Premium Essay

Was Reconstruction A Success Or Failure Essay

Submitted By
Words 811
Pages 4
The Success and Failures of Reconstruction In the aftermath of the Civil War an arduous task of reconstruction lay ahead for the United States. Subsequently, the North and the South faced the many changes that were instituted. Mainly, it was the friction between the North and the South that prohibited success. Furthermore, Andrew Johnson's presidency evoked havoc on the then vulnerable country. Despite all, the addition of amendments resulted in some progress to the era; yet, states showed oppositions and formed groups and acts to disregard the amendments. In all, the Reconstruction era was deemed partly successful and partial failure; yet it did nullify slavery, granted voting rights to all males and ended segregation.
After Abraham Lincoln's …show more content…
Therefore, Grant tried to shift the political focus to other issues like the economy and foreign affairs. The need for this especially arose since the United States suffered a major economic depression in 1873. However, the United States was constantly swept back to the reality and had to deal with the issue due to constant reminders via the KKK. Markedly, the Reconstruction came to an end during Rutherford B. Hayes presidency after he withdrew the last three Republican governments from the South.
The Era of Reconstruction failed to completely unite the nation and destroy segregation known as the Jim Crow. However, the added amendments did achieve to abolish slavery and grant equal voting rights to all male. Despite these additions, the United States still faced a rough Reconstruction challenge that would take another century to fulfill. Furthermore, the Women Movements initiated harsh attempts to gain their suffrage during this era. To say that reconstructing a nation after a war with a foreign country is challenging, uniting and satisfying a divided nation is henceforth extremely

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

Was Reconstruction A Success Or Failure Essay

...The Reconstruction Era was from 1865 to 1877, following the Civil War. In this era, the United States experienced reconstruction to help restore its socioeconomic and physical environment from the aftermath of the war’s damage. Some goals included ensuring civil rights to free African Americans through the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, reuniting the Southern States into the Union, and trying to restructure and build the ties between the state and federal governments. However, Reconstruction also led to the failure to protect African Americans through the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups, and the economic success that was gained during Reconstruction was not evenly distributed and was unstable. Reconstruction became successful...

Words: 544 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Was Reconstruction A Success Or Failure Essay

...Reconstruction is the period that follows the civil war and is known as the rebuilding of the United States. It was a time full of great pain. Even after the military conflict ended reconstruction was still a war in many different ways. The struggle was waged by radical northerners who wanted to punish the Southerners who greatly wanted to preserve their way of life. Was reconstruction a success or a failure? In many ways, it was both. Reconstruction was a success because it restored the United States. Reconstruction also settled the states’ rights vs. federalism debate that was an issue since the 1970s. (Reconstruction, UShistory.org) In other ways Reconstruction was known as a failure. Radical Republican legislation initially failed to defend former slaves from white discrimination and failed to create changes to the South. The sharecropping system, which was a legal form of slavery that kept African Americans secured to land owned by wealthy white farmers, became common in the South. With minute economic power, African Americans had to fight for their rights by themselves,...

Words: 1180 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Reconstruction

...The essay below was a very strong essay answering the question about Reconstruction. It was an actual essay (word for word) written by one of the students in class. It received 28.5 points out of 30. This was a great essay; about the only comment I would write was that the thesis in the introduction could have been a little more direct: As a country, America has gone though many political changes throughout her lifetime. Leaders have come and gone, all of them having different objectives and plans for the future. As history takes its course, though, most all of these “revolutionary movements” come to an end. One such movement was Reconstruction. Reconstruction was a time period in America consisting of many leaders, goals and accomplishments. Though, like all things in life, it did come to an end, the resulting outcome has been labeled both a success and a failure. When Reconstruction began in 1865, a broken America had just finished fighting the Civil War. In all respects, Reconstruction was mainly just that. It was a time period of “putting back the pieces”, as people say. It was the point where America attempted to become a full running country once more. This, though, was not an easy task. The memory of massive death was still in the front of everyone’s mind, hardening into resentment and sometimes even hatred. The south was virtually non-existent politically or economically, and searching desperately for a way back in. Along with these things, now living...

Words: 1268 - Pages: 6

Premium Essay

Essay On Reconstruction After Civil War

...Essay 1 The years following the Civil War were laden with political, social, and economic strife, especially in the South. While the events of Reconstruction provided political, social, and economic gains for various groups, Reconstruction can only be described as a minor success due to its many shortcomings and failures. The most notable successes of Reconstruction include reunification of the Union, passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, and establishment of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Reuniting the Union was Lincoln’s and many other Northerners’ main focus after the Civil War, although the last ex-confederate state was not readmitted until 1870. The passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments officially outlawed slavery, granted freedmen equal protection under the law, and gave black males the right to vote. While these helped equalize blacks and whites politically, the Freedmen’s Bureau was established to help provide economic and social assistance to former slaves. The bureau offered necessities like housing and food, but more importantly built schools and provided education and employment opportunities to blacks following the Civil War. With much southern resistance to the new political rights of former slaves, the...

Words: 606 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

American Dream

...that each region adapted the traditions and/or beliefs of those who settled in that area by maintaining dance, music, and crafts. Many English settlers did not respect the Native American cultures, and were seen as uncivilized and/or savages. Basically there was a clash of cultures, with new ideas pushing away old ways and mayor cultures oppressing others. b. Immigration and migration shape the early United States, for example: The first person to be processed at Ellis Island was Annie Moore who arrived from Ireland on January 1, 1892. As the first immigrant Annie Moore was given a $10 gold piece. She soon was married and gave birth to eleven children. While Annie Moore was the first immigrant, she was definitely not alone. Some famous immigrants who arrived through Ellis Island included Charles Chaplin, Cary Grant, Harry Houdini, Walt Disney, Albert Einstein, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is easy to see from this list how immigrants have changed the face of the United States. All of these famous people contributed to the United States, giving a bright future for innovative contributions to the young nation. c. The most important change in the United States ‘ involvement in foreign affairs from 1789 to 1877 was expansion of its territory. Marked by a treaty with France buying Louisiana territory doubling the United States, and other treaties with France, and Britain. The Treaty of Guadalupe added more territory and Texas being annexed. d. In the period 1789 until...

Words: 3352 - Pages: 14

Premium Essay

Vgfd

...Civil War Essay Prompts Reconstruction Historian Synopses: • Dunning School (Traditional): Dunning and Moore. It is a Tragic Era. The Southerners were tortured. The two underlying foundations: (1) the South should have been readmitted quickly after its defeat (2) there should have been no discussion of racial equality for the freedmen. He is accused of being racist and pro-southern. The Republicans were divided between leniency (conservatives) and punishment (scalawags and carpetbaggers – radicals). The freedmen are not to be blamed because they were pawns and were used by the Republicans. Once a freedman voted for a Republican, he was not paid back for his loyalty. Corrupt and incompetent Reconstruction governments that were eventually overthrown when Democrats regained control and the Tragic Era could come to an end. Bitterness and hatred between the races resulted. South was converted into a colonial appendage. What the Radicals were trying to do was dominate the South as though it were a colony. Moore emphasizes the punishment of North on South. This is the very negative Traditional school • Revisionist School: Simpkins & Woody. In spite of the Traditional charges of incompetence, the Reconstruction governments achieved a lot. Most wrote new constitutions that introduced long-needed laws about school, administration, civil and judicial rights, etc. They were successful. The Reconstruction governments were not controlled by blacks. In no Southern...

Words: 1232 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

American Life During and Post-Civil War

...Veer Shah AP United States History DBQ Essay #3: “American period between 1860-1880” The historic period prior to the 1860s was the most underlying era in American society as it led to the bloodiest war in the American history, the Civil war. Prior to the Civil war, the American politics were sectionally divided between the Northern Republicans and the Southern Democrats. The political culture was almost saturated as both sections had realized that the numerous compromises would only provoke questions and dissimilarities between them, with the largely interfered question of slavery and suffrage. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had been implemented as a nationwide direction towards admitting states with reference the 36° 30´ latitude line, either as a free-state (above line) or as a slave state (below the line). Despite of the temporary success of the compromise of 1820, it was repealed by the Stephen A. Douglas in 1854 in his Kansas-Nebraska Act. Likewise, the Compromise of 1850, created by the Great Compromiser, Henry Clay, was an effort to preserve the Union by settling the issue of slavery in the newly acquired territories from the Mexican-American War. Although it assured a temporary peaceful settlement between the sections, it failed to give birth to the Civil war and the rise in sectionalism. Although all these compromises had served their desired intents, politically as well as socially, in turn, they only played a catalyst role in increasing the tensions...

Words: 2988 - Pages: 12

Premium Essay

Discuss the Reasons Why the Eu Was Awarded the Peace Nobel Prize in 2012. Did the Eu Deserve the Award?

...Discuss the reasons why the EU was awarded the Peace Nobel Prize in 2012. Did the EU deserve the award? In this essay we will be discussing on how the EU has come about since its first came about and the successes and failures it has had since then. Then we will be linking this to what the Nobel peace prize is and try and explain on the reasons the EU has been awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2012, and evaluate to discuss on if the EU deserved the award. The Nobel Prize is a conventional annual international awards given in a number of categories by Swedish and Norwegian committees in achievements and recognition of academic, peace, cultural and/or scientific advances Firstly, we can understand the background of the European union from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community made in 1951 and 1958 from these Six countries of Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The EU is a group of liberal democratic countries that have come together in order to improve the living conditions of its members. It was created in the outcome of the second world war one of its first agendas was to improve the economy and its trade and to create an economic corporation. The idea of making a country to work together and trade therefore making them interdependent and avoid conflict with each other. This was created in order to avoid the bloody conflict European countries faced e.g. Germany, France and bring a long lasting peace. ...

Words: 2216 - Pages: 9

Premium Essay

Memory In American Culture

...After obtaining power over the state, dominant discourse was centred on class struggle (Wang, 2008, p. 789). Propaganda and education presented the CCP’s journey to power as a “revolution” (p. 789) against the oppression of the Chinese people under Dynastic rule and the corruptness of the KMT. This was done to inspire confidence in communist leadership, differentiating themselves as the sole “vanguards” (p. 789) of Chinese ethnic-nationalism. This shows an instrumental use of collective memory of the events leading up to independence, heavily centred on the struggle and eventual victory against would-be oppressors was implemented to shore up legitimacy for CCP rule (Wang, 2008, p. 787). With news of troubles in Eastern European communist states in the 1980s and personal experiences of suffering under the CCP during the Cultural Revolution, faith and appeal of the communist ideology started eroding, eventually externalised in the pro-democratic Tiananmen Square protests and massacre in 1989 (Friedman, 2008, p. 396; Yu, 2014, p. 1175). Therefore, a shift in the balance of global...

Words: 1289 - Pages: 6

Free Essay

It Management

...son of a sharecropper, was born into poverty in Sandersville, Georgia, on in 1887. He was one of 13 children of William and Mariah (Hall) Poole; his father was a sharecropper, and his mother was a domestic worker. He grew up in the same town I grew up in as a child and where I was appointed in 2009 as the first African American in history to serve as the Chairman of the Board of Commissioners, Cordele, Georgia. He attended school only through the fourth grade and dropped out to begin working in sawmills and brickyards. At an early age, Elijah witnessed extreme prejudice and violence toward blacks. He experienced lynchings, racist employers, marginal wages, and other social and economic maladies which all played a role in his exodus from Cordele. This essay will explore how Poole’s early life in Cordele played key role in shaping in role in the Nation of Islam, leadership, and later life and legacy. Elijah Poole Muhammad’s leadership transformed the Nation of Islam. Elijah Poole Muhammad’s early life began when his father, William Poole, Sr. and Mariah Hall joined in holy matrimony on January 9, 1887 in Sandersville, Georgia. William’s father, Irwin was a slave and was passed down as a fourteen year old youth to be a perpetual servant to Jane Swint. Irwin married a fair-skinned mulatto woman named Peggy, who gave birth to William Poole, Sr. Mariah’s mother, Ellen, was a mulatto, fathered by a slave master who had raped her enslaved mother. Ellen was very light in...

Words: 2022 - Pages: 9

Premium Essay

Heritage Language

...Whenever a discussion on identity is introduced, the most-cited poem in Korea is “The Flower” by Chunsu Kim. He sings of being himself as becoming a colorful and fragrant flower. To be the flower that will rightly represent his identity, he needs someone to call his name. In this poem, identity is not seen as something that is solid and concrete but as something that is situated and constructed by others, a glimpse of poststructuralist view on identity. Recently, language learning has been seen as participation and negotiation of self (see Higgins, forthcoming; Kinginger, 2004; Lam, 2000; Morita, 2004; Ohara, 2001; Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000; and Solé, 2007 among others). The trend is resonated in the growing interest in language learner identity and the studies in narratives. In this paper, a case of heritage language learner will be investigated upon the theoretical frame of poststructuralism. Narrative inquiry will be used to analyze how she negotiates her learner identity. The purpose of this paper is two-fold: First, by looking at the struggle a language learner makes to acquire her heritage language, I reclaim the centrality of identity in defining heritage language learners. Second, to widen the horizons of narrative studies to the cyber space as it provides an ample source of easily accessible data and it has become one of the commonplace media of daily communication. Heritage Language Learners and Identity To refer to the Heritage Language Learners (HLLs), various...

Words: 4079 - Pages: 17

Premium Essay

Religion and Theology

... The church of Laodicea was located a wealthy business place. This resulted in a materialistic church that started to boast for its success as well as tapping into God’s power. Jesus Christ condemned the church of Laodicea due to its lack of awareness of the spiritual wealth need. The church was located in a wealthy city and this resulted in the believers being immature, self satisfied and lacking vision. The present essay gives an interpretation of Revelation 13: 14-22. Socio-historical context Laodicea city was located in South-western Asia Minor on one of the ancient highways that was connecting Ephesus and Syria. At the time the letter to Laodicea was being written, the city of Laodicea already existed and had lasted for some hundred years. The city of Laodicea was founded by King Antiochus II during (261-246BC).The city of Laodicea was famous for its riches and wealth. This wealth was as a result of black wool garments’ production that took place in the city. Under the rule of Roman, Laodicea was made a banking center, and its residents mainly associated themselves with black wool production. The city was associated with black wool production, which was the raw material for making garments. Due to its riches and wealth, the city became a self-sufficient city. After the destructions caused by the earthquake in 60AD, Laodicea city due to its self-sufficiency refused the financial help that Rome was offering to its neighboring town for reconstruction. Apart from its wealth,...

Words: 1732 - Pages: 7

Premium Essay

Reseach Paper

...RECRUITMENT TO POSTS IN GRADES 17 & 16 UNDER THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, 1971 ENGLISH ESSAY Maximum marks: 100 C SS .C O M .P Note: Write an essay in ENGLISH on ONE of the following: 1. Man as part of a design infinitely vaster than himself. 2. Knowledge demands love as its complement. 3. The amusement mania. 4. The art of feature films made in Pakistan. 5. Art and Religion. 6. Education of freedom. 7. Brain-washing. 8. The lessons of the past. 9. Requisites for social progress in Pakistan. 10. How words change our lives? 11. Man is condemned to be free. 12. Leaders and followers. K Time allowed: 3 hours ENGLISH ESSAY EXAMINATION 1972 Maximum marks: 100 C SS .C O M .P Write an essay in English on One of the following: 1. Relevance of Islam to Science. 2. The sanctity of law. 3. Competitive results of planned economy? 4. The sick soul. 5. The strategy of political warfare. 6. “If’ in History. 7. Psychology and its social meaning. 8. Reverence for life. 9. International morality. 10. The divided self and the process of its unification. 11. Statesmen and Diplomatists. 12. The foundations of the feature. K Time allowed: 3 hours ENGLISH ESSAY EXAMINATION 1973 Time allowed: 3 hours Maximum marks: 100 1. (a) Make an outline for writing an Essay in English on One of the following subjects: (b) Write the Essay on the subject you have selected more or less on the basis of the Outline you have...

Words: 4558 - Pages: 19

Premium Essay

Assess the Relationship Between War-Fighting and Nation-Building.

... CONCLUSION 10 BIBLIOGRAPHY 11 ASSESS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WAR-FIGHTING AND NATION-BUILDING. Nothing is, and will remain in such short supply in the greater majority of the polities of the world’s ‘countryside’, as a sense of political community; and yet no such crucial term as ‘nation building’ has of recent been subjected to so much trivialisation and casual usage. This essay attempts to lay out what it is that nation building entails, as a background to assessing whatever linkage it may have with war fighting, causally or by coincidence. I outline existing schools of thought on nation building and demonstrate that it bore a clear relationship with war fighting especially in the dusk of the extensive empires of Western Europe. I argue that the United States had a much rosier experience by virtue of its geographical isolation, and of being constituted by an immigrant population, and as such, it may the least qualified actor to enforce nation building however construed. The essay points out the prevailing fallacy of conflating short-term post-conflict reconstruction with protracted nation building and state making and concludes by asserting that, recent ‘successes’ in war fighting and ‘nation building’ are attributable more to conjunction than to causation. General Models Nation Building and Political Development It is necessary to outline essential ingredients of nation building that can furnish us with a yardstick that we can use to ascertain...

Words: 4569 - Pages: 19

Premium Essay

Niotjin

...he personally had to do with that success, and where he failed, and why, remain to be established. That he was a political figure of enormous influence and importance, belonging in many ways to an age earlier than the 20th century, and that he fitted uneasily into the constraints of British party politics until his moment came in 1940 are not in doubt. Until recently his reputation during the years from 1940 onward was scarcely questioned. But now historians are beginning to reassess his career in just the same way as Churchill himself tried to revise T. B. Macaulay's account of the Duke of Marlborough by writing a multivolumed Life of his distinguished ancestor (completed in 1938). Churchill's record both before 1939 and after 1945 was for the most part undistinguished. But as Anthony Storr writes: "In 1940 Churchill became the hero that he had always dreamed of being. … In that dark time, what England needed was not a shrewd, equable, balanced leader. She needed a prophet, a heroic visionary, a man who could dream dreams of victory when all seemed lost. Winston Churchill was such a man; and his inspirational quality owed its dynamic force to the romantic world of phantasy in which he had his true being." Early Life Winston Churchill was born on Nov. 30, 1874, at Blenheim Palace—the home given by Queen Anne to his ancestor the Duke of Marlborough. He was the eldest son of Lord Randolph Churchill, a Tory Democrat who achieved early success as a rebel in his...

Words: 2123 - Pages: 9