What effect did Reconstruction have on former slaves? Where they better off after Reconstruction than they were before the Civil War?
The Reconstruction had a lot of effect on former slaves because they began to see that with the Reconstruction they were potentially going to be treated equally as other Americans would be treated. The Reconstrution told the former slaves and African Americans to step up, and defend themselves and their rights. It also brought many views that they should not be able to be enslaved and eventually develop to have their own rights. Consequently, it changed the former slaves lives forever. For some slaves it was really all they had to supply their family, and so earn money for their freedom.
Many taught that laws that would be passed during the Reconstruction like the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments were passed at that time to help slaves to be treated more properly. The amendments purpose was to try to end slavery, but no one was going to change the way Americans thinking of slavery. Americans still thought blacks as outsiders, immigrants and foreigners.
The former slaves lives were so much better off as the Reconstruction came to an end. The views of African American citizenship became equally important. They eventually exercised their freedom. Maybe the lives of the slaves were not as easy because the whites would enclose them back and not let them be free but as the government began to see that the whites were some what dictating the African Americans than they took over, and acted upon this. So laws never restrict people from judgment and attitude.
In conclusion, the reconstruction did change the lives of the slaves very much they began to be treated properly. But it took very long for the intended to be put in to place and for everything to be equal. It was just the beginning of what freed slaves and African Americans. Some exercised the rights, but others thought it was better off to live in the plantation.
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