APUSH—Kind
Reconstruction Notes
Major Issues of Reconstruction
 Rebuilding the Southern economy after the Civil War
 Richmond, Charleston & Atlanta destroyed
 Runaway inflation; factories destroyed; transportation lines destroyed (Sherman’s “iron doughnuts”)
 Cotton fields untended; livestock gone; pre-1860 production levels not achieved again until 1870, primarily due to Southwest
 Economic capital of South (Slaves) free; labor force unorganized
 Condition & Role of African Americans in the South
 Basic needs of freedmen not met: food, clothing, medicine, housing, land
 Specific need for job training & education
 Reintegration of South into the Union
 Re-entrance of seceded states into the Union; political participation of Confederates & Slaves
 Treatment of seceded states—conquered territory or forgiven transgressors?
 National Reconciliation vs. Social Reorganization
Control of the process of Reconstruction
Nascent Reconstruction
 Freedmen’s Bureau —Provide for basic needs of African
Americans; successes in education; collusion with Southern whites to force freed slaves into sharecropping system ; Special Field
Order #15—40 Acres & a Mule
 Lincoln’s 10% Plan —States reintegrated once 10% of voters from1860 election swear allegiance & form a state government to be formally recognized
 Wade-Davis Bill —Based on the “State suicide theory”
Confederacy should be treated as a conquered territory; 50% of population had to swear allegiance followed by a Constitutional convention; protections for emancipation; & possibility of further
Congressional restrictions.
 Lincoln used the “pocket veto,” but assassination changed everything; argument can be made that John Wilkes Booth hurt the South more than avenged it.

Presidential Reconstruction
 Johnson, a Unionist Southerner—Racist but hated the planter aristocracy; Agreed with Lincoln that seceded states had never left the Union
 Recognized readmission under Lincoln’s 10% Plan while
Congress not in session; Confederate leaders required to seek pardons directly from Johnson
 Required Southern states to ratify the 13 th Amendment ending slavery, but left power in the hands of re-emerging planter elite.
Congressional/Radical Reconstruction—Revolution?
 Reaction to actions of Johnson & re-energized Southern elites; fear
 of Southern & Northern Democrats forming a political bloc, taking
Congress & Presidency
Passed Civil Rights Bill of 1866 not guarantee voting rights
& 14 th Amendment
 Gave African Americans Citizenship within States & Nation; Did
 Intended as much to punish & weaken Southern states as to help freed slaves
 Military Reconstruction (1867)
 Divided South into military districts, treated them like conquered territories
 Required states to ratify 14 th Amendment & guarantee African
American suffrage in state constitutions
 Stopped short of making federal government directly responsible for African American suffrage; removal of federal troops signaled beginning of the end of active Reconstruction
 Passed 15 th Amendment (1869) & Civil Rights Act of 1875
 Provided for suffrage for African American males & nondiscrimination respectively
 All promise, no enforcement; represented the division & racism in the North
 Compromise of 1877 —End of Reconstruction
 Contested Presidential election (1876)—Questioned electoral votes in South
 Republicans agree to abandon Reconstruction to secure a
Republican President
 Illustrates how even Radical Reconstruction was more about
Political Balance than African American rights

Southern Reconstruction—Counterrevolution
 Began immediately after the hostilities end—Whites not satisfied with taking advantage of leniency of Presidential Reconstruction;
Brought on punishment of Radical Reconstruction
 Creation of Ku Klux Klan (1865)—Terrorism & Lynchings to control freed slaves & Republicans; ineffectively challenged by the
Force Acts (1870)
 Black Codes (1866); two purposes:
 Guaranteed stable labor force—enforced labor contracts to benefit of white employers; punished vagrancy to force African
Americans into employment; Creation of Sharecropping system, placing African Americans in subservient economic position to white land owners.
 Restored Racial Hierarchy—Few rights recognized beyond freedom & marriage; no African Americans on juries for white defendants; separate facilities; intricate system of racial norms developed into “ Jim Crow ” Laws.
 Political Control of South
 Dominance of Democrats, election of former Confederate officers, including Alexander Stephens, Confederate VP, to
Congress
 Disenfranchisement of African Americans— Poll taxes ;
Property Requirements ; Literacy tests applied to African
Americans only (Would have eliminated many white voters)
 Grandfather Clause & Gerrymandering (Selective drawing of electoral districts to provide white, democratic advantage) disenfranchised those African Americans not affected by the above.

Rise of Redeemer governments firmly re-established in state law what federal law had changed.