Lincoln’s Presidential Reconstruction plans were seen by many, including Radical Republicans in Congress, to be too tolerant towards what they considered to be traitors. With the war coming to an end, the question of how to reunite the former Confederate states with the Union was a divisive one. In the South, limits on human freedom endured and would stand for nearly a century more. Resistance continued, and Reconstruction eventually collapsed. When Black Americans and their radical allies succeeded in securing citizenship for freedpeople, a new fight commenced to determine the legal, political, and social implications of American citizenship. African Americans and Radical Republicans pushed the nation to finally realize the Declaration of Independence’s promises that “all men are created equal” and have “certain unalienable rights.” White Democrats granted African Americans legal freedom but little more. It was a moment of revolutionary possibility and violent backlash.

The era witnessed perhaps the most open and widespread discussions of citizenship since the nation’s founding. The answers to many of Reconstruction’s questions hinged on the concepts of citizenship and equality.

How would these states be brought back into the Union? Would they be conquered territories or equal states? How would they rebuild their governments, economies, and social systems? What rights did freedom confer on formerly enslaved people? Some of the material was burned, I know, but miles and miles of iron have actually disappeared, gone out of existence.” 1 He might as well have been talking about the entire antebellum way of life. “We had passably good roads, on which we could reach almost any part of the State, and the next week they were all gone-not simply broken up, but gone. “It passes my comprehension to tell what became of our railroads,” one South Carolinian told a northern reporter. Economic Development during the Civil War and ReconstructionĪfter the Civil War, much of the South lay in ruins.

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