Reconstruction and Black America According to Foner
In spite of the fact that African-Americans were largely at the center of the ideals in conflict during the Civil ar, history would largely overlook their experiences in the aftermath of this sustained and bloody conflict. The era known as Reconstruction would be far more frequently described according to hite experiences in the succeeding years. Eric Foner's 2002 text Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, would be designed to contribute to an increased effort at redressing this oversight. As a thesis statement, the author asserts that his goal is to provide "a coherent, comprehensive modern account of Reconstruction. This effort necessarily touches on a mulititude of issues, but certain broad themes unify the narrative. The first is the centrality of the balck experience. Rather than passive victims of the actions of others or simply a 'problem' confronting white society, blacks were active agents in the…...

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Works Cited:

Foner, E. (1987). Rights and the Constitution in Black Life during the Civil War and Reconstruction. The Journal of American History, 74(3).

Foner, E. (2002). Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. Harper Perennial Modern Classics.

Tyack, D. & Lowe, R. (1986). The Constitutional Moment: Reconstruction and Black Education in the South. American Journal of Education, 94(2), 236-256.

African-Americans in the South were afraid that any kind of relationship they would form with their former masters would lead to something resembling their enslavement (United States. Congress. Joint Committee on Reconstruction, illiam Pitt Fessenden, Thaddeus Stevens, United States. Congress). It was clear that it would take long before African-Americans would actually come to become equal citizens.
hile the North was initially actively engaged in helping the African-American community in the South as they claimed their right, matters gradually changed and the government abandoned its passion regarding the condition. Racial segregation thrived in the South, especially because white individuals were unwilling to accept black people into politics for the supposed reason that the latter installed a corrupt system that worked against the country's well-being (America's Reconstruction -- People and Politics After the Civil ar).

The Federal government lost interest in supervising the Reconstruction process consequent to seeing that conditions would stall…...

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Works cited:

1. Miller, Kelly. "The Primary Needs of the Negro Race"

2. Tryon Palace Historic Sites & Gardens. "African-Americans get the vote in eastern North Carolina." Retrieved October 24, 2010, from the Learn NC Website:  http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-civilwar/4820 

3. United States. Congress. Joint Committee on Reconstruction, William Pitt Fessenden, Thaddeus Stevens, United States. Congress. (1866). "Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, at the first session, Thirty-ninth Congress." Govt. Print. Off.

4. "America's Reconstruction, People and Politics After the Civil War." Retrieved October 24, 2010, from the Digital History Website: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/reconstruction/introduction.html

There were the growth organizations like Ku Klux Klan. Their aggressions kept away the African-Americans and the white epublicans from voting and gradually the radical epublican governments were overthrown. Their disintegration was enhanced by the death of the old radical leaders in Congress like Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Summer and by the disclosure of internal corruption in the radical epublican government. The Grant government was forced to decline its support of them because of growing criticism in the North of corruption in the federal government itself. (econstruction- www.gurunet.com)
Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana only remained under the epublican domination by 1876. utherford B. Hayes the epublican presidential candidate during the year promised to ease the situations in the South. However, the sentiment there had already led to the establishment of the 'Solid South' favoring his Democratic opponent, Samuel J. Tilden. The presidential contest created the circumstances in those three states…...

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References

An Outline of the Reconstruction Era. Retrieved at   Accessed on 16 November, 2004http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/recon/reconframe.html .

Fairclough, Adam. The Struggle for Equality: Civil Rights in America from Reconstruction to the Depression. Retrieved at   Accessed on 16 November, 2004http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/society_culture/protest_reform/civil_rights_reconstruction_01.shtml .

Reconstruction. Retrieved at   on 16 November, 2004http://www.gurunet.com/t1-method-4-dsid-2040-dekey-Reconstr-curtab-2040_1Accessed 

Reconstruction. Retrieved at Accessed on 16 November, 2004http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/m0020044.html.

Reconstruction After Civil ar
The liberation declaration in 1863 freed African-Americans in rebel states, and after the Civil ar, the Thirteenth Amendment liberated all U.S. slaves wherever they were. As a result, the mass of Southern blacks now faced the complicatedness which Northern blacks had confronted that of a free people bounded by many hostile whites. One freedman, Houston Hartsfield Holloway, wrote, "For we colored people did not know how to be free and the white people did not know how to have a free colored person about them."

Even after the liberation declaration proclamation, two more years of war, service by African-American troops, and the overwhelm of the confederacy, the nation was still unprepared to deal with the question of full citizenship for its newly at liberty black population. The reconstruction implemented by Congress, which lasted from 1866 to 1877, was aimed at reorganizing the Southern states after the Civil ar,…...

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Work Cited

Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution.1863-1877, NY: Harper & Row, 1988.

Belz, Herman. A New Birth of Freedom: The Republican Party and Freedmen's Rights, 1861-6.Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, Inc., 1976.

Congressional Globe, 38th, 1st, 1438.

Hyman, Harold M. A More Perfect Union: The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on the Constitution. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973.

However, the U.S. Congress extended the lending power and expanded the functions of the Corporation through including the powers to buy capital stocks of financial institutions, agricultural credit corporations, insurance firms, and national mortgage associations. Consequently, the Congress gave RFC the power to make loans to business enterprises, public school authorities, mining interests, agricultural improvement districts, and disaster victims. In addition, the corporation was also given the authority to help in funding the construction of public works. The Congress was further directed the Corporation to buy the securities of, provide loans, advances, and distributions of funds to several American governmental corporations and agencies.
In 1940, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation was given new responsibilities with regards to the national defense programs that were being undertaken following the enactment of legislation in that regard. These defense programs were mainly carried out by subsidiary corporations and they were significantly extended during the Second…...

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Bibliography:

Fraser - Federal Reserve Archive. "Final Report on the Reconstruction Finance Corporation,"

Fraser - Federal Reserve Archive, April 30, 2013,  http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/docs/publications/rcf/rfc_19590506_finalreport.pdf 

The American Presidency Project. "Statement about Signing the Reconstruction Finance

Corporation Act," University of California Santa Barbara, April 30, 2013,

Reconstruction & the 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments
The Civil War remains one the most momentous events in American history. The survival of the United States as one nation was at risk and on the outcome of the war depended the nation's ability to bring to reality the ideals of liberty, equality, justice, and human dignity.

The war put constitutional government to its severest test as a long festering debate over the power of the federal government vs. state rights reached a climax.

The Civil War and the bloodshed preserved the Union while releasing African-Americans as well as the entire nation from the oppressive weight of slavery.

Reconstruction was the period after the Civil War in which attempts were made to solve the political, social and economic problems arising from the readmission to the Union of the 11 Confederate states that had seceded at or before the outbreak of war. Reconstruction was greatly affected by…...

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Bibliography

Douglass, Frederick. 1866. Reconstruction. Atlantic Monthly, University of Virginia, vol. 18.

U.S. Constitution: Fifteenth Amendment. 2004. Findlaw; available from Internet; accessed 12 Decemberhttp://www.caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment15/;

2004.

U.S. Constitution: Fourteenth Amendment. 2004. Findlaw; available from Internet; accessed 12 Decemberhttp://www.caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment14/;

Unfortunately, infighting within the epublican Party prevented the adical epublicans from successfully implementing their own econstruction policies. A split within the epublican Party was most notably brought to light during the impeachment trial of President Johnson, when several epublicans voted for Johnson's acquittal.
adical epublicans' views differed from the mainstream party line, which held views similar to those held by their former figurehead Abraham Lincoln. Unlike the more moderate stream of epublicans, the adical epublicans favored equal rights for African-Americans and foresaw the potential disaster of neglecting to care for the needs of liberated slaves. The econstruction policies championed by adical epublicans included the 14th Amendment, which offered African-Americans full citizen status and subsequently granted former slaves equal protection under the law. Opposed to the 13th Amendment, most former Confederates could not stomach the 14th. Moreover, some adical epublicans suggested the confiscation of all Southern plantations, to divide land among…...

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References

Radical Republicans." Spartacus. Retrieved Sept 12, 2006 at http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASradical.htm

Reconstruction." Spartacus. Retrieved Sept 12, 2006 at http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASreconstruction.htm

While it is true that this bureau did a fair amount of work initially in improving such conditions, the effects were not long lived nor nearly as effective as they had been hoped and expected by many, former slaves and white reformers alike (Sage 2007). The idea of econstruction was far from settled when the Bureau was set up, and Lincoln's assassination shortly thereafter caused even greater upheaval in Congress, making econstruction even more "up for grabs" than it had been since the war's inception (Sage 2007). Basically, though the Bureau was set up and certain other laws were passed that attempted to create opportunities for freed slaves, such measures lacked popular support in the South and the means for enforcement from the federal government, which was already stretched thin from the war (McElrath 2009).
The measures that did carry popular support, and so unfortunately became the true defining policies…...

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References

McElrath, J. (2009). "The Reconstruction Era: An Overview." Accessed 20 April 2009. http://afroamhistory.about.com/cs/reconstruction/a/reconstruction.htm

Sage, H. (2007). "Reconstruction." Accessed 20 April 2009.  http://www.sagehistory.net/reconstruction/topics/recon.html

Reconstruction Act of 1867
Description:

Early in 1867, Congress passed a series of laws called the Reconstruction Acts. These laws abolished the Southern state governments formed under Johnson's plan. They also divided all the states that had seceded from the Union, except Tennessee, into five military districts. A major general commanded each area. Federal troops stationed in each district helped enforce the Reconstruction Acts.

The Reconstruction Acts also outlined the process of readmission for the 10 Southern states that still had not rejoined the Union. Election boards in each state would register as voters all adult black males and all qualified adult white males. The voters elected a convention, which adopted a new state constitution. This constitution gave black men the right to vote. The voters then would elect a governor and state legislature. Finally, the state had to ratify the 14th Amendment.

Ku Klux Klan

Description:

The Ku Klux Klan is a group of white…...

(Freeman, 2007). None of the programs was responsible, and freed slaves, especially in rural areas, were left with no property and few prospects following emancipation.
Unfortunately, slaves who did not choose to leave their plantations helped establish the precedence of sharecropping, which led to the virtual re-enslavement of a new generation of African-Americans after Reconstruction. Under the practice of sharecropping, a farmer works on someone else's land, and promises to pay the landowner with a percentage of the crop. The problem with sharecropping is that the tenant farmer often has to buy supplies from the landowner and pay all types of fees. The end result was that many tenant farmers became more indebted to the landowners with every passing year:

As Republicans in the South were driven from office or killed by terrorists, sharecroppers were left without protection and were frequently cheated by white landowners. Laws forced debtors to work the…...

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Works Cited

Freeman, Gerene. (2007). What about My 40 Acres & a Mule? Retrieved October 29, 2007 from Yale New Haven Teachers Institute.

Web Site:  http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1994/4/94.04.01.x.html 

Library of Congress. (2002). Reconstruction and Its Aftermath: Part One. Retrieved October

29, 2007 from African-American Odyssey.

The Civil War was fought over several interrelated issues, slavery being the most important. Yet it would be overly optimistic to assume that the Civil War was fought just to end enslavement. In fact, it was fought to preserve the integrity of the nation and to solidify a strong central government based on the principles of liberty and equality. Although many northerners harbored racist beliefs, the push to eliminate slavery had grown stronger as social norms changed. Compromise with slave owners and racist proponents of the slavery model was endemic to American political culture. As much as Lincoln was a “Great Emancipator,” he was also not a staunch abolitionist.
Lincoln’s assassination dealt a death knell to Reconstruction and reparation. The Freedman’s Bureau was designed with good intentions but its goals never reached fruition under the auspices of the Southern sympathizer Johnson Grassroots organizations like the American Missionary Association did little to help…...

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…...

" The more the freedmen resumed the habits and postures of slaves, the better the planters were able to accept the new system.
Thus reconstruction even with all the good intentions of some people was still a major failure. It had failed to bring the kind of peace and freedom for blacks that it was intended to. Since the blacks had become more or less accustomed to being treated as chained men, it took them a long time to accept freedom in true manner. The transition was slow and highly painful. It wasn't easy to shift power to the masses and it certainly took a long time to bring an end to slave mentality. ights were not granted easily and even after equality had been established on paper; it was not completely given in practice for a very long time.

eferences

econstruction., the Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, 01-01-1993

Eric Foner, a Short History of…...

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References

Reconstruction., the Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, 01-01-1993

Eric Foner, a Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877, Harper & Row Publishers, December 1989

Trotter, Joe W., Reflections on the African-American experience, Vol. 29, Journal of Social History, 02-05-1996, pp 85(6)

Otto H. Olsen, Carpetbagger's Crusade: The Life of Albion Winegar Tourgee (John Hopkins Press, 1965).  http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/procamn.htm

Southerners did not flock to become Republicans as the North desired, but when they were allowed to be Democrats, they worked hard to restore legitimate legislation and patriotism.

Meanwhile the attitude of Southerners toward the Blacks remained the same as before the war. Declaring a people free did not erase the subordinate and inferior image that the hites had of the Blacks. Even those blacks who had served in the military faced persecution and prejudice. A Colonel hittlesey testified before the Joint Committee on Reconstruction in 1866 and described several acts of violence he had witnessed:

Another case is that of Charles Everett, late 2d sergeant in the United States colored troops. Mr. Everett, since his discharge, has lived in this town, a quiet, peaceful citizen, has taken to himself a wife, and attended to his own business. He has had no quarrel nor unpleasant controversy with anyone, white or black. Hence…...

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Works Cited

McPhearson, James M. Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction. 3rd ed. 2001

Mintz, S. "Testimony of Colonel Whittlesey before The Joint Committee on Reconstruction." 2006. (Online)  http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/recon/whittlesey.html

One of the policies that black leaders fought for was the granting of land to blacks following the Civil War. Freedman saw "land represented as their chance to farm for themselves, to have an independent life. It represented compensation for generation of travail and bondage" (438). Although this demand has strong logical backing in that once freed, black farmers should have equal legal status as white, the reality of the situation did not support such a reformation. The general feeling of race within the northern landscape was very mixed, despite the fight for emancipation; Northerners still saw themselves as the superiors of the black population. Therefore, black leaders were not able to gain strong land-rights for African-American throughout the west. However, the government did relent to giving out equitable land rights to African-Americans during the mass-migration to the West; this was one of the impetus that spawned the greater…...

In turn-of-the-century America, there were some major civil rights advances for some groups, while other groups saw no advances in their civil rights and even saw advances that had been made begin to erode.  The time period was well after the end of the Reconstruction era and the beginning of Jim Crow laws, the rise of the suffragette movement, and a continued assault on rights for Native Americans.  There was also a significant increase in anti-Asian discrimination. Here are some suggested titles and thesis statements for an essay about civil rights in this era.

Essay Title....