The Reconstruction Period 1865-1877 By: Zachary Benner Rachel A. Jarred Condez Christian Esteves With the ending of the Civil War in 1865 the victorious Union Government had to make plan to reconnect and reunite the once brotherly Union. The Nation was left scared with hatred between the destruction of the Confederacy, the abolishment slavery, and the bitter feelings that the South and North put upon each other. The Union Government would devise a series of Acts to try to make an illusion that a post war Union would be the brotherly one they started off with. The Reconstruction Period of 1865-1877 was a failure to specify federal policies, to create the Union as it was once, and also with compromises with the South in which it created a form of hidden slavery within the Southern States through the Jim Crow Laws. The Reconstruction Period after war was an utter failure to specify the federal policies of the Government in the South. The government placed The Civil Rights Act and The Reconstruction Act. The Civil Right Act deliberately states, “1866 Civil Rights Act
14 Stat. 27-30, April 9, 1866 A.D. CHAP. XXXI.
An Act to protect all Persons in the United States in their Civil Rights, and furnish the Means of their Vindication. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States;” With allowing all people born within the territories of or in the United States citizens and give the same freedoms of white men. This seemed to be that the new government was on the right track but the South had something else in mind. But with The Reconstruction Act filling all the recognized loose ends of the Civil Rights Act; the “rebel” states to be readmitted into they had to follow the rules of the Reconstruction Act. Paraphrasing the Reconstruction Act, Creation of five military districts in the seceded states not including Tennessee, which had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and was readmitted to the Union

• Required congressional approval for new state constitutions (which were required for Confederate states to rejoin the Union)
• Confederate states gave voting rights to all men.
• All states must ratify the 14th Admendment.

These bills being passed by Congress, this had a loop whole within its own wording. The Aristocratic Southern Whites who regain control over the state governments saw this and used it to its advantage. They used this loop whole as an advantage by keeping the freedmen on the brink of slavery. The way they did this was to introduce of set of laws called the Jim Crow Laws. With the “rebel” states being readmitted into the Union the government was no longer to interfere with the state politics unless the states themselves were being Unconstitutional. The Jim Crow Laws were a set of many individual laws with all the old Confederate States that range from literacy test for voting to jailing if a black man was not in work. These laws would stay in place for hundred years before they were considered Unconstitutional in the 1960’s during the Civil Right Movement. As federal polices began to re-stitch the Union back together it would take much more than federal policies for the South to except that north was their countrymen. As Fredrick Douglas puts it so elegant in his paper Reconstruction in 1866, "Whether the tremendous war so heroically fought and so victoriously ended shall pass into history a miserable failure, barren of permanent results, -- a scandalous and shocking waste of blood and treasure, -- a strife for empire, as Earl Russell characterized it, of no value to liberty or civilization, -- an attempt to re-establish a Union by force, which must be the merest mockery of a Union, -- an effort to bring under Federal authority States into which no loyal man from the North may safely enter, and to bring men into the national councils who deliberate with daggers and vote with revolvers, and who do not even conceal their deadly hate of the country that conquered them; or whether, on the other hand, we shall, as the rightful reward of victory over treason, have a solid nation, entirely delivered from all contradictions and social antagonisms, based upon loyalty, liberty, and equality, must be determined one way or the other by the present session of Congress. The last session really did nothing which can be considered final as to these questions." From this piece from his paper he hit the nail on the head. The Union Government was trying to force the Union and its ideals on the Confederate States. By doing this the South would place its hatred by the North beyond just words they would rename the Civil War as the Progress of Northern Aggression. Teaching this to all the children in South that the North was the oppressor of Southern tradition and heritage. This is still taught throughout the Deep South. Fredrick Douglas also says that this is a “mockery of a Union”. Meaning that all the work that government is doing to ‘Reconstruct’ the Union it will just make an illusion of one and that federal policies would not change the deepen hatred the Southern Confederates would have towards a “Northern” Government. The Union Government wanting this “Reconstruction Period” to reunite the people of the nation was as stated BY: William Beveridge “Want is one only of five giants on the road of reconstruction; the others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, and Idleness."

This to Southerners would forever scar them as oppressed people by the Northern Government and the freedmen were a constant reminder of there once proud and atrocious tradition as state by the story of Kate Stone, “A young woman who was 20 when the civil war started experienced life before and after it. Before the Negroes were easy to control and everything was fine; she was wealthy and her family was happy; and after the civil war the Negroes were very rebellious and actually almost killed her brother. There was great tension between the whites and the Negroes. The Negroes demanded higher pay or they would leave and Kate’s family thought it hard to make a profit when the Negroes kept demanding higher wages and more supplies.” To Southerners this was to be the most felt because the African Americans were no longer under their control, for now they had to pay them as they would pay their white comrades. But the North to keep the Reconstruction alive they needed to stay in power. In the election of 1876 there was hidden deal stricken so Republican Candidate Hayes would become President. This deal was called the Compromise of 1877. The Compromise of 1877 was an informal, unwritten deal that settled the disputed 1876 Presidential Election . Through it,Hayes was awarded theWhite House over Democrat Tilden on the understanding that Hayes would remove the federal troops that were propping up Republican state governments in South Carlonia, Florida andLousiana. Consequently, the incumbent President, Republican Ulysses S. Grant, removed the soldiers from Florida before Hayes as his successor removed the remaining troops in South Carolina and Louisiana. As soon as the troops left, many Republicans also left or became Democrats and the "Redeemer" Democrats took control. At the End the Reconstruction Period of 1865-1877 was a failure. It would leave the South and the North scared from becoming a brotherly Union again. The Reconstruction Period would leave the Jim Crow Laws and the Racial into place almost hundred years later when the Supreme Court found that they were Unconstitutional during the Civil Right Movement. But still in our modern day there are people who live and breathe that one day the Confederacy will live again. These people are associated with organizations such as the K.K.K. which keep the racial being of the Confederacy alive and the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy who have moved on from the racial views and believe the “Union” is oppressing the Confederate way of life without ideal of slavery in it.