Positive And Negative Effects Of Reconstruction Essay

The aftermath of the Reconstruction era had a lot of negative effects, especially on the newly freed blacks in the south. In some ways the aftermath of the civil war was worse than slavery. Most African Americans could not read or write, which put them in a bad position. Previous to the war the south was mostly plantations and the land owners depended on the slaves as a cheap source of labor to keep them in operation. The war left the plantations burnt and nobody to work for cheap. This left the blacks jobless.Southern state governments enacted laws called the Black Codes to give whites control over blacks. Under the Black Codes newly freed black Americans could be detained and fined for being unemployed. Even women and children had to work …show more content…
The Freedmen’s Bureau also had assistance for poor whites that faced similar challenges as blacks. Some black Americans were able to find decent paying employment and bloom. They were able to purchase land and establish businesses and schools. The prosperity of some former slaves concerned some whites. In a struggle to maintain white supremacy groups such as the Ku Klux Klan were formed to keep black Americans in submissive roles.Sense the blacks now had a right to vote the KKK used intimidation tactics to keep blacks from voting. As another method, some of the land-owning planters refused to rent land to blacks. As Northern support for reconstruction began to fade, Grant (president at the time) began to reduce the number of military troops used to enforce rules that prohibited discrimination in the South. Grant was not chosen as the Republican nominee to run for president during the election of 1876. The period of reconstruction did not repair the prejudice at the time. However, most black Americans, even those who worked, remained in a cycle of poverty due to the unfair conditions that kept them from getting out of debt and the Jim Crow laws that were designed to keep them