Chapter 22
The Ordeal of Reconstruction
1865-1877
Questions after the War
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How would the South be rebuilt?
What about the new freedmen?
How do we bring the South back to Union?
Who was in charge of Reconstruction?
Jefferson Davis
Southern devastation destroyed
infrastructure
• “The lost cause”
Charleston, South Carolina, in
Ruins, April 1865
The Freedmen’s Bureau
• Freedmen’s Bureau March 3, 1865
• Union General Oliver O. Howard
• Intergenerational education
• Corruption of Bureau
Educating Young Freedmen and
Freedwomen, 1870s
Presidential Reconstruction
• Lincoln’s 10% Plan (1863)
• Congress counteracted with Wade-Davis
Bill (1864) pocket vetoed
• 2 factions in Congress- Radical and Moderate
Republicans
• Johnson’s Reconstruction ProclamationMay 29, 1865
Black Codes
• November 1865 Black Codes in Mississippi
• White control subservient population
• Labor force (Cotton Kingdom) contracts
signed for 1 year service
• Few rights
• Created generations of sharecroppers
• North= what did we fight for?
Congressional Reconstruction
• December 1865: new Southern members of
Congress (ex Confederates!)
• Fear of Democrat take over
• Black population= whole person, more
power to South!
• February 1866: Johnson vetoed Freedmen’s
Bureau extension
• Republicans in Congress= Civil Rights Bill
Congressional Reconstruction
• Future Congress might undo Civil Rights
Bill- needed 14th amendment
• Citizenship rights to blacks
• Reduced representation of state if black voting
denied
• Denied office to former Confederates who had
sworn to uphold US Constitution before
• Repudiated Confederacy’s debts
• 1866 midterm elections= veto proof
Republicans
Congressional Reconstruction
• Radicals= Charles Sumner (Senate),
Thaddeus Stevens (House)
• Saw South as conquered provinces
• Use federal power to revolutionize
• Moderates= more states rights, ensure
citizen rights with little federal intrusion
Military Reconstruction
• Reconstruction Act March 2, 1867
• South= 5 military districts (martial law)
• Readmittance to Union= ratify 14th amendment,
guarantee black voting in state constitutions
• Usurped President’s power as commander in
chief
• Ex parte Milligan case
• Needed 15th Amendment to ensure Southern
compliance
• Return to “Redeemer” governments (Solid South)
Military Reconstruction, 1867 (five
districts and commanding generals)
Freedmen Organization
• Lincoln and Johnson= gradual suffrage
• Moderate Republicans unsure of 15th
amendment many Northern states denied
voting to blacks
• Union League formed
• Civic education, black schools/churches,
militias
• Universal manhood suffrage 14
Congressmen/ Senators between 1868-1876
Angry White South
• “Scalawags”: white Southerners helping
new regimes (Republicans) thieves
• “Carpetbaggers”: white Northerners who
came to South for personal profit
• New regimes reformed system
• KKK formed in Tennessee 1866
• Terrorism to “put blacks/white Republicans in
place”
• Force Acts of 1870 and 1871
The Ku Klux Klan, Tennessee, 1868
Johnson Impeachment
• Too many clashes with Congress wanted to
replace him with Ben Wade of Ohio (president pro
tempore)
• Tenure of Office Act 1867
• Fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton
• Impeached by House 126 to 47 Senate heard
case for removal
• Johnson’s argument avoided removal by 1 vote
• Precedent?
Purchase of Alaska
• Russia wanted to sell Alaska 1867
• Secretary of State William Seward bought
for $7.2 million
• “Seward’s Folly”
• Didn’t want to offend Russia, future economic
opportunity?, flank GB
Alaska and the Lower Forty-eight
States (a size comparison)
Reconstruction- Failure?
• Too difficult to change South socially,
politically, racially
• No clear picture of what Reconstruction
should have been from beginningpiecemeal
• Black rights soon denied for over 100 years
• Too much desire for white dominance vs.
not enough desire to force South