Reconstruction: Success Or Failures Or Success?

Reconstruction had multiple failures and some successes. It’s pretty much agreed on by many historians that the idea of reconstruction was a failure. The Civil War preserved the Union and freed the slaves. However, during Reconstruction, a lack of political focus on the effort failed to solve the sectional wounds, and the elimination of the freed slaves’ new gained civil liberties failed to bring about long-term racial integration. Through the primary sources of: The Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, Frederick Douglass Papers, Mississippi Black Code, and The Letter of The Secretary of War, we can get a better understanding of what exactly happened during the reconstruction
Reconstruction was the plan of Abraham Lincoln, who first proposed the 10% plan, which offered a way for Southern states to rejoin the Union. This plan stated that a state in rebellion against the U.S. federal government could be reintegrated into the Union with 10% of the 1860 vote count from that state had taken an oath of allegiance to the U.S. and the Union. Once Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson became president and had his own ideas for reconstruction. With the federal government starting to divide, it caused the goals of Reconstruction to fail Once former Confederates eventually worked their way into Congress, all progress took a turn for the worse. Moderates and conservatives wanted the South to be readily admitted into the Union and Congress. These Republicans also wanted more reforms than those Johnson was providing. On the other hand radical republicans wanted drastic change. They desired to “remake the South in the image of the North.” All the tension and different opinions in Congress led to little progress and even an impeachment trial of Andrew
Although it appeared at times that freed slaves would become to be considered equals with white, racism was allowed to take control of society. The rise of the Klu Klux Klan and other white supremacy groups, in combination with the Black Codes-southern states created to limit former slaves from traveling, voting and working in certain jobs-, began to intimidate freed slaves and push back at their civil liberties. These black codes provoked a fierce resistance among the freedmen and undermined support in the North for President Johnson’s Reconstruction policies. As the violence towards African Americans increased in the South, they became much less likely to not take the opportunity to vote or run in elections, which further destabilized the basic foundation that had just been established with the beginning of Reconstruction. By the 1870s, white northerners, tired of dealing with South’s racial problems, effectively abandoned Southern blacks to the mercies of people who had not long before thought of and treated them like dirt. At the end of Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws-laws that enforced racial segregation in the South- begin to become popular in multiple