Why did the Reconstruction fail???

Question

My teacher wants 4 reasons as to why Reconstruction failed...

The main reasons I know are those associated with the society indeed granting equal rights to African Americans, but they weren't provided with the same privileges as a white man received.

Answer 1

What you say is one good reason. Three others would be:

1. Radical Republicans (yes, they've been around for a long time) wanted to punish the South for the Civil War, so the Southern states were forced to ratify the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the constitution. They also placed the burden of rebuilding sqarely on the backs of the Southern states, both physically and economically.

2. Race relations became even worse. Attempts at assimilating freed slaves into society were half hearted and quickly abandoned, leaving blacks to drift about in search of work. Many returned to their former plantations to work as sharecroppers. Once it became evident that support for blacks was nonexistent, Southern states imposed Jim Crow laws that restricted black voting and segregated every facet of society.

3. Southern crops were slow to recover from the war. The South lost many of its able bodied farming men to the war, and so restarting the backbone of the southern economy was a slow process. What is more, the Southern agrarian society was still slow to accept growing industrialization going on in other parts of the nation, and so wealth remained in the North.

I could also mention the fact that northern carpetbaggers plagued the South for years, cheating people of untold quantities of money, but I think you have plenty here.

Answer 2

Good answer above. You might ask your teacher why he or she thinks it failed? Perhaps it just took 142 years. A work in progress. Changing people is never easy.