Key Terms:
Black Codes
Carpetbaggers
Compromise of 1877
Congressional Reconstruction
Field Order No. 15
Fifteenth Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment
Freedman’s Bureau
Klu Klux Klan
The Lost Cause
Redeemers
Scaliwag
Slaughterhouse Cases
Union Leagues
United States vs. Cruikshank
The Base Problems of Reconstruction:
Treason?: Were ex-Confederates to be treated as traitors? If so, to what degree?
Every soldier? Just the high ranking officers and ministers? The cabinet? If no treason trials, should there be an effort to disenfranchise those who supported the
Confederacy?
Status of the States: What exactly was the legal status of the states? Did they still legally exist? Did they now become territories that had to reapply?
Rights of ex-slaves: What rights did ex-slaves have? How could those rights be protected? Were they legally equal to whites now? What did that mean?
Rights of Unionists: Some had opposed secession. How could those groups be rewarded for loyalty?
Veteran’s Rights:
How should those who fought for the North be rewarded?
Should ex-Confederate soldiers recieve any benefits?
Law and Order: The South had collapsed into chaos in the Confederate zones by the end of the war. How could that best be restored?
Repairs: Parts of the South were now wastelands. How could they be fixed?
Economic Wasteland: The South was an economic disaster area. How could the economy be gotten back in order?
From Slavery to Freedom:
The Freedman’s Bureau: The Freedman’s Bureau, created in March 1865, oversaw every aspect of the transition, working to ease the lot of the ex-slaves.
Education:
The Bureau’s greatest success was in the area of education.

Schools: Three thousand schools serving 150,000 men, women, and children.
Teachers: Mostly white women from the Northeastern states.
Later, there were enough educated blacks for them to take over.
Literacy: Black literacy rose from 10 to 30% by the mid-1870s.
Shifting Economic Role: Ex-Slaves didn’t want to work the plantations any more. During the war, many followed the armies. After the war, most sought out their own land. This created an urban and rural labor shortage for white employers in 1865 and 1866
Land for the Freemen:
Field Order No. 15: In January 1865, this set aside land along the
South Atlantic Coast for freed blacks to establish farms.
Southern Homestead Act: 1866—This gave blacks preferential access to homestead grants from the public lands in the South.
Upper South: By 1890, one in 3 black farmers in the Upper South owned his own land; one in five did in the South overall.
Mixed Success: Black farms struggled to survive, as the South was in the economic doldrums and they lacked capital to exploit modern methods.
Tenant Farming and Farm Labor: Most blacks eventually either became tenant farmers or worked as contract labor on the farms.
Migration:
Internal: Many blacks simply moved into the more marginal farming zones inside the South in search of land or work to their tastes, especially early on.
Urban: Many others moved to the cities to find work, having to work as unskilled labor. By 1870, the black populations of
Southern cities surged. They received poor wages but loved their freedom.
Religion:
Black Churches: Increasingly, distinctly black churches arose in the post-war period.
Education and Organization: Black Churches became the focus of education and self-organization in the black community, spawning many other forms of societies.
Defense of Black Rights: Black churches were a focus of resistance to oppression and defense of the rights of the black community.
The Lincoln Plan:
State Status: States were treated as having ceased to function; they had become federal territories.
Ten Percent Plan: To be readmitted with full rights, at least ten percent of voters had to swear allegiance to the Constitution
Ban Slavery: And they had to ban slavery.

Minimal Reconstruction: Lincoln essentially intended to reintegrate the old states with relatively minimal changes to the old status quo. We can only speculate on how he might have responded to Southern resistance.
The Johnson Plan (1865-1867):
Rebellion, Not Suicide: Johnson argued that the states were not dead, but only sleeping. They could be readmitted as soon as they elected new congressmen, restored order, and ratified the Thirteenth Amendment
Free Pardon: Johnson would pardon any Confederate who swore allegiance to the United States, and would restore any confiscated property. Southerners who had held prominent positions or had more than 20,000 dollars of taxable property had to petition the president directly.
No Concern for Black Civil Rights: Johnson didn’t care what happened to the ex-slaves, now that slavery was dead.
Promotion of Poor Whites: Johnson hoped to promote the old free farmers and poor whites to keep down the old planter class.
Southern Resistance:
Stubborn: The South was stubborn, and its leadership too stupid to take a good deal when they saw it. Many balked at passing the Thirteenth amendment, and elections sent ex-Confederates to office.
Black Codes: Furthermore, the new legislatures now revised slave codes into
Black Codes, intended to crush the freed blacks and keep them in near-slavery.
Congress Responds:
December 1865: Half of Congress is made up of Radical Republicans, who respond to this with the desire to hammer down Southern resistance.
Congress’ Desires:
To gain readmission, a state had to:
Extend Suffrage to Blacks
Protect Civil Rights of Ex-Slaves
The Whites had to acknowledge these civil rights
Moderates take Command: Radicals were unable to agree on a plan; moderates took the lead.
Civil Rights Act of 1866: Specified the civil rights of all citizens. First law passed over a Presidential Veto.
Fourteenth Amendment: Guranteed every citizen equality before the law. It also effectively barred ex-confederates from federal office and blocked any attempt to make the federal government pay confederate debts. It also reduced the representation of any state that kept people from voting.
The 1866 Election:
Johnson’s Tour: President Johnson went on an extensive speaking tour against the Fourteenth Amendment. This effectively declared war on Congress.

Johnson Fails: He was a lousy public speaker; Southern intransigence made the
North angry, and the Republicans now held over a 2/3rds majority in Congress.
The Democrats were crushed.
Congressional Reconstruction Begins: The Radical Republicans now took command and began dictating events to their own liking.
Congressional Reconstruction, 1867-1870
Military Reconstruction Act: Passed in 1867 over Johnson’s Veto, this divided the South into five military districts, each commanded by a general, who had authority to hold elections and determine who could vote. They barred ex-
Confederates and those who held office before the Civil War. The remaining whites and blacks now elected constitutional conventions that had to guarantee universal manhood suffrage and pass the fourteenth amendment. They could then be readmitted.
Tenure of Office Act: Intended to crush Johnson by keeping officeholders he didn’t like in office—it took Senate consent for him to fire the major officeholders.
Impeachment of Johnson: While it failed by one vote, it marked the utter end of
Johnson as any sort of effective president. Ultimately, though, it strengthened the moderates.
1868: Moderate Ulysses S. Grant became president, Republicans continued to hold a majority. Republicans “waved the bloody shirt” to rouse patriotic votes.
Black support for Grant put him in office.
Fifteenth Amendment: 1869. This guaranteed the vote to all American males, but angered suffragettes by explicitly limiting the vote to men.
The Southern Republican Alliance
Poor Whites and Blacks: The Republicans tried to build an alliance of small white farmers and blacks to take over the South. Southern white Republicans would later be tarred with the name
‘Scaliwag’.
Southern Whites: A mixture of yeoman farmers who wanted debt relief / good roads / public schools, and urban merchants, who wanted economic opportunity and support.
Northern Whites: ‘Carpetbaggers’: They were small in number, never more than 2% of the population, but economic opportunity drew them
South. They tended to be strong supporters of black civil rights and economic reforms. This could put them at conflict with the free farmers.
Southern Blacks: The largest constituency. In Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, they made up a majority of eligible voters. They formed clubs based on the Northern Republican clubs—The Union
Leagues .
Mobilization: They mobilized blacks on a large scale. In 1867,
90% of eligible black voters voted. Hundreds of blacks came to hold state office.

Measures: Black voters supported debt relief and public education.
Expansion of State Government: Southern Republicans greatly expanded the role of State Government, probably eased by the grown state power during the war.
Debt and Stay Laws
Building Projects
Public Education
Child Support
Legal Aid
Medical Assistance
Higher Taxes and Corruption: Unfortunately, these projects required higher taxes and risked more public corruption by officials, which weakened the
Southern Republicans.
Counter-Reconstruction:
Racism: The key to the collapse of Reconstruction was the persistence of racism in the South. Ultimately, this destroyed Southern Republicanism and ensured that any measures to protect blacks would have to be shoved down the South’s throat.
When the Northern will to keep shoving stopped, Reconstruction ended. This was facilitated by Northern racism, which eventually led the bulk of the North to accept Southern claims of black incompetence to wield power.
Overcoming Class: The most important aspect was that racism overcame class boundaries, convincing poor whites to chain themselves to the leadership of the old planter elite once more.
Violence: One of the keys to the resurgence of the old elites was white violence against blacks. Groups like the Klu Klux Klan used force to intimidate blacks into not voting and giving in to white authority. Founded in 1866, the Klan was unleashing violence by the 1867 elections.
Counter-Violence : Republican governors fought back with special police forces and congress sought to suppress the violence with the Enforcement
Act of 1870 and the Klu Klux Klan Act of 1871. Both acts empowered federal authorities to move against violent groups.
Failure of Northern Will : The biggest factor was the failure of Northern Will.
Northerners increasingly turned to other problems.
Corruption: Corruption was a major problem of 1870s politics, and many Americans came to distrust political processes because of it. Some blamed black voters for it.
Racism: Many in the North were as racist as the South and this was the heyday of science supporting racial theories.
Anti-Immigration: Many Northerners became preoccupied with bashing immigrants, who they viewed as inferior too.
New Political Issues:
Fiscal Responsibility

Tariffs
Hard Money
Liberal Republican Insurgency:
Republican Reform: Many Republicans feared government had grown too large and corrupt. They staged a revolt in 1872, which split the Republican Party.
Platform:
Civil Service Reform
Tariff Reductions
End of Federal Grants to Railroads
Amnesty for Southern Whites
Southern Self-Government
1872: Allied with the Democrats to run Horace Greely. But Grant still crushed them, taking all Southern states except Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas.
The Final Collapse of Reconstruction: ‘Redemption’, 1874-7
‘Redeemers’:
Southern Democrats now launched their big push, seeing themselves as saving the South from misrule and racial corruption.
Violence: They now openly used violence to back a Democratic resurgence in the South.
Civil Rights Act of 1875: Sought to prohibit discrimination in public accomodations. Not a very effective response to the violence. Ultimately overturned by the Supreme Court in 1883.
Grant’s Paralysis:
Grant took little effective action; his administration was racked by scandals and troubles.
The Election of 1876
Tilden vs. Hayes: Samuel Tilden, the Democrat, probably won the election for real. However, Southern Republican governments in three states (Florida, South
Carolina, Louisiana) tampered with election results to give the election to Hayes by one electoral vote, feeling justified by Democratic party violence.
Compromise of 1877: Allowed Hayes to take office in return for Republicans abandoning any effort at control of the South. This marked the end of reconstruction.
The Lost Cause and the Southern Memory of Reconstruction
The Lost Cause: Southerners came to glorify the Confederacy and to remember the antebellum south as a paradise of benevolent slaveowners and happy slaves and free white farmers. They also managed to force the view of reconstruction as a nightmare on the historical establishment.
Survival of Segregation: Wide acceptance of this enabled Southern discrimination against blacks to last until the 1950s and 60s, when it began to unravel.
Sharecropping: Most blacks ended up as tenant farmers, paying their rent with a share of their crops, perpetually in debt.

Slaughterhouse Cases (1873): Supreme Court basically went against the
Fourteenth amendment, arguing most civil rights remained under state jurisdiction
United States vs.
Cruikshank (1876): Supreme Court ruled the
Enforcement Act applied only to state actions.
Gutting of Protections: The protections given to Civil rights were basically gutted by the Supreme Court, leaving Southern blacks largely defenseless.