It was the year 1860 and a civil war had just begun between two sides; the Union army of the North and the Confederate army of the south. The North, under the guide of president Abraham Lincoln had been fighting to preserve the Union and to remove the pre-existing notion of slavery; whereas the south, under the guide of General Ulysses E.
Grant was fighting to preserve their rights as slave owners and to preserve slavery. The civil war was a brutal collection of battles that involved the deaths of many soldiers, and civilians, as well as the destruction of many Southern and Northern cities. Four years of brutal conflict were marked by historic battles at Gettysburg, Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Vicksburg among others. By the time it ended in Confederate surrender in 1865, the Civil War proved to be the costliest war ever fought on American soil, with some 620,000 of 2.4 million soldiers killed, millions more injured and the population and territory of the South devastated.There were several causes as to why the war had begun; the most prominent reason being to abolish slavery and give slaves their freedom and right to vote. But at the end of the civil war that goal of the North wanting to abolish slavery did not get accomplished.
Instead of getting freedom and their right to vote, African Americans received a law that was passed by congress called the Jim Crow Law. This law enforced racial segregation in the Southern states after the civil war, and this impacted the lives of African Americans in unpleasant ways; because it deprived them from their ability to enjoy life and deprived them from the same conditions and other governmental services that white people received. Background: After the Union Victory in the Civil War in 1865, a process of rebuilding called The Reconstruction Period took place. The Reconstruction period can be defined as the attempts that were made to redress the inequities of slavery and its political, social, and economic legacy and to solve the problems arising from the readmission of the 11 states that had seceded from the Union. Reconstruction less than a year after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. President Lincoln announced his Ten Percent Plan.
Under the plan, when one- tenth of a state’s voters took an oath of loyalty, they could establish a new government(FN). Since the plan was put in place in Union occupied Confederate states, To Lincoln, this plan was a method to weaken the Southern states. After Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, Andrew Johnson became president.
(FN) Johnson offered a pardon to all Southern whites in Confederate Southern states, and he also restored their political rights and properties. Apart from abolishing slavery, the Confederate states were not given any help to manage African Americans residing in their states. These Confederate states responded by enacting Black codes and by installing Jim Crow laws. Black codes were laws that were designed to maintain the social and economic structure of racial slavery in the absence of the “peculiar institution”. The laws codified white supremacy by restricting the civic participation of freed people(FN).
Jim Crow laws were laws that enforced racial segregation in southern states between the end of reconstruction in 1877 and the beginning of the civil rights movements(FN). The name Jim Crow was retrieved from the name of a minstrel routine performed beginning in 1828 by its author, Thomas Dartmouth Rice and by many imitators, including actor Joseph Jefferson. Legislatures started passing laws requiring the separation of whites from people of color in public places, transportation, and school. This was because the legislation of southern states was no longer controlled by carpetbaggers and freedmen. This allowed the Southern Legislatures to freely pass any law that concerns people of color without facing any pressure who promote helping African Americans.
