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recontruction. Reconstruction, also known as Radical Reconstruction, was
the period after the American Civil War. During this time ...
Submitted by imlostathome on January 3, 2006
Category: American History
Words: 891 | Pages: 4
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Reconstruction, also known as Radical Reconstruction, was the period after the American Civil War. During this time the South was in political, social, and economic turmoil, and eleven Confederate states had seceded. In response, the Union attempted to regain order in the Confederate states.
In 1865, in an effort to assist former slaves, Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, also known as the Freedmen's Bureau. It provided food, medical care, helped with resettlement, and its most notable task, it established schools. Over 1,000 schools were built, teacher-training institutions were created, and several black colleges were founded and some were financed with the help of the Freedmen's Bureau. Despite the bureau's successes, it was unable to cure all problems.
In the beginning, the Freedmen's Bureau did not suffer from lack of funding. The Bureau sold and rented lands in the South which had been confiscated during the war. However, President Johnson undermined the Bureau's funding by returning all lands to the pre-Civil War owners in 1866. After this point, freed slaves lost access to lands and the Bureau lost its primary source of funding.
The majority of historians believe that the Freedmen's Bureau made a very small impact, if any, on the freedmen during reconstruction. A few of the reasons for the Bureau's failures as a provider for social welfare include the following: lack of funds, weak organization of the Bureau's internal structure, opposition from conservatives, and apathy of the Southern community
Despite the many criticisms, the Freedmen's Bureau did help African-Americans gain access to the rights that they were denied during slavery. The Freedmen's Bureau helped black communities to establish schools and churches. Under slavery, blacks had been denied the right to education and religion. The Freemen's Bureau monitored the civil authorities in cases that involved...
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