Chapter 17
Reconstruction
The Politics of Reconstruction
• Each side had catastrophic losses in lives. The Union -360,000 men
and the Confederates - 260,000 men.
• Supremacy of the National Government
• The South was left in total ruin
• Southern whites greatly despised Emancipation.
• Lincoln’s Plan was a gentle and forgiving approach to reconstruction
and only 10% of the population would have to take an oath of
allegiance.
• He vetoed harsher Wade-Davis bill that would have called for 50%
of population taking the oath of allegiance.
• January 1865, General Sherman’s Special Field Order 15 - set aside
the Sea Islands off the Cost of Georgia for freed people.
The Politics of Reconstruction (Continued)
• Following Lincoln’s ideals Johnson
granted amnesty and pardoned many
southerners.
• Conflict with the Radical Republicans
• Radical’s wanted Federal
Reconstruction
• Civil Rights bill, Freedmen’s Bureau
& 14th /15th amendments.
Johnson’s impeachment crisis – lame duck.
By summer of 1868, Alabama, Arkansas,
Florida, Louisiana, North/South Carolina, &
Tennessee had returned to the Union.
The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
• Not trusted by the North
• A traitor to the South
• Tenure of Office Act
• 1867 - Impeachment
Election of 1868 & Woman’s Suffrage
Ulysses S. Grant was the Republican
nominee. Horatio Seymour was the
Democrat’s nominee. Grant won with 26
of the 34 states.
Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia were
readmitted after the ratification of 14th &
15th amendment.
Women’s Suffrage took a huge hit with
the incorporation of “male” in the 14th
amendment.
There was a split in woman suffragists
into the American Woman Suffrage
Association and National Woman
Suffrage Association.
The Meaning of Freedom
• There was no actual set date in which all the slaves were freed.
It was gradual as the news spread.
• Between 1865-70, the African American population of
Southern cities doubled while the White population only
increased by 10%.
• African American families now decided for themselves when
and where the women and children worked.
• The church was the first social institution fully controlled by
African Americans and became a pivotal point in many lives.
The Meaning Of Freedom (Continued)
• The idea of The Freedmen’s
Bureau Act of 1865 (forty acres
and a mule) became an issue of
debate.
• Percy Roberts identified 3 types
of “systems for hire” in a 1866
writing; money wages, share
wages, & sharecropping.
• Sharecropping dominated the
southern economy with 80% of
the land in the black belt(1880)
• African America political activity
becoming a large Republican
voting bloc.
Southern Politics and Society
• One key component of Reconstruction - the establishment of
Republican party in the South to complete the two-party system.
• Federal troops were needed to secure the Republican governments
in the south & their supporters. But by 1877, Democrats had
regained political control of all former Confederate states.
• There were 3 groups of Southern Republicans: African Americans,
Carpetbaggers, and scalawags.
•
• Economics
• Between 1868-72, the southern railroad was rebuilt and +3,000
miles of new track were laid.
• Black and Whites worked together.
Southern Politics and Society- White Resistance &
“Redemption”
• The Ku Klux Klan launched a
terrorist campaign against
Reconstruction governments and
local leaders.
• Supported the Democratic Party.
• Ku Klux Klan Act of April 1871 &
Civil Rights Act of 1875.
• Slaughterhouse cases of 1873, US v.
Reese (1876), and US v. Cruikshank
(1876).
• “King Cotton” began to grow in the
post war south, but it soon created
endless cycles of debt.
Southern Politics and Society
Reconstruction The North
• By 1873, American’s industrial
production had grown 75% over the
1865 level.
• The Pacific Railway Act of 1862
• May 10, 1869, Leland Stanford
hammers the last spike and finishes
the 1st transcontinental railroad.
• Railroad paved the way for mass
growth and expansion.
• Liberal Republicans
• Election of 1872, Grant defeats
Greeley
• Depression of 1873, the result of
commercial overexpansion, and drop
in cotton prices.
Reconstruction The North – The Election of
1876