CHAPTER 22
THE ORDEAL OF RECONSTRUCTION
For the South: A Tale of Ruin
● Economic Devastation
Charleston, South Carolina (1865)
• destruction of labor force
• end of plantation system
• infrastructure ruined
• extreme poverty
• source of wealth (slaves)
erased
• land values plummeted
• hyperinflation due to
worthless currency
● Social Changes
• destruction of planter aristocracy
• 1/5 of all white males dead
For the North: A Different Story
● Economic Opportunity
● rebuild the South with northern free labor ideology
● invest in southern infrastructure (especially RR)
● help the South
industrialize
● “carpetbagging”
● Social Opportunity
● educate southern blacks
● bring the South into 19th
century with abolition and a more egalitarian society
● Political Opportunity?????
Presidential Reconstruction vs.
Congressional Reconstruction
Lincoln’s Plan
● Lincoln’s hope
● wanted to re-establish southern loyalty
● bring confederate states back into Union
● end the war quickly
● 1863 Proclamation of Amnesty and
Reconstruction
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10% plan of full pardons
restored rights for all southerners willing
to take oath to the U.S. (Confed. officers,
high rankers excluded)
abolition must be accepted before re-admission
no provisions to overturn black codes, little protection for
social equality, no economic aid or the franchise for blacks
The Wade-Davis Bill in Opposition
to the “10% Plan”
 50% oath of allegiance
 Stronger safeguards for emancipated slaves
 Vetoed (pocket veto) by Lincoln
 When Congress reconvenes,
they refuse to seat some
southern delegates who
followed Lincoln’s plan
 Radicals wanted the South
to atone for its sins (they
committed “state suicide”) and
could only come back as
conquered states
Johnson’s 10% Plan (upon the untimely
death of Lincoln)
 Johnson’s Proc. of Amnesty and
Reconstruction (1865)
 Delivered when Congress was
out of session for the summer
 Pardoned most Southerners
 Pardoned Confed. officers,
high-ranking officials if they
applied for personal amnesty
(which most did and received)
 Once oaths taken and former
slaveholders pardoned, states
could convene to write a new
constitution and send it to
Johnson for approval
Radical Republicans’ (Sumner,
Stevens) Plan
 Wanted South to slowly integrate back into
Union (which party dominated the South pre-Civil War?)
 Protect the right of blacks to vote and form a political base
 Blacks then could gain more basic rights as the South accepts
abolition
 Reconstruction Act (1867)
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Passed by a veto-proof Congress
South must accept 14th & 15th Amend. before readmission
Until then 5 military governors would rule 5 districts to
enforce the black vote and equality
All orders from the Pres. to army went through General Grant (who
supported Radical Reconstruction)
50% loyalty oath (Confed. officers barred from office and vote)
Still no land or educational guarantees (moderate Republicans
were not in favor)
Radical Republicans Continued
 13th (1865): abolish slavery
 14th (1868): citizenship and equal protection under the law
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Why is this necessary? What happened about 10 years
earlier?
 15th (1870): the right to vote
 Freedmen’s Bureau (1866)
 Emergency agency to assist transition for freedmen
and white refugees
 Distributed clothing, food, and fuel, established schools
 Civil Rights Act (1866) : precursor to 14th Amend.
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Vetoed and overridden
Gave all persons born in U.S. citizenship with full set of civil
rights (suing, testifying, due process)
Can you tell why a white Southerner might
hate the Freedmen’s Bureau?
The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
• The Radical Congress had been challenging
Johnson’s “Reconstructed South” since Dec. 1865
•
Alexander Stephens (the vice-President of the C.S.A.)
was elected to Congress!
• Johnson is charged with violating the Tenure of
Office Act (1867)
•
President cannot remove Senate-approved officials w/o
Senate approval
• Impeachment trial for “high crimes and
misdemeanors” in Feb. 1868 (avoided by one vote)
for firing of Secretary of War Stanton
In the Newly Reconstructed South
 New state constitutions helped elect blacks
 A new tax system financed public schools,
infrastructure improvements and public works
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Some of this was done under the guidance of carpetbaggers
and scalawags that were corrupt
 As states were readmitted, federal troops withdrew
 “Redeemer” Democrats emerged (known as conservatives)
 The KKK is born in 1866
 Black codes (soon to be known as Jim Crow laws)
rolled back any legal or social gains
 Sharecropping replaced slavery