I. The Struggle for National Reconstruction
• Reconstruction questions:
▫ How should the South be readmitted?
▫ Should leaders be punished?
• Presidential Approaches: From Lincoln to Johnson
▫ Lincoln and Johnson had similar plans
 Amnesty (pardon) to most Confederates
 States could be readmitted once 10% of voters in 1860 pledged loyalty and
ratified 13th amendment
 Confederate states rejected
▫ Wade-Davis Bill – Congressional bill calling for a more strict 51% of loyalty
 No rebels in government and permanent disenfranchisement of CSA leaders
 Pocket-vetoed by Lincoln
▫ Johnson
 “Common man” from TN; loyal to Union during CW
 Offered amnesty to all who swore allegiance, except a few CSA leaders
 Used pardons heavily for former leaders like Lee and Stephens
▫ Congress stepped in to take control of Reconstruction when:
 South passed black codes - laws that restricted rights of free blacks
 Georgia elected Alexander Stephens as their senator
I. The Struggle for National Reconstruction
• Congress vs. the President:
▫ Freedmen’s Bureau - Provided food, education, and
assistance to former slaves and poor whites
 Its biggest success was in education
▫ Civil Rights Act of 1866
 granted citizenship to blacks and equal protection
▫ Both bills vetoed by AJ but overridden by Congress
▫ Fourteenth Amendment –
 citizenship to all those born in US (made the Act of
1866 permanent)
▫ Radical Republicans –
 Charles Sumner in the Senate, Thaddeus Stevens in
the House
I. The Struggle for National Reconstruction
• Radical Reconstruction: Aimed to reform the South and increase
federal power
▫ Reconstruction Act of 1867 – divided the South into 5 districts
▫ States must provide suffrage for blacks and deny it to ex-Confederates
▫ The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson:
 Violated the Tenure of Office Act:
 President must get consent of Senate before removing cabinet
members
 House said he was “infringing on the powers of Congress”
 Johnson is impeached, however, he is NOT removed from office
▫ Election of 1868 and the Fifteenth Amendment:
 Grant wins (war hero )
 15th – Suffrage could not be denied based on “race, color, or previous
condition of servitude”
 Left room for poll taxes and literacy tests.
Struggle for National Reconstruction
• Woman Suffrage Denied:
▫ Most men opposed women’s suffrage0-even northern men
▫ Abolitionists and women’s suffragists had been close allies before
1865
▫ 15th left out “sex”
▫ Movement splits:
 Lucy Stone and the American Women Suffrage Association hoped
to achieve suffrage after Reconstruction
 Stanton feared suffrage was not likely near, National Woman
Suffrage Association advocated an amendment for women’s
suffrage
II. The Meaning of Freedom
The Quest for Land
Freed Slaves and Northerners: Conflicting Goals
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Many Northerners believed that wage labor would
overtake the South-that cotton should still be the
primary export and African Americans should be wage
workers on plantations.
Former slaves wanted land; most Republicans did not
want to confiscate land, though former slaves felt
entitled to it; few states developed opportunities for
freedmen to purchase land; most were economically
vulnerable to discrimination.
Quest for Land…
▫ Wage Labor and Sharecropping:
 Many former slaves had to work for former slave
owners since they had no land
 **Sharecropping**
 Renting land and paying via crops
 If a drought or poor farming hit, tenants would be
in trouble
 Crop-Lien:
▫ Receiving credit from a local store, usually at a
HIGH rate (50-60%)
▫ Usually led to debt for borrowers (former slaves)
II. The Meaning of Freedom
Republican Governments in the South
Rejoining the Union
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All southern states rejoined the Union between 1868 and
1871;
Being protected by federal troops, Republican governments
included African Americans
The Southern Republican Party included whites and blacks
In the late 1860s, African Americans made up the majority of
voters in AL, FL, SC, and MS.
Union League- a secret organization to pressure Congress for
freedmen’s causes;
Freedmen’s Bureau played key role in creating colleges for
African Americans (Fisk, Tougaloo, and the Hampton
Institute).
Scalawags and carpetbaggers
Republican Governments in the South, cont’d…
Scalawags and carpetbaggers
▫ Scalawags: Southerners that favored Reconstruction (mostly for
economic reasons)
▫ Carpetbaggers: Northerners that moved South during
Reconstruction:
▫ Political opportunities for African Americans increased during
Reconstruction:
 Robert Smalls – former slave, and Civil War hero, became a
Congressman
 Hiram Revels – 1st African American in the Senate (Jefferson
Davis’ seat)
II. The Meaning of Freedom
C. Building Black Communities
1. Churches
2. “Race uplift”
III. The Undoing of Reconstruction
Disillusioned Liberals –
▫ Revolt emerged within Republican Party; led by
“classical liberals” who advocated free trade,
smaller government, and limited voting rights;
formed the Liberal Republican Party in 1872;
▫ Leader-Horace Greeley
Progression of the neck
beard…
Depression & Demands for Inflation
• Panic of 1873
▫ Caused by unbridled capitalist expansion
 Produced too much – price goes down, businesses collapse
 Banks – loans were not being repaid
▫ 15,000 businesses went bankrupt; including the Freedmen’s
Savings and Trust Company ;black Americans lost some $7
million in savings.
▫ Many argued for inflationary policies to make it easier to pay off
debts.
Corruption in Grant Adm.
• Credit Mobilier Scandal – 1872
▫ Railroad construction
company formed by Union
Pacific
▫ Over paid themselves
▫ Paid off members of congress
▫ Exposed by NY newspaper
 2 congressmen censured
 VP accepted stock
• Whiskey Ring – 1875
▫ Robbed treasury of
millions in excise tax
▫ Grant’s private sec was
involved
• Sec of War William
Belknap – 1876
▫ Pocketed money from
suppliers to Indian
resrvations.
III. The Undoing of Reconstruction
• Counterrevolution in the South:
 Redeemer” governments:
 Local and state governments that ousted Republican
governments
 Often done through violence and intimidation
 KKK terrorized blacks and Republicans
▫ Enforcement Acts: 1870-1871
 Response to the KKK
 Federal government could intervene to suppress
terrorist activities.
 President could use the military to protect individual
rights
III. The Undoing of Reconstruction
• Reconstruction Rolled Back
▫ Democrats gained control of the House in 1874
▫ Most of the country (including the Grant
administration) was no longer concerned with the
South
▫ The Supreme Court Rejects Equal Rights:
 US v. Cruikshank – court ruled that only state
violations of individual rights were a concern, not
individual rights
 Civil Rights Cases - 14th Amendment did not prevent
private discrimination, only government
discrimination
▫ The Political Crisis of 1877:
 Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican) v.
Samuel Tilden (Democrat)
 Tilden received 184 electoral votes to
Hays 165; 185 needed to win
 20 votes were in dispute
 Eventually, all 20 were given to Hayes
 Importance of the Compromise of
1877?
 RECONSTRUCTION ENDS!, The military
is withdrawn from the South
Constitution & Votes
• Specifies that the electoral returns shall be
sent to Congress & opened by president of the
Senate
▫ Who should count the votes? Constitution doesn’t
say
Results of the Compromise
• Officially ended Reconstruction
• Violence was averted by sacrificing
the black freedmen in the South
▫ Republicans abandoned its commitment
to black equality
• Civil Rights Act of 1875 – last try by
Republicans
▫ Supposedly guaranteed equal accommodations in
public places & prohibited racial discrimination in
jury selection
Supreme Court
• Declared Civil Rights Act of 1875
unconstitutional in 1883.
• Declared that the 14th Amendment prohibited
only government violations of civil rights, not
the denial of civil rights by individuals
The Democratic South
• Suppressed blacks
▫ Blacks who tried to vote faced unemployment,
eviction, & physical harm
• 1890s – required literacy test, voter
registration laws, & poll taxes
• Blacks became economically dependant
▫ Sharecropping & tenant farming
Compromise of 1877
• Created to solve the election deadlock
• Electoral Count Act - passed by Congress
▫ Set up electoral commission consisting of 15 men
selected from the Senate, the House, & the Supreme
Court
▫ Not successful in solving the problem
because there were 8 –R and 7-D
• Democrats agreed to elect Hayes in
exchange for:
▫ Removal of all federal troops in the South
▫ Subsidizing of a southern transcontinental
railroad line – not kept