Was Reconstruction a failure or success?

One of
the more disturbing observations that
one can make about United States history with respect to
the outcomes of the
Civil War and the period ofwas the fact that institutionalized racial

segregation and the struggle among African Americans for civil rights survived more than
halfway
into the 20th century. Legislation granting basic rights to African
Americans was still being
debated in the United States Congress a century
after the end of the Civil War. That is a
failure of
Reconstruction.

Reconstruction was a process whereby the
South,
physically and mentally defeated, would essentially be rebuilt
physically and politically to
better mirror the North. It was a process of
reuniting two very disparate entities. The war
cemented the Souths
unification with the North. Reconstruction was needed to maintain that unity

by culturally and politically transforming the vestiges of the Southan effort that could
be
termed, to employ a World War II vernacular, as "a
bridge...