RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CIVIL WAR

A Report On the Reconstruction of the Civil War

A Report On the Reconstruction of the Civil War

Introduction

Reconstruction after the Civil War is referred to the United States' reconstruction period after the Civil War, from 1863 to 1877. This period saw the destruction of the slave system from the Confederation and returned the Southern States in Union. Moreover, this period is also the result of the failure of the integration of freed African Americans in the legal, political, economic and social development in the former states of the South. This paper in this connection will attempt to discussion the social, cultural, political and economical aspect of reconstruction after Civil War.

Historical Context

The Civil War (1861-1865) provided the most severe test of civil liberties in U.S. history by challenging, and ultimately abolishing, the institution of slavery and by spawning a host of postwar civil rights laws and jurisprudence (Nieman, 1994). The Civil War actually began as a struggle to preserve the Union. Abraham Lincoln, though personally opposed to slavery, was politically opposed primarily to the extension of slavery to other states. His major concern was the preservation of the Union. In a famous letter to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, in 1862, Lincoln shared his vision was of America as the great bastion of democracy for the world, and he believed that promise would be destroyed by dividing the nation (Foner and Mahoney, 1997).

Lincoln's election in 1860 was highly divisive. By the time he was inaugurated in March 1861, seven southern states already had seceded from the Union to form the Confederate States of America. In his inaugural address, President Lincoln warned that federal properties (forts, custom houses, and so on) located in the seceding states would continue to be occupied by the United States. The war officially began in April 1861 following the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, one of those properties off the coast of South Carolina.

Once the war began, Lincoln exercised extensive powers on his own authority before Congress came into session. He was widely criticized for suspending the writ of habeas corpus (forcing authorities to specify grounds for incarceration) in areas where Confederate sentiment was strong, and in Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. 2 (1866), the Supreme Court eventually invalidated the conviction of a civilian who had been tried for aiding the enemy by a military court (Woodward, 1974).

The Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves was not issued until January 1, 1863, nearly two years after the war began. The war itself helped turn the tide against slavery among many who were previously indifferent. The issue of slavery also was a delicate one with a number of foreign nations, who thought slavery was evil (Chalmers, 1965).By the time the war ended with General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Virginia, on April 9, 1865, the point of the Civil War was to put an end to slavery and to secure the civil liberties of the newly freed men and ...