Civil War Reconstruction Articles

These three articles encompass the ending of the civil war and helped the country grow. They all helped America in different ways to become the nation that we know today.

You will pick ONE of the three articles that touches on a single aspect of the Civil war reconstruction. Using the checklist, you will find details to support the argument on why you picked that one aspect over the other two. 

Article 1 Voting Rights for African American men- 

When the Civil War ended, leaders turned to the question of how to reconstruct the nation. One important issue was the right to vote, and the rights of black American men and former Confederate men to vote were hotly debated.

In the latter half of the 1860s, Congress passed a series of acts designed to address the question of rights, as well as how the Southern states would be governed. These acts included the act creating the Freedmen's Bureau, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and several Reconstruction Acts. The Reconstruction Acts established military rule over Southern states until new governments could be formed. They also limited some former Confederate officials' and military officers' rights to vote and to run for public office. (However, the latter provisions were only temporary and soon rescinded for almost all of those affected by them.) Meanwhile, the Reconstruction acts gave former male slaves the right to vote and hold public office.

Congress also passed two amendments to the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment made African-Americans citizens and protected citizens from discriminatory state laws. Southern states were required to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before being readmitted to the union. The Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed African American men the right to vote.

Most of the documents in this section are related to the right to vote and how voting actually occurred in Southern states. Other rights are also discussed in some of the documents. As you read the documents, weigh the various arguments that are made. Also, look for similarities with issues or concerns that have been raised in more recent U.S. history.

Article 2 Established a more powerful and centralized federal government-

What this account leaves out is how deep remained the commitment in the North across the Civil War years to keep intact the government ordained by the Constitution. Many of the new powers assumed by the federal government during that time were justified by war emergency and thus understood to be legitimate only so long as wartime lasted. Even the major effort during the Radical Republican era to move beyond circumstances of emergency and change the conception of governance permanently via constitutional amendment altered the balance of power between the states and the central government less than is commonly thought. The Civil War and Reconstruction era, therefore, may not have constituted a sharp pivot in the history of the American state.

To have some sense of the possibilities and limits of state power in the Civil War and after, we need some sense of government before the war. The point of departure must be what students of federalism have always insisted: that from the start, the United States was a federal republic, meaning that it divided authority between the central government and the governments of the states. This division was central to an overriding ambition to prevent any one institution of government from gaining too much power. But America’s federal system went beyond a simple division of powers. It organized the two major divisions of government—the central state and the states—around different theories of power. A liberal theory animated and guided the central government. The fundamental principle of this theory was that citizens had rights that no government could take away except under the most extraordinary of circumstances; as a result, the powers of the central government had to be limited in clear and effective ways. Several features of the central government came to embody this aspiration: separating its powers into three independent branches, limiting the realm of federal authority to those activities specifically enumerated in the Constitution, and elaborating in the Bill of Rights a sphere of autonomy and security for the individual that the federal government would not be allowed to breach except under the most exceptional of circumstances.

Article 3 Laid the foundation for America's emergence as a world power in the 20th century-

The outcome of the Civil War resulted in a strengthening of U.S. foreign power and influence, as the definitive Union defeat of the Confederacy firmly demonstrated the strength of the United States Government and restored its legitimacy to handle the sectional tensions that had complicated U.S. external relations in the years before the Civil War. The renewed strength of the U.S. Government led to the defeat of French intervention in Mexico, and hastened the confederation of Canada in 1867. Union victory also ensured continuing support for the international abolishment of racial slavery.As the Confederacy collapsed, U.S. leaders were able to shift resources to resisting French intervention in Mexico and to deploy troops along the Texas-Mexico border. U.S. pressure, combined with Mexican resentment and military success against Emperor Maximilian ultimately compelled French Emperor Napoleon III to end his imperial venture in Mexico.

In the north, fears of a resurgent United States and calls by some U.S. politicians for the annexation of British North American territory allowed Canadian politicians to overcome their own sectional differences, while also spurring British parliamentary leaders to urge a stronger central government in British North America, especially after Irish-born Civil War veterans launched several unsuccessful raids into Canada. This resulted in the British North America Act of 1867, which united Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Subsequently, in 1870, Canadian Prime Minister John MacDonald successfully convinced the British Government to cede the lands of the Hudson's Bay Company to Canada, crushing the hopes of U.S. expansionists who hoped to acquire those lands for the United States. Although it took considerable negotiation, the U.S. Government was also able to obtain restitution for claims stemming from the attacks on merchant shipping by British-built Confederate warships such as the Alabama.

The renewed international image of the United States also helped Secretary of State William Seward in his attempts to acquire additional territory in the postwar period. In 1867, Seward succeeded in purchasing Alaska from the Russian Government. Seward also sought to acquire territories in the Caribbean, and to negotiate permission to build the Panama Canal. The postwar period also saw attempts by U.S. political leaders, including Seward, to resettle freed slaves abroad in either Mexico or Brazil, but the governments of those countries dissuaded Seward from these efforts. 

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