Reconstruction sought to solve many problems that the United States was now faced with after the war. Following the Union victory in 1865, the nation was preserved as a whole and slavery was defeated. The United States now had to cope with the damage and conflict left over from the war and work towards resuming normal life as one united nation. During Reconstruction, unsuccessful attempts were made to solve the social, economic and political problems that arose from the readmission of the Confederate states to the Union. .
The defeat of the Confederacy raised many questions and concerns for American society. .
"Slavery was now destroyed, but what kind of labor system would replace .
it? African Americans were now free, but what would they do with their new freedom? How would their former masters react? Who would lead the new .
South now? The policies of the period called Reconstruction were the attempt .
to answer these questions" (WBA, 536). .
Southerners, Northerners and freedmen all had a different conception of what should happen during Reconstruction. Southern whites wanted a return to stability and a continuance of a society where they were in control. They did not want to face competition from the millions of former slaves. Northern whites did not want the south to return to its prewar ways. Most northerners were committed to rebuilding the South as quickly as possible on free-labor values, while transforming slaves into wage laborers. Freedmen felt that emancipation gave them the right to live and speak as free people, and they wanted to guarantee these freedoms (WBA 536). .
One main issues that Reconstruction sought to resolve involved the rights of African Americans. .
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- radical reconstruction- the act divided the former Confederate states into five military districts, each having constitutional conventions in which blacks would participate, backed by protection by fed troops. these conventions were mandated to draft new constitutions, which had to include provisions for aan suffrage.
