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Reconstruction Era Slaves

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The questioning of whether slaves were free or still held in a different kind of captivity during the reconstruction period is still something many historians are discussing today. With the information learned, ones conclusion is that the slaves were considered free because the had the right to vote, own property, work for wages, and had laws to protect them, however in reality slaves were still trapped in hard times due to little education, money and still hated by many people of the Confederacy. Slaves were now considered Freedmen, and one male of each family was given 40 acres of land and one-hundred dollars to build a house. Those who let the Freedmen rent the land from them were also taking portions of their crops, this was called sharecropping. …show more content…
Some were leased to big corporations for construction, while others did sharecropping. The freedmen were pretty much isolated to the land they worked on. After the war the Confederacy’s economy was wrecked, and they were attacked by many economic troubles due to the abolishment of (physical) slavery. The banking systems were initially destroyed and the Confederacy’s currency was useless. Landowners had no money to pay the freedmen to work on the farms, nor could they borrow the money from the banks to pay them. This meant the freedmen were reluctant to work in the field for subsistence level wages. Most of the land was ruined and could not sustain crops, and poor harvest only made the issues worse. The Freedman’s Bureau was established, helping freedmen by letting them handle abandoned land. This didn’t help anything, causing freedmen to get into contracts with white landowners that expected the labor to be how it was during slavery. They “supervised” them at all times, Whitelaw Reid said most …show more content…
Before these amendments were added, those of the former Confederate states were required to include the abolition of slavery in their new state constitutions, however it did not prevent states from “practicing” slavery with the revised constitution. This is what the thirteenth amendment was for, it abolished slavery “within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” This amendment went into place on December 6th 1865. The fourteenth amendment merely stated that “any person born or naturalized in the United States” was considered an American citizen, making a majority of former slaves citizens. All citizen of the United States were under equal protection of the laws. States who failed to let freedmen vote, or do other acts of citizenship were punishable by reducing their representation in congress. The amendment also prevented many people “engaged in insurrection” (Men who had higher power in the war fighting against the Union.) From holding any position in the military or elected government positions without Two-thirds of the house of representatives and senate votes. The amendment was ratified and put into place on July 9th 1868. The fifteenth amendment was used to prevent the deprivation of voting to those of a different race, color or previous conditions of

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