The Failure of Reconstruction

Reconstruction was an overall failure and while some decent attempts to help the South were made, eventually finances and the overall will to help the south faded. The Primary Source given was an excerpt from Albert T. Morgan's Yazoo, Or, On The Pocket Line of Freedom. In this primary source, Morgan, who was a sheriff and a Republican in Mississippi during Reconstruction talked of the environment of the South during Reconstruction. He described his time there as a dictatorship and said that bridges and highways were made or repaired and that poor farms were helped so that the South had better facilities there than ever before. But he said there was a failure to get a railroad through town. He said that the plan to do so failed so bad that railroads didn't even make it to Mississippi. 

In the statistics that were shown it seemed that there was almost no railroad built in the South. While 1,545 miles of railroad were built most of it was built scarcely through large areas. Compared to the North the Southern railroad system was miniscule. There might of been an attempt to create railroads for the South but any efforts didn't last long and the railroad system wasn't enough to reasonably help the South. Railroads were being made and changes were happening as said in the primary document but not enough changes were made to impact the South in a positive enough way as to make Reconstruction a success as seen in both the statistics and the primary document. The statistics do back up the primary source's overall message and paint a picture of the overall failure of Reconstruction.

Both the Primary Document and the Statistics show that overall the Southern's attempts at Reconstruction was a failure. This was due to the fact that the attempts to create a railroad system for the South was an overall failure. While attempts were made to help the South none of them were to the affect that would greatly fix the South and the attempts to create a railroad system were not good enough. These factors were a primary reason in the South's overall failure of Reconstruction.