Reconstruction Dbq Research Paper

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There was a period between 1861-1865 in which the civil war occurred. The Civil War was when the North, called the Union, fought the South and was called the Confederacy. A considerable amount of the reason they were fighting was an issue of slavery. After long bloody battles, the Union won and preserved the United States. The time after that was called Reconstruction, which was used to rebuild the United States but mainly the South from 1865-1867. But for Radical Republicans, Reconstruction meant for the freedmen to obtain their civil rights. So the main goal was to give African Americans the rights that were always denied to them in the past. Even with the passing of the Reconstruction Amendments, Reconstruction was ultimately unsuccessful …show more content…
This was a great thing and allowed African Americans to exercise their rights. On the other hand, the South did not want the African Americans to use their rights, so they found a legal way to prevent the African Americans from using their rights by creating literacy tests and poll taxes. Poll taxes required individuals to pay a tax before they could vote, and if they could vote they had to take a literacy test, which tests that African Americans were forced to take before they could vote. For example, the Texas Poll Tax had an extremely large amount of money for people to pay, but on this receipt, it was 76 dollars, which is equivalent to around 700 dollars today. This was outrageous because African Americans had just gotten out of slavery and they didn’t make income, so paying that poll tax just to vote wasn’t an option for them. An example of a literacy test is the Louisiana Literacy Test, which asks questions that you can have multiple answers to since the questions do not make sense and if they were to get it wrong then they are not allowed to

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