From: Jack D. Drummond
Date: 4/25/00
Time: 12:17:35 AM
Remote Name: 216.59.55.200
While some of the politicians involved in Reconstruction had the rights of freemen in mind, in all actuality the policies that the U.S. adopted during the post Civil War period were meant to simply speed the recovery process. Measures taken to accelerate the reunification process came at the expense of the freemen. In order to ensure greater rights of the freeman, Radical lawmakers like Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania espoused a plan that would have the federal government having harsh control over the South in an effort to “reshape Southern society before readmitting ex-Confederates to the Union.” Their plan called for a period of military rule, federal aid for schools to educate blacks and whites for citizenship, and the redistribution of large landholdings for use by freedmen. However, while these measures would certainly have given freedmen an excellent opportunity to better themselves, they never passed because they gave too much power to the federal government. It was also felt that the extended military rule in the Southern States would create lingering bad feelings among Southerners that could have led to another civil war. In the end, in order to speed the recovery of the United States, the only real concession made to the freedmen was the right to vote. While this should have been an important step for the freedmen, literacy and land-owning requirements coupled with intense pressure from the Ku Klux Klan kept freedmen from having a strong say in government. In short, many freedmen didn’t see much improvement after the Civil War. The Union was preserved, but freedmen threw off the shackles of slavery and found themselves without any means to support themselves other than going to work for their old masters or as sharecroppers. The plans for Reconstruction sacrificed their rights for a speedy recovery and laid the groundwork for racial inequality that still exists today.