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Presidential Reconstruction
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Congressional Reconstruction
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The Conflicted South
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Collapse of Reconstruction
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Lincoln’s second inaugural address deep
compassion for the enemy guided his
thinking about peace
Lincoln’s plan for reconstruction (1863) was
designed to shorten the war and end slavery
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To determine the social, political,
economic status of 4 million ex-slaves
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demanded that half of
the voters in a rebel state
take an oath of
allegiance to the US
before reconstruction
could begin;
prohibited exConfederates from
participating in drafting
new state constitutions,
and guaranteed the
equality of freedmen
before the law
Lincoln’s
Proclamation of
Amnesty and
Reconstruction
included full pardons
for rebels willing to
renounce secession
and accept the
abolition of slavery; it
angered abolitionists
 Lincoln
endorsed suffrage for
Southern Blacks for the first time
four days before his assassination
 Wartime reconstruction failed to
produce agreement about
whether the president or
Congress had the authority to
devise and direct policy
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2.1 mil
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880,000
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2 out of 3
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360,000
260,000
Number of Northerners
mobilized to fight for the Union
army
Number of Southerners
mobilized for the Confederacy
Number of Civil War deaths
that occurred from disease
rather than battle
Federal soldiers killed
Confederate soldiers killed
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Biggest problem facing the South was
transition from slave labor to free labor
What to do with federally occupied land?
Jan 1865, Gen Sherman set aside part of the
coastal land south of Charleston for black
settlement
He wished to be rid of the thousands
straggling after his army
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400,000 acres of
land — a strip of
coastline stretching
from Charleston,
South Carolina, to
the St. John’s River in
Florida, including
Georgia’s Sea Islands
and the mainland
thirty miles in from
the coast
Lincoln’s successor
was a southern
sympathizer and
overturned the
Sherman’s Order. He
returned the land to
the planters who had
originally owned it
— to the very people
who had declared war
on the United States of
America.
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Johnson’s Program of Reconciliation
◦ He was the only senator from a Confederate state to
remain loyal to the Union
◦ Held the planter class responsible for secession
◦ Republicans did not like him as he had been a slave
owner and a defender of slavery, only a
begrudgingly acceptance of emancipation
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the states’ citizens to renounce the right of
secession
disown Confederate war debts
ratify the Thirteenth Amendment
Johnson instructed military and government
officials to return to pardoned exConfederates all confiscated and abandoned
land, even if it was in the hands of freedmen.
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Thirteenth Amendment
Freedmen’s Bureau Acts
Civil Rights Act of 1866
Fourteenth Amendment
Military Reconstruction Acts
Fifteenth Amendment
Civil Rights Act of 1875
"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."
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The amendment to abolish slavery became
part of the U.S. Constitution at the end of
1865
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The U.S. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and
Abandoned Lands, popularly known as the
Freedmen’s Bureau, was established in 1865
by Congress
Under pressure from Southern whites,
Congress closed the Bureau in 1872
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It distributed food and clothing to destitute
Southerners and eased the transition of blacks
from slaves to free persons
Congress authorized the agency to divide
abandoned and confiscated land into 40-acre
parcels, to rent them to freedmen, and
eventually sell them
By June 1865 the bureau had situated nearly
10,000 black families on a half million acres
abandoned by fleeing planters
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Freedmen wanted economic independence,
restoration of family life, literacy, freedom of
worship
Whites believed that without the discipline of
slavery, blacks would be lazy, wild and
irresponsible
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Southerners miscalculated and assumed
Republicans would accept everything
Andrew Johnson accepted
The black codes became a symbol of the
South’s intention to restore all of slavery
but its name;
Moderate Republicans did not champion
black equality, but they did wish slavery and
treason to be dead. They remained
distrustful of ex-Confederates
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Southern obstinacy forged unity among
Republicans
Republicans drafted two bills to
strengthen protection for the newly
emancipated
Johnson vetoed the first bill, an
extension of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and
Congress failed to override the veto by a
narrow margin.
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Johnson’s veto galvanized support for the
Civil Rights Act 1866, which nullified Black
Codes.
Johnson vetoed the bill again; Congress
overrode Johnson’s veto
Congress also submitted another bill to
extend the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau
and successfully overrode the president’s
veto.
 All native born and naturalized persons deemed
citizens; equal protection of the laws
 dealt with voting rights, giving Congress the
authority to reduce the congressional
representation of any state that withheld
suffrage from some of its adult male
population.
 Republicans stood to benefit by gaining black
votes or by lessening representation where
black suffrage was rejected
 The suffrage provisions ignored women
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introduced the word “male” into the
Constitution; it provided for punishment for
any state denying suffrage on the basis of
race but not sex
Johnson advised southern states to reject
the Fourteenth Amendment
He made it the main issue of the
congressional election of 1866—the
opponents of the Fourteenth Amendment
gathered into a new conservative party, the
National Union Party
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June 1866 Congress passed the
Fourteenth Amendment; two years later
it gained the necessary ratification of
three-fourths of the states
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March 1867 Congress overturned the
Johnson-approved southern state
governments and initiated military rule of the
South
The Military Reconstruction Act divided the ten
unreconstructed Confederate states into five
military districts and place a Union general in
charge of each district to oversee political
reform, which including drawing up new state
constitutions and guaranteeing black suffrage.
 Post-war reconstruction failed
to produce agreement about
whether the president or
Congress had the authority to
devise and direct policy
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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.
Left the door open to exploitation with
literacy or other ‘tests’ to vote
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Terrorism in the South by the Redeemers and
the KKK, and success of white supremacy
The North grew tired of the financial and
political demands of Reconstruction
The Supreme Court narrowed Congress’s
powers in preference of state governments
and undermined federal protection of blacks
Disintegration of Republican state
governments in the South