Reconstruction Lecture 9/28 Part 2
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.
1. Landowner provides
land, seed and tools to
sharecropper in
exchange for a large
share of the harvested
crop.
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.
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.
Slave marriages had no legal standing; now tens
of thousands of freed people registered their
unions before the army, Freedmen's Bureau, and
local governments.
Immediately after the Civil War, AfricanAmericans established their own churches
and schools, seeking economic autonomy,
and demanding equal civil and political
rights.
Most Southern blacks belonged to
the African Methodist Episcopal
and Baptist churches.
Black churches throughout the South
played a central role in the 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.
BLACK CODES
• The Black Codes were a series of laws
passed by Southern states defined
freedman's rights and imposed serious
restrictions upon former slaves.
• For example, according to Florida's Black
Code, blacks who violated labor contracts
could be whipped and sold for up to one
year's labor.
• The Black Codes created an uproar among
many Northerners, who considered them to
be another form of slavery.
• The 1868 presidential campaign revolved
around the issues of Reconstruction.
• The Democrats ran on a platform opposing
Reconstruction.
"This Is A White Man's Government"
became their slogan, openly appealing to
racial prejudice.
•Southern cartoons
illustrated the extent
to which Democrats
used racial imagery to
castigate and discredit
Republican
governments and
Reconstruction
efforts…
• The essential reason for the growing
opposition to Reconstruction was the fact that
most Southern whites could not accept the idea
of African Americans voting and holding office,
or the egalitarian policies adopted by the new
governments.
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.
In places like Georgia
and Louisiana,
The Klan established a reign of
terror so complete that
African -Americans were unable
to go to the polls to vote and were
subjected to hideous attacks.
In South Carolina, a campaign of
terror and violence wrestled control
of the state from the Republican
Party.
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.
Federal
marshals,
assisted by
U. S. troops,
brought to trial
scores of
Klansmen,
crushing the
organization…
• …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 war-torn
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
• White southern
bitterness towards the
North and the
government
• Southern economy was
still slow and
agriculturally based
• Did not address the
regulation of railroads,
safer working
conditions, or woman
suffrage