Mark Passerini Period 1 American History Reconstruction Essay

In 1865 the civil war ended and plunged into a time when political wars were fought between the north and the south; when Presidents were killed and impeached and the north tried to change the south. This was the unsuccessful era of reconstruction, it did not successfully change the political society of the south, it unsuccessfully stopped freeman dependence on white southerners and most of all it frequently was unable to bring true equality to the nation.

After the civil war, the South started to elect the white southern officials and was trying to get back into congress to gain more political power. While they were in power, they created policies such as black codes to become prominent throughout the South. This returned the freedmen back to the same state they were in before the Emancipation Proclamation. Although the black codes were outlawed by the Fourteenth Amendment, they still attest to the southerners resistance to the Freedman gaining rights in the southern states. Another way that the southerners denied the freedmen rights in the South were the literacy tests that stopped many a Freedman from gaining a true foot hold in American politics. If freedmen could not easily vote the Democrats could regain power in the South with the votes of white southerners. But the most critical blow to the reform of southern society is sharecropping. Sharecropping allowed many land owners to keep poor whites and freedman in a cycle of dept that few could escape, and help preserve the power of the souths landowners. Other events also helped create a South that favored Democrats, is Presidents Grants administration. Grant was surrounded by many

Mark Passerini Period 1 American History Reconstruction Essay

scandals and controversy that not only weakened the Republican Party but allowed more and more democrats to find their way to political power. These scandals included many people close to him such as his brother-in-law and secretary of war. With the weakening and fragmentation of the Republican Party white democrats had been gaining ground. With more support, the Democrats sought to exploit further the weakness and corruption of the Republican Party and strengthen the southern democrats.

While the freedman had the ability to decide things for themselves, they lacked the financial independence to free themselves from the rich plantation owners. The landowners of the South were more often than not unwilling to sell land to the freedmen, who greatly wanted financial freedom and autonomy, but the rich land owners wanted a poor and easily controllable workforce. Thus, sharecropping and tenet farming became a widely accepted compromise that would usually end with the wealthy southerner keeping the poor freedmen and poor whites in a cycle of debt. They were kept in dept by a merchants credit, this meant that the sharecropper would get half of his crop but would still need to repay his debts from the previous year and buy new seed and tools for the new season ahead. This cycle of debt kept many freedmen in a kind of legalized slave labor that would keep them under the thumb of the rich land owners of the South.

The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery. W. E. B. Du Bois. Though freedmen gained rights through the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments towards the end of reconstruction it can be seen that their rights

Mark Passerini Period 1 American History Reconstruction Essay

recede due to the Republican Party losing power over the south and the implementation of literacy tests and the fall of southern governments to the Redeemers. Many African Americans begin to have their rights slowly slip away due to steps back from a real system of equality in the South. Politically, literacy tests were in effect preventing many freedmen the option to vote. Many in the north felt they had done enough for the Souths freedmen and felt that they should be able to fend for themselves, by this time the Redeemers have taken back the Souths legislature and reconstruction will be ending soon.

In this time of political and social turmoil, the north failed to truly free the freedmen from rich whites of the south, who still had control in the form of dept. They failed to make a lasting social change in the south that would prevent rule by rich southerners. They most of all failed to deliver the rights promised to African Americans who would not really see their rights advance until the 1960s.