The Failure of Reconstruction after the Civil War

AP US History 2
The Failure of Reconstruction
The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments liberated, naturalized, and franchised slaves. Although adequate in theory, they did not immediately establish social and economic equality of opportunity between freedmen and whites. On the contrary, former slaves were deliberately suppressed, both economically and socially, by supremacist whites that felt black men could never be equal to their former masters. In this aspect, Reconstruction was a failure due to: the leniency of the 10 Percent Plan and later federal readmission policies, th…