RECONSTRUCTION
1865-1876
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
1) How should the Southern states be
brought back into full membership in the
Union?
2) What should be the legal, political, social,
and economic position of the freedmen?
3) Who has the constitutional power to make
these decisions (legislative or executive)?
PRESIDENTIAL
RECONSTRUCTION
PRESIDENT LINCOLN:
I. Wartime Reconstruction Policies
 Davis Bend Experiment
 produced a highly profitable cotton crop
 could freed slaves become a part of the cotton
economy?
 Sea Island Experiment (Special Field Order #15)
 freed slaves adopted subsistence farming
 showed little inclination to embrace the cotton economy
 “40 acres and a mule”
SEA ISLAND FREEDMEN
PRESIDENTIAL
RECONSTRUCTION
 Banks Plan (Louisiana: 1862-1865)
 required
freed slaves to sign 6-year contracts to
work on former plantations
 workers paid a wage or percentage of crop
produced
 owners provide food and shelter
 workers could not leave the plantation without
permission
PRESIDENTIAL
RECONSTRUCTION
PRESIDENT LINCOLN
II. Postwar Reconstruction Plan
 Ten Percent Plan
 full pardon and restoration of rights for those who
signed a loyalty oath
 when 10% of the population had signed, they could
write a new state constitution and create a new
government
excluded high-ranking Confederate political and
military leaders
 required to recognize formally the abolition of slavery
CONGRESSIONAL RESPONSE TO
LINCOLN’S PLAN
Wade-Davis Bill (July 1864)
 President would appoint provisional governors
 “Ironclad Oath” (majority of state population)
 state constitution must abolish slavery and
disenfranchise Confederate leaders
 guaranteed full legal and civil rights for freed
slaves, but not suffrage
 vetoed by Lincoln
 he supported voting rights for “educated”
freedmen
SEN. CHARLES SUMNER
REP. THADDEUS STEVENS
SEN. BENAMIN WADE
FORD’S THEATER
JOHN WILKES BOOTH
LINCOLN’S ASSASSINATION
ANDREW JOHNSON
PRESIDENTIAL RECONSTRUCTION
PRESIDENT JOHNSON’S PLAN
Ironclad Oath-- pardon and restoration of property
 did not include high-ranking Confederate
military and political leaders
 majority to form new constitutions and
governments
 provisional governors oversee the process
 readmission requirements:
 revoke secession ordinances
 ratify the 13th Amendment
RESULTS OF JOHNSON’S PLAN
(1865-1867)
 By the fall 1865:
 Johnson had issued pardons for
many white Southern elites
 restored
all lands distributed by
Sherman and the Freedmen’s
Bureau
JOHNSON CARTOON
RADICAL REPUBLICAN
RECONSTRUCTION (1867-1876)
RADICAL REPUBLICAN PLAN
 Reconstruction Bills (early 1867)
 vetoed by Johnson; overridden by Congress
 invalidated states reconstructed under Lincoln and
Johnson’s plans
 Southern states organized into 5 military districts
 readmission requirements:
 “republican” constitutions
 ratify 14th amendment
 black male suffrage
 military placed in charge of voter registration
 readmission must be approved by Congress
RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION
RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION
IN THE SOUTH
 state Republican government controlled by
unstable coalitions:
 carpetbaggers—Northern whites who had
moved South
 Union veterans, idealistic reformers,
capitalists
 scalawags—Southern white Republicans
 Southern Unionists
 freedmen
CARPETBAGGERS
RADICAL POLICY TOWARD
THE FREEDMEN
I. Freedman’s Bureau (est. March 1865)


emergency relief for the freedmen
some attempts to distribute land to the freedmen

Gen. O.O. Howard—Circular 13
GEN. O. O. HOWARD
FREEDMEN’S BUREAU
SCHOOL
RADICAL POLICY TOWARD
THE FREEDMEN
II. Constitutional Amendments:
13th Amendment
 abolishes slavery forever in the United States
14th Amendment:
 guaranteed black citizenship rights
 did not guarantee black suffrage
 incorporation
 due process clause
 equal protection clause
15th Amendment
 guaranteed black male suffrage
 had to be ratified by remaining Southern states who would
apply for readmission (VA, MS, TX, GA)
SOUTHERN RESISTANCE
I. Black Codes (1865-1866)
 reestablished planter control over freedmen
 arrest of unemployed blacks
 fines/jailings for vagrancy (work off fines)
 forbids black land leasing or ownership
 contract labor and domestic servants
 apprentice clauses—allowed white officials
to black children “apprentices” on nearby
farms
MISSISSIPPI “VAGRANTS”
SOUTHERN RESISTANCE
II. Terrorism and Paramilitary Activity




Ku Klux Klan (1865)
White Camellia (1867)
White League (1874)
Red Shirts (1875: MS and SC)
 1871-1876—the Democratic Party regains control of
Southern governments
 so-called “Redeemer” governments
 intimidation and terror
KLANSMAN (1868)
KU KLUX KLAN
KLANSMAN (1871)
SOUTHERN RESISTANCE
III. Economic Dependency
 there was no wholesale redistribution of land to the exslaves


some ex-slaves became independent farmers (South
Carolina)
some became wage laborers (Louisiana)
 sharecropping system
 imposed on most freedmen and poor whites
 contract between land owner and cropper (tenant)
 crop lien
 “cycle of debt”
BLACK VETERANS
FINAL STAGES OF RADICAL
RECONSTRUCTION
 early 1867:


Republican Party begins to break into factions
Northern resolve was weakening
 Radical
attempt to impeach Johnson
 Tenure of Office Act (March 1867)
 Election of 1868
 Gen. Ulysses S. Grant elected
 Southern violence in response to the 14th
Amendment
THE END OF RECONSTRUCTION
(1872-1876)
Southern Whites
 encouraged by decreasing support in the
North due to:
 high taxes
 economic depression
 desire for “white man’s rule”
 feeble response of Grant Administration
 plagued by scandals
 limited enforcement of Reconstruction
laws
SOUTHERN PROPOGANDA
THE END OF RECONSTRUCTION
(1872-1876)
Election of 1876
 Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican)
electoral votes)
 Samuel Tilden (Democrat)
electoral votes)
48% (185
51% (184
 allegations of voter fraud made by both sides


an electoral commission awarded disputed votes to
Hayes
Hayes removes federal troops from the South
BLACK POPULATION BY 1880