Reconstruction is the time period after the Civil War that saw the rebuilding of the United States. It was a difficult time with many questions and great pain. The Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln of Confederate States freed slaves. All slaves became free under the Thirteenth amendment in 1865. Despite the fact that slaves were legally free, they felt still held captive by cruel and unjust treatment. Houston Hartsfield Holloway stated, “For us colored people did no know how we could be free and for the white people, how to have an equal colored person around them.” The citizenship rights of freed slaves allowed them to participate in wars, but it was still a matter of debate. Black was viewed as evil and impure, and whites believed they were not equal.
Reconstruction was a success because it restored the United States to unity. By 1877, all former Confederate States had written new constitutions, recognized the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as pledged loyalty to the U.S. government. Reconstruction resolved the debate between states’ rights and federalism that has been a matter of contention since the 1790s. Reconstruction led to many deaths and no protection of former slaves. This anti-progressive movement was strengthened by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in the Slaughterhouse Cases, Civil Rights Cases, United States. Cruikshank, which effectively repealed and Fifteenth Amendments. Confederate officials, slave owners and others who had been Confederate officials were almost immediately restored power by President Rutherford B. Hayes’s 1877 removal of fel troops. These white, conservative Supreme Court judges allowed black codes and voter qualifications to be implemented. They also reversed the Reconstruction rights that blacks were granted. The sharecropping program, which was basically a legal type of slavery, allowed blacks to work on white farmland. However, this made it more difficult for blacks to demand civil rights. Northerners had become sick of Reconstruction, scandals and radicals by 1877.
The Republican Party’s resolutely anti-depressive, money-saving policies, such as the Resumption Act (1875), were not well received. This allowed the Democratic Party huge political gains that catalyzed the end to Reconstruction. In an attempt to eliminate inflation from the 20’s depression, the Resumption Act cut the money flowing into the economy. The act provided good economic conditions for America’s future but it created difficult times for the South and North in the near future. The Act was Republican-sponsored, so Democrats were able to capitalize on its unpopularity to rally support for their party. This popularity resulted in more victories for Democrats that allowed them to take control of the South once again. Reconstruction was finally over.
