After the Civil War, which tore the United States in it most bloody internal conflict, efforts were being subjected to reconciling the different races. Racial justice was at the center of operations, and everyone wanted to see a united union. This paper shall analyze the efforts that were directed to ensuring racial justice, and the response that was begotten from the people. Racial profiling was a major hindrance to unity in the United States, and the Reconstruction Era provided a chance to heal the wounds, how well was it taken?

I am writing about the challenges that occurred in the attempts to heal racial differences during the Reconstruction Era. In the United States, the challenge of race has been prevalent since the times of our ancestors. This makes for an interesting topic whose impact in the way of social leaving should be sought from the way it was back in the years. I love exploring the topic of racial differences because it provides an opportunity to suggest workable recommendations on bringing about healing for the people. This topic will help draw a clear relationship between race and slavery, and the way it brought a great challenge in attempts of cohesion.

With the consolidation of racial slavery came the racial category of “black”. By the end of the seventeenth century, the African Americans were rendered black by an ideology of exploitation based on the logic of race. This led to the establishment of a color line and the establishment of slavery. With slavery, the understanding of society was based on race. This led to the shaping of specific racial identity[1]. From these ideologies, racism was born. The society recognized people based on their race. By the time the civil war ended, the social racial establishments were strong and it became hard to integrate the free slaves into the society. The superior race could not accept that all men are equal regardless of color.

The reconstruction was not an experiment rather it was a call for change. Reconstruction happened just after the end of the civil war. Though reconstruction started before the end of the civil war, it was more significant after the end of the war. It was a period of rebuilding the United States. It was a period when the confederacy was allowed back in to the Union[2]. The biggest problem in this period was that even with the end of the civil war, the southerners still wanted to continue with their way of life mainly slavery. However, the northerners wanted the black people to be free.

To some point, the reconstruction was a harsh union punishment of the south. Most of the policies and laws passed at this period affected the southerners. The northerners wanted to punish the southerners for their refusal to change. With the passage of the fourth and Fifth Amendment, the constitution abolished slavery but the southerners still wanted to keep the African Americans as slaves.

This period present an effort that was successful though not as fully expected. With the congressional elections of 1866, radical republicans took power and immediately went to work to punish the south and to remove the ruling class from power.[3] However, though slavery was abolished, most of the southerners could not accept this idea. In return, the southerners started killing the elite African Americans who tried to inert their political rights. The clandestine Klan perpetrated lynchings, Beatings, and massacres. The southerners never accepted that the black men were equal to them. When President Lincoln was assassinated and Johnson became the president, he did not support the idea of free black men. This was a major setback to the reconstruction.

In 1865, the Union victory of the civil war occurred and more than 4 million slaves gained their freedom. However, the process of rebuilding the American south provided a set of new challenges. Under the administration of President Andrew Johnson in 1865 and 1866, the southern state, which was new, passed restrictive coded governing the behavior and labor of the former slaves and other African Americans[4]. This created an outrage in the northern part of the country, this eroded the support for the Presidential Reconstruction, and the radical wing of the Republican Party triumphed. During the radical reconstruction, newly enlightened blacks gained a voice in government.

African Americans won elections in the southern state and even in the congress. However, in less than a decade, the relationally forces such as the Ku Klux Klan managed to reverse these changes through radical reconstruction and violence. This radicalization restored white domination in the South. Federal registration were passed to with an aim to control these radicals but white supremacy reasserted itself in the south after the early 1870s as the support for reconstruction reduced. Though many could not accept it, racism was still very strong in both the north and south. As the decade continued, the republicans became very conservative and less democratic.

When the confederate armies surrendered, there were pressing questions of how to unite the nation. The definition of citizenship was questioned in this era. The more pressing question was labor replacement. With the abolishment of slavery, there had to be a replacement for the forced labor. The African Americans who had just gained freedom from slavery were at the center of most of these questions. The white northerners had come to understand that the civil war was not only a fight against slavery but also a place of the African Americans in the society. The slaves had no citizenship to be Americans and had worked as slaves all their life. When slavery ended, they had nowhere else to go rather than remain in America. The question of citizenship thus arose.

The white settlers in both sides thought that the African Americans would not participate in the reconstruction era. However, African Americans were very vocal in fighting for their rights. In the Dred Scott decision of 1858, the Supreme Court had ruled that the African Americans who had been imported into American would never be citizens of America[5]. The decision did not leave out those African Americans who were not slaves. The decision was full of racism. During the civil war, slaves had to flee to unions in large numbers and after the abolishment of slavery; the facts on the ground overtook the Supreme Court decision. The citizenship status of the slaves was to be determined on the status of the former confederate. The power to define the rights of the former slaves thus lay with the rulers in the former confederacy.

The issue of American citizenship provoked competing views. The southerners had ideas about the racial and social order that had to replace slavery. They intended to restrict citizenship to the African Americans. They ensured this happens by introducing the black codes and pother oppressive laws. These codes denied the black people the right to vote, freedom of movement, and criminalized certain behaviors. The combination of the harsh prevalence of Confederates in the southern delegations to Congress in the fall of 1865 and Black Codes accelerated the beginning of Congressional Reconstruction. In essence, the Congress, in the control of a Republican majority, used its powers and control over the federal purse strings in an attempt to impose answers to the big Questions of Reconstruction

During slavery, the African Americans were not allowed to get married legally. Most enslaved people lived in nuclear families and in long-term relationships. Couples lived together as “sweethearts” but not as a married couple. After emancipation, the African Americans were allowed into the society. The act to marriage was very prominent as one of the rights denied to enslaved people[6]. Laws that legitimized marriages began to rise in different states. Former slaves who had been living together as husband and wife were recognized by law as a married couple in some states.

However, some states took a different approach. In some states, African Americans couples who had been living together as husband and wife were given as six to nine months to re-marry before a minister or civil authority. Newly married couples were also expected to file a marriage license with the county court. This was a bureaucratic detail, which carried a high price, which was unaffordable for many freed African Americans. In the states where these laws applied, failure to follow them called for a criminal prosecution for fornication and adultery. Some states gave the freed slaves less than six months to formalize their marriages.[7]

Some freed slave allowed the law to operate upon them while others swamped the public offices demanding for the validation of the new and old unions. The right to marry for the African Americans became symbolic and very significant. It was symbolic in that its acceptance signaled the acceptance into the moral society and significant in that the economic and social benefits flowed after marriage.

In 1863, the American freedmen’s Inquiry commission was formed was created to suggest ways of dealing with the freed slaves. In its report to the secretary of war, the commission echoed the view that African Americans were degraded, uncivilized, undisciplined, and lived followed unchristian ways[8]. This view was very dominant with the whites at the time. The commission recommended that the rule of law and patient guidance would tame the African Americans. The commission urged the federal government to take an active role in the cultivation of the black character. In this regard, the federal officials thus acted as the guardians of the moral practices of the black people, which qualified the black people for citizenship. The enforcement of the marriage laws was viewed by the federal government as the best advantage to control the morals of the freed slaves.

However, after emancipation, many freed slave found themselves in violation of the marriage laws. The problem was that during slavery, a married man would be sold to another planter only for the woman to marry another man thinking that she will never see her first husband again.[9] So at the end of the war, many freed men found themselves with more than one spouse. In that bigamy was a crime in all states, the free slaves were forced to choose one legal spouse and cease any intimate relation with the others. Failure to comply with these directions attracted a prosecution for fornication and adultery[10]. In cases where any man or woman was unable or unwilling to choose one of the spouses, the Bureau agents were allowed to choose for him. The bureau agents ended up marrying men to women who had many helpless children.

Therefore, freed people who could not manage to formalize their marriages were prosecuted for adultery and fornication. Immorality and marital immorality also served as a basis for denial of pension benefits for the African Americans windows. When the congress amended the pension act in 1866, a provision was included prohibiting the pension rights to windows who had engaged in immoral conduct.

Even with the abolishment of slavery, the African Americans were not free. They still faced slavery through laws and regulation. The white dominant race wanted to control and rule the minority races preferably the black race. Several attempts were made to congregate the black people into one state but the black people fought fiercely.

The American west was not left behind in the reconstruction. The civil war history and the emerging west were twisted together. Though the war was fought mostly in the East, the events, which ignited it, were born with the expansion of the 1840s[11]. The war in turn shaped the development of the west. However, there were many challenges experienced in the development of the American west.

Many westerners supported the expansion of slavery into the west and other supported the succession by the southerners. With the Transcontinental Railroad and the Homestead Act, a vast majority of people migrated to the west and displaced the Native Americans living there. These native tribes lost their traditional cultures and way of life. They were also relegated to reserves. The Americans Indians in particular tried to fight off the settlers but were defeated and confined in the least desirable areas of the west.

When the Congress passed the Homestead Act, people did not have to pay for land especially in the west. However, most of the land was grassland. There was not enough rain to grow trees. The farmers tried to grow crops especially wheat but it did not grow well due to lack of enough rains.[12] When a group of Germans came from Russia with a new variety of wheat, it grew very well but brought with it Thistle seeds which spread all over America.

There was also the slavery problem. Kansas-Nebraska Ac allowed the settlers in the two areas to choose whether they would permit slavery. A problem arose because those who were in the areas at the time did the voting. Potential voters flooded the areas to vote and a conflict arose between the supporters and opponents of the slavery.

The Northern and Southern military had different strategies to win the war. Both had advantages and disadvantages but the north had more advantages and ended up winning the war. However, the south could still not accept that slavery was abolished. This was mainly because they were farmers and depended on the slaves for labor[13]. The abolishment of slavery meant that they had to hire labor, which lowered profits. In an attempt to control the slaves, they resulted to enacting the black codes. The north on the other hand fought back through federal registration. This fighting through laws slowed down the reconstruction process.

Though the African Americans were free from being enslaved, the society could not accept them. Strict laws and regulations such as the marriage laws were enacted to control them. They were viewed as uncivilized and unchristian people who needed to be tamed to civilization.

 Bibliography

Amsden, Alice Hoffenberg. The rise of” the rest”: challenges to the west from late-industrializing economies. Oxford University Press, USA, 2001.

Brundage, Fitzhugh. “Reconstruction And The Formerly Enslaved, Freedom’s Story, Teacherserve®, National Humanities Center”. Nationalhumanitiescenter.Org. Accessed July 27, 2016. http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1865-1917/essays/reconstruction.htm.

Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt. Black Reconstruction in America: Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880. Transaction Publishers, 2013.

Franke, Katherine M. “Becoming a Citizen: Reconstruction Era Regulation of African American Marriages.” Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 11, no. 2 (2013): 2.

Kaczorowski, Robert J. “Revolutionary Constitutionalism in the Era of the Civil War and Reconstruction.” NYUL Rev. 61 (1986): 863.

Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial formation in the United States. Routledge, 2014.

History.com Staff,. “Reconstruction – American Civil War – HISTORY.Com”. HISTORY.Com. Last modified 2009. Accessed July 27, 2016. http://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/reconstruction.

[1]Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial formation in the United States. Routledge, 2014.

[2] History.com Staff,. “Reconstruction – American Civil War – HISTORY.Com”. HISTORY.Com. Last modified 2009. Accessed July 27, 2016. http://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/reconstruction.

[3] Kaczorowski, Robert J. “Revolutionary Constitutionalism in the Era of the Civil War and Reconstruction.” NYUL Rev. 61 (1986): 863.

[4]History.com Staff,. “Reconstruction – American Civil War

[5] Robert. “Revolutionary Constitutionalism in the Era of the Civil War and Reconstruction 866.

[6] Franke, Katherine M. “Becoming a Citizen: Reconstruction Era Regulation of African American Marriages.” Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 11, no. 2 (2013): 2.

[7]Katherine. “Becoming a Citizen: Reconstruction Era Regulation of African American Marriages, 260.

[8]Brundage, Fitzhugh. “Reconstruction And The Formerly Enslaved, Freedom’s Story, Teacherserve®, National Humanities Center”. Nationalhumanitiescenter.Org. Accessed July 27, 2016. http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1865-1917/essays/reconstruction.htm.

[9]Ibid.

[10]Katherine M. “Becoming a Citizen: Reconstruction Era Regulation of African American Marriages, 253.

[11]Amsden, Alice Hoffenberg. The rise of” the rest”: challenges to the west from late-industrializing economies. Oxford University Press, USA, 2001.

[12]Ibid., 130

[13]Burghardt. Black Reconstruction in America 120

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