The Reconstruction process which America’s Southern States underwent in the aftermath of the Civil war was a success in terms of social reform, one example of this is being that hundreds of thousands of freed slaves had access to a basic education. Politically, this period in US history was also a success; the Confederate states pledged loyalty to the US government and made constitutional changes to amendments regarding slavery. However, these reforms did not stop racism from having a pervasive effect on society. From an economic standpoint, Reconstruction heralded the beginning of a period of poverty that would last until after the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Overall, in the long term, reconstruction has been a success, yet it took much longer than the actual period for the effects to be felt and observed.

The Greatest American Inventor and Invention
In my opinion, the greatest American inventor was Thomas Edison, and the greatest invention was his commercial electric lightbulb. Consider the societal changes that have occurred since Edison’s 1879 public display of incandescent electric lighting, which the great man himself said would be so cheap that only the rich would use candles. In 1880, Edison’s company offered the first electric utility to rival gas.

Public safety would have increased as a result of better street lighting, work hours would have been more flexible now that people could labor at night, and there would have been less house fires because people were no longer burning candles of lamps in their homes.

Edison is famous for saying that genius is mainly comprised of hard work rather than talent. This man was hard-working indeed, with over 1,000 patents in his name for inventions related to electricity. It is hard to imagine a world without Thomas Edison’s amazing and useful inventions.