How Did The Process Of Reconstruction

The period after the Civil War in the late 19th century is most commonly known as the period of Reconstruction. After the Civil War, the defeated South was left in complete ruin; physically, socially, and politically. While black Southerners, who were for the most part former slaves with little to nothing but the clothes on their backs, tried to start a new life as free persons the white Southerners strived to restore “local and regional autonomy and white supremacy.” (Brinkley, 371) Aids under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson were the first government steps towards Reconstruction in 1864. A number of tendencies and events led to the undermining and eventually the end of Reconstruction efforts by 1877. Reconstruction was nothing more than just an envisioned change in the social structure from the dominant white Americans to the lower class African
He started with some form of amnesty to Southerners but Congress did not agree with his further actions of “Johnson governments” and his attempt for restoration ended there. Meanwhile, the South grew angry over the North’s reluctance to abolish slavery and their refusal to grant suffrage to any blacks. Meanwhile, black codes controlled the South. Black codes allowed local officials to imprison unemployed blacks, fine them for vagrancy, and hire them out to to private employers to satisfy the fines. (Brinkley, 376) That’s when the congressional plan came into play and reacted by expanding the Freedmen’s Bureau to nullify the forced agreements of the black codes. Shortly after, Congress passed the first Civil Rights Act, declaring blacks as citizens of the United States which was shortly after incorporated into the Constitution as the fourteenth amendment. The fifteenth amendment was ratified soon after, granting suffrage to any citizen, disregarding any account of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” (Brinkley,