Reconstruction After The Civil War Essay

The American civil war led to the reunion of the South and the North. But, its consequences led the Republicans to take the lead of reconstructing what the war had destroyed especially in the South because it contained larger numbers of newly freed slaves. Just after the civil war, America entered into what was called as the reconstruction era. Reconstruction refers to when “the federal government established the terms on which rebellious Southern states would be integrated back into the Union” (Watts 246). As a further matter, it also meant “the process of helping the 4 million freed slaves after the civil war [to] make the transition to freedom” (DeFord and Schwarz 96).
This era “had a social as well as a political meaning. The social aspect

But, when these officials were elected to Congress, they passed the “black codes” and thus the relations between the president and legislators became worst (Schriefer, Sivell and Arch R1). These so called “Black Codes” were “a series of laws to deprive blacks of their constitutional rights” that they were enacted mainly by Deep South legislatures. Black Codes differ from a state to another but they were stricter in the Deep South as they were sometimes irrationally austere. (Hazen 30) Furthermore, with the emergence of organizations such as the Red Shirts and the White League with the rise of the Conservative White Democrats’ power, efforts to prevent Black Americans from voting were escalating (Watts 247), even if the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S constitution that gave the Blacks the right to vote had been ratified in 1870. Former slaves who “tried to vote or participate in politics [were] likely to be singled out for “punishment”” by a terrorist organization named as the Ku Klux Klan, until the Congress passed the Force Bill in 1871 that gave the federal authorities the right to arrest and pursue active members of the KKK. But, the bill appeared to be only figurative as not really much of the Klan’s members were prosecuted (Hazen