Introduction
The years from 1865 to 1912 were the time of radical reforms in the United States. After the end of the Civil War, it was necessary not only to eliminate the former authorities in the South, replacing them with new ones, but also to break the laws, institutions, and traditions rooted there for many years of slavery. This process was called the Reconstruction of the South. The reconstruction was intended to consolidate the results of the Civil War. Among the specific measures of the Reconstruction period, the adoption of the 13th and 14th amendments to the US Constitution (1865-1866) should be highlighted. The first of them legislated the abolition of slavery, the second formally granted the Blacks civil rights. The third economic reform was the transition from a “patriarchal” America, mainly a traditional agrarian society, to an industrial power with developed transport infrastructure, a country with large multinational cities.
Discussion
On June 19, 1862, the law on the abolition of slavery was issued. In January 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was adopted, according to which all people held as slaves in the territory of the Confederate Union were declared free (Armstrong). During the same period, Lincoln appealed to the Union Army to free all slaves. According to the text of the Thirteenth Amendment, adopted at the end of the war, the United States and the Territories under its jurisdiction proclaimed a ban on slavery and forced labor, with the exception of punishment for a crime (Armstrong).
It should be noted that the abolition of slavery itself, even at the legislative level, could not immediately serve to establish relations of respect and trust between the blacks and the whites. The radical extremist response of the whites to equality with former slaves was lynch courts and the Ku Klux Klans (Southworth). In response, the Negroes created armed groups attacking the whites. However, although the 13th Amendment failed to prevent explosive social conflicts, it has become a solid legal basis for further countering violence and discrimination. Thus, in 1868-1900, African Americans received the right to citizenship, political participation, voting, social benefits, pensions, as well as equal protection of rights by the state.
On July 9, 1868, the 14th amendment to the Constitution of the country came into force. By July 1868, the Southern States had ratified it, and the gains of the Civil War were preserved. In 1870, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was supplemented by the 15th, which specifically stipulated that the right to vote in the United States in the past was not limited to skin color, race, or slavery (Southworth). On the basis of the 14th Amendment, the rights of the black population were consolidated. The first paragraph of the amendment stated that all persons born in the United States or who have acquired citizenship there and are subject to the laws of the country are its citizens and subjects of the state where they live and can be deprived of the right to life, liberty and property only by a court decision, and not by any restrictive laws.
The end of the Civil War and the amendments adopted on December 13 and 14, which freed a significant part of the population from slave labor, led to an economic upsurge that the United States made in the last third of the XIX century. The first transcontinental railway was opened which connected the rapidly developing areas of the West with the old regions of the USA and the Atlantic coast. The USA has become the birthplace of the automotive industry. In 1892, entrepreneur Henry Ford designed his first car and established mass production by 1915 (Mohajan). Simultaneously with the automobile industry, the construction of highways developed, by 1914 they amounted to 247.5 thousand miles (Mohajan). With the gigantic territory of the United States, such a network of railways and highways contributed to the development of the domestic market and the consolidation of the country into a single economic and political space.
Conclusion
The reconstruction of the South, based on reforms for the abolition of slavery, provided the prerequisites for rapid economic growth and generally consolidated the results of the Civil War. By the end of the XIX century, the USA had become the leading industrial power on the planet. Moreover, the reforms allowed the country to become the world’s champion of equality, human rights, and freedom.
Works Cited
Armstrong, Catherine. “Concepts of Slavery in the United States 1865–1914.” The Palgrave international handbook of human trafficking, 2020, pp. 35-50.
Mohajan, Haradhan (2019): “The Second Industrial Revolution Has Brought Modern Social and Economic Developments”. Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol. 6, No. 1,2020, pp. 1-14. Web.
Southworth, Stephanie. Gale Researcher Guide for: Social Reform Movements and Nativist Movements in the United States from 1840 to 1930. Gale, Cengage Learning, 2018.