Reconstruction and the West The post-Civil War South has been called the “New South.” In what ways did it succeed in reinventing itself? In what ways did it fail?

The south’s reconstruction failed for many reasons in my opinion. First off many states rejected the 13th Amendment. Furthermore, many of the southern states had no intentions of giving Blacks any type of true freedoms. Many states tried to make the African Americans as property-less as possible. They were not given the right to be on a jury. The second problem was the president and congress was not seeing “eye to eye” on how the reconstruction should be conducted. Many states were electing prominent military leaders along with political leaders from the war. Johnson knew this of course but buckled under the pressure because he wanted to hurry up and get reconstruction completed. The moderate republicans wanted the same things as the radical republicans but did not want to give the southern blacks too much power. They thought that giving the blacks in the south the power to vote that it would give an unfair advantage to the south. However, many moderate republicans did think that the south was too hard on their black populations and wanted some form of regulation. As a moderate republican they did not want to clash with the president or have a social revolution in the south. That is why the in 1865 the congress revamped the Freedmen’s Bureau to give emergency food and care. The south’s reconstruction failed because there was no one to make things right between all the parties. The south wanted to be part of the Union but on their terms. The moderate’s wanted the southern states back but on their terms while the radical’s held the same point of view too. Then there was the president. The President was put all of these people up against each other and later paid the price