Freedman Vs South Reconstruction

Amongst the Civil War, General Patrick Cleburne had mentioned how, “slavery, from being one of our chief sources of strength," had evolved into "one of our chief sources of weakness" (Bodenner). When the Emancipation Proclamation was released, all the slaves were freed leaving the white men to do the work for themselves (Holzer). This changed the course of the war because the white men were no longer free to fight in the war because they had to do their own work (Holzer). This meant that the Southern army no longer had many soldiers. It also meant that the North now had many more soldiers, who were also former slaves (Holzer).

Do we really need reparation? Since Blacks first came to the Americas, they have endure many hurdles. Two hundred fifty years of slavery, ninety years of Jim Crow, sixty years of separated but equal and thirty five more years of racist housing policy. Would compensation for wrongs that have been done make us forget about the wicked past? American law and policy have worked to diminish the Black race and raise all White men to the level of citizen and wealth.

President Andrew Johnson had tried to veto the Civil RIghts Act of 1865 but it was overturned and the act became a Law. President Johnson’s attitude toward this led to the growth of the Radical Republican Movement and it also increased intervention in the South, more help to former slaves and also to Johnson’s impeachment. The Black Code, Freedman’s Bureau, and the Bill of 1865 are all prime examples of how the African American’s have freedom. In 1865, the Civil War ended offering more freedoms to all African American

Fredrick Douglass was an enslaved African American who escaped slavery and became a leader of the abolition movement. Douglass wrote two novels which would become bestsellers and this would really help in the abolition movement. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the first republican to win an election. During the civil war which took place in 1863, Abraham Lincoln was against slavery in America and he said that after January 1st all slaves that where on rebel territory shall be free people. Then in 1865 slavery had not existed anymore.

At the end of the third election, anti-slavery settlers outnumbered the pro-slavery settlers and Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state. The last main cause of the Civil War was the presidential election of 1860. Abraham Lincoln and John C. Breckinridge were the candidates. Lincoln won the election with more than half of the electoral votes. This caused major controversy.

Before the Civil War, slavery was a very popular practice in the southern United States. Though not many people actually had slaves, most southerners defended it because one day owning a slave was the “American Dream.” In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses satire to reveal the greed, religious hypocrisy, and gullibility among the pre-Civil War south. Twain uses satire to demonstrate how greed can leave a person with less than what they began with. In the novel, this is shown through the King and Duke’s actions. After stealing the six thousand dollars from the family of Peter Wilks, the Duke suggest, “That we glide out of this before three in the morning, and clip it down the river with what we got” (Twain 179), to which the King replies, “What!

One of our most famous, or infamous, wars was centered around the enslavement of a whole race because white people in the South needed cheap labor and saw themselves as racially superior. However, after the war I have to admit that the Government at least tried with the Reconstruction Amendments. The 15th amendment gave the right to vote to African-American males which was a huge step in the right direction for change. This new amendment definitely benefited the black community considering there was a rise of African-American officeholders during the Reconstruction Era (Foner,

The North ended the Reconstruction because they were too busy to look after the South, they were racist to African Americans, and they removed soldiers from Southern states. America was well into the Reconstruction and the nation was happy. The election of 1876 ruined the dreams of over 3 million African Americans. The winner of the election of 1876 was Rutherford B. Hayes. President Hayes was a member of the Democratic party, but actually did not win the election until later.

Through the institution of African slavery alone, blacks played key roles in helping to boost the early American economy particularly throughout the Southern states where crops such as cotton were capital. What is truly unfortunate is the fact that much like the Native Americans, blacks served honorably alongside British troops in countless battles which helped to establish the United States. This is perhaps the most notable throughout the American Revolution where in some areas many free blacks were said to have voluntarily joined Patriot armies at higher rates than whites.4 Unfortunately, what would result for those helping to pave the way for an American victory would be additional generations of injustice and slavery for them and their descendants based upon the color of their skin

White politicians, many of whom were former yeoman, were the biggest supporters of white superiority and a continuation of slavery. This was due to their failed plans “to translate successes here into social or economic gains”. Many years later, after Reconstruction, the Redeemers, who were Southern capitalist Whigs, pushed hard for industry and left black and white farmers behind. This gave rise to the Populist movement, which included both whites and blacks. Both sides put aside racial differences in order to improve their condition.