<p>I'm reviewing over the Reconstruction right now and I have a feeling a possible essay would ask if it was a "success or a failure". Can anyone help me out?</p>
<p>Well...
Success:
13, 14, 15 amendments passed
Freedmen's bureau</p>
<p>Failures:
Jim crowe laws
Poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses
Sharecropping
KKK</p>
<p>well let's summarize it.</p>
<p>Reconstruction successes:
Civil Rights Act
Fourteenth Amendment
Fifteenth Amendment</p>
<p>Reconstruction failures:
five military districts
poll taxes, literacy tests, etc. designed to keep blacks from voting
Plessy v. Ferguson
Compromise of 1877 - military reconstruction officially dead</p>
<p>other things you can mention during reconstruction:
Andrew Johnson's ineffectiveness and attempted impeachment for purely political reasons
scalawags and carpetbaggers
Thaddeus Stevens; Charles Sumner
"bloody shirt"
Wade-Davis bill
10 percent plan
Booker T. Washington</p>
<p>there's obviously a lot more, but when you get to an essay question, just write down everything you can remember about the era first. then you can decide which way to argue and what to use. if you don't know anything, just throw in everything you can. it's all "outside information"</p>
<p>Also...</p>
<p>Success:
-Built more railroads (economic success)
-Went from 'Old South' (cotton + slavery) to 'New South' (more industrial)
-More African-American involvement in politics (large # in public office during Reconstruction)</p>
<p>Failure:
-Maybe mention nadir?
-Most racial issues not resolved (vague, but could tie in Civil Rights Movement, WEB DuBois, Booker T., etc.)</p>
<p>also the African-American government were just as ineffective as the white governments, and once reconstruction ended they stopped being in office</p>