Is reconstruction era success or failure for African Americans

Federal and state governments failed to

secure the rights guaranteed to former slaves

by constitutional amendments.

Explanation:

Federal and state governments failed to

secure the rights guaranteed to former slaves

by constitutional amendments.

 Radical Republican governments were

unable or unwilling to enact land

reform or to provide former slaves

with the economic resources needed

to break the cycle of poverty.

 State Republican parties could not

preserve black-white voter coalitions

that would have enabled them to stay

in power and continue political

reform.

 Racial bias was a national, not just a

southern, problem. Northerners

became more absorbed in westward

expansion and industrialization than

with the problems of the former

slaves.

 The Supreme Court undermined the

power of the 14th and 15th

Amendments.

At the end of Reconstruction, former slaves

found themselves once again in a

subordinate position in society. The historian

Eric Foner concludes: “Whether measured by

the dreams inspired by emancipation or the

more limited goals of securing blacks’ rights

as citizens…Reconstruction can only be

judged a failure.”

Reconstruction was an attempt to create a

social and political revolution despite

economic collapse and the opposition of

much of the white South. Under these

conditions, its accomplishments were

extraordinary.

 African-Americans only a few years

removed from slavery participated at

all levels of government.

 State governments had some success

in solving social problems. ; for

example, they funded public school

systems open to all citizens.

 African-Americans established

institutions that had been denied

them during slavery: schools,

churches and families.

 The breakup of the plantation system

led to some redistribution of land.

 Congress passed the 14th and 15th

Amendments, which helped African

Americans to attain full civil rights in

the 20th century.

Despite the loss of ground that followed

Reconstruction, African Americans

succeeded in carving out a measure of

independence within Southern soc

in mcculloch v. maryland (1819) the supreme court ruled that congress had implied powers under the necessary and proper clause of article i, section 8 of the constitution to create the second bank of the united states and that the state of maryland lacked the power to tax the bank.

gibbons v. ogden, (1824), was a landmark decision in which the supreme court of the united states held that the power to regulate interstate commerce, granted to congress by the commerce clause of the united states constitution, encompassed the power to regulate navigation.