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Reconstruction DBQ
​During the time period of 1860 and 1877 many major changes occurred. From the beginning
of the civil war to the fall of the reconstruction, the US had changed a lot. After the Declaration
of Independence which declared all men equal, many social and constitutional alterations were
necessary to protect the rights of all people. These social, political, and economic changes to
the US occurred as a result of the Civil War and the period of Reconstruction.
There are several forms of ways that the US had changed socially after the Period of
reconstruction, one of them would be the treatment of African Americans after the period of
reconstruction. We can obviously say that everyone can have their own opinion and not
everyone agrees on just one opinion, which leads to the topic of the long term effect of
reconstruction. In document 6 we are shown a bit of how African Americans were treated in the
South after Reconstruction. In the image we can see two different water fountains, each labeled
either “white” or “colored”, we can clearly see that the ‘’white’’ water fountain is more modern
and clean than the ‘’colored’’ fountain. African Americans were now allowed to live like humans
but we can see they were not treated equally because of their race, they were only given poor
quality items. From this we can take the idea that African Americans were finally being treated
better but not equally as the 14th Amendment had stated. Although socially you started to see
more African Americans live out of slavery.
The US had also changed politically, during the reconstruction period with bringing in the
Amendments to support formerly enslaved people. In document 1, Section 1 of the 14th
Amendment states that citizenship would be given to any person that is born in the US.This
amendment allowed help for the enslaved people along with the 15th amendment which freed
them. Although there were positive changes politically, there were debates that were formed
throughout the era of reconstruction, in document & we can tell that there was a big debate as
to if suffrage was to be given to Afro-Americans or withheld by the states. This debate seemed
to be unfair as reconstruction was going on so the African Americans would have freedom. This
situation can be connected to the Dakota Pipeline which involved taking the Native Americans
land, this seemed to be unfair as they had gone through a lot of injustice like the African
Americans which were slaves.
Finally after Reconstruction and the Civil War came many economic changes that really
helped America as African Americans started to live freely. In document 4 we can see how
much the economic role of African American changed between 1860 and 1880. In the
illustration of 1860 we can see that there were about 10 locations where they were kept as
slaves and forced to work, to the right in the illustration of the same area in 1880 we can see
that economically the African Americans have spread around the land to form a community in
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which they live all over, there also seems to be more agriculture within the map, and this is an
effect of Reconstruction and the Civil War.
Through the period of The Civil War and Reconstruction we can see all of the impacts that
have been brought up through time. There were many changes that had been done in order to
help African Americans gain some freedom. This was a hard thing to do back then as it was
normal for people to own slaves and it was a drastic change to see them as normal people.
These were only some of the few changes that arose from this period in history.