Reasons For Failure Of Reconstruction

After a long and brutal war, known today as the Civil War, the South was left in shambles; a desolated shell of what it once was. The very few large towns and cities that existed there were reduced almost completely to rubble and ash. It would take years to rebuild the South to what it once had been and many were unsure how to do it. This is when the plan for reconstruction was developed. Its main goals were to adopt the southern states back into the Union, rebuild the South to resemble the North in hopes to close the culture gap between the two areas, and also give the thousands of newly freed slaves the same freedoms and rights as whites. As a whole reconstruction was a mixed success. Some of the objectives were achieved, such as getting the southern states to rejoin the Union, but other aspects of it failed. One of the largest failures of reconstruction was ensuring former slaves and African Americans received their promised rights and eliminating racism. It wouldn’t be until well into the 20th century that African Americans would finally get these once promised rights. …show more content…
Unfortunately just because they were now free didn’t mean they had all the rights and freedoms that their white brethren had. Racism and hatred towards them still existed all over the country. Many who opposed slavery didn’t oppose it because they harbored good feelings towards slaves; they opposed it because they felt the enslavement of a person was wrong, as it was. So now even though they were free they still were not accepted as a whole across the nation. Republicans knew and were aware of this fact, so in the reconstruction act they passed laws and amendments in the hopes that it would close the racial gap between the two