Cartoon share croppr10/31/2022 ![]() ![]() While they granted some rights to African Americans – like the right to own property, to marry or to make contracts – they also denied other fundamental rights. South Carolina and Mississippi passed laws known as Black Codes to regulate black behavior and impose social and economic control. Many southern governments enacted legislation that reestablished antebellum power relationships. The following is Jourdon Anderson’s reply. After the war, he contacted his former slave Jourdon Anderson, offering him a job opportunity. Anderson of Tennessee was one such former slave-owner. Most slave-owners sought to maintain control over their former slaves through sharecropping contracts. Jourdon Anderson writes his former master, 1865īlack Americans hoped that the end of the Civil War would create an entirely new world, while white southerners tried to restore the antebellum order as much as they could. ![]() This excerpt from her diary explains her experiences during this time. She lent her educational expertise to the war effort by relocating to South Carolina in 1862 with the goal of educating former slaves. After receiving an education in Salem, Massachusetts, Forten became the first black American hired to teach white students. Documents Charlotte Forten teaches freed children in South Carolina, 1864Ĭharlotte Forten was born into a wealthy black family in Philadelphia. These sources gesture toward both the successes and failures of Reconstruction. 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 were created equal” and had “certain, unalienable rights.” Conservative 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. 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 upon formerly enslaved people? The answers to many of Reconstruction’s questions hinged upon the concepts of citizenship and equality. After the Civil War, much of the South lay in ruins. ![]()
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