#1: Reconstruction: The Perfect Failure

Reconstruction is the period following the Civil War, after which slavery was abolished with the 13th Amendment from all the States of USA. After the Civil War, black people were called "Freedmen". The purpose of the Freedmen's Bureau was the first attempt to help black men, by giving them food, clothes and opening schools for them. The first obstacle of Reconstruction was President Andrew Johnson, who instituted the Black Codes, a few laws according to which Freedmen couldn't have rights. For this reason, Congress tried to stop him by proposing the Civil Right bill. Johnson vetoed their proposal and, for the first time, a bill passed as a new law even with a president's veto. Reconstruction was reaching its goals with the 14th Amendment, which established that blacks and whites must be treated equally and have the same rights. At the same time, Congress tried to remove President Johnson by office, even if they didn't manage to do it, because of a lack of votes.

 We can assert that Reconstruction failure because of four main facts: the first one is the continuous try of President Johnson to send Freedmen in a condition most close as possible to slavery; in that period there was a group of white people, called KKK (Ku Klux Klan) who tormented, killed and kidnapped Freedmen, which had no laws protecting them; an other important episode was a United States Supreme Court case, Plessy v. Ferguson, according to which segregation was legal; the last fact, that caused the end of Reconstruction, was that President Hayes pulled the troops out of the South, believing that whites could keep blacks' laws, but this didn't manage and the blacks remained without a protection and with this episode the Reconstruction ended.