After the Civil War ended and the death of President Lincoln, the United States faced the challenge of re-unifying the Union, Confederacy and formerly enslaved people into political and economic life. The biggest problem faced was creating equality among the north and south; with the position of slavery, and newly acquired freedoms. Wanting to maintain momentum and keep control radical republicans had pushed for supports from African Americans in helping them gain the right to vote. They also had passed laws preventing union soldiers from voting, preventing most southerners from voting against republicans. Congress created a lengthy process of rules that the southern states had to do to reenter the Union. Southerners were obviously at unrest
When blacks were given the right to vote, it was only somewhat successful. Many blacks did use their new political power to vote as it is shown in Harper's Weekly (Document G), but whites still tried to stop them. Literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and fear caused by the Ku Klux Klan were used to keep blacks from exercising their right to vote. Another issue of reconstruction was the banking and currency system. In an attempt to uniform the currency, Senator John Sherman gave a speech saying that with "a currency and a medium of exchange, we shall have a broader and more generous nationality" (Document B). At the time many states had their own currency and a change needed to be made to unite the states. A sense of nationality was needed as the nation was in turmoil after the attempted secession of the South. Reconstruction came to an end in 1877 with the Compromise of 1877. Rutherford Hayes became president for agreeing to end federal support for Southern Republicans and building a transcontinental railroad. In this compromise he also withdrew troops from the South. This, along with the rejection of laws protecting blacks from discrimination, brought reconstruction to an end in 1877.
After the conclusion of America’s Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln pitched the idea of “Reconstruction,” which would bring the southern states back into the Union. President Lincoln, according to many radical Republicans, was too gentle on the south. The government was divided on how to solve the issue of readmitting the southern states back into the Union. In addition to that, the government was not certain on what rights to enumerate to the newly emancipated slaves. These issues became more difficult to solve after President Lincoln was murdered. Lincoln’s successor, Vice President Andrew Johnson, was a Tennessee Democrat that lacked respect of the Republican Congress. The legislative and executive branches of the American government
Question 1: After the civil war, during the period of Reconstruction in the South it was chaotic causing the creation of new issues and problems between the people of the South. One of the issues that came to existence was that of a one sided dominant political party that controlled the South and everything in it, the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party was the party of the wealthy aristocratic white man which had the money and intelligence to control and influence the local/state government to do as they want it to do. Because in the South there were two different classes of the white people, the upper white class that was well known within their community that was well educated and had excessive amounts of money to use.
The Civil War marked a monumental period in United States History. President Lincoln found himself attempting to preserve the union, while the Confederates from the south were fighting to create their own separate country. This war was primarily caused by one issue: slavery. The northerners did not expect the power of the South; it was not the quick war that they had expected. Both sides had their fair share of victories and losses. From the beginning of the war the Confederacy had a strong advantage of military leadership. After turning points in the war such as the battles of Gettysburg and Antietam the power shifted to the Union, eventually leading to the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House. During the war, Lincoln was able to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves. The freeing of the slaves resulted in a tremendous change in the lifestyle of southerners, both black and white. White southerners no longer had free labor, and black southerners were free to start their own lives. However, many of these free blacks did not know what to do with themselves after they were freed (McPherson 105). They did not have any land or money, and the majority were not educated. They were promised land from the union, but they never received this land (PBS 1). Without land it was nearly impossible to gain money in the southern economy at this time. These blacks were technically free citizens, but they were nowhere
Congress comes in to play in December 1865. The Congress was made up mostly of Republicans and they refused to let past Confederates to take their seats in Congress at this time. This marked the beginning of Radical Reconstruction or sometimes known as Congressional Reconstruction. The president and the congress did not agree on many issues. Congress overrode President Johnson on the Civil Rights Act of 1866, The Fourteenth Amendment, and the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill. The Fourteenth Amendment spelled out rights of both black and white citizens as equal. It prolonged Federal powers for the enforcement of civil rights. States that approved the Fourteenth Amendment were considered reconstructed, and Tennessee did so. President Johnson advised other southern states to oppose doing this. Congress passed many laws to limit President Johnson’s powers. They passed the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 which set new
The Reconstruction of the United States was an experiment in interracial democracy. The Civil War victory by the North brought to a close the establishment of slavery but, in turn, opened Pandora's box. The questions and answers pertaining to economical, political, and social equality for freedmen had yet to be addressed on a practical level. The Southern states, still bitter from defeat and economic stresses, strongly rejected the societal transformations thrust upon them. The Northern states' focal point remained on the necessary political powers by which to enact constitutional amendments, therefore empowering the federal government with the capabilities to enforce the principles of equal rights. On paper, slavery was abolished, but in reality, African-Americans were once again enslaved on a ship without the security or knowledge of what the next port held for them. The Civil War had not truly ended. It was still active under the guise of Reconstruction, but now coats and flags of many colors existed, and battles were merely fought on alternate battlefields. A war of ideas lacking in substantial practicality resulted in repetitious battles being won and loss. The motivating forces that set Reconstruction into motion were for the most part the North's quest for unification among states', and the emancipation of slaves. However, the primary objective of Reconstruction was to grant political, economical, and social opportunities for the freedmen. The
One of the key factor contributing to the Civil War was States Rights. This refers to the struggle between federal government and individual states over political power. One side argued for greater state’s rights and those arguing felt that the Federal Government needed to have more control over states. The states felt they should have the right to decide if they were willing to accept certain federal acts. Meaning that states had the right to rule federal acts unconstitutional. The federal government denied states this right. When nullification would not work and states felts that they were no longer respected, they moved towards secession from the Union. The southern people were viewed as democratic and depended slaves for the plantations, they were devoted to agriculture and shipped cotton up north and favored low tariffs.
ship the cotton but this meant that the South had to pay the North to
The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments state, “The United States Constitution officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery to this day. The United States Constitution declared that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are American citizens including African Americans.the United States Constitution prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” This is the part where it really express the north winning the battle. As you had the south making it very difficult to change their ways and thoughts of slavery, there was nothing at this point that was going to stop the republican party to keep going in this direction. As each amendment was made, the south was do little things such as the Jim Crow law to get around them. The Jim Crow Law was made in many states that was their to segregate the whites and the blacks. When smaller things like this were made the republicans came up with amendments or smaller laws such as Blacks vs Boarders to stop the south from slowing down the reconstruction process.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”1 These words, spoken by Abraham Lincoln, foreshadowed the war that became the bloodiest in all of the United State's history. The Civil War was a brutal conflict between the North and South; brother against brother. With slavery as the root cause, Southern states had seceded from the Union and were fighting for their independence. They became the Confederate States of America (CSA) and were a force to be reckoned with. The Union, however, put up a fierce struggle to preserve the country. If the Civil War was to be a war of attrition, the North had the upper hand because of its large population, industrialization, raw materials, railroad mileage, and navy. But if the war was short lived, the
As soon as President Andrew Johnson signed a Proclamation which promised order and peace to the United States on August 20th, 1865, the Civil War was formally ended. Though the Confederates had been dominated, there was still a battle to preserve the Southern lifestyle against the impeding Northern republican ideals. President Lincoln had plans to peacefully restore the country to the Union it was prior to the war, but his assassination created set-backs to his plan. While both the North and the South were working toward reconciliation in the nation, the north was more interested in creating a controlling, centralized government while the south was concerned with protecting and preserving their southern customs and ideals. While there were many attempts at reconstructing, the Reconstruction era ultimately failed at unifying the Union under agreed terms due to the constant disagreements between the north and the south.
During reconstruction the United States was divided on social issues, presidential campaigns were won and loss on these issues during this period. The struggle for development of African Americans and how they initiated change in political, economic, educational, and social conditions to shape their future and that of the United States. (Dixon, 2000) The South’s attempts to recover from the Civil war included determining what to do with newly freed slaves and finding labor to replace them. The task of elevating the Negro from slave to citizen was the most enormous one which had ever confronted the country. Local governments implemented mechanisms of discrimination to combat citizenship
American history was radically changed when President Abraham Lincoln gave the very famous Emancipation Proclamation. This lead to the freedom of millions of African Americans who sought the same liberty and equality that was promised to everyone under the United States constitution. These liberties, of course, were not achieved right away. During the Reconstruction era, which is the decade right after the Civil War, many of the recently freed slaves did not have money, property, or credit. They could not buy the necessary things to enjoy their freedom, which lead to sharecropping, a glorified form of slavery. Sharecropping is a system of agriculture in which a landowner lets a tenant use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on their portion of land (Sharecropping).. Added on to this, facilities were segregated to prevent the black man from enjoying the same things as the white man due to Jim Crow laws which were enacted after the Reconstruction era. The struggle for equality and rights continued during the Gilded Age (1873-1900), the Progressive Era (1900-1920s), the Great Depression (1930s), WWII (1939-1945), the beginning of the Cold War (1947), up until the Civil Rights movement (1954-1968). At this point in history, African Americans fought for their rights and changed the course of American history. Music was a very important tool used by African Americans that helped achieve this. Ever since the slavery times, music was a big part of their culture
When the American Civil War began in the spring of 1861, those flocking to enlistment stations in states both north and south chiefly defined their cause as one of preservation. From Maine to Minnesota, young men joined up to preserve the Union. From Virginia to Texas, their future foes on the battlefield enlisted to preserve a social order, a social order at its core built on the institution of slavery and racial superiority . Secession had not been framed by prominent Southerners like Robert Toombs as a defensive measure to retain the fruits of the revolution against King George, a fight against those who sought to “intrique insurrection with all its nameless horrors.” (Toombs Speech) On January 1, 1863, when Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect the war became a revolution. The Union, the soldiers in blue fought to preserve could no longer exist. On every mile of soil, they would return to the Stars and Stripes from that moment on, the fabric of society would be irrevocably changed. In May of 1865, with the abolition of slavery engrained into the Constitution with the passage of the 13th Amendment, the Confederate armies of Lee and Johnston disbanded, and Lincoln dead of an assassin’s bullet; this change was the only certainty the torn fabric of the newly reunited states was left to be resown. Andrew Johnson and Southern Democrats believed the revolution of 1863 had gone far enough. Radical Republicans and African-Americans sought instead to bring it to
The secession of South Carolina on December 20, 1860, by a vote of 169-0 was a response to the election of Abraham Lincoln of 1860. Lincoln perceived as an abolitionist wanted to contain slavery rather than ending it. The majority party above the Mason-Dixon line were Republicans and below were primarily Democrats and Republicans were viewed as abolitionists. The election of a Republican threatened the South’s status quo. The primary catalyst for secession was based on slavery. Different social cultures and political beliefs developed due to the South’s intimate and reliant relationship on slavery. Southern whites feared the end of slavery and this paranoia was shared among plantation slave owners and white Yeoman farmers. Southern whites felt that the North were threatening the supposed tranquility of the South. The South’s agrarian economy, honor, and independence were believed to be in danger. Slavery was intertwined with the South’s social, cultural, and economic makeup. As a result of slavery, the South developed a paternalistic culture and racial ideology of white supremacy. The perceived notion that the North was influencing it’s political and social beliefs on the South lead them to believe that secession was the only act of self-preservation. The growing differences between the South and North made it difficult to negotiate. This fear was exaggerated and accelerated the South’s eventual implosion. The South believed that without slavery it would self-destruct and