Reconstruction
Reconstruction was a period of time between 1865 and 1877, which was very complex and controversial. It refers to the actual rebuilding of the south physically, economically and politically from the damage of the Civil War. It was an effort to rebuild southern states and also to restore the Union. During this time period, the federal government passed a series of laws, acts and amendments to bring change. Many of these amendments guaranteed the equal rights to African-Americans. Yet, the question was still that is reconstruction successful? The topic of reconstruction is still very debatable even today. Although there are more facts that would prove reconstruction to be very much successful, there is also evidence that
Debt peonage trapped sharecroppers and tenant farmer on the land because they could not make enough money to pay off their debt and their failure to pay off their debt led to convict labor in which they have two options, imprison or forced labor. These kinds of services called de facto discrimination, which is discrimination caused by conditions rather than by law. Southern states government also found new ways to legally limit the rights of free African-Americans to vote by developing laws like property requirements to vote, poll tax in which everyone has to pay tax to vote if you can’t afford it you can’t vote. If free blacks managed to pay poll tax, they then have to go through literacy test, the test which involves writing and reading the Constitution, very unfair because African-American had very little or no education and Grandfather Clauses, it was a law giving the right to vote only to the people who had that right in 1867, it was also an intent to keep blacks from voting but it benefited poor whites. The Civil War ended slavery, but the failure of reconstruction left many African-Americans in circumstances where they were helpless and lost their newly unseen gained freedom (ch.12 sec.4).
Even though the reconstruction ended in 1877, it brought some