Blacks and the Reconstruction Term Paper

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The Goals of Reconstruction

President Lincoln stated in his Second Inaugural that the U.S., now whole again, should work “to bind up the nation’s wounds”—but with his assassination, and the voice of America’s better angels now gone, Reconstruction got off to a rockier start than the deceased president would have hoped to have seen. Reconstruction was supposed to be a new dawn of brotherhood; the South was to be forgiven, and blacks were supposed to be equal. What had been razed to the ground during Sherman’s March to the Sea was now to be rebuilt so that order could be re-established. Frederick Douglass, writing in The Atlantic in 1866, stated that enfranchisement of the free black would only come if the federal government passed laws to protect the newly freed former slaves and brought the law of the North into the South. What happened, however, was something else entirely. The spirit of the south continued on: the Ku Klux Klan arose from the ashes of Sherman’s March. Jim Crow laws reigned where Douglass had hoped to see Yankee law prevail. Reconstruction floundered and racism persisted. This paper will show how the goals of Reconstruction regarding African-Americans were not achieved by 1900 because of a failure of the federal government to oversee effectively the Era of Reconstruction and to eradicate the racist doctrines and organizations of the South.

President Johnson essentially gave the South a free hand in determining how the Reconstruction Lincoln had envisioned would be effected: this set the tenor for the times. Free blacks were not provided for: Johnson returned most of the land of the South to its original owners.

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The Southern aristocracy returned to power, ensuring that free blacks would not be enfranchised. Johnson stated in his 1865 pardon: “I hereby grant and assure to all persons of color who have, directly or by…

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…from the government. It was as though they had been dropped in their own same land as yesterday but now without any titles, any lodgings or any place to call home. Thus, the blacks took flight in what became known as the Great Migration, as whole families of freed blacks flocked north to the cities to find work and shelter. African Americans found themselves unwanted everywhere they went.

In conclusion, Reconstruction failed to achieve its goals because nothing was done to reduce the animosity that the old aristocracy felt towards the new radical Republicans who supported the federal government’s program. The Old South was still bitter about the war—and that “south will rise again” feeling was evident in the rise of the KKK, which emerged from the Southern resentment towards the Union, which had taken away the slaves and overturned the order. The Supreme Court did nothing to prevent Jim Crow from taking over as its….....

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