Yet southern whites refused to give blacks any

guidelines, all the former states of the Confederacy established new state governments in 1865.
Yet southern whites refused to give blacks any political rights, instead passing a series of black
codes, laws designed to keep blacks an uneducated, property less, agricultural laboring class. The
black codes were laws enacted by former Confederate states as an attempt to recreate slavery. It
made it almost impossible for black people to make money and made bankruptcy laws. Former
slaves were not allowed to vote, hold office, or own land. Though the blacks were free, they
couldn’t own land so they had to rent from landowners, who were most the time white. Blacks
worked under the landowner for a very low income, which they couldn’t support their family
with. Thus, this made the blacks borrow money from their landowner, which put them in debt.
This worked in favor of the landowner because the black owed money and basically was in
mercy of him. In addition, white southerners defiantly elected prominent former Confederates to
office. Lincoln was for bringing people together no matter the skin color.
Turns out the south don’t like change because they did everything in their power in order to keep
things the way they were. They were for keeping slaves and making sure blacks received no
rights. This affected the social development in the United States because people couldn’t get
along or wanted power over the other. The whites wanted to maintain power and keep black as
slaves. As said earlier, whites did anything they could to keep power; former Confederate
General, Nathan Bedford Forrest army veterans and a group of former soldier in Pulaski,
Tennessee organized the first group of Ku Klux Klan members. This group preached the
superiority of the white race. With the blacks possessing rights and the Thirteenth Amendment
being passed, the whites couldn’t control them as much as they wanted to. Their free labor
workforce was depleting and it angered them. The Ku Klux Klan frightened the people who
were free and tried to reinforce President Johnson’s idea of “Restoration”.

Reconstruction started out with Lincoln then Andrew Johnson; in 1866 it made it to Radical
Republican leader, Thaddeus Stevens. He objected to both Lincoln and Johnson’s plans for