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. 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. 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. Lynchings, Beatings, and massacres were perpetrated by the clandestine Klan. 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.

Work cited
Kennedy, David M and Lizabeth Cohen. The American Pageant. Print.

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