Reconstruction Timeline
1861
Union troops occupy the Sea Islands off the South Carolina coast
1862
The Homestead Act provides western lands for pioneer farmers
1862-90
Federal, state, and local governments distribute 180 million acres of free land to railroads
an area equal in size to New York and the six New England states
1865
- January: General Sherman issues Field Order No. 15 authorizing ex-slaves to take possession of
more than 400,000 acres of abandoned coastal plantations from South Carolina to Florida
- March: Congress passes the Freedmen’s Bureau, promising to lease confiscated land in 40-acre tracts to
freedmen and “loyal white refugees”
- April: Lincoln assassinated/Andrew Johnson becomes President; Congress passes the 13th Amendment
- May: Pres. Johnson offered amnesty to most Confederates, allowing them to reclaim abandoned lands
occupied by freedmen; Johnson establishes easy terms for readmission of seceded states
- Summer/Fall: Southern states established the Black Codes, limiting the movement and controlling ex-slaves
- September: Congressman Thaddeus Stevens proposes confiscation and redistribution of southern plantations
- Fall: “Colored Conventions” convened throughout the South to protest the Black Codes and demand civil
rights; African-Americans began building hundreds of schools and churches throughout the South
1866
- February: Pres. Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act and extension of the Freedmen’s Bureau (Congress overrides)
- June: Congress passed the 14th Amendment, granting freedmen citizenship and protections for their civil rights
exclusion of women caused split in reform movement
- Ku Klux Klan founded in Tennessee
1867
- March: Congress passed the Reconstruction Act (military districts, new constitutional conventions, and
granting suffrage to freedmen)
- Union Leagues in the South mobilize black and poor white candidates/voters for constitutional conventions
1868
- Andrew Johnson impeached (eleven articles/charges filed); Johnson acquitted by one vote in his trial
- Radical Republican state and county governments elected across the South
- July: Ratification of the 14th Amendment, mainly with support of southern states, whose approval was required
as condition of readmission to the Union
- Stalwarts (moderates) gained control of the Republican Party; Radicals decline in influence
- November: Ulysses S. Grant elected President as a Republican
1869
Congress passed the 15th Amendment
1870
States ratified the 15th Amendment
1870-71
Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan and Force Acts
1873
Slaughterhouse Cases: Louisiana had created a partial monopoly of the slaughtering business and gave it to one
company; competitors argued that this created "involuntary servitude," abridged "privileges and immunities," denied
"equal protection of the laws," and deprived them of "liberty and property without due process of law”; the Court
devoted most of its opinion to a narrow construction of the privileges and immunities clause, which was interpreted to
apply to national citizenship, not state citizenship
1873-76
Panic of 1873 (economic depression) weakens northern and Republican commitment to Reconstruction
1875
Democrats launched the “Mississippi Plan,” a successful campaign of intimidation and violence to regain control of the
state government
1876
U.S. v. Cruikshank: Colfax Massacre resulted in 100 black/3 white deaths; the Court ruled that the 14th Amendment did
not empower the federal government to suppress crimes by individuals (only when state actions denied citizens’ rights)
1877
Rutherford B. Hayes became President as a result of the Compromise of 1877 and ends Reconstruction
1880-1900
Black and white sharecroppers became caught in a cycle of constant debt
1883
U.S. v. Singleton: Black man denied entry in New York opera; the Court ruled the 14th Amendment did not cover
private acts of discrimination
1896
Plessy v. Ferguson: Black man tried to sit in a “white” section of railway car; the Court ruled that segregated
facilities were not inherently unconstitutional (“separate but equal”)
I go to some churches, and I see all the folks sitting quiet and still like they don't know what the Holy Spirit is. But I find in
my Bible, that when a man or a woman gets full of the Holy Spirit, if they should hold their peace, the stones would cry out;
and if the power of God can make the stones cry out, how can it help making us poor creatures cry out, who feel to praise
Him for His mercy. Not make noise! Why we make a noise about everything else; but they tell us we must not make noise to
praise the Lord. I don't want such religion as that. I want to go to Heaven in the good old way. And my brothers and sisters, I
want you all to pray for me, that when I get to Heaven I won't never come back again.
--Comments made by A FREEDWOMAN
at a religious meeting, 1865, as reported by northern white visitors
... [T]hey broke into our well furnished residences on each plantadon and stole or destroyed everything therein. Nor was there
a solitary instance in either plantation of any one of our Negroes presenting for us a single thing whatever.... A negro woman
[Peggy] seized as part of the spoils my wife's large and handsome mahogany bedstead and mattress and arranged it in her
own Negro house on which she slept for some time.
Frederick [the driver] was the ringleader [at the Marshland plantation].... He encouraged all the Negroes to believe that the
Farm, and every thing on it, now since emancipation, belonged solely to them, and that their former owners had now no rights
or control there whatever.
--South Carolina planter
CHARLES MANIGAULT, 1865
We has a right to the land where we are located. For why? I tell you. Our wives, our children, our husbands, have been sold
over and over again to purchase the lands we now locate upon; for that reason we have a divine right to the land.... And then
didn't we clear the land and raise the crops of corn, of cotton, of tobacco, of rice, of sugar, of everything? And then didn't...
large cities in the North grow up on the cotton and the sugars and the rice that we made!... I say they have grown rich, and my
people are poor.
-- BAYLEY WYAT,
an ex-slave protesting eviction of blacks from confiscated plantations in Virginia, 1866
[Land confiscation] is a question not of humanity, not of loyalty, but of fundamental relation of industry to capital; and
sooner or later, if begun at the South, it will find its way into the cities of the North....
An attempt to justify the confiscation of Southern land under the pretense of doing justice to the freedmen, strikes at the root
of property rights in both sections. It concerns Massachusetts as much as Mississippi.
--New York Times, July 9, 1867
I take the liberty of writing to you a few facts that have come under my observation respecting the freedmen. … The enemy
of emancipation cries that negroes will not work, that the government will have to support them, or they will become pests to
the country… Any one who has been where he can observe the working of emancipation can see the fallacy of such cant
[false, insincere language]. Through the parishes where I have been I think I never saw the [black] laboring class more
industrious. Many seem to vie one with each other in making a living, and saving something for a future day…. Those who
feel so badly because the Government feeds a few negroes should be with me on ration day and see their white brethren and
sisters, those who for the last four years have been trying to destroy the nation, come for their food that the Government has
to give to save them from starving…
-- CORPORAL RICHARD T. HENRY writing from Donaldson, Louisiana, 1866
It is surprising to see the amount of suffering which many of the people endure for the sake of sending their children to
school. Men get very low wages here.. and a great many cannot get work at all. The women take in sewing and washing, go
out by day to scour, etc. There is one woman who supports three children and keeps them at school; she says, "I don't care
how hard I has to work, if I can only send Sally and the boys to school looking respectable." Many of the girls have but one
decent dress; it gets washed and ironed on Saturday, and then it is worn until the next Saturday.... One may go into their
cabins on cold, windy days, and see the daylight between every two boards, or feel the rain dropping through the roof; but a
word of complaint is rarely heard. They are anxious to have their children "get on in their books" and do not seem to feel
impatient if they lack comforts themselves. A pile of books is seen in almost every cabin, though there be no furniture
except a poor bed, a table and two or three broken chairs.
--MISS M. A. PARKER, the American Freedmen, April 1869
[A] case of some significance that came before me was that of a white man that I knew unfavorably and well. He had
cursed, abused, and threatened the life of an inoffensive old colored man on account of a misunderstanding over a small
business transaction. Upon the complaint of the colored man, a warrant was issued for the arrest of the party against whom
the complaint was made. When he was brought before the court and the charges had been read to him and he w asked
whether or not he suns guilty as charged, he seemed to be somewhat surprised. "Why," he remarked, "do you mean to tell
me that it is a crime for a white man to curse a nigger? "Yes," the court replied. "It is a crime for a white man to curse a
Negro as it is for a Negro to curse a white man." "Well," he exclaimed, "that's news to me. You certainly must be mistaken.
If there is such a law, I never heard of it." The court then handed him the code and told him where he could find the section
bearing upon the point at issue and requested him to read it for himself, which he did.
When he had finished, he exclaimed in a somewhat subdued tone: "Well, I'll be damned." The court then admonished him
that if that remark should be repeated, he would be committed to the county jail for contempt of court. He quickly
apologized and assured the court that no disrespect was intended. He said that he could not deny having used the language
set forth in the affidavit, but he hoped the court would not be severe because he did not know and did not believe that in
using that language he was violating any law. Since it was his first offense, he was let off with a fine of five dollars and
costs which he promptly paid. It was the first and only time he was brought before me.
--The Autobiography of JOHN ROY LYNCH, edited by John Hope Franklin, 1970
You say you have emancipated us. You have; and I thank you for it. But what is your emancipation?
When the Israelites were emancipated they were told to go and borrow of their neighbors—borrow their coin, borrow their
jewels, load themselves down with the means of subsistence; after, they should go free in the land which the Lord God gave
them. When the Russian serfs had their chains broken and given their liberty, the government of Russia—aye, the despotic
government of Russia—gave to those poor emancipated serfs a few acres of land on which they could live and earn their
bread.
But when You turned us loose, you gave us no acres. You turned us loose to the sky, to the storm, to the whirlwind, and,
worst, of all you turned us loose to the wrath of our infuriated masters.
-- FREDERICK DOUGLASS,
summing up the failure of Reconstruction, 1876
“This is a White Man’s Government”
– Harper’s Weekly, 1868
“Colored Rule in Reconstructed State”
– Harper’s Weekly, 1874
“He Wants a Change Too”
– Harper’s Weekly, 1876
Democratic Broadside
– Pennsylvania’s campaign of 1866
Klan warning: a prediction in the event of a Democratic victory in 1868 presidential election
– Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor, 1868
“Worse Than Slavery”
-- Thomas Nast, 1870
“The Fifteenth Amendment Illustrated”
-- A support for woman’s suffrage, at the expense of African Americans, Chinese,
and illiterate immigrants, in the St. Louis The Star Chamber, 1870