Chapters 22 and 23
And I don’t want no pardon for what I
was or am, I won’t be reconstructed
and I don’t give a damn…
Chapter 22
The Ordeal of Reconstruction
Introduction
 After the war, many questions remained;
 How would the South be rebuilt after all the war
damage?
 How would liberated blacks fare as free men and
women?
 How would the Southern states be reintegrated in the
Union?
 Who would direct the process of Reconstruction – the
Southern states themselves, the president, or
Congress?
The Problems of Peace
 Another question was, what should happen to all
the Confederate ringleaders who were captured
during the war?
 Most, including Jefferson Davis, served some jail
time, but were released in part because no VA
jury would convict them.
 Cities like Charleston, Richmond, and Atlanta,
once beautiful, were reduced to rubble.
The Problems of Peace
 Economic life was also dismal as banks and
businesses had been crippled by runaway inflation.
 The transportation system was in shambles. In
Columbia, SC 5 different railroad lines converged
before the war. Now, the nearest usable rail was 29
miles away.
 Agriculture was not much better as the slave-labor
system had collapsed and left the massive cotton
fields unattended.
Freedmen Define Freedom
 Many blacks faced slavery and freedom at
different times (one former slave estimated that
he had been freed 12 times).
 Many attempted to escape to freedom after being
emancipated, only to be lynched by angry slave
owners.
 Many planters argued, more legalistically, that
slavery was still legal until state legislatures or the
Supreme Court decided otherwise.
Freedmen Define Freedom
Many slaves resisted liberation out
of loyalty to their masters.
Others joined the Union army in
pillaging their former master’s
possessions (one slave laid 20 lashes
on the back of his former master).
The Freedmen’s Bureau
 Reality began to set in that freedmen were
overwhelmingly unskilled, unlettered, without property
or money, and with little knowledge of how to survive as
free people.
 On March 3, 1865 Congress created the Freedmen’s
Bureau, which was intended to be a kind of primitive
welfare agency.
 It provided clothing, food, medical care, and education
to both freedmen and white refugees.
The Freedmen’s Bureau
 The Bureau taught more than 20,000 blacks
how to read.
 Sometimes the Bureau, supposedly giving
40 acres of Confederate land to blacks, sold
the land out from under the freedmen.
 President Andrew Johnson, repeatedly tried
to kill the Bureau, and it expired in 1872.
Johnson: The Tailor President
 No man has ever come from more humble
beginnings to become president than Johnson.
 He was born into poverty in NC and never
attended school, but was apprenticed to a tailor at
age 10.
 Johnson did eventually learn how to read and his
wife taught him how to do simple math and write
a little bit.
Johnson: The Tailor President
 Johnson was seen as a man without a
country;
 A Southerner who didn’t understand the
North.
 A Democrat who was never accepted by
Republicans.
 A president who was never elected.
Presidential Reconstruction
 Lincoln never believed that the Southern states
had legally withdrawn from the Union.
 Accordingly, Lincoln in 1863 proclaimed his “10
percent” Reconstruction plan, which decreed that
a state could be reintegrated into the Union when
10% of its voters in the presidential election of
1860 had taken an oath of allegiance to the U.S.
and pledged to abide by emancipation.
Presidential Reconstruction
 In reaction, Radical Republicans pushed the Wade-
Davis Bill (named after Benjamin Wade of OH and
Henry Winter Davis of MD) through Congress in
1864.
 The bill required that 50% of a states’ voters take the
oath of allegiance and demanded stronger safeguards
for emancipation that Lincoln’s as the price of
readmission to the Union.
 Lincoln “pocket-vetoed” this bill by refusing to sign it
after Congress had adjourned.
Presidential Reconstruction
 Republicans were outraged and refused to send
delegates to VA when they reorganized its
government in accordance with Lincoln’s 10%
plan.
 Congress, unlike Lincoln, felt the southern states
had left the Union and forfeited their rights.
 The Lincoln assassination did nothing to appease
Congress, as Johnson stepped in and upheld
Lincoln’s 10% plan.
Presidential Reconstruction
 On May 29, 1865 Johnson issued his own
Reconstruction proclamation in which states who
complied with his conditions would be swiftly
readmitted to the Union.
 The terms were;
 Repeal the ordinances of secession
 Repudiate (drop) all Confederate debts
 Ratify the 13th Amendment
The Baleful Black Codes
 The Black Codes were laws designed to regulate
the affairs of the emancipated blacks, much as the
slave statutes had done in pre-Civil War days.
 These codes varied from state to state, but they
all wanted a stable and subservient labor force.
 King Cotton would not rise again without white
control over the black field hands and plow
drivers from the days of slavery.
The Baleful Black Codes
 Blacks worked under labor contracts that
committed them to work for the same employer
for one year, at very low wages.
 Anyone who violated their contracts would be
made to forfeit back wages and could be forcibly
dragged back to work by a “Negro-catcher”.
 The Codes also sought to restore as nearly as
possible the pre-emancipation system of race
relations.
The Baleful Black Codes
 Some freedmen were allowed to marry and
were technically “free”, but they were not
allowed to serve on a jury, rent or lease land
in some areas, or vote.
 With nothing to offer except their labor,
many blacks and landless whites slipped into
a status of sharecropper.
Congressional Reconstruction
 The Republicans were rudely awakened when
they returned to the Capitol in 1865.
 Used to having their way in Congress during the
war with the South not represented, the
Republicans were not looking to give up their
power that allowed them to pass legislation that
favored the North, such as the Morrill Tariff, the
Pacific Railroad Act, and the Homestead Act.
Johnson Clashes with Congress
 After Johnson vetoed the extension of the
Freedmen’s Bureau, Congress passed the Civil
Rights Bill, which conferred on blacks the
privilege of American citizenship and struck at
the Black Codes.
 Johnson vetoed this bill, but in April 1866
Congress pushed it through and assumed the
dominant role of controlling government.
Johnson Clashes with Congress
 Republicans now tried to pass the 14th
Amendment which said;
 It conferred civil rights, including citizenship
to the freedmen.
 Reduced proportionately the representation
of a state in Congress and in the Electoral
College if it denied blacks the ballot.
Johnson Clashes with Congress
 Disqualified from federal and state office
former Confederates who as federal
officeholders had once sworn “to support the
Constitution of the United States”
 Guaranteed the federal debt, while repudiating
all Confederate Debts.
 They were afraid that the Southern states might
one day win control of Congress and repeal the
hated law.
Republican Principles and Programs
 In the election of 1866, Republicans won 2/3 majority
in both houses of Congress, which allowed them to have
virtually unlimited control over Reconstruction policy.
 The radicals in the Senate were led by Charles Sumner
who worked tirelessly not only for black freedom but for
racial equality.
 In the House, the most powerful radical was Thaddeus
Stevens who was an unwavering friend of blacks and a
foe of rebellious white southerners.
Republican Principles and Programs
 The radicals were in favor of keeping the
Southern states out as long as possible and using
federal power to force them into drastic social
and economic transformation.
 The moderates were more attuned to policies
that restrained the states from abridging citizens’
rights in the South.
 One thing both sides could agree upon was the
necessity to enfranchise black voters.
Reconstruction by the Sword
 Against the backdrop of vicious and bloody
race riots that had erupted in several
Southern cities, Congress passed the
Reconstruction Act on March 2, 1867.
 Essentially, the South was split into five
military districts, each commanded by a
Union general and policed by Union
soldiers.
Reconstruction by the Sword
 Congress also laid down a strict set of guidelines
for Southern state readmission into the Union.
 States were required to ratify the 14th
Amendment.
 The main purpose was to get the electorate to
vote the Southern states back in and alleviate the
federal government from direct responsibility for
the protection of black rights.
Reconstruction by the Sword
 Radical Republicans were worried that without
federal intervention the Southern states would, once
they were readmitted, amend their constitutions so
as to withdraw the ballot from blacks.
 The only ironclad safeguard was to add black
suffrage in the federal Constitution.
 This goal was achieved with passage of the 15th
Amendment in 1869 and ratified by the states in
1870.
No Women Voters
 The passage of the three Reconstruction-era Amendments
(13th, 14th, and 15th) delighted abolitionists, but deeply
disappointed advocates of women’s rights.
 Even though they considered women’s rights and black
rights one and the same, female rights activists put their
issues on the back burner to work wholeheartedly for
emancipation.
 The Woman’s Loyal League gathered nearly 400,000
signatures on petitions asking Congress to pass a
constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery.
No Women Voters
 When the 14th Amendment was passed and defined equal
national citizenship for the first time including the word
male, women were shocked to see they were not
included.
 When the 15th Amendment proposed to prohibit denial
of the vote on the basis of “race, color, or previous
condition of servitude”, women wanted the word sex
added to the list.
 Fifty years would pass before the Constitution granted
women the right to vote.
The Realities of Radical Reconstruction
in the South
 Both Presidents Lincoln and Johnson
wanted to gradually give selected blacks the
ability to vote if they qualified through
education, property ownership, or military
service.
 Having gained their right to suffrage with
the 15th Amendment, Southern black men
began to organize politically.
The Realities of Radical Reconstruction
in the South
 The primary vehicle for blacks was the Union League,
which was originally a pro-Union organization based in
the North.
 Assisted by Northern blacks, freedmen turned the
League into a network of political clubs that educated
members in their civic duties and campaigned for
Republican candidates.
 Soon, the league’s mission expanded to building black
churches and schools, representing black grievances
before local employers and government, and recruiting
militias to protect black communities from white
retaliation.
The Realities of Radical Reconstruction
in the South
 Black women held a large role in helping
rally voters to campaign functions, but free
black men held the greater political
authority.
 The sight of former slaves holding office
deeply offended their onetime masters, who
lashed out at the freedmen’s white allies,
calling them scalawags and carpetbaggers.
The Realities of Radical Reconstruction
in the South
 Scalawags- Southerners, often former Unionists
and Whigs.
 Carpetbaggers- Were supposedly sleazy
Northerners who had packed all their worldly
goods into a carpetbag suitcase at war’s end and
came to the South to seek personal power and
profit. Most were just people who wanted to play
a role in modernizing the “new South”.
The Ku Klux Klan
 Out of the new success of black legislators and
political corruption, many secret organizations
came forth.
 The most notorious of these groups was the
“Invisible empire of the South”, or Ku Klux Klan,
which was founded in Tennessee in 1866.
 Besheeted nightriders, their horses hooves
muffled, would hammer on the door of an
“upstart” black family.
The Ku Klux Klan
 The riders, in a ghoulish tone, would ask for
a bucket of water and pretend to drink it
while actually pouring its contents into a
rubber attachment concealed beneath his
mask and gown.
 When finished, he would smack his lips and
declare that to be the first drink he’d had
since he was killed at the Battle of Shiloh.
The Ku Klux Klan
 The main goal of the Klan was to scare the
“upstart” blacks away from the polls.
 In 1868 in LA, whites in two days killed or
wounded 200 victims.
 Congress passed the Force Acts of 1870 and
1871, but the Invisible Empire had already
done its work of intimidation.
Johnson Walks the Impeachment Plank
 Radicals hatched a plan to get Johnson out of the
White House by saying that he had a harem of
“dissolute women”.
 In 1867, Congress passed the Tenure of Office
Act, over Johnson’s veto, as usual.
 The principle part of this Act was that the
president had to secure the consent of the Senate
before he could remove his appointees once they
had been approved by that body.
Johnson Walks the Impeachment Plank
 The purpose was to freeze the secretary of
war, Edwin M. Stanton, into office.
 Stanton was a holdover of Lincoln and
although outwardly loyal to Johnson, he was
secretly serving as a spy and informer for
the radicals.
Johnson Walks the Impeachment Plank
 Johnson dismissed Stanton in early 1868,
which gave the radicals the pretext to
impeach him.
 The House voted 126 to 47 to impeach
Johnson for “high crimes and
misdemeanors”, as required by the
Constitution, charging him with various
violations of the Tenure of Office Act.
A Not-Guilty Verdict for Johnson
 Johnson’s attorneys argued that Johnson felt the
Tenure of Office Act was unconstitutional and
fired Stanton merely to bring a test case before
the Supreme Court.
 The House prosecutors, Benjamin Butler and
Thaddeus Stevens, had a harder time building a
compelling case for impeachment.
 The radicals failed to muster the 2/3 majority
vote to impeach Johnson by 1 vote.
The Purchase of Alaska
 By 1867, the Russians were inclined to sell the
vast and chilly expanse of land now known as
Alaska.
 In 1867 Secretary of State William Steward, an
ardent expansionist, signed a treaty with Russia
that transferred Alaska to the U.S. for $7.2
million.
 “Seward’s Folly” was not met with great
enthusiasm by Seward’s fellow countrymen.
The Purchase of Alaska
 In a country bent on Reconstruction, why
did they feel it necessary to expand their
borders?
 Russia had been very nice to the North during
the Civil War and they did not feel they could
be rude to their friend, the tsar.
 The area was rumored to be teeming with furs,
fish, and gold, not to mention oil and gas.
Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age
Chapter 23
Introduction
Over 39 million people in the U.S.
as of 1870 census (26.6% more
than in 1860).
U.S. was the 3rd largest nation in the
Western world, behind Russia and
France.
The “Bloody Shirt” Elects Grant
 After all the issues between Congress and
President Johnson, people were convinced a good
general would make a good president.
 Ulysses S. Grant was the most popular Northern
war hero.
 People in 3 states raised money to build him a
home and New Yorkers wrote him a check for
$105,000 as a thank you for his help in the Civil
War.
The “Bloody Shirt” Elects Grant
 Republicans enthusiastically nominated Grant for
president in 1868 and Democrats nominated
Horatio Seymour.
 Republicans whipped up enthusiasm for Grant by
“waving the bloody shirt”, reviving gory
memories of the Civil War.
 Grant won 214 electoral votes to 80, but only
won by 300,000 majority votes (500,000 former
slaves voted Grant).
The Era of Good Stealings
 Post War America was a place rife with
corruption.
 Men like “Jubilee Jim” Fisk and Jay Gould
concocted a plot to corner the market on gold in
1869.
 The plan would only work if Grant ordered the
Treasury to not sell gold as Gould and Fisk bid up
the price.
The Era of Good Stealings
 Contrary to Grant’s assurances, Treasury
released gold and the prices plummeted.
 Grant was cleared of any wrongdoing
except for acting stupidly, but many honest
people lost their life’s savings.
 “Boss” Tweed employed bribery, graft, and
fradulent elections to milk NY of as much as
$200 million.
The Era of Good Stealings
 Tweed was outed by the New York Times
(although they were offered $5 million not to run
the story).
 Tweed died behind bars.
 Grant was surrounded in his cabinet by grafters
and incompetents.
 His extended family also reaped benefits from his
status.
The Era of Good Stealings
 In 1872, Grant was tarred by the Credit Mobilier
scandal.
 Union Pacific Railroad insiders formed the Credit
Mobilier construction company and then hired
themselves at inflated rates to build the railroad, earning
dividends (off of stock) as high as 348%.
 They gave kickbacks to key Congressmen too keep the
government off their backs.
 2 Congressmen and the vice president were revealed to
have accepted payments.
The Hayes-Tilden Standoff
 Grant, urged by his hangers-on, ran for an
unprecedented 3rd term, but was derailed 233 electoral
votes to 18.
 The House passed a resolution that sternly reminded the
country- and Grant- of the anti-dictator implications of
the two-term tradition.
 The Republicans elected Rutherford B. Hayes who was
the 3 term governor of Ohio and Democrats elected
Samuel J. Tilden, the man who blew the whistle on Boss
Tweed.
The Hayes-Tilden Standoff
 Tilden racked up 184 of the needed 185 electoral votes,
but with 20 votes doubtful due to irregular returns
(some came back as Democrats winning the majority in
the state and others came back as Republicans winning).
 The Constitution specified what should happen, the
president of the Senate should open the results in front
of the House and the Senate.
 The Constitution was silent on who should count the
results (the president of the Senate or the Speaker of the
House).
The Hayes-Tilden Standoff
 The deadlock would be broken by the
Electoral Act passed early in 1877, which
was an electoral commission consisting of
15 men selected from the Senate, House,
and Supreme Court.
 Hayes came out on top and reluctantly, he
was accepted by Democrats if he removed
federal troops from LA and SC.
The Hayes-Tilden Standoff
 The Republicans assured the Democrats of a
southern trans-continental railroad line in
return.
 Peace came at a price as the civil rights of
blacks was sacrificed and the Tilden-Hayes
deal led Republicans to abandon its
commitment to racial equality.
The Birth of Jim Crow in the PostReconstruction South
 For the now friendless blacks in the South,
reconstruction was officially over.
 Blacks who tried to assert their rights faced
unemployment, eviction, and physical harm.
 Many blacks were forced into sharecropping
and tenant farming, pitting former slaves
against former masters who were now their
land lords and creditors.
The Birth of Jim Crow in the PostReconstruction South
 With white southerners back in charge,
informal separation of blacks and whites
developed into a system of state-level legal
codes of segregation known as Jim Crow laws.
 Southern states also enacted literacy
requirements, voter-registration laws, and poll
taxes to ensure full-scale disfranchisement of
the South’s freedmen.
The Birth of Jim Crow in the PostReconstruction South
 The Supreme Court validated the South’s segregationist
social order in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which
ruled that “separate but equal” facilities were
constitutional under the 14th Amendment.
 Blacks were segregated in inferior schools and separated
from whites in virtually all public facilities, including
railroad cars, theaters, and even restrooms.
 Blacks who dared to violate the South’s racial code were
dealt with harshly.
Class Conflicts and Ethnic Clashes
 Railroad owners were reaping the benefits of the
work being done, but they decided in 1877 to cut
workers’ salaries by 10%.
 This led to workers strikes in cities from Baltimore
to St. Louis as President Hayes called in troops to
help quell the unrest.
 The failure of the railroad strikes exposed the
weakness of the labor movement in the face of
opposition such as government, militias, U.S. Army,
federal courts, etc.
Class Conflicts and Ethnic Clashes
 Ethnic struggles also broke out between the Irish
and the Chinese immigrants in California.
 The mostly single male Chinese immigrants could
not get any work after the railroad was finished
and the gold ran out.
 Without any children to help their assimilation,
they faced beatings and other violence from the
Irish who lived among them and worked for less.
Class Conflicts and Ethnic Clashes
In 1882 Congress passed the
Chinese Exclusion Act prohibiting
nearly all further immigration from
China.
The Chinese Exclusion Act
slammed the door until 1943.
Garfield and Arthur
 The Republican party sought a new standard bearer
for 1880 and settled on dark horse candidate James
A. Garfield from electorally powerful Ohio.
 Garfield barely squeaked out a victory over
Democratic candidate and Civil War hero, Winfield
Scott Hancock.
 Garfield’s secretary of state James G. Blaine became
ensnared in a conflict with Senator Roscoe Conkling,
a member of the Stalwart faction.
Garfield and Arthur
 As the Republican factions dueled, tragedy
struck; a deranged office seeker named Charles J.
Guiteau shot President Garfield in the back in a
Washington railroad station.
 Guiteau’s attorneys argued that he was not guilty
because of his incapacity to distinguish right from
wrong- an early instance of the “insanity defense”.
 Garfield lay in agony for 11 weeks until he finally
died.
Garfield and Arthur
 One good thing did result from Garfield’s death; the
shocking of politicians into reforming the shameful spoils
system.
 In 1883 The Pendleton Act was passed, which was known as
the Magna Carta of civil-service reform.
 Compulsory campaign contributions from federal employees
became illegal.
 Established the Civil Service Commission to make
appointments to federal jobs on the basis of examinations
rather than “pull”.
The Blaine-Cleveland Mudslingers of
1884
 James G. Blaine was nominated as the
Republican candidate for President in the
election of 1884.
 Blaine was blessed with almost every
political asset except a reputation for
honesty.
 Victory starved Democrats turned to noted
reformer, Grover Cleveland.
The Blaine-Cleveland Mudslingers of
1884
 Known as a man of principles, it was
soon discovered that Cleveland had
been involved with a Buffalo widow
with whom he had an illegitimate child.
 Despite this, Cleveland squeaked into
office with 219 to 192 electoral votes.
“Old Grover” Takes Over
 Cleveland in 1885 was the first
Democrat to take the oath of
presidential office since Buchanan, 28
years earlier.
 The biggest question was, could the
party of disunion be trusted to govern
the Union?
Cleveland Battles for a Lower Tariff
 As it was for decades, the topic of the tariffs in
the U.S. was a heated debate.
 Republicans, controlling most of the factories in
the North wanted higher tariffs to support
domestic business and keep prices up.
 The Treasury was running an embarrassingly high
surplus of $145 million, most of which came
from the tariff.
Cleveland Battles for a Lower Tariff
 The debate continued on through the 1888
election where the Democrats, seeing no
alternative, re-nominated Cleveland.
 Eager Republicans turned to Benjamin Harrison,
whose grandfather was former president William
Henry Harrison.
 On election day Harrison nosed out Cleveland,
233 to 168 electoral votes.
The Drumbeat of Discontent
 Politics was no longer “as usual” in 1892,
when the newly formed People’s party, or
“Populists”, burst upon the scene.
 Rooted in the Farmer’s Alliance of
frustrated farmers, they demanded inflation
through free and unlimited coinage of silver
at the rate of sixteen ounces to one ounce of
gold.
The Drumbeat of Discontent
 They further demanded a graduated income tax;
government ownership of railroads, telegraph, and
telephone; direct election of U.S. senators; one-term
limit on the presidency; the adoption of the initiative and
referendum to allow citizens to shape legislation more
directly, a shorter workday (12 hour down to 8 hour);
and immigration restriction (immigrants were working
for less and taking jobs).
 The Populists nominated General James B. Weaver as
their candidate for president.
The Drumbeat of Discontent
 The Populists worked to stage strikes throughout
the country, including one at Andrew Carnegie’s
Homestead steel plant.
 The Homestead Strike pitted workers angry over
pay cuts against U.S. troops employed to break
the strike.
 The Populists made a remarkable showing in the
election of 1892 where they gained 22 electoral
votes for Weaver and 1,029,846 popular votes.
The Drumbeat of Discontent
 The Populists looked to gain support from black
farmers in the South as well as white farmers in the
South and West.
 Unfortunately, the Populist inspired reminder of
potential strength of African American voters led to
the near-extinction of what little suffrage African
Americans had in the South.
 White Southerners more aggressively than ever used
literacy tests and poll taxes to deny blacks the ballot.
The Drumbeat of Discontent
 The notorious grandfather clause exempted from
those requirements anyone whose forebear had voted
in 1860- when, of course, black slaves had not voted
at all.
 The conservative crusade to eliminate the black vote
also had dire consequences for the Populist party.
 After 1896 the Populist party lapsed increasingly into
vile racism and staunchly advocated black
disfranchisement.
Cleveland and Depression
 In 1893, Grover Cleveland became the only president
ever to be reelected after defeat.
 Hardly had Cleveland seated himself in the presidential
chair when the devastating depression of 1893 burst out.
 Lasting 4 years, it was the most punishing economic
downturn of the nineteenth century.
 Contributing causes were the splurge of overbuilding and
speculation, labor disorders, and the ongoing
agricultural depression.
Cleveland and Depression
 About eight thousand American businesses collapsed in
six months.
 Alarmingly, the gold reserve in the Treasury dropped
below $100 million, which was popularly regarded as
the safe minimum for supporting about $350 million in
outstanding paper money.
 After tense negotiations at the White House, a group of
bankers led by J.P. Morgan agreed to lend the
government $65 million in gold with a commission of $7
million.