Chapter 16
Reconstruction
Presidential Reconstruction
• How should the Southern states be re-admitted
into the Union?
• Lincoln’s “10 Percent Plan”
 Southerners could be reinstated as citizens by taking
a oath of loyalty
 When a number equal to 10 percent of those who had
voted in 1860 had done so they could set up a state
government
 That government must be a republican form, must
recognize freedom of slaves, and provide for
education of freed slaves
Presidential Reconstruction
• Radicals against 10 percent plan – too moderate
and gave Lincoln too much power to determine
policy in South
• Radicals passed Wade-Davis Bill
 Constitutional conventions in states had to have a
majority
 Those who bore arms against Union were barred
from voting
 States had to repudiate Confederate debt
 Bill vetoed by Lincoln (just prior to assassination)
Lincoln Dead!
• After Lee’s surrender, John Wilkes Booth’s
plot to kidnap Lincoln changed to
assassination
• Lincoln was not the only one targetedGeneral Grant, Vice-President Johnson,
and Secretary of State Seward were also
to be killed
Lincoln Dead!
Lincoln Dead!
Lincoln Dead!
Lincoln Dead!
Lincoln Dead!
Lincoln Dead!
Lincoln Dead!
Lincoln Dead!
Lincoln
Johnson
John Wilkes Booth
George Atzerodt
Seward
Lewis Powell
Grant
Lincoln Dead!
Mary Surratt was the first woman to be
executed by the US government
Lincoln Dead!
• Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860 and
JFK was elected in 1960
• Both were elected to Congress in ’46
(1846 and 1946)
• Both had children die in the White House
(Willie and Patrick)
• Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theater and
JFK was shot in a Ford limousine
Lincoln Dead!
• Lincoln was killed in a theater and his
assassin was caught in a warehouse
• JFK was shot from a warehouse and his
killer was caught in a theater
• Both assassins went by three names:
John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey
Oswald
Lincoln Dead!
• Both presidents were succeeded by
Southern Democrats named Johnson
• Both Andrew and Lyndon Johnson were
born in ‘08 (1808 and 1908)
• Both presidents were shot in the head
from behind while seated
• Both presidents were shot in the company
of their wives
Lincoln Dead!
• Both presidents were shot on a Friday
• Both presidents were shot in the presence
of another couple in which the male was
also wounded (Rathbone and Connally)
• Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy
who told him not to go to the theater*
• Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln
who warned him not to go to Dallas
Lincoln Dead!
• Both assassins were killed before being
brought to trial
• A week before his assassination, Lincoln
was in Monroe, Maryland*
• A week before his assassination, JFK was
in Marilyn Monroe*
Lincoln Dead!
•
•
•
•
•
Major Rathbone, who, with his fiance
Clara Harris, had accompanied the
Lincolns to Fords theater, was appointed
counsel to Hannover, Germany in 1882
While there, he killed his wife, almost
killed his three children, and attempted
suicide
Rathbone spent the rest of his life in a
German insane asylum
It is said that Rathbone’s insanity was
caused by his sense of failure in
stopping Booth
In the 1950’s, the bodies of Rathbone
and his wife were disposed of by the
German cemetery
Lincoln Dead!
• Robert Lincoln
 Only Lincoln son to reach
adulthood (Edward, Willie, and
Tad all died in childhood)
 Had his mother committed to an
insane asylum (she escaped)
 Was present at the
assassination of President
Garfield
 Was present at the McKinley
assassination
Robert Lincoln
Lincoln Dead!
 Some weeks before his father’s
assassination, Robert Lincoln was
at the train station
 A large crowd jostled him and he
fell from the platform onto the
tracks into the path of an oncoming
train
 Just before he would have been hit
and probably killed, a hand
reached down and grabbed him,
pulling him to safety
 The man that saved Robert Lincoln
was Edwin Booth, older brother of
Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John
Wilkes Booth
Edwin Booth
Presidential Reconstruction
• Lincoln succeeded by Andrew Johnson
 Tennessee Unionist Democrat
 Champion of the small farmer
 Hated Southern aristocrats which endeared him to
Republican radicals thinking he was anti-South
 Johnson shared South’s views on states’ rights and
contempt for blacks
 Enacted an amnesty program only slightly more
rigorous than Lincoln’s
 By 1865, all Southern states had governments, had
ratified the 13th Amendment, and were ready to re-join
the Union
Republican Radicals
• Ultra-radicals wanted complete civil and
political equality for blacks
• Other Republicans wanted to protect
blacks from exploitation and guarantee
basic rights but little else
• Republicans wary of seating Southern
delegates as 3/5 Compromise gone and
South could hold majority
Republican Radicals
• Southern states provoked North by
electing representatives from former
Confederacy
• South provoked North by enacting Black
Codes
• Johnsonian Reconstruction therefore
rejected
Congress versus Johnson
• Johnson vetoed legislation expanding the
Freedmen’s Bureau
• Congress passed Civil Rights Act putting
teeth in 13th Amendment
• Johnson’s veto was overridden –
Congress was now in control
• Johnson’s behavior alienated many
• Radicals demanded extra rights to protect
blacks – faced increasing opposition
Fourteenth Amendment
• Supplied a broad definition of American
citizenship
• Struck at discriminatory state laws such as Black
Codes
• If states refused the vote to any adult male, its
representation was to be reduced
• Former federal officials who had served in the
Confederacy were barred from holding state or
federal office
• The Confederate debt was repudiated
The Reconstruction Acts
• South unwilling to ratify 14th Amendment
• Furious North enacted coercive measures
known as the Reconstruction Acts
• Divided South into military districts each
controlled by a general with neardictatorial powers
• Military rule would end only with ratification
of the 14th Amendment
The Reconstruction Acts
• First Reconstruction Act too vague to be
workable – South made no effort to follow
laws
• A Second Reconstruction Act required
military to register voters and supervise
election of delegates to constitutional
conventions
• Southerners refused to go to the polls
• Georgia last to ratify in 1870
Congress Supreme
• Southern resistance to even the mildest
forms of reconstruction goaded the North
to apply increasingly harsher measures
• Johnson’s stubbornness also influenced
Republicans
• Congress exerted more authority over
army, cabinet members, and even
Supreme Court (size reduced and
jurisdiction limited)
Congress Supreme
• Johnson refused to submit to
Congress reducing executive
powers
• Johnson violated “Tenure of Office
Act of 1867” by removing Sec. War
Stanton
• Johnson was impeached but
escaped conviction by 1 vote
• Kept Congress from permanently
damaging the power of the
executive
The Fifteenth Amendment
• Grant elected president in 1868
• Radicals wanted to give right of vote to all blacks
in all states
• Republicans saw black vote as advantageous –
15th Amendment sent to states in 1869 and
ratified in 1870
• Amendment to give suffrage to all men
regardless of color – women outraged
• Suffrage restricted through literacy tests and
other measures
“Black Republican”
Reconstruction
• Within five years of emancipation, blacks
were exerting real political influence
• Real winners were “scalawags” – white
Southerners willing to cooperate with
Republicans
• “Carpetbaggers” – Northerners who went
to South to help blacks, serve in federal
system, or grab a piece of the pie
“Black Republican”
Reconstruction
• Blacks failed to dominate Southern politics
• Most of those who held office were house
servants or artisans
• Mulattos also fared better politically and
socially
• Black officials were usually competent and
conscientious though there were examples
of corruption
“Black Republican”
Reconstruction
• Biggest thieves were white
• Despite wasted money, Southern
infrastructure was rebuilt
• Major contribution made by the
Freedmen’s Bureau
• Programs enacted under Black
Republicans as well as corruption
continued under white rule that came later
The Ravaged Land
• South was never as wealthy as the North
– now it was desperately poor due to the
destruction of war
• Radical Republicans wanted to confiscate
plantations and divide land between freed
slaves
• Land without seed and tools useless
• Blacks had to either strike out on their own
or work for former masters
The Ravaged Land
• Black productivity dropped after
emancipation
• Whites assumed blacks “lazy”
• Black family dynamics changed- male
authority increased and women moved to
child-rearing roles
Sharecropping and Crop-Liens
• After the war, Southern
planters tried farming
through gang-labor –
failed due to scarce
money and black dislike
of working under whites
• Sharecropping system
emerged- planter
supplied land, seed,
equipment in return for
half the crop
• Sharecropping gave
blacks more control over
their lives
Sharecropping and Crop-Liens
• Poor whites also utilized sharecropping system
• Lack of capital forced development of crop-lien
system
 Both landowner and sharecropper depended on local
bankers, merchants, storekeepers for everything from
seed to coffee and salt
 Crossroads stores proliferated- prices of goods on
credit high
 Store owners also lacked capital and paid high
interest on credit purchases
Sharecropping and Crop-Liens
• South, drained of resources, had to compete
with the West and North for capital
• Southern reconstruction achieved at the
expense of the standard of living of the
producing classes
• Progress in South slow: 7,000 miles of track laid
in South between 1865-1879, in rest of US
45,000 miles laid
• Late 1800’s Southern production revived in
cotton, tobacco, textiles
White Backlash
• Radical Southern governments needed
support of whites to maintain power
• Support came from wealthy merchants
and planters (former Whigs)
• Southern white Republicans used the
Union League of America to control the
black vote
White Backlash
• Dissident Southerners powerless to oppose the
League openly
• Secret terrorist societies established such as
KKK, White Camelia, and Pale Faces
 KKK began as social club in 1866 but by 1868 it was
taken over by vigilantes trying to drive blacks out of
politics
 Claimed to be ghosts of dead Confederate soldiers
 When intimidation failed they used violence
 Congress struck back at the KKK – severely
diminishing their influence
White Backlash
• KKK eroded will of white
Republicans and Black
voters
• Open intimidation and
violence erupted with the
Red Shirts in Mississippi
beginning 1874
• Terrorism against blacks
increased white fears of
black retaliation
• Blacks learned to stay
home on election day
White Backlash
• Northern anger at South diminished over
time and “conservative” white
governments took over in South
• North had little interest in racial equality
• Southern idea of the need for the
workforce to be disciplined gained ground
in the North
Grant as President
• Stock market crash of
1873 created economic
problems for a decade
• Controversies over
“greenbacks” versus
“sound” money
• Grant administration and
corruption
• 1872 election split
Republicans between
Grant and Greeleyended Republican
dominance
Election of 1876
• Republican: Rutherford B.
Hayes / Democrat: Samuel J.
Tilden
• Tilden carried enough states to
win – Republicans controlling
Southern states threw out
Democratic ballots so that
Hayes “won”
• BUT many blacks kept from
voting
• A commission organized to
judge the election was
corrupted by both sides
• Commission voted for Hayes 8
to 7
Compromise of 1877
• Southern Democrats ready to accept Hayes if he
ended military occupation of South
• Hayes elected and troops removed
• Efforts made by Republicans to find niche in
South but South remained solidly Democratic
• Compromise ended Reconstruction and began
new political order in the South
• Blacks would bear the brunt of these changes as
the North forgot them and the courts rebuffed
them