His017B
The Radical Reconstruction Essay
The Civil War ended in the spring of 1965, and the nation began to recover. President Abraham Lincoln initially led the reconstruction process for peace, reincorporating the Confederate states back to the Union and emancipating the former slaves. However, Lincoln was assassinated on April 1865, and his plan came to a halt. The new President, Andrew Johnson, stepped in to undertake the job, but his excessive sympathy shown toward the Confederate States stirred great controversies among the loyalists. As Johnson’s outrageous leniency continued, members of the then Republican-dominant Legislature unanimously decided that they must intervene in order to save the face of the Union (p.439 & 440). …show more content…
Although, the Radical Reconstruction failed in the end; there are improvements that could have made to make successful, such as using Congress’ monetary power to stimulate the economy and law making power to implements more effective laws.
During the Radical Reconstruction, Republican Congress sought to reform the South and nationalize citizenship status and privileges. First, with regard to the recovery process in the South, Congress imposed military rules, whose jobs were to register eligible voters, supervise state conventions, and uphold the law, and required rebel states to sign off certain Civil Right laws before admitting them back to the Union (p.442). It extended the Freemen Bureau that acted as the representative agent for the black communities; the Bureau assisted with establishing schools, negotiating work contract, and providing protection against violence. Numerous republican governments additionally sought to modernize their cities by banning cruel punishments, installing electricity and railroad, and providing health, legal, and education services to both the black and white (p.455). In dealing with Southern …show more content…
First, economic hardship was one of the causes of the Reconstruction’s failure. Congress could have diverted a greater percent of the government spending to further industrialize the South; this creates industrial jobs for the poor, which reduces poverty. Another problem is that in a crop-lien system, a type of a sharecropping established in the South after the War, the black farmers, to initiate the farming, had to borrowed money and equipment from warehouses “loan sharks,” which trapped them in continual debts (p.451). The Freeman Bureau could have stood up to act as a bank that supplies loan at an affordable interest rate, ending the crop-lien system. The third possible improvement to the Reconstruction, specifically aim at the Civil Right movement, is integrated schools for all races that would promote education and undermine racism, especially in children, who are still open-minded. It may appear that all these tasks are too expensive, but if the Congress exercise their taxation power to increase the tariffs, they would generate enough revenue to pilot the programs and at the same time, stimulate domestic trade, which would satisfy the northerners. Lastly, to strengthen all the Civil Right laws, the