But yet another reason the reconstruction didn’t work is the idiot president wanted to pull all federal troops from the southern states which only furthered they’re freedom to control the african Americans .
A union still divided, the union even through it was brought back to one body it was still seperated in the minds and hearts of the north and southerners. What i mean by this is the north hated the south and the south hated the north for the war and they didn’t want to be around each other. Both sides came up with offensive names for the other region. It was a complete re-run of sectionalism that we also faced on the terms of slavery.
All of these different pieces of evidence proves my claim that the reconstruction was a complete failure and should have only done it the way that the radical republicans intended on it being done. Thanks to presidental reconstruction racism and teriorism lasted in the us till the mid 1900s.
