CIVIL WAR RECONSTRUCTION
The Civil War began in 1861 and lasted till 1865. This was known as the greatest war in American history where 3 million people fought and around 600,000 lost their lives. To this day this was the only war fought on American soil by Americans and caused massive destruction to the South. When the war ended in 1865, the South was faced with the major task of reconstructing their war torn land. The Reconstruction lasted from 1865 to 1877. A major concern during this period was the condition of the millions of free slaves (Freedmen). Most of the freedmen had no homes, were very poor, and had virtually no education. In order to try to help the freedmen, Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandon Lands, otherwise known as the Freedmen's Bureau. The bureau had issued food and supplies to newly freed slaves as well as it set up hospitals and schools throughout the south. Despite its achievements, the Freedmen's Bureau did not solve the serious economic problems that the African Americans had. Introducing a system of free labor economy was another of the bureau's responsibilities. The bureau's goal in this respect was to return the ex-slaves to plantation labor, which was still essential to the Southern e
Women would eventually overcome their equality barrier and they received their right to vote when Congress passed the 19th Amendment in 1920. The amendment grants citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" which included former slaves who had just been freed after the Civil War. Many women activists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. In response, many of them formed "Democratic Clubs. Known as the "Reconstruction Amendment," it forbids any state to deny any person "life, liberty or property, without due process of law" or to "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of its laws. Wage labor became the dominant economic system in the South immediately following the Civil War. After white governments had been established in the South the Ku Klux Klan continued to undermine the power of blacks. The amendment had been rejected by most Southern states but was ratified by the required three-fourths of the states. A year later a general organization of local Klans was established in Nashville in April, 1867. These laws were like the earlier slave codes. In time, the wage labor system gave way to tenancy. It was the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, which finally gave African Americans the right to vote. This was a tremendous setback as it made land ownership difficult, if not impossible, for the vast majority of the freedmen. "Forty acres and a mule" was the slogan for the Reconstruction land-grant plan, but in the end only about 2,000 South Carolina and 1,500 Georgia freedmen actually received the land they had been promised, which is less than one percent of the four million ex-slaves populating the South. On July 28, 1868, the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified.
Common topics in this essay:
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South Carolina,
African Americans,
Basically Landlord,
Klux Klan,
Americans Introducing,
Frederick Douglass,
Freedmen's Bureau,
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War Klansmen,
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radical republicans,
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Acceptance Essays
