Reconstruction in the United States

During the Reconstruction period of the United States just after the civil war, many groups of people made efforts to either help the cause or do everything they could to stop it from happening. One group that attempted to help the reconstruction was the population of free and newly freed African-American citizens. African-Americans used their new right to vote to elect members of congress and the senate that promised to fight for civil rights and reconstruction acts. Many so-called “radical” republicans fought President Johnson for harsher punishments for the south and were able to overrule the president’s veto power with a 2/3-majority vote to pass the military reconstruction act. Former southern confederates, slave owners and politicians who strongly opposed the reconstruction refused to pass legislator such as the 14th amendment and instituted “black codes” and similar oppressive laws to keep African-Americans from becoming socially equal with the white population. Some of these southern whites turned to violence, murder and domestic terrorism to show just how opposed to these changes they were.

Although the majority of southern white opposed reconstruction, a few felt that the new legislation being passed was making them powerless and destroying their livelihood. One of the outraged southern whites, Nathan Bedford Forrest, a former slave trader and die-hard confederate, founded the infamous terrorist organization known as the Klu Klux Klan, Or KKK, to fight the reconstruction by any means necessary including arson, threats, and murder as vulgar as publicly displayed hangings.

Perhaps the most successful of all the laws and regulations in the south to prevent social equality between African-American citizens and white citizens were the Black Codes. The Black Codes were designed to ensure a work force for plantation owners and former slave owners, and more severe punishment for African-Americans that violate their working agreements. In some states African-Americans could be arrested for being unemployed, and denied them the right to get married, own land, or file lawsuits. Needless to say African-Americans were fairly upset over these codes, to them, their newly granted freedom was being taken from them by easily bypassing the 13th amendment. Thankfully, The Civil Rights Act of 1866 outlawed these black codes. Another way African-Americans were continually oppressed was through the sharecropping system. Former white slave and plantation owners forced African-Americans to continue working for them as indentured servants by paying the former slaves with food and a place to live. Although successful in some aspects, many indentured servants simply up and left for the north.