Reconstruction

Advancement in equality, but unfulfilled promise

After the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and the end of the Civil War, the Radical Republican Congress led the nation through many advances in the First Principles of unalienable rights and equalitly. However, the efforts of Reconstruction were cut short and its promise unfulfilled.

During the Civil War, the nation abolished slavery when it ratified the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. After the Civil War, the nation ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees due process and equality under the law from the states.  The Fifteenth Amendment guarantees the right to vote regardless of race.

Dominated by Republicans (dubbed “Radical Republicans”), Congress enacted a series of civil rights acts to protect the rights of freedman, including acts that placed a duty on the occupying federal troops to enforce the acts and protect individual liberties.

Such measures provoked heated opposition from the South and President Andrew Johnson, leading to a showdown in which the House of Representatives impeached Johnson – but he narrowly escaped conviction in the Senate.

Although Reconstruction was a magnificent step in the march toward equality, its promise was regrettably set back in 1876. The nation had grown weary of Reconstruction and the sharp divisions it wrought. Immediately following an extraordinarily controversial election in 1876, in which the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was eventually declared the winner, federal troops were withdrawn from the South, and Reconstruction ended.  Soon “Jim Crow” laws resulted in the segregation and political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the South. Congress and the Supreme Court stood idly by as the First Principles of unalienable rights and equality were ignored for generations.

The promise of Reconstruction would not be approached again until the Civil Rights movement of the next century.

For more about Reconstruction, the Radical Republican Congress, and their importance to our liberties today, buy a copy of  America’s Survival Guide.

 

 

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