The Civil War from 1861 to 1865 was a historic milestone for the United States of America of enormous significance (Foner 16). The victory of the capitalist North over the slaveholding South offered broad prospects for the unimpeded development of capitalism in the United States, both in industry and agriculture. Then, the Reconstruction of the South began, a period in U.S. history after the Civil War in which slavery was abolished in the Southern states and the Southern states were integrated into the United States. Thus, it is important to establish the level of success of the Reconstruction and the main changes that occurred.
Reconstruction, the period after the end of the Civil War, lasted from 1865 to 1877. At this time, the Reconstruction amendments were introduced into the Constitution, expanding civil rights for Americans (Foner 16). These amendments included the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing citizenship to all born or naturalized in the United States. It also included the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed voting rights for men of all races (Foner 16). Thus, formally, the changes that were implemented were positive for black citizens.
Despite this, in response to Reconstruction, a number of Southern organizations, including the Ku Klux Klan, emerged to oppose the civil rights of colored people. Violence by such organizations was resisted by the federal army and authorities, including the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1870, which declared it a terrorist organization (Foner 31). Nevertheless, in the Supreme Court case U.S. v. Cruikshank, the civil rights of the population were vested in the state authorities. This indicates that, under the pressure of loudness, the declared changes were not really seen in all the states. Consequently, people’s rights were still being restricted. Moreover, the economic crisis exacerbated the failures of the Republican government.
In the end, Republican governments lost the support of Southern voters, and the Democrats returned to power in the South, who did not restore slavery. But they did pass discriminatory laws called the Jim Crow laws. In 1877, military participation in government in the South was ended (Foner 51). As a result, African Americans became second-class citizens, and racist principles of white supremacy continued to dominate public opinion. The Democratic Party’s monopoly on power in the Southern states continued thereafter until the 1960s. Until then, the Constitution’s amendments had not been fully implemented. By 1871, U.S. authorities had decided that agreements with Indians were no longer necessary and that no Indian people or tribe should be treated as an independent nation or state. In 1880, the mass shooting of the American bison resulted in the extinction of almost the entire population, and the Indians lost their primary livelihood (Foner 64). The authorities forced the Indians to abandon their customary way of life and live only on reservations. Hence, the actual exclusion and slavery did not occur, and the Native Americans were the opponents of the society, which they attempted to reduce.
Therefore, reconstruction was aimed at giving black people the same rights as others and declaring emancipation from slavery. However, in fact, only a hundred years after the Civil War, African Americans were able to achieve equal rights with whites, not on paper but in practice. Moreover, during the reconstruction, these rights were only legally enshrined, but the exploitation and extermination of black people continued, who, in fact, did not receive any rights.
Work Cited
Foner, Eric. The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution. WW Norton & Company, 2019.