Reconstruction demonstrated that the federal government could get involved in civil rights. Through the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, African Americans went from being slaves to citizens who could legally vote. All of this took place over five years. Reconstruction also demonstrated that the nation could put itself back together even after war had claimed over six hundred thousand of its most productive citizens. Reconstruction also gave the United States the power...
Reconstruction demonstrated that the federal government could get involved in civil rights. Through the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, African Americans went from being slaves to citizens who could legally vote. All of this took place over five years. Reconstruction also demonstrated that the nation could put itself back together even after war had claimed over six hundred thousand of its most productive citizens. Reconstruction also gave the United States the power to deliver direct aid to some of its most vulnerable citizens through the Freedmen's Bureau.
Reconstruction also demonstrated that the nation still had problems. The South did not honor African American voting and would not ratify new state constitutions without the military being stationed there. After the army left in 1877, African American political participation fell dramatically as states put legal barriers in the way and groups such as the Ku Klux Klan sought to intimidate the newly enfranchised black voters. The South still remained poor after Reconstruction, as there was little there to invite Northern investment capital. While segregation happened in the North as well, the South instituted it on a larger scale; this forced separation would last for nearly another one hundred years.
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