African Americans
in the South Post-Civil War
Gains for Former Slaves
• 13th Amendment
• 14th Amendment
• 15th Amendment
•
•
•
•
•
Able to travel/leave
Reunify with families
Educate themselves
Hold Political office
40 acres and a mule
Republicans in the South
• Scalawags – white southerners
who joined Republican party
– Wanted industrialization
– Supported Union in war
– Disliked power of wealthy planters
• Carpetbagger – Northerner who
moved to the South
– Moral duty to help former slaves
– Entrepreneurs or Land Seekers
– Exploit South’s turmoil
• African Americans
• Did not have the same goals
Rights Slowly Taken Back
• Lack of Political Majority
• Former Confederate officials
elected when eligible
• Resentment of Freedmen's
Bureau/ occupying troops
• Johnson withdraws 40 acres and a
mule
• Southern Homestead Act of 1866
set 44 million acres of poor land
aside for freed blacks
• Passage of black codes and state
voting laws limit rights of blacks
• Ku Klux Klan and other vigilante
groups increased violence
Weakening of Radical
Republicans
• Political scandals
– Grant’s Administration accepted Bribes
• Economic problems
– Panic of 1873
• Restoration of political rights to former
Confederates
• Supreme Court Undid social/political changes
– Slaughterhouse Case 1873
– US vs. Cruikshank 1876
– US vs. Reese 1876