The United States' attempt at Reconstruction was not successful because although slavery was abolished, African Americans were not given a chance to elevate themselves in any way.
The Reconstruction Period began with good intentions, but in the end it failed. Based on the research I have done, the only real successes that came out of Reconstruction were the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and even those were only effective to an extent because of Supreme Court interpretation. Although African Americans were freed from physical bondage, racism did not at all go away. African Americans were continuously targeted and oppressed by whites, forced to live lives sub-standard to the rest of the people in the country, and denied their basic rights. The lives African Americans led during Reconstruction were barely a step up from those they had led prior to the Civil War, and that says a lot about just how little Northern whites were willing to do to fight for this cause. Reconstruction did create a constitutional basis on which black Americans would eventually be able to take advantage of their rights, but that did not happen until decades later, leading me to conclude that Reconstruction was not very successful at all.