Was Reconstruction was a Missed Opportunity?

Reconstruction

Reconstruction was a missed opportunity since American missed social, political and economic opportunities.

The Southern States citizens worked hard to uphold their white supremacy social system by passing what was known as black code that restricted liberated slaves’ political and economic rights. When the Congress attempted to negate laws proposed to undermine liberated slaves, the whites developed Ku Klux Klan who fought to push blacks to what they considered their rightful place ‘slavery’. There were racial prejudice in the south, and though blacks were managing to push southern states to permit blacks to vote, only a few states in the north allowed black suffrage. In addition there was social segregation of blacks with regard to access to public facilities. This political conflict and resistance slowed down the growth of blacks and as a result they lugged the American economic growth.

There was an extensive spread liberated slaves illiteracy and poverty, a primary unwillingness to give them land, and absolute degree of enacting laws to safeguard the Africa-Americans from Texas to Virginia all demonstrated insurmountable obstacles on racial equality road.  This resulted to social inequalities between blacks and whites in the country. Although there were a number of measures taken to enhance racial equity during that time, the missed opportunity in this case is that the measures taken were not radical enough. There were a lot of attitude surrounding all decisions made to provide blacks with equal voting rights.

Another major failure of reconstruction was white resistance to accommodate whites’ freedom and liberation. As a result most white men from south who owned properties employed measures such as refusal to pay taxes to what they considered as alien state government which incorporated blacks and which was created with contribution of blacks in form of voting. This slowed down the rate of economic growth as that time.

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