RECONSTRUCTION
1865-1877
Differing Meanings of Freedom
• Freedom’s meaning to the former slaves
• Open ended ideal based on equality and autonomy
• Freedom’s meaning to former masters & white
southerners
• Mastery and hierarchy – a priviledge nota right
• Most remained convinced that “the old relation of master and
slave” had been the best condition in which the two races
could live together for mutual benefit.” – Henry Ravenal, SC
Planter
• Freedom’s meaning to northern whites
• Free labor – men were free to rise as far as the fruits of their
labor would take them
RECONSTRUCTION AMENDMENTS
• 13th – Outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude
• Adopted December 6th, 1865
• 14th – Section I, Section II-IV
• Ratification bitterly contested.
• ¾ ratification on July 9, 1868
• 15th - prohibits the federal and state governments
from denying a citizen the right to vote based on
that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of
servitude“
• Ratified Feb. 3rd, 1870
CHOICES FOR RECONSTRUCTION
• How to treat states in rebellion
• Conquered foe?
• Who decides?
•
•
•
•
Congress
President
Supreme Court
Former Slaves?
• Constitution is unclear
Lincoln’s Second Inagural
RECONSTRUCTION PLANS
Moderate Republicans
(Lincoln)
• 10% Loyalty Oath
• Win the South for
Republicans
Radical Republicans
(Congress)
• Radical Republicans
(Congress)
• 50% Loyalty Oath
• Treat South as a
conquered land
FIRST STEPS
• Freedmen’s Bureau
• Assistance with food and legal questions
• Schools
• Sherman’s Example
• 40 acres and a mule
APRIL OF 1865
• Lincoln Assassinated
• VP Andrew Johnson (TN)
• Looked to follow Lincoln
• Pro-Union, pro-states rights,
racist, anti-slavocracy, proyeomen farmer
• Personal plan more lenient
• Johnson pushes it through Congress
• Requirements
• Renounce Confederate laws
• Reject Confederate debts
• Pass 13th Amendment
Why might Lincoln choose to run
with a southern slave owning
senator for his second term?
SOUTHERN REACTION TO LOSS
• Black Codes
• Paramilitary
Groups
• Election of
former
Confederates
BLACK CODES
• Enacted in 1865
• State by state
• Attempted to
reinstate slavery
• Labor laws
• Vagrancy laws
The future of southern black codes
Freed slave who refused to sign a labor
contract is auctioned off to a white
plantation owner who agreed to pay his fine
– preference was often given to freedmen’s
former masters
KU KLUX KLAN
• Established in 1865 in
Tennessee
• Spread throughout the South
• Terrorist Intent
• 10% of black office holders
are known to have been
victims of violent threats or
assaults
• At least 35 black officials
murdered
• Not a unified movement but
one of many organizations
• Suppressed in 1874
Confederate General
Nathan Bedford Forrest
ELECTIONS OF 1865
• Former Confederates
elected and return to
Congress
• Former Confederate VP
Alexander Stephens
• Elected to the US House of
Representatives 1873-1882
• Elected Governor of
Georgia 1882
• Died March 4th,1883
NORTHERN REACTION AS COVERED BY
HARPER’S WEEKLY
NORTHERN RESPONSE
•
•
•
•
Freedmen’s Bureau Bill (vetoed)
Civil Rights Act (veto overridden)
New Freedmen’s Bill (veto overridden)
Elections give Republicans two-thirds majority
General Oliver
Otis Howard,
Director of the
Freedmen’s
Bureau
RADICAL (CONGRESSIONAL)
RECONSTRUCTION
• Begins after elections
• Ignores President
Johnson, turning back
the clock to just after
Appomattox
• Reconstruction Act of
1867 (passed over veto)
• Requirements
• Allow blacks to vote
• Pass 14th Amendment
• Institute military
governments
Woodcut shows Freedmen’s Bureau agent
separating armed whites from armed blacks. This
image gives the impression that the Bureau was
the only thing stopping a race war in the south
during the period following Andrew Johnson’s
failed reconstruction attempt.
MILITARY RULE - 1867
• South divided into 5 military districts
• Troops stationed in districts
• Radical Republican state governments
• Black participation in government
A NEW SITUATION
• Carpetbaggers
(Northerners)
• Scalawags (Southerners)
----------------------------------------• Resentment over the
“Negro Rule”
• Never actually happened
• Two Senators & 15
Congressmen
• South Carolina had black
majority
• Louisiana had a black
governor
NEW ECONOMIC STRUCTURE
• Land Seizures
Rejected
• 40 acres and a mule
• Sharecropping
• Tenant Farming
• Terms prevent
independence
• De facto (in fact)
slavery
IMPEACHMENT - 1868
• Johnson opposes
Congressional will
• Attempts to subvert
Radical Reconstruction
• Campaigns for
Democrats
• Misses removal by one
vote
RESULT
• Johnson is marginalized
• U.S. Grant elected in
1868
• Era of corruption (though
not Grant personally)
• North begins to lose
interest in reconstruction
The Meaning of Freedom to Freedmen
• Family
• Former slaves asked for help from the Freedman’s Bureau to help locate
family members not seen in years and in some cases walked hundreds of
miles to find former family members
• Freedmen placed ads in newspapers seeking members of their family
• Economic Independence
• Land – the war over the economic resources of the South hardly ends with
the end of shooting
• Suffrage
• “Slavery is not abolished until the black man has a ballot.” – Frederick
Douglas
• Access to Education
• Beaufort NC first public school ever erected was built by freed blacks
during reconstruction
• Religious Autonomy
• In the Front Street Methodist Church in Wilmington NC (which was 2/3
black) members told Reverend L.S. Burkhead that “his services were no
longer required…he being a rebel.”
14TH AMENDMENT
• Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in
the United States, and subject to the
jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United
States and of the State wherein they reside.
No State shall make or enforce any law
which shall abridge the privileges or
immunities of citizens of the United States;
nor shall any State deprive any person of
life, liberty, or property, without due process
of law; nor deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
14TH AMENDMENT
• Section 2 – Eliminated the Three-Fifths Clause
• Section 3 – Banned Confederates
• Section 4 – Removed War debt