Radical Reconstruction
Today’s LEQ:
How did the government react?
Radical Republicans Challenge
Johnson’s Reconstruction
• By the end of 1865, President
Johnson thought Reconstruction was
over – Radical Republicans felt
Reconstruction had hardly begun
• Many in the North disagreed with
the black codes
Radical Republicans Challenge
Johnson’s Reconstruction
• Radical Republicans joined with more
moderate lawmakers to enact two bills
designed to help former slaves
• Extended the Freedmen’s Bureau and gave
it more power
• Civil Rights Act of 1866
• Took direct aim at the black codes
• All Americans were entitled to “equal benefit of
all laws… enjoyed by white citizens.”
Radical Republicans Challenge
Johnson’s Reconstruction
• Johnson vetoed both!
• Congress overrode his decision and both
laws were passed
• Radical Reconstruction had begun
Radical Republicans Challenge
Johnson’s Reconstruction
• To further protect the rights of freedmen,
Congress passed the Fourteenth
Amendment to the Constitution
• Reversed the Dred Scott Decision
• Guaranteed citizenship to African
Americans and “equal protection of the
laws”
Reconstruction Acts
• Congress laid out its plan for
Reconstruction
• The South was divided into five districts and
put under military control
• Both white and black males could vote if they
were loyal to the Union
• Each state had to write a new constitution
• Required to ratify the 14th amendment and allow
African Americans to vote
President Johnson Faces
Impeachment
• Congress enacted two laws to keep Johnson
from interfering
• Command of Army Act – limited president’s
power as commander in chief of the army
• Tenure of Office Act – barred the president
from firing certain federal officials without the
“advice and consent” of the Senate
President Johnson Faces
Impeachment
• President Johnson is outraged and fires
the Secretary of War to prove his point
• Johnson is charged with violating the
Tenure of Office Act and just escapes
impeachment by one vote!
Activity: Andrew Johnson is Impeached
(answer on the back)
1.
What occupation did Johnson have before he entered into
politics?
2. To what party did Johnson belong?
3. What was the “swing around the circle”?
4. What was the effect of the “swing around the circle”?
5. Whom did Johnson want to help, and whom did Stevens want to
help?
6. What was the purpose of the Tenure of Office Act?
7. Whom did Johnson fire, and whom did he appoint to replace him?
8. How many senators must vote “guilty” before an official is
removed from office?
9. How many states had senators at that time? How did you figure
that answer out?
10. How many votes did Johnson have to spare?
Living Under Radical
Reconstruction
• White Southerners were angry!
• Shocked at return of federal troops
• Thought Reconstruction was over
• Black Southerners were elated!
• Had been organizing to fight discrimination
• “We simply ask that the same laws that govern
white people shall govern black men.”
The South’s New Voters
• Former confederates barred from
voting under Reconstruction Act of
1867
The South’s New Voters
•Freedmen
• Joined Republican party
(Lincoln’s party = Emancipation
party)
The South’s New Voters
• Scalawags
• “worthless scoundrels”
• White Southerners who opposed
secession
• Joined Republican party
(Democratic party = party of
secession)
The South’s New Voters
• Carpetbaggers
• Northerners
who were
attracted to the
South after the
war
• Viewed as
fortune hunters
Election of 1868
• New voters help Republican candidate,
Ulysses S. Grant, win the election of 1868
• Grant’s victory helped persuade Congress
to pass the Fifteenth Amendment
• African Americans win the right to vote
• “the right of citizens… to vote shall not
be denied or abridged [limited] by the
United States or by any State on account
of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude.”
Rebuilding the South
• Every state readmitted into the Union by
1870
• Wrote new constitutions and formed new
governments
• Majority of those elected into office were
Republican – 1/5 were African American
• Established the South’s first public school
system
Slow Economic Recovery
• Corrupt government officials used money
intended to rebuild Southern
infrastructure for personal gain
• Most of the South still dependent on
agriculture
• Many Southern farmers lost all they had
to war costs
Slow Economic Recovery
• Once-wealthy plantation owners had land
but no money to hire workers
• Tenant Farming - planters divided land
into small plots they rented to workers
who would grow crops
• In some cases, tenant farmers would
pay a share of their crop as rent instead
of cash – this was called Sharecropping
Who Benefited?
“We make as much cotton and
sugar as we did when we were
slaves and it does us little good now
as it did then.”
In Summary…
Reconstruction Amendments
Foldable
• Some important vocabulary:
Amendment:
Constitution)
a change or addition (to the United States
Jurisdiction:
power, authority; authority over an area
Naturalized:
granted citizenship
Reconstruction: era of rebuilding (in the US, 1865-1877)
Servitude:
state of being a slave