How well written are these essays?

Reconstruction Essays

Below are three pairs of paragraphs taken from three essays. The first for each pair is the introduction and the second is a body paragraph. Pick two of the pairs and critique them in a separate comment for this blog post. You should end up with two comments, posted separately. Be sure to include your name.

1.  The reconstruction Era is not something we should not be proud of. We shouldn't be proud of reconstruction because of many various reasons: one is that we lost workers and infastructre another is that we lost finances or money the last one is that politically we practically fell apart. Reconstruction was jus a horrible time for the United States. It was horrible because we did not gain anything from from it we actually lost money and jobs...



    ...We lost finances and money when money meant nothing. Northern and southern money was turned worthless. No one wanted the previously printed money. They would would have to print new money which have caused and huge economic deficit. The US had no other choice but to print new money which could be used in the north and south














2.

    There has been a lot of dispute between different historians as to whether or not the United States should be proud of the Reconstruction Era. The United States should not be proud of the reconstruction era because they did not accomplish what they had intended to accomplish. The freedmen did not get all of the freedom that they were promised in the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, many laws were passed in the south along with violence against blacks, and there were financial problems....

...The southern whites tried to do pretty much anything they could to restrict the freedmen from their rights. The Black Codes were one way of denying the freedmen their rights. The Black Codes said that freedmen were a separate class with fewer liberties and more restrictions than the southern whites. Also, the freedmen were not allowed to testify in court against southern whites, and they were only allowed to own certain properties. They were also not allowed to serve on a jury, and they were not allowed to vote. Another thing that was not only in the south, but also in the north was the Jim Crow laws, or segregation. “Separate but equal,” is others called it, but to the freedmen, it was definitely not equal. Instead of having say one school for both southern whites and freedmen, there would be two separate schools. The southern white school had nicer classrooms and books and everything where the blacks would get the scraps and leftovers that the southern whites did not want. And it wasn’t just the laws that bothered the freedmen; it was also the violence that went on. There was one secret organization called the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The KKK were supposed to have taken the figure of confederate ghosts come back to take their revenge. “They are secret, oath-bound; they murder, rob, plunder, whip, and scourge; and they commit these crimes, not upon he high and lofty, but upon the lowly, upon the poor, upon the feeble men and women who are utterly defenseless.” This quote is by John Sherman, a former Ohio senator. He is describing that the KKK is the worst he believes organization in the history of the United States. The southerners with their laws and the violence from the Ku Klux Klan presented problems for the freedmen. But the freedmen were not the only ones having trouble during the Reconstruction era. Almost everyone was suffering slightly from financial issues.

3.  The Reconstruction Era is not something the United States should be proud of. The major goal of Reconstruction was to bring blacks back into the mainstream society, and that was not accomplished until about 100 years later. Also, the era included many racist and violent southern whites.  The goals of Reconstruction were set too high for them to be achieved, so if most goals weren’t reached, the Reconstruction Era is not something the United States should be proud of....


...The Reconstruction Era included many racist Southern whites.  Many cruel things were said about the blacks.  A delegate to the Texas Constitutional Convention said, “I concede them [blacks] nothing but the station of ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water.”’ South Carolinian White Julius Fleming wrote, “The Negroes are to be pitied....They do not understand the liberty which has been conferred upon them.” These people are saying such hurtful and disturbing things towards the blacks.  The goal of the Reconstruction Era was to get the blacks to be equal to everyone else; this proves that they certainly did not achieve that goal.