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The Reconstruction is one of the most significant events in the history of the United States of America, as it led to numerous changes in how the federal administration related with the states, people, and how people related to each other. It also led to the creation of various freedoms that saw the citizens, especially from the Southern States [A1] clash with the federal government. One of the major impacts of the Reconstruction was constitutional amendments that changed how people related and also the inception of civil rights movements. The Reconstruction saw the enactment of the 13th amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. The national administration made slavery and forced servitude criminal unless used as punishment for crime. The Southern states depended on slavery for their economic activities, and therefore slavery abolition affected the Southern economy.

The 14th amendment also changed the relations between people, states, and the federal government as it gave citizenship to all people born or naturalized within the borders of the United States including African Americans. The amendment answered the citizenship question after the Civil war, thus giving the slaves equal protection by the laws. Making the slaves, citizens did not augur well with the slave owners and traders. The Reconstruction also led to the 15th amendment which prohibited the states and the federal governments from denying any citizen the right to vote on account of their race, color, or their previous servitude conditions (Randall & Donald, 2016). The south protested against the 15th amendment and got around it by introducing poll taxes and literacy tests. Poll taxes made it difficult for the former slaves to vote, same to literacy tests because they had no education, unlike the whites.

Annotated bibliography[A2]

Bateman, D. A., Katznelson, I., & Lapinski, J. S. (2018). Southern nation: Congress and white supremacy after reconstruction (Vol. 158). Princeton University Press.

Bateman, Katznelson & Lapinski (2018) discussed the south during the reconstruction period after the civil war[A3] , and how white supremacy blocked the implementation of various amendments that sought to give equal rights to the slaves. The white supremacists fought the 13th amendment that abolished slavery because their economy depended on slavery. They were farmers and these slaves worked on their farms for free. They also sold slaves to other countries or states in need. Abolishing the slave trade, therefore, meant they had to pay for labor. Bateman, Katznelson & Lapinski (2018) state that the white supremacists in the south made it difficult for the former slaves to get equal rights by introducing the Jim Crow laws in the south that allowed segregation despite the constitution providing citizenship to the former slaves.

Guelzo, A. C. (2017). Defending Reconstruction. Claremont Review of Books, 17(2).

Guelzo (2017) defines reconstruction[A4] as an attempt to build the south politically. () also denotes that reconstruction was a bourgeois revolution that was crushed by the resurgent political power of a bloodied but unbowed aristocracy. The goal of abolishing slavery was not a racial one but an economic one. The free labor provided by the slaves gave the south an advantage. The Jim Crow law was an anti-free labor strategy as much as it was also a political exclusion method. Guelzo (2017) highlights the protests by the whites who felt that the eight box law during elections had no other purpose but to keep the middle-class whites, poor whites, and the African Americans from having anything to do with elections, and they were right. This article shows the challenges that the whites encountered during the reconstruction as the wealthy whites not only segregated the blacks but also the low-income whites in a bid to control them. The article contributes to the paper by highlighting the effects of some laws and the motive behind some decisions and laws made during the reconstruction.