The Successes and Failures of The Reconstruction Era

Throughout history so many events and things happened between. In some cases, there are some successful events and failures. By 1874 Reconstruction in Texas was over. In this essay I’m going to be listing four successes and four failures that happened throughout the Reconstruction era, the successes were: Freedmen’s Bureau, The Thirteenth Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment, the Enforcement Act of 1870 and the most important one was the freedom of the slaves. Some of the failures were: The Ku Klux Klan, sharecropping and tenant farming and black codes.

The Thirteenth Amendment freed the slaves. The fourteenth Amendment gave citizenship’s rights, and equal rights under the law. The Fifteenth Amendment gave the right to vote, they could not have denied you the right to vote, no matter what race, color or servitude you were. These were some big successes because now anyone that wasn’t white could finally have a saying in their lives, they couldn’t be scared anymore. These Amendments helped anyone and until now they are still helping us no matter who you are, or what you are, you have a saying in this world and it will be heard.

According to the article of Abraham Lincoln, “the Freedmen’s Bureau was established on March 3, 1865” to find and reunite family members who were sold away, help black people assimilate into white society and to established schools and provide and education for the black men, women, and children that were free, and were clueless to everything, the Freedmen’s Bureau would help all of them, become a better person, for them to know the rights so white people will no longer be stepping on them for just being black. Now they will have knowledge to know what’s right and wrong. They had sixteen schools in Texas in 1865.

Enforcement Act of 1870 was a United States federal law that forced the first section of the Fifteenth Amendment throughout the United States. This Act was the first of three enforcements acts passed by the United States Congress. The Enforcement Act of 1870 prohibited discrimination. They could not judge because of their race, and color. It also banned the use of terror, force, or bribery to prevent people from voting because of their race. It also reinforced the thirteenth amendments which gave slaves their freedom.

The freedom of slave was so much more than a success. The progress happened slowly but eventually it got there. Even though at first the free slaves weren’t really free because they still had struggles throughout the road they eventually were free. They had so many things in their way like the black codes, KKK, racism, etc. that wanted them dead, slaved, or just to themselves. Eventually justice happened and they got free, finally could get proper education, get married to whoever they wanted, do basically what they had never done.

The legislators across the South and in Texas had passed the Black Codes. The black codes were laws passed by Democrats, they were restricting African American’s freedom, women and men were forced to sign labor contracts, if they left their job they would keep their money. They could not carry firearms, couldn’t hold public office, they could be arrested for intoxication, vagrancy, or truancy, could not testify against whites in court, couldn’t marry whites, and so many other things they were prohibited to do. Some slaveholders only freed their slaves because they had to if not they would have kept them forever. The whites wanted to control over the black people’s lives, even if they were free. That caused big chaos because why tell them they’re going to be free, even if they still have to obey some law that is still controlling them.

Ku Klux Klan was a group of people who wore robes and masks who pretended to be ghost of the Confederate soldiers. They were scared of changes and the power that African Americans would have, because they wanted them to be labor workers and slaves forever. The KKK would attack African Americans by putting their homes on fire.

African American struggled a lot. They had to do sharecropping, working crops for the landowners. They had chronic indebtedness from sharecropping. They had the lowest paying job, and really poor housing. Their illness was horrific, they had smallpox and cholera. They also had high infant mortality. Legalization of black marriages were not legal until 1870. Their education was trash and there were so much racism against them.

I believe that so many things happened during the Reconstruction era so much suffrage but also so much success. I believe that everything happens for a reason and sometimes well life isn’t fair. For a fact life wasn’t fair for the African American’s back then or the people in color, even now a lot of racism is still happening, but we hope that the future changes and that we are all equal in the future. To stop the fighting and for all of us to get a long no matter what race, color, religion, etc. you are. Reconstruction era was a process to where we are now.

Conclusion

1. “Abraham Lincoln.” The Freedmen's Bureau: History for Kids ***, Siteseen Limited, 9 Jan. 2018, www.american-historama.org/1860-1865-civil-war-era/freedmens-bureau.htm.