In the 19th century, a time for the tremendous growth of the United States, the fundamental economic difference existed between the North and the South. The North was highly industrialized, establishing thousands of factories, while the South developed large plantations of cotton which depended on the labor force of black slaves. Inspired by Manifest Destiny, Americans continued to explore and expand to the West. Whether the new Western territories should be free states or slave states was hotly debated throughout the country. One of the solutions offered by Congress, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, potentially opened all new land to slavery by asserting the rule of popular sovereignty. However, the Act did not help diminish the sectional rift. The growing number of abolitionists and opposition to slavery’s extension caused many southerners to fear that the existence of slavery would be finally eliminated in America. Following Lincoln’s election in November 1860, seven southern states decided to secede from the Union and created the Confederate States of America, thus leading to the Civil War. The Civil War was one of the most bloody wars fought in the United States. The final Union victory gave rise to the dissolution of the Confederate States and the beginning of the Reconstruction Era. The issues of slavery needed to be settled and the Southern states needed to be reintegrated to the Union. Along with several Constitutional Amendments and Acts, both Presidential and Congressional Reconstruction allowed the Southern states to be readmitted into the Union. Some organizations, such as Freedman’s Bureau, were formed to support free blacks in sustenance and education. In contrast, deviant southerners still sought for ways to restore their labor force and return to a society as close to slavery as possible. During this time period, the Constitutional Amendments were adopted swiftly, which led to further social changes in southern states. Some are revolutionary, but some are not. A revolutionary change is a dramatic and wide-reaching change in the way something works or in people’s ideas about it. Any change consists of a complete abandonment of an old system and the employment of a new system could be considered as revolutionary. According to this qualification, the constitutional changes clearly amounted to a revolution, while the social changes were paltry in comparison and nearly a complete failure.

During the period of Reconstruction, three amendments to the Constitution were made in order to establish equality and to protect the rights of black Americans. When the Civil War ended in 1865, the question of slavery was not resolved at the national level. Although the federal government required former Confederate states to abolish slavery in their new constitutions, there was nothing to prevent the states from re-adopting the practice or to ensure the free status of Black Americans. In response to this, the 13th Amendment was adopted and abolished slavery throughout the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Now, with the 13th Amendment, the scope of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was widened to include the entire nation. The successive 14th Amendment addressed citizenship rights and equal protection for all people in response to issues related to the treatment of the freeman. The amendment claimed that all Blacks were American citizens and authorized the government to punish states that denied the citizenship to Blacks by lowering their representatives in Congress. Furthermore, the right to vote, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, was stated in the 15th Amendment. All of the aforementioned amendments affected the foundation and structure of the country. Since then, the practice of slavery was abolished once and forever and the United States became truly free soil, a long-pursued dream of many American people. The notorious Fugitive Slave Clause and the Three-Fifths Compromise were directly nullified by the 13th Amendment, redistributing the political power in North and South. The 14th Amendment was utilized by many other court decisions to reject unnecessary discrimination against people belonging to various groups. Although these Amendments left open the possibility for Southern states to hinder the absolute equality of Blacks, they indeed guaranteed freedom to former slaves and prevented discrimination in certain civil rights to them. The Reconstruction Amendments not only threw away the old social norms and established a new social structure, but also cast a long-lasting influence on the development of the country in the future. As a result, it is fair to conclude that Constitutional changes during the period of Reconstruction were revolutionary.

Not only did the Constitution change drastically during the Reconstruction, but American society also changed to a certain extent. The economy in the South, which depended largely on agriculture, suffered great damaging effects. The plantations were destroyed during the Civil War and the landowners lost a large amount of profits due to the loss of their free labor force. Socially, Reconstruction hoped to reunite the people in the North and those in the South. However, the attempts to protect the status and basic rights of freedmen was obstructed. The Southerners remained hostile and brutal to Black Americans and cut back the positive progress made by instituting Black Codes: laws aiming at keeping the Black population in submission and black labor force in work. The system of sharecropping was implemented in which the plantation owners would rent out the lands at prices higher than the return the land could produce. The renters of the land were bound by contract to continue to work the land until debts were repaid to the plantation owner. Unable to repay the debts, blacks began to jump out of their contracts. The codes imposed harsh penalties on blacks who jumped their labor contracts, some of which usually forced the blacks to work for the same employer for one year. More shockingly, if the blacks were jobless, they would be arrested. A similar peonage system in which an employer compelled the workers to pay off their debts with labor was also inhumane. Sometimes, the whites would simply catch blacks in the streets and claim that they were in debt when they were actually innocent. Consequently, it was extremely difficult for black Americans to start their new life in the South. According to the 13th Amendment, all the Blacks were claimed free within U.S territory; however, their freedom was substantially restricted by former slaveholders. Moreover, the Southern states passed the other laws in response to the 15th Amendments. The states instituted irrational voter qualifications in order to disenfranchise blacks, such as poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses. Nearly all blacks were forced off the voter registration rolls and out of the political system. The violence toward blacks erupted in southern states as well. Extremely racist Whites who hated the Blacks founded the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in Tennessee in 1866, an organization that scared Blacks into not voting or seeking jobs. They deliberately disrupted the black political meetings, intimidated them at the polls, burned down their houses and schools, and even murdered people. All of the legislation and organizations formed by white people sought to restore the pre-emancipation system of race relations. The South used every possible means to mock the idea of freedom and to impose terrible hardships on blacks who were struggling against mistreatment and poverty to make their way as free people. The social life of blacks was hardly improved or changed; sometimes it was even worse, as they worked relentlessly for former slaveholders for no profits and faced threats and discrimination from rabid racists whites. The old system still existed, though in a different form, and the blacks were still suffering in great pain. With this in mind, it is impossible to suggest that social changes amount to a revolution during the period of Reconstruction, for there was neither complete abandonment of the old “slavery” system nor wide-reaching changes occurred in South.

Based on the evidence analyzed above, a conclusion can be safely drawn that the constitutional changes were revolutionary, while the social changes were negligible. The three Amendments to the Constitution successfully challenged the unequal social structure and provided a concrete foundation for the future prosperity and development of the country. Some other important acts, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, were all based on the landmark Amendments proposed during Reconstruction. Nevertheless, the social life of black Americans changed little compared to their previous situation. The discrimination was deeply held by the Southerners. Slavery ended only in nominal term but still persisted in other forms, which would take another 100 years to be fully addressed. Considering these changes, both constitutionally and socially, was the price of Civil War worth the loss of life and complete devastation of the Southern economy?