Reconstruction

After the Civil War, there were many different plans for the reconstruction of the South. Lincoln had a detailed plan that he wanted to enact, but he was assassinated before he was able to do so....

When Reconstruction began after the end of the Civil War, most Northerners were in support of it. The war had been fought in large part in order to preserve the Union, and it was necessary that the...

Congressional Reconstruction is often referred to as Radical Reconstruction because it involved big bold plans. Presidential Reconstruction as envisioned by Lincoln and Johnson was meant to be...

Reconstruction was a failure in that it didn't fully incorporate the South back into the Union. Despite the best efforts of Radical Republicans in Washington, the South remained a land apart, never...

Reconstruction's aim was to bring the South back into the Union while protecting the rights and safety of the newly freed slaves. At the end of the Civil War, there were nearly 4 million former...

As Abraham Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural Address, "With malice toward none, with charity for all," he hoped to bring the South back into the Union with a forgiving hand. Lincoln's plan was...

Abraham Lincoln's plan of Reconstruction was conceived to reunite a divided country with a healing hand. His motives can best be summarized by the words from his second inaugural address, which...

Reconstruction had several goals. The main goal was to rebuild the South. After the Civil War, the South was completely destroyed. This meant several things needed to occur. First, the economy...

There are two different ways one could argue the fate of the South. The Lincoln government never recognized the Confederacy in name, since doing so would open up a path to international legitimacy...

Feelings about Reconstruction varied to some degree in the South. Overall, it was greatly disliked and reviled by white Southerners, who felt that their defeat in the Civil War was being rubbed in...

Any benefit that African Americans received from Reconstruction is problematic at best, and most historians will argue that Reconstruction was a failure. African Americans were freed by the...

One major disadvantage of Lincoln's plan was its leniency. Lincoln wanted to allow the former states of the Confederacy back into the Union with only ten percent of the eligible voters swearing...

Presidential Reconstruction was the plan implemented by President Andrew Johnson. Possessed of a limited view of the role of the federal government, and above all committed to the idea that the...

Reconstruction was largely a failure. The main reason is that there was resentment on the part of the South. The North's attempts to impose values were not well-received. They felt like they...

The Reconstruction period, though marking the end of the chaos and destruction of the Civil War, was not without its own set of issues. The Civil War freed the slaves, but the trauma of war was far...

After Reconstruction, the South was still trying to recover from the Civil War. The infrastructure in the region was still in shambles, especially in the Lower South, along the route William...

The federal government had many challenges during Reconstruction. The most pressing issue was what to do with the newly freed slaves. The federal government established the Freedmen's Bureau in...

Politically, bringing the Southern states back into the Union was the biggest success of Reconstruction. This was the ultimate goal of Reconstruction. The nation was brought together in a way that...

Reconstruction failed to change the basic race relations equation in the US (because there was no way it could), which would have been necessary for real progress in that area. It failed to...

To say the South "won the peace" might be a bit of a stretch: the South's economy was damaged greatly after the war and its former social customs were breaking down. While the so-called Old South...

Through the so-called Black Codes, Southern elites sought to keep the status quo and provide loopholes to the Thirteenth Amendment and the abolition of slavery. Owing to President Andrew Johnson's...

Reconstruction (1865–1877) is the term used to describe the historical period after the end of the Civil War(1861–1865). Because Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, he did did not actually...

Life was difficult for African Americans during Reconstruction. It was very difficult to go from a life where a person was always told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, and then be...

Reconstruction had more than its fair share of successes. For an all too brief period it allowed newly-freed slaves to participate in the nation's government by voting and standing for public...

Presidential Reconstruction, as envisioned by Abraham Lincoln and enacted by Andrew Johnson, was meant to heal and reunite a fractured nation. Lincoln summed up his feelings about a post-war...

This period from 1865 to 1877 is usually called Reconstruction.The obvious problem for America in April 1865 is the assassination of a President: Abraham Lincoln was murdered on April 14, 1865. The...

Civil War Reconstruction is one of those rare instances in U.S, History by which one can neatly place an "era" of time neatly into an exact beginning and ending date. This is due to the fact that...

Like Lincoln, Johnson wanted the former Confederate states brought back into the Union as quick as possible. Johnson did not insist on the Radicals "Ironclad Oath" which prohibited anyone who...

One of the purposes of Reconstruction (at least in the minds of some people) was to give the freed slaves a chance at a new and better life. The fact that sharecropping became so prevalent shows...

Lincoln's Ten Percent plan was quite lenient in letting the former Confederate states back into the Union. Ten percent of the state's voters in 1860 would have to swear loyalty to the Union and...

While Congress, as led by the Radical Republicans, sought to ameliorate the ravages wrought by the institution of slavery and the Civil War, its legislative agenda, which included the 13th, 14th,...

During the Civil War, President Lincoln began formulating a plan to reunify the nation when the war came to an end. He felt reunification should be a gentle and gradual process. He planned to...

The Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction as the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won the presidency over the Democrat Samuel Tilden. The election of 1876 was quite close and the electoral votes of...

Reconstruction dealt with inequality at the formal, rather than substantive level. So although it allowed African Americans to vote for the first time and hold public office, it did little or...

What made Radical Reconstruction radical was its extensive use of federal power to achieve its policy goals. Although the Civil War appeared to have settled the vexed question of the political and...

There are a few reasons why Reconstruction under Andrew Johnson and the radical Republicans went so badly. First, Lincoln was an advocate for moderate Reconstruction. As leader of the Republican...

The Reconstruction era refers to the period from 1863 to 1877 when the United States tried to recover from the devastation of the Civil War and rebuild the South in a way the returned it to...

The North and South had very different agendas throughout the period of Reconstruction (1865–1877). Although it had been defeated in the Civil War, the South was determined to maintain as much of...

Racial equality did not come to the South as a result of a lack of political will on the part of Northern lawmakers. While Congress created the Freedman's Bureau and passed the Fourteenth and...

Following the Union victory in the American Civil War, there were several plans for reconstruction. President Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan was far different from the one put in place under President...

Radical Reconstruction ultimately failed because it lacked the sustained political effort needed to make it work. As time went on, most people, North and South, wanted to move on from the war, and...

This, of course, is an incredibly complicated question, and there is no way I can do justice to the equally complicated answer in 200 words, so I'll simply do a brief overview. Rather than simply...

The other educator's answer is spot-on in naming white Southerners as the major opponents and obstacles to Reconstruction. However, they did not succeed in hampering Reconstruction efforts alone....

Wartime Presidential reconstruction was represented by President Lincoln's "ten per cent plan," issued in 1863 which provided that new state governments could be formed when ten per cent of voters...

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was a great start; even though it meant little to the Confederate government at the time, and to the Southern states still under Confederate control, Southern...

The first challenge would have to do with the amount of refugees the war created in the South. In the countryside, lawlessness was commonplace as people were desperate for life's basic needs such...

One of the more disturbing observations that one can make about United States history with respect to the outcomes of the Civil War and the period of Reconstruction was the fact that...

Johnson was primarily concerned with assimilating the South back into the Union as soon as possible. Unlike most Congressional Republicans, he didn't see Southerners as traitors and rebels who...

The primary purpose of Reconstruction was to ensure that the defeated South would not rise again. To this end, the system of government in the defeated states was reorganized to keep out those...

The Ku Klux Klan is a group that has typically been associated with racist beliefs. It has also been involved in nativism and antisemitism. The KKK was founded in 1866. The KKK was originally...