Was Reconstruction A Success Or Failure Essay

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The era of Reconstruction was a massive failure when it came to fixing the nations three major problems, with only a few exceptions. The three challenges being: integrating freed slaves into American society, re-incorporating the rebellious states back into America and rebuilding the south's economy. Attempting to integrate freed slaves back into society, was a failure. Andrew Johnson attempted his best to veto all laws having to do with giving black people any sort of rights. This was due to the fact that Johnson believed passing laws containing civil rights for African Americans was beyond what the founding fathers intended for the constitution. Radical Republicans was a small portion of the population actually pushing for rights for black …show more content…
Andrew Johnson was very lenient with the southern states as he let them come back to America if they agreed to some very simple terms that Johnson set. A couple of the terms that needed to be followed to rejoin was the 10% plan and to ratify the 13th amendment. The 10% plan was having the southern voting population in 1860 say an oath to the union, which successfully allowed that state to rejoin. The rebellious states had smoothly integrated back into the union until the Republicans stormed into office with the outrage of the rebellious states being able to quickly rejoin after the declaration of war from them not too long ago. It felt like all of the effort that had just been put into the Civil War was a waste. Republicans proceeded to reject all southerners from being put into Congress. One action the Republicans took amongst themselves was passing the Reconstruction Act in 1867, this said that the union was to split the southern states into five different military sections. Union soldiers were then placed in each military section to govern the south; this went on for ten years. Once the election of 1876 happened, however, southerners were able to get some control of the government. As part of the agreement for letting President Hayes run was that at least one southerner was placed into

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