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The Civil War is over
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Answer the following questions
How will you bring the former Confederate states back into the Union?
Will there be any restrictions? Any requirements for them?
What will you do with the former Confederate soldiers? Generals? Political leaders?
There are now 4 million African Americans who were once slaves who are now free. They have no homes, no property, no jobs. What will you do with them?

Plans for Reconstruction
The Main Idea
Northern leaders had different ideas for dealing with the many issues and challenges of restoring the southern states to the Union.
Reading Focus
• What challenges faced the South after the Civil War?
• What actions did Union leaders take during wartime to reconstruct the nation after the war’s end?
• How did Lincoln’s assassination affect the nation?
• Why did President Johnson and Congress differ over
Reconstruction?


Much of the South in ruins

Over 1/5 of population dead


4 million African Americans free

No education, no job, no money
Former Confederate States

Conquered territories or states again?

Former Confederate officers

Forgive or punish?


94,000 KIA, 164,000 to disease, 194,026 wounded

Spent $2,099,808,707 on war

Livestock killed: 40%

Farm machinery destroyed: 50%

Drop in total property wealth: 66%

Total national wealth, 1860: 30%

Total national wealth, 1870: 12%


110,100 killed in action

224,580 to disease

Of every 1,000 Federals in battle, 112 were wounded

Spent $6,190,000,000 on war

$2.5 million daily

 Dec 1863: Proclamation of Amnesty and
Reconstruction
 Forgiveness to all southerners who pledged loyalty to Union & support of emancipation
 except high-ranking officers
 When 10% took oath could organize new state government banning slavery
 3 states readmitted before end of war
 Arkansas, Louisiana, & Tennessee

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

 Readmitting states a power of Congress
 Secession illegal; southern states never left the Union
 States should go through same admission process as territories
 1864 Wade-Davis Bill

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
Military governors to rule southern states
Majority of white males pledge loyalty before elections could be held
• South should be treated as conquered province
Lincoln pocket vetoed the bill


April 14, 1865 at Ford’s Theater
 Watching Our American Cousin with wife and two guests
 Actor John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln


Part of a conspiracy
“Sic Semper Tyrannus”
 Vice President Johnson & Sec. of State
William Seward were also targets
 Johnson was not attacked
 Seward was stabbed in bed

 Lincoln died at 7:22 a.m. on April 15
 Booth was killed while hiding in a barn
 8 of his co-conspirators were tried & found guilty
 4 were hanged
 Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and
George Atzerodt
 4 were sentenced to prison
 Andrew Johnson became president


Similar to Lincoln’s plan
 Confederate leaders & wealthy southerners had to apply for pardon
 State must ratify 13 th Amendment
 Outlawed slavery
 Republicans in Congress displeased with
Johnson’s plan


Welcomed Johnson’s plan
 New state governments were formed
 Former Confederate officials were elected to public office
 Some were sent to Congress
 Black Codes were passed

 Kept former slaves from attaining equality
Resented Freedman’s Bureau & occupying troops

 Unhappy with presidential reconstruction because of:
 Former Confederate leaders holding office
 Black Codes
 Wanted tougher rules for restoring state governments
 Wanted to reshape southern society
 Give Freedmen political & economic equality
 Wanted to punish the South

 1866 Congress passed two bills

Continued support of Freedman’s Bureau
 Civil Rights Act of 1866
 Gave blacks citizenship & outlawed discrimination
 Johnson vetoed both bills
 Angered moderate Republicans who then supported Radical Republicans

 14 th Amendment
 Granted blacks citizenship & made Bill of
Rights apply to state governments
 4 Reconstruction Acts were passed over
Johnson’s veto


Divided South into 5 military districts
Set 3 conditions for state’s readmission
 Must ratify 14 th Amendment
 New state constitutions guaranteeing black vote

Form new gov’t. elected by all male citizens

 Tenure of Office Act, 1867
 Senate approval to remove any appointed official that Senate had approved
 Johnson challenged the law by firing Sec. of
War Edwin Stanton
 Congress impeached Johnson
 1 vote shy of removing him
 Fifteenth Amendment
 Protected voting rights of African-American males

Radical Reconstruction

Johnson’s impeachment
Edward Stanton, Lincoln’s secretary of war, had stayed on in Johnson’s cabinet.
 Stanton supported congressional
Republicans and prevented Johnson from undermining Congress’s program. In response, Johnson fired him.
 The House of Representatives voted to impeach Johnson for violating the
Tenure of Office Act.
 The Senate failed to convict by one vote, and Johnson remained in office.
 Although no longer in control of
Reconstruction, Johnson continued to issue pardons, and by the end of 1868 the rights of almost all Confederate leaders had been restored.
The Fifteenth Amendment
 During the impeachment trial,
Republicans nominated General Grant as their presidential candidate.
 The 1868 election was close, but the
African American vote in the South gave Grant an electoral college victory.
 Republicans pushed through the
Fifteenth Amendment , which extended suffrage to all African
American males nationwide.
 This brought millions of potential new voters to the Republican Party and aimed to protect freedmen from pardoned former Confederates.
However, it did not ban denial of suffrage for reasons other than race.

 Political power in the South shifted
 Carpetbaggers
 Northerners who were in the South
 Scalawags
 Southerners who supported Radical Reconstruction
 Freedmen
 700 African Americans served in state legislature
 16 elected to Congress
 Created first public schools, eliminated property requirements for voting, illegalized discrimination, repealed Black Codes

• Some:
– Sought long-lost relatives
– Owned land or got a job
– Moved to cities
• Faced discrimination & low pay
– Moved West
• Soldiers & cowboys
– Sought education
• Freedman’s Bureau established 4000+ schools
– Established churches
• Most remained in the South

• Sharecropping
– Work for someone in exchange for a share of the crop
– By late 1870s most freedmen were sharecroppers
– Employer provided land, seed, tools, etc.
• Tenant farming
– Renting land from the landowner
– Grow any crop

 South very violent during Reconstruction
 KKK & others attacked black leaders & members of the Freedman’s Bureau
 Southerners wanted to restore the old political & social order
 Congress passed Enforcement Acts, 1870-71
 Set heavy penalties for trying to prevent someone from voting
 Gave army & federal courts power to punish the KKK

 People were dismayed that the army remained in the South
 Republican governments appeared ineffective, insufficient, & corrupt
 Blacks were unhappy: still impoverished & no land reform

South’s poor economic condition

 By 1870s support for Reconstruction was declining
 Thaddeus Stevens & Charles Sumner died
 Lawlessness was increasing in the South

Northerners were getting tired of South’s problems

 (R) Rutherford B. Hayes v. (D) Samuel J. Tilden
 Tilden won popular vote & led in majority of electoral votes
 Votes in South were disputed, so Tilden lacked majority of electoral votes
 Two sets of returns from some states
 Compromise
 Republican congressional commission gave votes to
Hayes
 Republicans agreed to pull troops out of the South ending Reconstruction