Reconstruction: The Greatest Catastrophes Of The American Civil War

The Civil War was one of the greatest catastrophes that happened in America. For years the debate of abolishing slavery led the Northern abolitionists and Southern proslavery plantation owners to collide head on with each other. After the Civil War the nation suffered greatly in social and economic departments. America was moving downward as a nation. Many of the nation’s leaders tried to rebuild the nation as a whole which began the reconstruction period. Reconstruction was hard to accomplish because slavery was still a big issue that people disagreed on. The task seemed to be impossible even with the laws that were passed concerning slavery. It was as if the nation would never become united again. While Congress was passing laws and amendments …show more content…
Congress came up with Freedmen’s Beauro Act, which was an act to provide protection of blacks rights and to help watch over racism in the south. In 1866, there was the Freedmen’s Bureau report on the Memphis race riots that stated, “The immediate cause was the collision heretofore spoken of between a few policemen and Negroes on the evening of the 30th of April in which both parties may be equally culpable, followed on the evening of the 1st May by another collision of a more serious nature and subsequently by an indiscriminate attack upon inoffensive colored men and women.” The Freedmen’s Bureau helped former slaves and poor whites in the South by providing housing, food, and schools for them, but in the end failed because eventually shut it down in …show more content…
The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery constitutionally, but the south still believed that they belonged as slaves. They continued to heavily promote their beliefs about slavery, which is why the creation of the Ku Klux Klan came about. They were a secret civilization of white men who were ex-confederate soldiers that dedicated their lives to prevent pro Black laws to happen and to promote racism. The Klan’s main goal was to restore white supremacy in the south and reverse the policies of Radical Reconstruction no matter what it took to do it. They mostly used violence to complete their goal, such as bombing black schools and churches. Their most violent acts occurred during night time when they would go out and beat African Americans, even murder them by hanging them off trees. Reconstruction led the South to attack and kill innocent people. The Klan’s actions helped the failure of passing the Civil Rights Act of 1866, just as they