Black Subordination Social Order Dbq

1860 through 1877 America witnessed a bloody war that resulted in several constitutional and social developments, all attempting to break the established black subordination social order prevalent in the South. By 1877 the Civil War and Reconstruction had ended, and the social revolution had failed. There are two key parts to a revolution: force, and its use to bring a new order to society. There was certainly force during this time period, with Confederate lost and the Union’s military presence in the conquered land, the South had no choice but to accept the Constitutional Amendments and other acts that Congress had passed. However, for every policy that Congress had forced on the South, there was a loophole or an act of violence that fought against it. The black subordination social order had remained, unbroken by the abolishment of slavery or the Amendments that followed. The first sign of an attempt at a new social order was seen in Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1862, where slavery was legally abolished in the Union states. Paired with Union victory at Antietam, emancipation looked to be a serious threat to the well-established institution of slavery in the Confederacy, or Southern states. In 1865 Congress had approved the Thirteenth Amendment; it
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Its failure was firmly secured in 1873 when the Supreme Court began to undermine the Constitutional Amendments and the Civil Rights Act in the Slaughter-House Cases. Military and political force was used in an attempt to give slaves equal rights to the white man. However, the actions of the South had stopped that from happening. Slaves were free but they were trapped in plantation labor. They could vote but many could not. They were equal to whites but in many ways were not. The constitutional developments failed to bring a social revolution, and the actions of the stubborn South and the Supreme Court would pave the way for segregation in the