Final Exam - Topic #2

Analyze the successes and failures of Reconstruction.

Successes:
  • Freedmen's Bureau - educated 200,000 blacks
  • 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments
  • Wasn't too harsh
  • Got the Union back together

Failures

  • Black Codes
  • KKK
  • Failure to enforce 14th and 15th amendments (poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clause)
  • Weak executive branch
  • Women still couldn't vote
  • Southern whites unhappy! But Southern society wasn't destroyed - it was resurected - went back to the old society pretty much
  • Dispute over policy toward South - Congressional vs. Presidential
  • Extinguished Republican party from South for about 100 years