Reconstruction failure
When Reconstruction failed, it affected the populations of African Americans in the south. This failure postponed social and economic recovery in the region until the 20th century. Many historians have been debating on what Reconstruction meant, and the reasons for its failure. Steven Hahn, the author of the first essay, argues that confederates and earlier slaves were ready to set up an armed defense for their objectives. This act was a reflection of the violence that dominated the southern region where slavery was undergirded. He argues that Reconstruction ended when the military of the northern part failed to support the freedmen. As a result, the men were outgunned. In the second essay, David Blight takes a different side. He claims that Reconstruction was a vie for attention between two significant, but incompatible goals, emancipation, and reconciliation. For a single country to be formed, the nation intended to abolish the sectional divide, but it engaged in a battle of fighting for justice for former slaves.
Consequently, resistance from the south tapered with the conditions that would make reconciliation possible. As a result, the emancipation promise of the war got stunted, and it was eventually forgotten in efforts to reduce the differences between the south and the north. It got to be a lasting contest between the meaning and memory of war. African Americans in the southern region lost the battle. This paper agrees with David Blight that Reconstruction collapsed because it was a competition for attention between the south and the north.
After emancipation and the civil war, residents of America encountered an overwhelming task. This task involved how to comprehend the tangled association between two phenomena, justice and healing. On a given level, these two things had to happen. However, they never created a historical balance due to their potency of assumptions of different races during the nineteenth century. The reunion of the two territories following the horrible civil war was considered to be a political victory. However, its success could never be attained without suppression from victims who had been freed by the civil war from slavery.
American Reconstruction can be viewed as a long referendum of the memory and meaning of the Appomattox verdict. The most significant challenge that the Reconstruction faced was assessing how to reconcile a countrywide blood feud. At the same time, social revolution and war led to the emergence of a new nation. The survivors of the war, the losers, and the winners would remain on common land, with shared leadership.
The plan of the significant republicans regarding Reconstruction was very genuine. They had an ideology based on the concept of a federal government of activists. The government would redefine the citizenship of America to ensure that it guaranteed equality in political rights, as well as free labor in the highly competitive capitalist structure. These radicals significantly fixed federal power. They also adjusted their vision on national faith and national security. They believed in the philosophy of equity before the law, which was protected by the 14th amendment of the constitution. The policy expanded citizenship to involve all people born in the US, regardless of race.
Within the same period, congress made changes to the Freedmen’s Bureau over the veto of Johnson. It was during this moment that congress also passed the earliest act on civil rights in the history of America. The reality of this legislation was achieved because the people of the northern territory would not forget their sacrifices and the impacts of the civil war. The increased power of the federal law was due to the rejection of the constitution’s fourteenth amendment by the southern states, and the progressive vetoes of Johnson on the measures of Reconstruction.
The congress also divided the states of ex-confederate into various military regions and even made a condition of readmission to the union in black suffrage. Eventually, all the ex-confederate states had joined the coalition, including the Republican Party, which consisted of the reins of the national government.
As time went on and the congress get involved in a critical discussion on national policy, the senate and the house grew to be arenas of opposing memories. Numerous retributions against the south drove many republicans, triggering the desire to remake the constitution based on black equality, and the need to create a long-lasting political hegemony. The debate congress on the public was sanguinary. It challenged the ability of every person to transform old memory into public policy. The entire country was full of death and mourning. As a result, people began demanding for the meaning of the deaths. Contests erupted between the northern and southern territories, triggering the failure of the Reconstruction that the American government had been fighting for a very long time.
In conclusion, the reconstruction era was marked by a set of oppressive regimes that were sent to the southern region to create the Republican Party, using the votes of African Americans. It involved the creation of a legitimate leadership in the south by whites, which forced Americans into a rule of oppression by the federal government.
Bibliography
Patterson, Thomas G. “Major Problems in American History, Volume 1: To 1877.” (2007).