Reconstruction
Objective: Interpret reconstruction’s
impact on south/north relations post
civil war
Review:
Main Causes of Civil War
• State’s Rights
• Slavery
• Cotton Gin by Eli
Whitney in 1793
• Preserving the Union
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin by
Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Slave vs. Free States
• Economics
Review:
Lincoln’s Aims and Actions
• PRESERVE THE UNION
– “Nothing more than Shay’s Rebellion or the Whiskey
Rebellion”
– Constitutional issue – Not a war over slavery
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Calls out state militias
Increases the size of the Navy
Naval Blockade of South
Increased military spending without Congress’ okay
The Soldiers: Human Devastation
Problems after the war:
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Unemployment
Starvation
Illiteracy
War torn communities
Homelessness
Hatred and resentment towards Blacks
State governments in the South
Punishment: southern whites
Economic breakdown in southern (agricultural) states
White Control in the South
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Sharecropping
Black Codes
Poll Tax
Literacy Tests
Grandfather Clause
Jim Crow
– Laws that separate blacks and
whites
Sharecropping/Tenant Farming
Sharecropping
• A white plantation owner provide a Black
family with:
– seeds
– Tools
– shack to live in
• Blacks work the land and grow the crops
• Sell them and split the earnings
• Blacks would go in debt with storeowners
– never leave the plantation.
Segregation
Black Codes
• Old slave codes aimed at keeping blacks at
conditions close to slavery
• Laws passed after the Civil War
– In Southern States
• The laws controlled
– Freedmen
– Enabled plantation owners to exploit African
Americans.
• (Example: curfews and contract work)
Military Districts: 1867
• Divided the southern states into 5 military
districts
• Each district was assigned a Union general
– maintain peace
– protect the rights of Blacks.
Freedman’s Bureau
• Government program
– helped to feed
– Clothe
– educate Blacks
– helped to find jobs for them.
Literacy Tests
• Southern state tests designed to keep Blacks from
voting
– the tests were really really hard!
• Had to prove you could read & write before you
voted.
– Had to interpret the Constitution
Poll Tax
• Southern state laws that required
registered voters to pay to vote
– kept the poor away from the polls.
Grandfather Clause
• If your father or grandfather was eligible to vote
in 1866/1867, then you could vote even if you
were illiterate or poor.
Jim Crow laws
• Racial caste system (segregation)
• Preachers
– White is choosen
– Black cursed to be servents
• Whites superior to all blacks
• No interracial “crossbreeding”
– Create a race that destroys America
• Use violence if necessary to keep blacks down
Jim Crow Examples
• A Black male could not offer his hand (to shake hands) with a
White male because it implied being socially equal. Obviously,
a Black male could not offer his hand or any other part of his
body to a White woman, because he risked being accused of
rape.
• Blacks and Whites were not supposed to eat together. If they
did eat together, Whites were to be served first, and some
sort of partition was to be placed between them.
• Under no circumstance was a Black male to offer to light the
cigarette of a White female -- that gesture implied intimacy.
• Blacks were not allowed to show public affection toward one
another in public, especially kissing, because it offended
Whites.
Jim Crow Examples
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Never assert or even intimate that a White person is lying.
Never impute dishonorable intentions to a White person.
Never suggest that a White person is from an inferior class.
Never lay claim to, or overly demonstrate, superior knowledge
or intelligence.
• Never curse a White person.
• Never laugh derisively at a White person.
• Never comment upon the appearance of a White female.
Plessy v. Ferguson
• Separate railroad cars
for blacks and whites
was constitutional
– “Separate but equal”
• Segregation was legal as
long as the separate
facilities were equal
• Solidified Jim Crow as
law
Booker T. & Du Bois
Booker T. Washington’s Views
• Concentrate on Vocational Education
– Learn a trade or skill
– Tuskegee Institute Created
• Accept “second class citizenship”
– DO NOT fight against segregation
– DO NOT fight for suffrage
• Concentrate on economics
– Work hard
– Your rights will come later
W.E.B. DuBois’ Views
• You deserve your rights now
– Political, social and economic equality
• You need to send people to college
• Fight for you rights!
– Use the law to guarantee your rights
• NAACP Established
• Court Cases
13th Amendment
• Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,
except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall
have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United
States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
• Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this
article by appropriate legislation.
14th Amendment
• Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United
States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens
of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of
life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor
deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws.
15th Amendment
• Section 1. The right of citizens of the United
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged
by the United States or by any State on
account of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude.
• Section 2. The Congress shall have power to
enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Ku Klux Klan
• A southern secret society organization that
terrorized African Americans and anyone else
that was sympathetic towards the Blacks.