In a 2-3 page essay assess whether ideals of citizenship changed during Reconstruction.
...tion that was unexpected for both white landowners and the blacks who had served them. The white landowners were suddenly in competition with the blacks for survival resources. This came as salt in the already smarting wound of losing the war to the wealthy white landowners who before the war’s end had suspected no change in the state of their lives in the South. Now they were faced with having their property, both physical and human chattel seized by what they considered to be the meddling and ungrateful republican government they had supported during the Revolution. As the tension mounted, newly succeeded President Andrew Johnson was faced with the challenge of mollifying thousands of angry white landowners who felt that they had been robbed of their livelihood when the slaves were freed, and considered it outrageous that no one had thought about what to do with the millions of newly created “citizens” now clamoring for a way to survive on their own. Johnson’s solution was to try to appease the voters and show that the federal government was not punishing individual landowners for the rebellion of the Confederacy by returning federally held lands to white landowners with no consideration of the Black Americans who had spilled onto them once freed. Despite the pleas of the freed new citizens to the President that they required a home now that they were free, he declined to take the land from white landowners in order to give it to them . It was suggested that instead, the blacks work for the whites as they had been, only under “contract” instead of as slaves. This weak solution created tension between Whites, who resented having to pay anything at all for what was once free, and Blacks, who understood that being paid less than was needed to survive and not being allowed to become landowners amounted to the same conditions from whence they had so recently come. The freed men and women insisted that they be allowed the same liberties and rights as their white counterparts. They demanded a place in society. The White landowners were forced to come to grips with the fact that they could not get away with continued enslavement of Blacks and subjugation of minorities, and since their physical rebellion failed, they rebelled legislatively and through terrorism. With southern landowners attempting to continue the battle between the states and the union over who had the right to decide what the law would be, turmoil in the South continued into the 1870s. The states made laws specifically designed to circumvent the federal ones in order to try to retain the status-quo. These “Black Codes,” were specifically designed to stop the tide of change. The Black Codes simply changed the word “slave” in many places to “freedman,” and continued to impose the oppressive law designed to keep Blacks in a state of economic profitability for Whites and social subjugation . President Johnson’s plan for reconstruction failed because he attempted to stifle the controversy without taking a specific stand. He wanted to compromise by satisfying the needs of those who voted while keeping everyone else as quiet as possible. Instead, he satisfied no one and incited an outcry among the Blacks and some Northern Whites, and eventually, from Congress. Change is not easy. Congress’ plans faired little better. They wrested control of the Reconstruction from the President because he was unable to come to compromise, and they issued the 14th amendment, which specifically included minorities as citizens and limited the power of the Confederate leaders by barring them from holding office . By including Blacks as citizens, Congress produced two outcomes. First, the Southern Democrats were forced to recognize African Americans as just that, American citizens. This created a basis for the civil rights struggle that continues even today. The second was to make that citizenship a blessing for the South. By counting Blacks as citizens, the population increased in southern states and so did their legislative representation. This meant more power in government and more of a chance to have their say in the running of the newly re-united country. The outcome for Blacks was that they began to question the denial of their rights as born or naturalized citizens and they worked to bring about the ideal originally posited in the Declaration of Independence; that all men are created equal and are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They set out, as it were, to prove that they were men. They had a new war to fight. T...