Essay due 12-19-12

ESSAY

Context: During Reconstruction the federal government attempted to rebuild and bring the nation together through a series of programs, laws, amendments and acts.  The state and local governments in the South created laws of their own.  Often the goals of the federal and state governments did not match. 

         To insure the Southern states would participate in Reconstruction and not continue their policies of racial inequality Republicans worked in Congress to develop Civil rights Acts, the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments, and the Freedman’s Bureau.  The South opposed them legally and illegally by developing Black Codes, voting rules(poll taxes, grandfather clause, literacy tests) Jim Crow laws, and sharecropping that continued to segregate the races.  These rules were sometimes upheld by the Supreme Court in cases like Plessy v Ferguson (separate-but-equal).  Some Southerners also participated in groups like the K.K.K. and the White League that worked to keep the races separate. 

         In 1865 President Lincoln called on Americans to help put the country back together  “With malice(hatred) toward none; with charity(help) for all; with firmness in doing right…let us bind up the nations wounds and…bring lasting peace.  By 1877 Reconstruction was over and the federal troops were being pulled from the South.  Where Lincoln’s hopes in vain?  This is a question still debated by historians today?

TASK: Use textbook pages 190-198, 233-235 (and documents on 200-202) as well as class notes and all documents used in class to answer the following question.

-----How successful was Reconstruction?  (1865-1877)--------

-Use specific information from the textbook and your documents

-Compare and contrast the actions of the federal and state governments

-How were Freedmen’s lives helped or hurt during this period? 
-Don't Forget Plessy v Ferguson

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