Reconstruction
Unit 1.3
Differing Goals of reconstruction
• Republican goals of reconstruction
– secure rights for African Americans
• Democrats goals for reconstruction
– restore democrats to political power and deny
rights of freedmen and republicans
Principle of American Democracy
• Majority rule and minority rights
– The idea that the winners of elections make the
rules but not at the expense of the minority's
rights
– IGNORED by southern Democrats during and after
Reconstruction
Initial Southern Response to Reconstruction
• Black Codes
– Laws created by southern governments during
Presidential Reconstruction to keep as much of
the old order as possible; African Americans were
kept in slave-like conditions. Black codes
established curfews, labor contracts, limits on
women's rights, and land restrictions for
freedman.
Black Codes
African American men who were
arrested for vagrancy due to
unemployment
h
• White Southerners sought
ways to control newly freed
African Americans
• They wrote Black Codes to
regulate civil and legal
rights, from marriage to the
right to hold and sell
property
• In many ways the codes
guaranteed African
Americans would continue
working as farm laborers
Jim Crow Laws
• Legal acts designed to remove newly gained
rights from African Americans (14th and 15th
amendments)
• Two main aims
– Segregation
• the enforced separation of different racial groups
– Disenfranchise
• Attempting to remove or restrict suffrage, the legal
right to vote, with a certain group
Segregation
• Southern states wrote segregation into their
constitutions (de jure segregation)
• Plessy v. Ferguson
– Supreme Court ruling that made segregation of separate
but equal facilities legal.
– In practice, the African American facilities were
usually “separate-and-unequal.”
– It would take until the 1965, 100 years after the Civil
War ended, for Jim Crow laws to be outlawed and
blacks to finally realize legal equality in America.
Disenfranchisement
• All-White Primary
– only allowing African Americans to vote in the
general election.
• Eight Box Law
– Made voting difficult for illiterate voters
• Grandfather Clauses
– requiring a literacy test if their grandfather could
not vote before 1867.
• Poll Taxes
– requiring an amount of money that a citizen had
to pay before he or she could vote.
Disenfranchisement cont.
• Ku Klux Klan
– In 1866 a group of white southerners created the Ku
Klux Klan.
– The KKK was a secret society opposed to African
Americans obtaining civil rights, particularly the right
to vote.
– The KKK used violence and intimidation to frighten
blacks.
– Klan members wore white robes and hoods to hide
their identities.
– The Klan was known to have murdered many people.
“Boy, You ain’t a votin’ here”!
WHITE SUPREMACY
Disenfranchisement Cont.
• Force Acts
– designed to end Klan activities in the South. They allowed
federal prosecution for any interference with the rights
granted by the 14th and 15th amendments. IT effectively
ended Klan activities.
• Paramilitary Groups
– citizen controlled organizations that used military tactics to
intimidate and attack Republican voters in the late 1870s.
Examples include the Red Shirts, and the White League
• Colfax Massacre
– Attack and killling of 50 republican freedmen in Louisiana
by the White league
Legal Challenges
to the 14th & 15th Amendments
 U. S. vs. Cruickshank (1876)
 LA white supremacists accused of attacking a
meeting of Blacks & were convicted under the
1870 Force Acts.
 The Court held that the 14th Amendment extended
the federal power to protect civil rights ONLY in
cases involving discrimination by STATES.

Therefore, discrimination by individuals or groups were
NOT covered.
Presidential Elections
• 1868—Presidential election
– Democrats had nominated Horatio Seymour
• Johnson’s out no matter what
– Republicans nominate Ulysses S. Grant
• War hero, but no political experience
– Very close election—would have lost without
black votes
The 1868 Republican Ticket
The 1868 Democratic Ticket
Waving the Bloody Shirt!
Republican “Southern
Strategy”
1868 Presidential Election
1872 Presidential Election
Northern Economy
Panic of 1873
• Overspeculation by financiers and
overbuilding by industry and railroads
• Debtors wanted more paper money issued
that wasn’t supported by gold
• In 1874, Grant sides with hard-money
bankers
The End of Reconstruction
• During Grant’s second term, Radical
Republicanism declining
• Corruption, economic problems in the north,
waning interest in idealistic policies
• Rise of the redeemers
– Term for the newly restored Democratic governments
in the south in the late 1870s that wanted:
• States’ rights, lower taxes
• Reduced spending on social programs
• White supremacy
1876 Presidential Tickets
Election of 1876
Republicans nominate Rutherford B. Hayes
Governor of Ohio
Not involved with corruption of Grant Administration
Democrats nominate Samuel J. Tilden
Governor of New York
Fought corruption of the Tweed Ring
Votes contested in LA, FL, SC
Tilden wins popular vote, needs only one
electoral vote from one of the three states to win
1876 Presidential Election
The End of Reconstruction
• Special electoral commission created to
decide who gets disputed votes
• Commission: 8 Republicans, 7 Democrats
• Votes 8-7 to give all electoral votes to
Hayes
• Democrats threaten to filibuster the
results, send election to the House
The End of Reconstruction
•
Compromise of 1877
– Deal worked out between the parties
– Hayes becomes President on two conditions:
(1) Federal support for Republicans in the south
ended immediately
(2) Support the building of a Southern
transcontinental railroad
– Hayes complies with conditions, agrees to
only serve one term
A Political Crisis: The
“Compromise” of 1877
The End of Radical Reconstruction



Federal Reconstruction
ended in 1876 with the
election of Rutherford B.
Hayes to the presidency
A few weeks after taking
office Hayes issued an
order for the removal of
all federal soldiers
stationed in the South
The end of
Reconstruction led to a
drastic reduction of rights
for African Americans
President Rutherford Hayes
positive results of reconstruction
•
•
•
•
1. Reunited the nation after the civil war
2. Provided education for freedmen
3. Provided aid for need southerners
4. granted rights and suffrage to freedmen
Other Positive achievements of
Reconstruction
 Universal male suffrage
 Property Rights for
Women
 Debt relief
 Modernized penal
codes
 Built roads, bridges,
railroads
 Hospitals, asylums,
public schools for all
 Overhauled tax
systems, issued bonds
negative results of reconstruction
• 1. Jim Crow laws removed many rights gained
during reconstruction once federal troops left
• 2. African Americans will need to struggle for
90 years to gain full guarantees of their rights
from the 14th and 15th amendments.
• 3. sharecropping keeps the south in poverty
for generations