CH17 - Northwest Missouri State University

© 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved.

Chapter 17

Reconstruction, 1863-1877

Wartime Reconstruction

• Problem of Black equality, even most northern states denied it

• Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction

(1863)

– 10% of 1860 voters swear loyalty oath to U.S. and agree to end slavery, state could begin reconstruction process

– Some Republicans opposed because not enough protection for freed slaves

© 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved.

Radical Republicans and

Reconstruction

• Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner: Radical

Reconstruction leaders

– Give freed slaves land of Confederates

– Give freed slaves right to vote

• Louisiana’s reconstructed government rejected by even non-Radical Republicans

• Wade-Davis Reconstruction Bill (1864)

– Lincoln’s veto

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved.

Andrew Johnson and

Reconstruction

• Tennessee Democrat who was the only southern senator to stay in office after secession

• Radical Republicans wanted punitive

Reconstruction and Black enfranchisement

Johnson’s Policy

• Presidential proclamations

– Amnesty Proclamation

– Formation of new state governments in South

• Radical opposed, many supported Johnson

• Moderate Republicans


Southern Defiance

• Thirteenth Amendment – many Southern states balked at ratifying

• Neo-confederate violence against Blacks

• Presidential pardons made to ex-Confederates by

Johnson

• Many ex-Confederate leaders elected to Congress

– Alexander Hamilton Stephens

• Praise and support of Johnson from leading

Northern Democrats


The Black Codes

• State governments that reduced newly freed slaves to a condition close to slavery

– Blacks were excluded from juries, ballot boxes, interracial marriages, were punished more severely, could not lease land

– Unemployed blacks declared vagrants and hired out to planters


Land and Labor in the Postwar

South

• Post-war South was in economic shambles

• Post-war Slaves:

– Returned to farming for wages or crop shares

– Moved into towns

– Searched out relatives


The Freedmen’s Bureau

• Union army occupies South

• Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and

Abandoned Lands

• Sharecropping


Land for the Landless

• Most slaves could not purchase land

• “40 acres and a mule”

• President Johnson restores almost all land to prewar owners by 1866


Education

• Abolitionists helped freed people obtain education

• 2,000 Northern teachers (3/4 were women)

– Trained black teachers: missionary societies

– Black colleges founded


The Advent of Congressional

Reconstruction

• Congress refused to admit former

Confederate states

• Some Republicans wanted to enfranchise

Blacks, but were constrained by fears of racist northern electorate


Schism Between President and

Congress

• Freedmen’s Bureau extension

• Civil Rights Act (1866)

• Congress passed both over presidential veto


The Fourteenth Amendment

• Passed in Congress, 1866

– Most important provisions for defining and enforcing civil rights and liberties


The 1866 Elections

• Republican campaign theme: 14 th

Amendment

• Johnson and the National Union Party

• Deadly race riots in Memphis and New

Orleans

• Republicans win three-to-one majority in

Congress


The Reconstruction Acts of 1867

• Compromise between Radical and Moderate

Republicans

• Created five military districts

• Permitted Black suffrage

• States must ratify 14 th Amendment to be readmitted

• Many southerners boycott elections

• Scalawags and Carpetbaggers

• Johnson tries to slow Congressional

Reconstruction


The Impeachment of Andrew

Johnson

• Threats of impeachment

• Edwin M. Stanton

• Tenure of Office Act

• House votes to impeach Johnson

• Long and complicated impeachment trial in Senate

• Moderates fear successful impeachment will endanger balance of powers

• Senate fails to impeach by 1 vote


The Completion of Formal

Reconstruction

• New state constitutions in the South

– Universal male suffrage

– Statewide public schools, but they could be segregated

– More state responsibility for social welfare

• Violence and Ku Klux Klan

• 8 southern states ratify 14 th Amendment


The Fifteenth Amendment

• Prohibited states from denying the right to vote on grounds of race, color, or previous condition of servitude

• Woman’s suffragists embittered

– Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony


The Election of 1868

• Election was referendum on Congressional

Reconstruction

• Ulysses S. Grant

– Republican nominee

– Opposed Johnson’s Reconstruction policies

• Horatio Seymour

– Frank Blair

– Nathan Bedford Forrest and the KKK

– Grant wins electoral college, but got minority of white vote nationally


The Grant Administration

• Scandals

– 3 Cabinet members resigned

• Grant’s administration not alone

– “Boss” William Marcy Tweed and Tammany Hall

– Credit Mobilier

– An “Era of Good Stealings”

• Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

–

The Gilded Age (1873)


Civil Service Reform

• “spoils system”

• Politicized bureaucracy with unqualified people

• Reformers wanted competitive exams for civil service positions

• George William Curtis and the Civil Service

Commission


Foreign Policy Issues

• Santo Domingo affair

• Treaty of Washington (1871)

– Hamilton Fish

– "Alabama Claims"

• Canada

– Fenians


Reconstruction in the South

• Northerners tire of sectional strife and

Reconstruction

• Democratic violence protesting

Reconstruction

• Instability of the Republican coalition


Blacks in Office

• Republican Party

– Southern white perceive it as symbol of conquest and humiliation

– 80% of Republican voters in South were Black

• 1868-1876:

– 14 Black Representatives

– 2 Black Senators

• "Negro rule“ myth

– Blacks held 15-20% of elected offices in

Reconstruction


“Carpetbaggers”

• Adventurers who came South with nothing but a “carpetbag” in which to stow loot plundered from helpless people

• Those who settled in post-war South hoped to rebuild its society in the image of the free-labor North


“Scalawags”

• Native-born whites who joined the southern

Republican Party

– Came from upcountry Unionist areas of western North Carolina and Virginia, eastern

Tennessee

– Often former Whigs

• Republican Party in the South a fragile and vulnerable coalition


The Ku Klux Klan

• Klan purpose

– Social control of freed slaves

– Destroy Republican Party in the South

• “Colfax Massacre” (1873)

• Ku Klux Klan Act (1871)



• Liberal Republicans and Horace Greeley

– Democrats also endorse Greeley

• Thomas Nast cartoons

• Grant reelected


The Panic of 1873

• Wall Street panic

– Five-year depression

– Jay Cooke’s banking firm and the Northern

Pacific Railroad


The Retreat from Reconstruction

• After the panic, Democrats made large gains in

1874 Congressional elections

– 1 st House majority in 18 years

• Public opinion turned against Republicans in the

South

• 1875: only 4 states remained under Republican control

– South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana

– White paramilitary groups


The Mississippi Election of 1875

• Mississippi Plan (1875)

– All whites should become Democrats

– Intimidate Black voters

– Adelbert Ames

– Grant trades Ohio for Mississippi


The Supreme Court and

Reconstruction

•

U.S. v. Cruikshank (1870)

•

U.S. v. Reese (1871)

•

Civil Rights Cases (1883)



• Corruption and government reform were key campaign issues

• Samuel J. Tilden

• Rutherford B. Hayes

• “bulldozing”

• “Hamburg Massacre”


Disputed Results

• Discrepancies in results

– Hayes had votes, but Democrats refused the results

– Democratic House, Republican Senate

– Constitutional crisis

• Electoral commission


The Compromise of 1877

• Electoral Commission partisan vote awarded victory to Hayes

• Compromise

– Federal aid and patronage to Democrats in South

– Withdrawal of federal troops


The End of Reconstruction

• Postmaster David M. Key (D-TN)

• Internal Improvements for South 1878

• Removal of federal troops in Louisiana and

South Carolina

• North tired of crisis and Reconstruction


Conclusion

• Federal government power increases

• Amendments Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen

• North wearied of Reconstruction

• Withdrawal of federal troops from the South in 1877


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Chapter 17

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