Question

Describe the successes and failures of Reconstruction. Which do you feel were the most important and why?

Answer 1

Reconstruction can be considered to be a success on one basis that consolidated what we could call the United States. For this to happen, all of the former Confederate states drafted new constitutions, acknowledged the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments by the year 1877. All of them pledged their loyalty to the U.S. government. Reconstruction was also successful in finally settling the issue of the states’ rights vs. Federalism. This was a debate since the 1790s.

However, the failures of Reconstruction were far more: Reformation was not able to save former slaves from persecution by the white people. The Radical Republican legislation failed to protect the slaves and bring about any social change of the South. Soon after the removal of federal troops from the South in 1877, the former Confederate officials and slave owners returned to power. Even what was gained during reformation was altered afterward with the support from a conservative Supreme Court. These newly empowered white southern politicians passed black codes, voter qualifications, and other anti-progressive legislation to reverse the rights that blacks had gained during Radical Reconstruction. The U.S. Supreme Court acted as a catalyst in this anti-progressive movement. The supreme court gave decisions that repealed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the Civil Rights Act of 1875 in the Slaughterhouse Cases and the Civil Rights Cases.

Reconstruction was a failure on another front. It failed to abolish the exploitative system of sharecropping. This system of sharecropping was essentially a legal form of slavery that tied blacks to be tied to the land owned by the rich white farmers. This practice was widespread in the south.

I feel that most important was the failure on the part of Supreme Court that acted on the orders of white southern politicians. They passed black codes, voter qualifications, and other anti-progressive legislation to reverse the rights that blacks that they had gained during Reconstruction were something unacceptable. The meanness and weakness of the Supreme Court that denied all citizens to be equal and continue with the exploitation of the weak group are totally unjust.