Strengths and Weaknesses for the Reconstruction Period Essay

Post-Civil War, a fractured US was trying desperately to put itself back together to regain its stature as one of the most powerful and unified countries. Reconstruction was a hopeful endeavor at the start, with aspirations such as bringing the eleven states out of secession and back into Congress, granting the former Confederate leaders civil status, and giving legal rights and status to freedmen. However, the road to recovery was long and not without difficulty for our nation, and while adjusting for lingering racial tensions, some successes turned out to be failures.

Reconstruction kicked off in 1865 and was tasked with getting an entire country together and on its feet again after an internal war had shaken the American people to their core. Which, as we know looking back, was no walk in the park. The massive deaths of hundreds of thousands of people had those left behind resenting, grieving, and hating one another, the government, and change. The South had dissolved economically and politically and was frantically trying to find a way back into the swing of things. On top of everything else, there were now almost four million slaves trying to feel out of the society they had been freed into, despite not knowing how to make a living on their own. With the freedoms of the 13th Amendment in 1865, it was not only the freedmen who didn’t know what to do. Political leaders were in the hot seat to settle the concerns of the future. Leaders in politics brought forth their plans for Reconstruction, each one sure it was the answer to their prayers. President Abraham Lincoln was among those spitballing ideas and proposed his version of the plan for the nation's salvation. His was an open one, where he included that after conditions were met, southern states could “rejoin the Union if at least 10 percent of those who had cast ballots in the election of 1860 would take an oath of allegiance to the Union and accept emancipation. This minority could then create a loyal state government.” (Boyer, 16-1.1) This excluded higher-ranking officers of the state who had to apply for a presidential pardon to hold office or gain voting rights.

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The assassination of President Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre on April 14th, 1865 put a swift end to any hope of implementing the Lincoln Plan, or so everyone thought. Following his death, members of the Republican party came forward with their plans, claiming to be the Radical Republicans. These “Radical” members had goals on their docket. The first, was to make the South suffer for the Civil War, as they blamed them for the start of the war in the first place. The second is to provide aid and protection to the newly freed slaves coming into society. Three men were at the forefront of the Radical Republican charge, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and Andrew Johnson. Stevens was a member of the House of Representatives, urging land reform from the Southern estates that never made it past the rest of the Republicans, but his focal point for concern was for slaves to have economic opportunities now that they had joined a changed society. He hoped for them to be able to make a living on their own, with a fresh start, and have more experience making a name for themselves in business without the supervision of the “white man”. Supporting along the same lines was Senator Charles Sumner, who had “radical” hopes for African Americans in society, including fighting for their rights to citizenship. He felt that the “all men are created equal” concepts outlined in the Constitution were viable enough to apply to everyone. Well, for only men that is. “…This was the first time the word male was written into the constitution; to the women’s rights advocates, soman suffrage seemed a yet more distant prospect.” (Boyer, 16-1.4) Vice President turned President, Andrew Johnson was the one to bring the majority of Lincoln's Plan into the ring. However, not every Radical could get behind Johnson’s version of the plan, as they felt he was too concentrated on pardons and less concentrated on helping to politically and economically integrate the freedmen. Johnson was eventually impeached and Congress decided to take over the show. They came up with The Reconstruction Act, which was their best effort to officially claim the South. Under this Act, military districts were sprinkled throughout the southern regions and reported as an acting government for each region that had military forces, which helped enforce the second part of the act, where each state had to come up with a new constitution, to include changing the 14th amendment to give black men voting rights, all which guaranteed the safety of freedmen and lessen discrimination.

The Reconstruction Act sounded like a fairly good idea on behalf of the North, but the election of 1876 threw a curve ball at its permanence. The election was an extremely close race between Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes and came down to electoral votes. Congress, fearing a dispute over who got the electoral votes to take home the win, suggested an informal compromise, which became the Compromise of 1877. Hayes got the votes, as long as the Republicans pulled out their troops from the South. However, without the strong military government representing the freedmen, the Radicals feared for them. Supremacy-minded Southerners saw this opportunity to continue to practice racism and discrimination against freed slaves but they had to find a way around the laws. They couldn’t blatantly disregard what Congress had approved in the Reconstruction Act, but they found a way around the protection it had given colored Southerners, hence the development of the “black codes”. “…the ‘black codes’ revealed white southern intentions. They showed what ‘home rule’ would have been like without federal interference.” (Boyer, 16-1.2) With no one to reinforce the laws in the Reconstruction Act, the South became more democratic than ever in rejection of the Radicals and northern Republicans. It was then that Reconstruction ended. People had tapped out after making the laws and slacked on the follow-through of enforcement. “With the hindsight of a century, historians continued to regard Reconstruction as a failure, though of a different kind. No longer viewed as a misguided scheme that collapsed because of Radical excess, Reconstruction is now widely seen as a democratic experiment that did not go far enough.” (Boyer, 16-5.3)

As for myself, I am conflicted as to labeling this era as a complete success. Granted, the successes achieved were eventually proven to be monumental in providing a backbone for later civil rights for not only colored men and women but all women’s suffrage as well. The only failure that changed everything was the Compromise of 1877. I understand why Congress had the idea, but it gave Southerners the freedom to grow arrogant in the way of finding loopholes around the law. This led to the suppression of freedmen by the Democratic party long after the Compromise was in effect and it was a setback in the fight for political, economic, and social freedom for black people living in the South. I guess you can’t have success without failure though, so in total, Reconstruction was a good start on the road to rights in the South.