African Americans Were Truly Free Essay

The definition of freedom is the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved. This is exactly what the freedmen and women were experiencing. The 13th amendment and document A say that slavery is abolished and owning slaves is illegal. This links so perfectly with the definition of freedom. This also means that slaves were truly free during reconstruction, and will bet extending on that in this essay. Secondly there are many pieces of evidence that also state that slaves were free and had rights. First and foremost, in document A and the 14th amendment it states that African Americans are now given the the right to vote. This means that they were not only free they had rights. By giving them the right to vote it shows that they are truly becoming citizens and that there beginning to live a normal life. Also in document D is states that thousands of African Americans were in local or state office. This …show more content…
In the United States, the Black Codes were laws passed by Democrat-controlled Southern states in 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War. These laws affected and restricting African Americans' freedom, and of compelling them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or debt. Secondly sharecropping was stopping them from being truly free. After the Civil War, former slaves sought jobs, and planters sought laborers. The absence of cash or an independent credit system led to the creation of sharecropping.High interest rates, unpredictable harvests, and unscrupulous landlords and merchants often kept tenant farm families severely indebted, requiring the debt to be carried over until the next year or the next. Laws favoring landowners made it difficult or even illegal for sharecroppers to sell their crops to others besides their landlord, or prevented sharecroppers from moving if they were indebted to their landlord. This is why slaves weren't truly