Reconstruction Video

 The incident that occurred in Charleston that we have read and heard all about lead to many people around the world asking why these hate crimes are happening. People started looking into the history of our country leading all the way back to the civil war in the 1860's. America had always promised to be the land of the free but this wasn't the case up until the reconstruction era. As this reconstruction occurred, it caused a lot of backlash, white southerners could not accept the fact that we are all equal and tried to do something about it. The goal of this was to have the government run without race playing any part in it which was different from what it was in the past. On April 9th, 1865, the civil war was over and this was the death day of slavery in the US. The United States had the opportunity to make up for the decades of slavery and inequality but failed by not redistributing the land formerly used for slavery, and we are still dealing with the backlash from it. Before slavery was abolished, it was a part of the economic, legal, and political systems in the United States. After it being abolished, the United States had to work to change how slavery was viewed and how it effected the country. Also, the racism against slaves and black people in the US didn't just immediately change, it took a while and we are still working on it to this day. The United States created laws that only applied to the black people, the Black Codes. The overall purpose of the Black Codes was to accept and recognize that slavery has been abolished, but for there to be as little change as possible. Every adult black person was forced to sign a labor contract for the year with a white person as their employer. If they didn't do that, then they would be fined but if they could not pay the fine then they would be hired by a white person who could pay the fine and work to pay the fine off. Any white family could go to the courts and say that a family could not take care of their own child and to let them do the job. The white southerners would take these young children and train them in farming methods as well as train their daughters in housewifery. The parents would receive little to no payment at the end of it, but they had no say in it. Thaddeus Stevens believed that black people saved the United States and that we have a moral obligation to create freedom and equality before the law. He believed that without that, everything was a fraud. Johnsons reconstruction plan established the idea that anyone born in the country is a citizen. They did this because they knew that southern states were trying to define ex-slaves as non citizens. Even though black people were given the right to vote, they were still threatened and worried about going and voting. They would gather the night before and discuss plans as to when to go to the polls when the least amount of white people would be there. They would bring weapons and show up in large groups just in case, for their own safety. Grant won the election and he treats black people as equal citizens and said that they could not defeat the confederacy without the help of the blacks. In this election, even tons of black men were elected to office, even if they were enslaved in the past.