Did Reconstruction succeed?

• The population in the South who had been defeated in the civil war were very resistant to reconstruction.​ Although slavery had legally ended attempts were made to try and retain the social order by keeping black people at the bottom of society.​ There was some change, the 14th Amendment gave them full citizenship and the right to vote and black Americans were elected into local political positions.​ Organisations developed (like the Ku Klux Klan) to terrorise the newly free.​