Reconstruction Essay
"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.”- President Abraham Lincoln (1864). Reconstruction occurred between 1865 and 1877 following the Civil War. The Civil War ended and the United States faced the difficult task of reintegrating former slaves back into society. The successes and failures of reconstruction negatively impacted the political, social, and economic lives of newly-frees African Americans in the South. Slaves were socially impacted by Blacks Codes because they controlled everything Freedmen wanted or were able to do. Slaves were told they were free and their families could no longer be bought nor sold. They were also economically oppressed by sharecroppers who kept them in debt …show more content…
“On the 29th of October 1869, {the klansmen} broke my door open, took me out of bed, took me to the woods and whipped me three hours or more and left me for dead.” said Colby in document I. Colby was a former slave who had his door broken down, and was dragged into the woods to be killed by the Klansmen. If Colby wasn't an African American the Klansmen wouldn't be breaking his belongings and trying to kill him. According to document J, “They go by robbing, whipping, ravishing and killing our people without provocation, compelling colored people to break the ice and bathe in the chilly waters of the kentucky river.” In 1871 the KKK went from country to country terrorizing the lives of blacks. The organization used acts of terrorism including murder, lynching, arson, rape, and bombing to the oppose the granting of civil rights to African Americans. Not only was the lives of African Americans impacted negatively by society but were also politically …show more content…
Document M stated, “General we want Homesteads; we were promised homesteads by the government ” After the Civil War, colored veterans were promised a certain amount of land in which they can grow crops and gain profit from them if they were to sell the crops or land. But the government never gave them their land in which made them suffer economically. In document G which states, “By the time sharecroppers had their crops and paid their debts, they rarely had any money left”. The document shows that sharecroppers were in debt to the point where they had barely any money for themselves due to the farmers raising the expectation of crops that were supposed to be collected and paying the least for the
"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.”- President Abraham Lincoln (1864). Reconstruction occurred between 1865 and 1877 following the Civil War. The Civil War ended and the United States faced the difficult task of reintegrating former slaves back into society. The successes and failures of reconstruction negatively impacted the political, social, and economic lives of newly-frees African Americans in the South. Slaves were socially impacted by Blacks Codes because they controlled everything Freedmen wanted or were able to do. Slaves were told they were free and their families could no longer be bought nor sold. They were also economically oppressed by sharecroppers who kept them in debt …show more content…
“On the 29th of October 1869, {the klansmen} broke my door open, took me out of bed, took me to the woods and whipped me three hours or more and left me for dead.” said Colby in document I. Colby was a former slave who had his door broken down, and was dragged into the woods to be killed by the Klansmen. If Colby wasn't an African American the Klansmen wouldn't be breaking his belongings and trying to kill him. According to document J, “They go by robbing, whipping, ravishing and killing our people without provocation, compelling colored people to break the ice and bathe in the chilly waters of the kentucky river.” In 1871 the KKK went from country to country terrorizing the lives of blacks. The organization used acts of terrorism including murder, lynching, arson, rape, and bombing to the oppose the granting of civil rights to African Americans. Not only was the lives of African Americans impacted negatively by society but were also politically …show more content…
Document M stated, “General we want Homesteads; we were promised homesteads by the government ” After the Civil War, colored veterans were promised a certain amount of land in which they can grow crops and gain profit from them if they were to sell the crops or land. But the government never gave them their land in which made them suffer economically. In document G which states, “By the time sharecroppers had their crops and paid their debts, they rarely had any money left”. The document shows that sharecroppers were in debt to the point where they had barely any money for themselves due to the farmers raising the expectation of crops that were supposed to be collected and paying the least for the