Reconstruction, 1863-1877 Outlines
I.
The Meaning of Freedom
A. Reconstruction: the period of the United States history in which the nation tried to
adjust to the new conditions created by the Civil War
B. Breaking down Slavery
1. In 1865, the states ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, thereby
abolishing slavery.
2. During the Civil War, African Americans in the South often simply stopped obeying
their owners as soon as Union troops were reported to be nearby; they had no doubt
that they were, or very soon be, legally declared free.
C. What Freedom Meant to African Americans
1. New African American Organizations
 Being labeled as “free” meant that African Americans now had the liberty to
move about and live wherever they wanted.
 Across the South, freed people withdrew from congregations with both white and
African American members and formed their own churches.
 They also founded thousands of voluntary organizations, including mutual aid
societies, temperance clubs, debating clubs, drama societies, and trade
associations.
2. Education
 Freedom also meant education for African Americans.
 In 1860, it is estimated by historians that up to 90% of adult freed people were
illiterate.
 Slave codes had often prohibited teaching enslaved people to read and write.
In 1862 a wealthy free African American woman from Philadelphia named
Charlotte Forten had gone to Port Royal, South Carolina, to teach African
Americans; she later described the enthusiasm she found: ~I never before saw
children so eager to learn…Coming to school is a constant delight and recreation to
them…Many of the grown people [also] are desirous of learning to read. It is
wonderful how a people who have been so long crushed to the earth…can have so
great a desire for knowledge, and such a capability for attaining it.
3. Political Involvement
 African Americans held state conventions and rallies; they wanted the political
rights of citizenship: to vote, to hold office, to serve on juries.
4. Land Ownership
 Freedom also meant the right to own property, the ability to pursue whatever line
of work they chose, and the power to determine what they produced.
 Freed people throughout the South also sought the redistribution of land; they
argued that they were entitled to the land on which they lived, even though it
belonged to white people.
 General William Tecumseh Sherman and his forces arrived in coastal South
Carolina and Georgia in late 1864; therefore the land came under the military rule
of the U.S. Army.
 On January 16, 1865, General Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15, in
which Sherman reserved the Sea Islands of Georgia and a 30-mile-wide strip of
coastal land south of Charleston for eligible African American families.
 By June 1865, roughly 40,000 African Americans were living on 400,000 acres of
land that Sherman had set aside for them.
D. The People of White Hall Plantation
1. The story of the Arnold family—Richard and Louisa and their children—they owned
a plantation near Savannah, Georgia.
 Richard moved the family North to Rhode Island, as he did not favor secession,
nor did he support the South.
 Richard sold While Hall to his son Thomas, who supported the South.
 Because of Richard Arnold’s opposition to secession, White Hall was declared
exempt from Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15 (Sherman’s land redistribution
order).
 The Arnold’s were lucky to have saved their plantation, as most southern planters
had lost everything.
2. Upon his return to the plantation in Savannah, Thomas found significant damage to
the mansion, but even more astounding, he found that the attitude of his former
slaves had changed drastically.
3. New Working Relationships
The revolution of our social fabric is too great, the entire upheaval and overthrow of
all the foundations of our society too universal not to affect everybody. ~a Georgia doctor
during Reconstruction
II.
Three Plans for Reconstruction
A. Helping Freed People
1. Freedmen’s Bureau—established by Congress in March 1865, the purpose of
the bureau was to provide aid to freed people and help them make the adjustment
to freedom
B. Lincoln’s Reconstruction Plan
1. Lincoln offered a pardon, an official forgiveness of a crime, to any Confederate
who would swear allegiance to the Union and accept the end of slavery.
2. Confederate military and government officials and those who had killed African
American prisoners of war were excluded from Lincoln’s offer.
 When 10% of those who had voted in the 1860 election had taken the oath in
their state, that state could hold a constitutional convention.
 After the delegates had written a constitution endorsing the Thirteenth
Amendment, their state could be returned to its proper place in the Union.
3. Some Radical Republicans wanted terms that would be much more difficult for
southern whites to accept.
 Radical Republicans passed the Wade-Davis Bill in July 1864—under this
legislation, the terms a Confederate state had to meet in order to return to the
Union were almost impossible to fulfill.
 Lincoln refused to sign this legislation, and because Congress had closed for
the session after passing the bill, Lincoln’s refusal to sign it amounted to a veto
of the bill.
*Think and consider* Why would the successful passage of this legislation be
counter-productive? Why did Lincoln refuse to sign it?
 The point was to get the southern states that had seceded back as a part
of the Union, not to make it nearly impossible for them to comply with the
terms and not be able to fulfill them. Hence the word Reconstruction…
C. Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan
1. April 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln in the head in Ford’s
Theater, killing him and turning over the presidency to the former Vice President,
Andrew Johnson.
2. Johnson is Moderate
 Johnson granted 13,000 pardons to former Confederates in 1865.
3. Southern defiance
 Once southern state governments were established, they quickly worked to
undermine Johnson’s terms for Reconstruction.
 The southern states enacted black codes, which were laws that severely
restricted the rights of freed people.
D. The Radical Plan for Reconstruction
1. March 1866, Congress passed a Civil Rights Act in order to ensure equal rights
for African Americans in spite of black codes, but President Johnson vetoed it.
 It then switched course and proposed the Fourteenth Amendment to the
Constitution, which became law two years later.
2. Protecting Citizen’s Rights
 No state can…”deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due
process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws…” ~Fourteenth Amendment
 The amendment also provided for the punishment of states that did not permit
African Americans to vote.
3. Controlling the South
 Military Reconstruction Act of 1867—legislation passed by new Congress
dividing the South into five military districts that were to be governed by
northern generals.
4. Controlling the President
 Congress also attempted to limit the power of President Johnson.
 Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, which dealt with the President’s
power to hire and fire officials.
 When the President tried to fire Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a Radical
Republican, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Johnson—to
charge him formally with wrongdoing in office.
 Under the Constitution, officials impeached by the House are then tried by the
Senate, which by a two-thirds majority can convict the official and remove him
or her from office.
 Seven Radicals refused to vote for the conviction of President Johnson—
therefore, he was not impeached.
E. The Last Reconstruction Legislation
1. Fifteenth Amendment—proposed in February 1869 and ratified in March 1870, it
stated that no citizen could be denied the right to vote “by the United States or by
any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
III.
Reconstruction in the South
A. Republican Support in the South
 Significant problems faced the Republican plan for Reconstruction in the South.
1. White Republicans in the South
 carpetbaggers: northern Republicans who moved to the South after the Civil
War
 scalawags: a term that means “rascals,” referred to southern whites who
became Republicans
o African Americans in Office “Now that we are free men, now that we have
been lifted up by the providence of God to manhood, we have resolved to
come forward, and, like MEN, speak and act for ourselves.” ~1865 African
American state convention addressed to the people of South Carolina
B. Republican Policies
1. Economic Development
 Republicans in the south worked to improve economic conditions—specifically
through land redistribution and economic development through the emergence of
more railroads, banks and businesses.
2. Voter Anger
 Many of the policies enacted during the first years of Reconstruction were
ineffectual, and the state officials from the North often accepted bribes.
 Worldwide demand for cotton was falling; in 1875, cotton production was at the
same level as that of 1859, but the profits reaped from the crop were significantly
less.
C. Changes in Southern Agriculture
1. Debt Peonage
 Southern white planters would sign former slaves to labor contracts, loaning them
money in exchange for a written contract forming the basis for all debts to be paid
before moving.
2. Sharecropping
 sharecroppers: farmers who grew a crop on land owned by someone else; in
return for use of the land and supplies, the farmer gave one third to one half of the
annual crop of the landowner.
 tenant farmers: farmers who paid cash for the rental of land
D. Whites Attack Reconstruction
1. The Ku Klux Klan
 KKK—an organization that began as a social club in Tennessee in 1866
 Leaders of the KKK included planters, merchants, lawyers, and occasionally
ministers
 each member took an oath in which they promised to “defend the social and
political superiority” of whites, to vote for only white candidates, and to protect
whites against what the Klan called the “aggressions of an inferior race”
2. The Compromise of 1877
 Rutherford B. Hayes became President in exchange for promising to remove all
federal troops from all southern states; therefore, Southern Democrats would
regain complete control of the region.
IV.
The Retreat from Reconstruction in the North
A. Becoming an Industrial Power
1. Industrial production in the United States rose by 75% between 1865 and 1873.
2. In 1873, the U.S. reached a new milestone: it now had more industrial workers than
farmers.
3. The nation ranked second only to Great Britain as an industrial power.
B. The Republicans Abandon Social Issues
1. African Americans Remain Powerless
2. The Postponement of Women’s Rights
 United States Sanitary Commission—formed in 1861, coordinated local
organizations dedicated to providing medical aid and other assistance to soldiers;
200,000 northern women served in it
 After the war, close to 1,000 women went south to teach African Americans.“If I
were to give free vent to all my pent-up wrath concerning the subordination of
women, I might frighten you…Suffice it, therefore, to say, either the theory of our
government is false, or women have a right to vote.” ~Lydia Maria Child, to
Charles Sumner in 1872
3. Unhappy Farmers and Working People
 Farmers and working people challenged Republicans to extend more rights to
them; as a result of these feelings, strong protest movements arose in the late
1800s on the nation’s farms.
4. The Significance of Reconstruction
 By the year 1877, Reconstruction had essentially fizzled out of the social and
industrially-focused nation.