Blog #10: Reconstruction

What's the deal with Reconstruction?
Reconstruction was an idea for the people who won the war, the Union. Republicans wanted to readmit the South and become America again, how it was before the war. There were many people who were against the though. Because of the lack of fair government involvement in the whole Reconstruction, it was a bit of a failure. The amendments that passed after the Civil War that was supposed to help freed slaves, but instead. was undermined. Former confederates came up with state and local level rules for freed african americans. Ulysses assumed that the South would shape up and everyone would get along, which is the reason why he was very uninvolved in the matter when he was president. Basically, it took a while after the Civil War to put in effect the reason for the war in the first place.

What is/was Reconstruction? What went well? What went poorly?
I'm pretty sure it was to fix up the Southern States. After the war, Abraham Lincoln wanted to put in effect some new amendments like the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment, hoping to have them enforced. I think this went poorly because Abraham didn't really get to finish what he started. He dealt with a lot of things like the aftermath of the war, the reconstruction amendments, etc. The part that went poorly was that the amendments didn't really effect life. Even though slaves were freed, the confederates still made it difficult for them and limited the rights they are supposed to have as freedmen. They found loopholes that didn't allow African Americans to vote. There was also immense violence caused by the KKK, a clan started by former confederates who still thought the war was going on. Also, like I said before, the presidents after Abraham Lincoln were horrible and didn't enforce anything in the South at all. In fact, they actually helped the South by appointing former confederates as governors. All in all, I think it was a complete mess with what they did. The Presidents weren't supportive, there was no amendment enforcement, no organization, no help, nothing. The government/ military was just corrupted with confederates.

Why is it relevant today?
It is relevant today for many reasons. One of the main reasons is how things in the future change if the past is changed. There are things that could have happened to completely change the America we know today. We may not even have been born. There are many "what if" questions that we can over, like "What if Abraham Lincoln wasn't shot?" or "What if there had been a different president elected?" that may give us a different perspective on how modern life would've been like. The past has a huge influence on the future.

Connect the basic history of Reconstruction with a modern issue, as found (and cited and excerpted from a modern news story).
I emailed Randy about this, but I still didn't really understand what he meant by a modern examples that connects to the Reconstruction. It was between many ideas. One idea was getting an example of starting something over and having a rebellion from the other side. The second idea was comparing the Reconstruction back then to, perhaps, a failure of Reconstruction in modern times? The third idea was comparing the Reconstruction back then to a successful beginning in modern time. I was sort of confused.