Radical Reconstruction

Improved Essays
The radical reconstruction that took place after the civil war was America’s first attempt at an interracial democracy. Reconstruction included three major initiatives which were reconstruction of the union, transformation of southern society and enactment of progressive legislation favouring the rights of freed slaves.
The process of the reconstruction of the union began before the end of the civil war in 1863. As the union made many victories President Abraham Lincoln issued the proclamation of amnesty and reinstruction in which was the framework for his ten-percent plan. Lincoln hoped that the proclamation would rally northern support for the war and persuade confederate soldiers to surrender. The plan set out that each secessionist state
…show more content…
As an alternative to the Ten-Percent Plan, Radical Republicans passed the Wade-Davis Bill in 1864. Under the bill, states could be readmitted to the Union only after 50 percent of voters took an oath of allegiance to the Union. Lincoln effectively killed the Bill by refusing to sign it. Although, Congress did successfully create the Freedmen’s Bureau, which helped distribute food, supplies, and land to the new population of freed slaves. Anyone who pledged loyalty to the Union could lease forty acres of land from the bureau and then have the option to purchase them several years later. Most southerners regarded the bureau as a nuisance and a threat to their way of life. Plantation owners threatened their former slaves into selling their land, and many bureau agents accepted bribes, turning a blind eye to abuses by former slave owners. Despite these failings, however, the Freedman’s Bureau did succeed in setting up schools in the South for nearly 250,000 free …show more content…
White supremacists in Tennessee formed the Ku Klux Klan (KKK,) a secret organisation meant to terrorize southern blacks. Race riots and mass murders of former slaves occurred in Memphis and New Orleans that same year. From 1867 onward, African-American participation in public life in the South became one of the most radical aspects of reconstruction. The Ku Klux Klan dedicated itself to an underground campaign of violence against Republican leaders and voters in an effort to reverse the policies of Radical Reconstruction and restore white supremacy in the South. The KKK are still around today, which conveys their significance as people in the US are still against minorities having equal rights.

During Presidential Reconstruction, white supremacist Congressmen passed a series of laws called the black codes, which denied blacks the right to testify against whites, marry white women, be unemployed, and even to wait around in public places. Black Codes were passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866. These laws had intended to restrict African Americans' freedom and compelling them to work on low

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The main difference between presidential Reconstruction and Congressional Reconstruction was that presidential Reconstruction was much more lenient toward the South. Because the “Radical Republicans” in Congress did not like this, they overrode President Johnson’s wishes and implemented a harsher variety of Reconstruction. Before he died, President Lincoln had been eager to bring the states that had seceded back into the Union. He felt that it was important to heal the wounds from the war and wanted to be easy on the South.…

    • 496 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Rebuilding the south Reese construction 1. Ways the lives of the African-American changed after they were freed? After the African-Americans were freed, some of them but not all were returned to their families in Africa. Most had to start learning how to live for themselves. They had no education, no knowledge of how America worked at the time.…

    • 1727 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The reconstruction is the time period in the U.S. that directly follows the Civil War. During this time “…the federal government set conditions that would allow the rebellious southern states back into the union.” (Wormser) President Abraham Lincoln came up with the 10% plan. The original goal of Lincoln's plan during the Civil War was to keep the nation together and destroy the Confederacy.…

    • 840 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Lincoln feared that if the fighting did not end, the north and the south would never reunite and his ten percent plan failed. Lincoln’s ten percent plan was only used to…

    • 1615 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    After the Civil War ended, the south was in a state of uncertainty and action needed to be taken in order to reunite the nation. This action took the form of reconstruction as an attempt at restoring the nation. However, even though reconstruction transformed the nation, it did so in very limited ways. President Lincoln had high hopes for reconstruction as a way to bring the nation back together, "to bind up the nation's wounds," as he said. Lincoln's plans for reconstruction included the south being allowed back into the Union if southern states accepted the abolition of slavery.…

    • 681 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    President Abraham Lincoln believed it was the job of the president to take control and impose his authority in order to reunite the nation and preserve the union, and he regarded every measure needed to achieve that as lawful1. Thus said, he devised a plan for Reconstruction that would help get the South readmitted into the union as soon as possible. It was called the Ten Percent plan because it only required ten percent of the voters in each state to take an oath of loyalty to the union in order to establish state governments. Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee reestablished state governments in accordance to the Ten Percent Plan in 1864.…

    • 428 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Horrors of the Ku Klux Klan during the Reconstruction Era During the Reconstruction era, politics was a catalyst for widespread racism and hatred that former slaves experienced throughout the South. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), founded by a Confederate general in 1866, became known as the “invisible empire of the South” in which members represented the ghosts of the Confederate dead returning to terrorize, suppress, and victimize African Americans and Radical Republicans (white reformers) (Gale Encyclopedia of American Law, 2011). From 1868 through the early 1870s the Ku Klux Klan functioned as a loosely organized group of political and social terrorists. The Klan 's goals included the political defeat of the Republican Party and the maintenance…

    • 808 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    With the end of Civil War, the victorious north faced an unprecedented challenge about how to reconstruct the ravaged and resentful south as it was the large responsibility for the federal government and its resources were inadequate. President Lincoln issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction which said that 10 percent of the southerners who voted in 1860 needed to sign a loyalty oath to the union and after that the states could join the union back. They were also got the presidential pardon of excusing them of treason. His actions indicate that he wanted Reconstruction to be a short process in which secessionist states could draft new constitutions as swiftly as possible. He returned all property to former Confederates who pledged loyalty to the…

    • 610 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Freedmen's Bureau Essay

    • 1843 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Now that the slaves were gone, they now had to work in their own fields, wash their own clothes, and cook their own meals. They wanted their slaves back and they were willing to do anything in their power to keep them from leaving. This along with political issues put a dent in the success of the Freedmen’s Bureau. No one wanted to deal with the issues of politics. Everyone was so concerned with not going into a depression due to the seriousness of the war that they just came out of that they were not very concerned with certain economical situations.…

    • 1843 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The end of the Civil war marked the beginning of a new sense of freedom. Before, freedom in the United States had referred to Americans fighting for independence, but now a new meaning of it in which all living in the nation would not be enslaved. Since the civil war was a focus on slavery, this meant that the purpose was to give African Americans equal opportunities, which started with freeing them. The reconstruction era had two phases: presidential reconstruction and radical reconstruction. During the presidential reconstruction of Andrew Johnson, his presidency was lenient, in which the black codes were common in the south.…

    • 305 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When Lincoln was inaugurated for a second term he put the 10% plan into use. This plan allowed the south to come back into the union if 10% of its voters pledged an oath of allegiance back into the union. Soon after this plan was put into use, Lincoln is assassinated and President Johnson is sworn into office. He ultimately favored Lincoln’s 10% plan and freely let the south back into the economy. All the African Americans wanted was to have freedom and get paid for the work they did.…

    • 759 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Reconstruction Dbq

    • 715 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The struggle of economic and political issues after the Civil War in 1865, was the Reconstruction period; in which the government attempted to bring back the former South. Abraham Lincoln first introduced his Reconstruction plan in 1863, in hopes of unifying the North and South to once again become a unified state, but its lack of success left the plan with a destructive and unruly experience. Although Reconstruction did help many Southerners to survive, but the failure of Reconstruction dominated, due to the fact that African Americans and some poor whites, never gained the power and equality that they were first promised, until later in the 1900s. After the Civil War, hundreds and thousands of African Americans were free from their plantation…

    • 715 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Was Reconstruction a Success or a Failure? After the Civil War ended in 1865, America was left divided, and needed a solution to solve the problems that were present before the war. There were problems like Southern Democrats wanting their power back, discrimination against blacks, and many more problems. The solution to this problem was Reconstruction which lasted from 1865 to 1877.…

    • 1402 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Reconstruction Act of 1867 divided the south into military 5 districts and made northern troops take control of the south. This was both for the prevention of another civil war and to ensure the southerners did not reestablish slavery. The northern troops stayed in the south from 1867 to 1877. The final action taken by Congress was the establishment of the Freedman’s Bureau. This agency was specifically constructed to provide food, shelter and other necessary aid to African Americans.…

    • 1951 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    While the Reconstruction after the civil war was multi-faceted, there were three main goals of Reconstruction era. The North wanted to restore the Union to include all of the Southern states so they could become one nation, compromise with the Southern states that ceded before and during the war to give them a reason to come back and reunite, and to help blacks reenter society by giving them a voice and opportunities never before had. While these goals seemed simple enough, different views of how people should be treated and how governments should be run, make compromise a very difficult thing to accomplish. To restore the Union, President Lincoln began by enforcing the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction.…

    • 1322 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays