The Agony of Reconstruction essay

The Reconstruction of the American federal states immediately after the historic American Civil War was not an easy task although there seemed to be some expression of political goodwill from both sides of the Confederate and the Union as described in the reading. Throughout the Reconstruction era, the abolition of slavery and the following liberation of the formerly enslaved African Americans in the newly formed democratic republic remained the most contentious issue that threatened the stability of the Union.

The Southerner Confederates and the Union members were always at odds in the U.S. Congress over the political powers and the new status of the freed African American slaves across the United States of America. These two issues constitute a stumbling block to the realization of various reconstruction agenda such as Civil Rights and Emancipation Act as spearheaded by the then Union executive leader President Lincoln Abraham.

The reading makes facts straight that the hasty incorporation of the rebelling Confederate into the Union by President Abraham Lincoln without first dictating how to constitutionally free thousands of the African American slaves also contributed to the agony of the Union’s Reconstruction on the basis that the loophole provided the disillusioned Confederate slave owners with an avenue to wrestle back slavery into South Carolina- the main cause of incessant political wars between the Republicans and the Southerner Confederates at the Congress.

In general, the reading is categorical that the Confederates political maneuvers at the Congress and National levels to retain their ownership of the liberated African American slaves on their farm so as to stimulate the slave-driven Southern agricultural economy. I am strongly convicted that the political ambition of the Southerner Confederates to perpetuate slavery, contrary to the Emancipation Act, became the biggest threat to the Union’s stability during the Reconstruction era.