So the civil war is
over…
NOW
WHAT???
Reconstruction
After The Civil War
1865 - 1877
Reconstruction, one of the most turbulent
and controversial eras in American history,
began during the Civil War and ended in
1877.
Just as the fate of slavery was central
to the meaning of the
Civil War, the divisive politics of
Reconstruction altered the status the
former slaves …
in the
reunited nation.
The national debate
over Reconstruction centered on
three questions:
1. On what terms should the defeated
Confederacy be reunited with the Union?
2. Who should establish these terms,
Congress or the President?
3. What should be the place of the former
slaves in the political life
of the South?
Lincoln’s Got a Plan!
• A state could be readmitted
when the number of men who
had taken a loyalty oath to the
Union equaled one tenth of
the number of voters in the
1860 presidential election
(“ten percent plan”)
• Most exConfederates
would be granted
amnesty if they
took the loyalty
oath
• High-ranking exConfederate
officials would
have to ask the
President for a
pardon to be
granted amnesty
• The new state
constitutions
had to ban
slavery
• States had to
provide free
public
education to
blacks
…But, sadly, it
never fully went
into effect
• On April 14 1865,
Abraham Lincoln,
while watching a
performance with
his wife, was shot in
the back of the head
by John Wilkes
Booth
• After Lincoln’s
death, VicePresident Andrew
Johnson, who had
been the only
Southern senator
not to leave
Congress after
secession,
became president
Johnson’s Plan/ Presidential
Reconstruction
• Granted amnesty to former
Confederates who would
take an oath of loyalty to
the Constitution and the
federal laws
• Property was restored,
except for slaves, and any
land or goods all ready in
the process of being
confiscated
• The ordinances of
secession had to
be revoked
• Confederate war
debts could not be
collected
• The states had to
ratify the
Thirteenth
Amendment
• During the first eight months of his term,
Johnson took advantage of Congress being
in recess and rushed through his own
policies for Reconstruction,
which included
allowing the
South to set up
"black codes,"
which
essentially
maintained
slavery under
another
name…
Black Codes
1) Allowed
former slaves
to:
• Marry fellow
blacks
• Own personal
property
• Sue and be
sued
2) Didn’t allow them to:
• Serve on juries
• Vote
• Carry weapons without a
license
• Hold public office own land
• Travel without a permit
• Be out after curfew
• Assemble in groups without a
white person in attendance3)
required a former slave to buy
a license to work
3) Authorized the
arrest and fining
of unemployed
blacks
4) Allowed an
employer to pay
the fine of an
unemployed
black in exchange
for the person’s
labor
Many Northerners became
convinced that Johnson's policy,
and the actions of the governments
he established, threatened to reduce
African Americans to a condition
similar to slavery, while allowing
former "rebels" to regain political
power in the South.
As a result, Congress
overturned Johnson's
program.
Between 1866 and 1869,
Congress enacted new laws and the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments to the Constitution,
guaranteeing blacks' civil rights and
giving black men the right to vote.
In March 1867 - Congress passed the
Reconstruction Act of 1867.
•Under
provisions of the
Reconstruction
Act, Southern
states could no
longer restrict
the right to vote
because of race.
•It also stated that the states of
the former Confederacy would
only be readmitted to Congress
after they ratified the 14th
Amendment.
•This led directly to the creation of
new governments in the South
elected by blacks as well as
whites.
Johnson's vetoes of Reconstruction
legislation and opposition to the
Fourteenth Amendment alienated
most Republicans.
In 1868, he came
within one vote
of being removed
from office
by impeachment.
Now what about those
amendments?
13th Amendment
• On January 1865, Congress passed
the Thirteenth Amendment, and by
December, the necessary twentyseven states ratified it.
• “Neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude, except as a punishment for
a crime where of the party shall have
been duly convicted, shall exist in the
United States.”
th
14
Amendment
• All persons born in
the United State or
naturalized were
citizens of the U.S.
and of the state in
which they lived
(blacks included)
• States were
forbidden to deny
citizens their rights
without due process
of law
• All citizens were to
enjoy equal protection
under the law
• A state that denied
voting rights to any
adult male would have
its representation in
Congress reduced in
proportion to the
number of citizens who
had been denied the
vote
15th Amendment
• In March, 1870, the 15th
Amendment was
ratified
• “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.”
th
13
th
14
Free
Citizens
can
th
15
Vote
In the South, a
mobilized black
community joined
with white allies to
bring the
Republican party to
power, while
excluding those
accustomed to
ruling the region.
•The Reconstruction Act of 1867 also
stipulated that former Confederate
states hold conventions to draft new
constitutions that granted former
slaves the rights of citizenship.
- Almost 300 African Americans,
or 25 per cent of the total delegates,
attended these conventions
held in Southern states
in 1868-69…
…making them the first public
bodies in American history with
substantial black representation.
The 41st and 42nd Congress included black
members for the first time in American history.
A total of sixteen blacks served in Congress
during Reconstruction.
Economic Impact of
Reconstruction
Destruction
The war
destroyed…
• 2/3 of Southern
shipping
• 9,000 miles of
railroads
• 654,000 soldiers
• Southern farm property
value plunged 70%
• Black southerners
were homeless and
starving, plantation
owners were broke
and without labor and
poor white southerners
couldn’t compete with
the new freedman
The most difficult task: A new
system of labor to replace the world
of slavery.
The economic lives of planters,
former slaves, and non-slaveholding
whites, were transformed
after the Civil War.
Many former slaves believed that their years
of unrequited labor gave them a claim to
land; "forty acres and a mule" became their
rallying cry.
White reluctance to sell to blacks,
and the federal government's
decision not to redistribute land in
the South, meant that only a small
percentage of the freed people
became landowners.
Most rented land or worked for
wages on white-owned plantations.
Increasingly, both white and black
farmers fell within a cycle of debt and
year by year the promise of economic
independence faded.
5. Sharecropper
must promise the
landowner a larger
share of the next
year’s crop and
becomes trapped in
a cycle of debt.
4. Landowner sells the
crop and takes the
predetermined share.
The sharecropper’s
potion of the crop is
worth less than the
amount owed to the
landowner.
1. Landowner
provides land,
seed and tools to
sharecropper in
exchange for a
large share of the
harvested crop.
Cycle of
Cycle of
Debt
DEBT
3. Sharecropper
plants and
harvests the crop
/ lives in owners
rent house…
owes him for
rent.
2. Sharecropper
purchases
supplies from
landowners store
on credit, often at
high interest rates.
New systems of labor
slowly emerged to
take the place of
slavery.
Sharecropping
dominated the cotton
and tobacco South,
while wage labor was
the rule on sugar
plantations.
As under slavery, most rural blacks
worked on land owned by whites.
But they now exercised control
over their personal lives,
could come and go as they pleased,
and determined which members of
the family worked in the fields.
African-Americans
found a wider
variety of
employment
opportunities in
cities.
Many black women
worked as domestic
servants…
…the vast majority of black men
worked as manual laborers
performing the tasks that white
workers were unwilling to do.
Social Impact of Reconstruction
After the war,
African
Americans
searched with
varying degrees
of success for
family members
separated by
slave sales or by
the disruptions of
war.
Reuniting families separated under
slavery and solidifying existing family
relations,
were essential.
The family stood
as the main pillar
of the postwar
black community.
The church functioned as a social and
political gathering place
as well as a house of worship.
• In 1865, Congress
established the
Freedmen's Bureau to
provide assistance to
former slaves.
• During Reconstruction,
the Freedman's Bureau,
missionary societies,
and blacks themselves
established over 3,000
schools laying the
foundation for public
education.
• Crowded into illfurnished classrooms,
often without
blackboards and
chalk, AfricanAmerican students
and teachers
nevertheless made do
with whatever
materials were
available.
Resembling texts used in Northern
schools, books produced for freed
people included practical advice
on everyday matters and moral
instructions.
Opposition to
Reconstruction
Most white
Southerners reacted
to defeat and
emancipation with
dismay.
What to do??
• Some thought of leaving the South
altogether,
or retreated into nostalgia for the Old
South and the lost cause
of the Confederacy.
• Others, unwilling to accept a new
relationship to former slaves, resorted to
violent opposition to the new world being
created around them.
•Southern
cartoons
illustrated the
extent to which
Democrats used
racial imagery to
castigate and
discredit
Republican
governments and
Reconstruction
efforts…
Members of the
Ku Klux Klan
disguised
themselves in
hooded robes
while committing
criminal acts
against Southern
blacks
and their allies.
The KKK's
hooded costumes
not only protected
the klansmen's
identity,
but the robes and
cross were
intended to link
the Klan
to Christian
brotherhood.
Thomas Nast's
cartoon, drawn in
response to
South Carolina's
violence, depicts
blacks as victims
but also warns of
the possibility of
their taking up
arms in selfdefense.
• …but the North's commitment to
Reconstruction soon waned.
• The election of 1876 hinged on disputed
returns from states where Republican
governments still survived.
• After negotiations between both parties,
the Republican candidate, Rutherford B.
Hayes, became president, while
Democrats assumed control of the
disputed Southern states.
• In time, the North abandoned its commitment
to protect the rights of the former slaves.
• Reconstruction came to an end; white
supremacy was restored.
• Until job opportunities opened in the North in
the next century, spurring a mass migration out
of the South, most blacks remained locked in a
system of
political powerlessness and economic
inequality.
Not until the mid-twentieth century
would the nation again
attempt to come to terms
with the political and social agenda of
Reconstruction.
The civil rights movement of the 1950s
and 1960s is often called the Second
Reconstruction.
The Successes
• Republicans carried out their main goals: To
rebuild the Union and help repair the wartorn South
• Stimulated economic growth in the South &
created new wealth in the north
• The 13th, 14th, and
15th Amendments
were passed
• Freedman’s
Bureau helped
newly freed blacks
with schooling,
housing, and jobs
• Southern states
adapted public
school systems
Failures
• Blacks were still in poverty
and lacked property,
economic opportunity, &
political power
• Anti-black organizations
(Ku Klux Klan) still
prevented blacks from
voting
• Racism still continued