Jim Crow and Black Codes after the Civil War

Reconstruction: Successes and Failures

Reconstruction after the Civil War was a mixed bag of successes and failures. If its primary aim was reintegration of the South into the US, it could be said to be a success. The problem with Reconstruction is that the architects of Reconstruction were themselves divided about how it should proceed. The Radicals wanted vengeance, whereas Lincoln (before he was murdered) called for forgiveness. The US government under Johnson was torn between trying to implement Lincoln’s vision and trying to appease the very vocal Radicals more or less calling for blood. On top of all this were very real social concerns, like voting rights, equality, and Jim Crow laws (the Black Codes).

Although the Reconstruction succeeded in abolishing slavery through the 13th Amendment, it did not do much to establish actual civil rights for blacks. Indeed, racist Black Codes and sharecropper agreements (which basically kept all the negatives of slavery in place by restricting blacks in terms of what they could do on their own) essentially meant that the spirit of inequality and oppression remained entrenched in the South. The Union countenanced it all by permitting it to go on, moreover. This was one of the biggest failures of Reconstruction (Carte, 1985).

Still, it should be observed that one of the biggest successes of Reconstruction was the abolition of slavery. This change legally freed an entire race of people and dismantled the peculiar institution that had existed in the US since before it even became an actual nation. It should have been the dawn of a new era in American society, and legislation that followed appeared to suggest as much. The 14th and 15th Amendments were passed to secure civil rights for newly freed slaves, granting them citizenship and the right to vote, respectively. The Reconstruction Acts further divided the South into military districts, requiring states to draft new constitutions that upheld these amendments. These legislative achievements were supposed to be supported by the Freedmen\\\\\\\'s Bureau, which provided essential services like food, housing, and education to former slaves (Olds, 1963). For a brief period, blacks now had opportunities they had hardly experienced before—like the opportunity to vote and be elected to public office at the local, state, and federal levels.

However, these were undermined by a spirit of repression that persisted. The period was marred by the rise of Jim Crow and Black Codes. These laws, enacted by Southern states after the withdrawal of federal troops, put restrictions on the civil liberties of blacks and institutionalized racial segregation. The economic system that replaced slavery was hardly better for most freed slaves. Sharecropping, in which freedmen worked land owned by whites in exchange for a share of the crops, entrenched black workers in cycles of debt and poverty that were impossible to escape. Moreover, the era was plagued by violence and intimidation against blacks. People looking to exploit or control newly freed blacks arrived in the South and hindered any positive advancement of Reconstruction.