Reconstruction
Bell
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People that have to pay a portion of their crop as payment as their rent.
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In the 1876 presidential election, how many electoral votes were disputed?
– Twenty
Southerners that worked with Republicans
and supported reconstruction
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Scalawags
After the election of 1876, with no clear leader, congress worked out what deal ushering in the End of Reconstruction?
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Sharecroppers
Compromise of 1877.
In what building was Lincoln shot on the evening of April 14, 1865
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Ford’s Theater
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Who becomes President when Lincoln dies?
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– Andrew Johnson
This was given the task of feeding and clothing war refugees in the South using surplus army supplies.
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Freedmen’s Bureau
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Southern state legislatures passed these laws severely limiting African American rights.
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– Black codes
That the right to vote “shall not be denied...on account of race, ….” is in which Constitutional Amendment?
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– Fifteenth Amendment
Northerners who traveled to the South were known as
– carpetbaggers.
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In March 1867, Congress passed this, which essentially nullified Johnson’s programs.
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the Military Reconstruction Act
How many votes was Johnson shy of being impeached?
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one
Review
• Lincoln interpreted his reelection as a
mandate to end slavery permanently by
amending the Constitution.
• On January 31, 1865, the Thirteenth
Amendment was sent to the states for
ratification.
• With his ragged and battered troops
surrounded and outnumbered, Lee
surrendered to Grant on April 9, 1865.
Review
• With the war over, Lincoln delivered a
speech describing his plan to restore the
Southern states to the Union.
– Mentions having African Americans serve in
southern state governments
• However, on the evening of April 14,
1865, John Wilkes Booth assassinated
Lincoln.
Notes
The South is destroyed
• The Civil War ended April 9, 1865.
• Most of the land in the South was
destroyed by the Civil War. The South
would need to be rebuilt.
• This rebuilding of the South was called
Reconstruction.
Notes
Reconstruction
• In the months after the Civil War,
the nation began
the effort to rebuild and reunite. Reconstruction
Begins
• After the Civil War, the president and Congress grappled
with the difficult task of Reconstruction.
• In December 1863, President Lincoln set forth
his moderate plan for reuniting the country in the
Proclamation of Amnesty and
Reconstruction. (quickly!)
– Did not want to punish the south.
• “With malice [hatred] toward none, with
charity for all, with firmness in the right
as God gives us to see the right, let us
finish the work we are in, to bind up the
nation's wounds, to care for him who
shall have borne the battle, and for his
widow and for his orphans, to do all
which may achieve and cherish a just
and a lasting peace among ourselves
and with all nations.
Notes
• He offered a general amnesty to all
Southerners who took an oath of loyalty to
the US
– Any southern state with at least 10% of its
voters making a pledge to be loyal to the U.S.
could be readmitted to the Union.
• accept the Union’s proclamations
concerning slavery.
• Resistance to plan surfaced among Radical
Republicans.
Notes
• Radical Republicans wanted to achieve the
following:
– Prevent the leaders of the Confederacy from
returning to power.
– Make the Republican Party powerful in the
South.
– Most importantly: the federal government help
African Americans achieve political equality guarantee their right to vote in the South.
Notes
• By the summer of 1864, the
• moderates and radicals had come up with a
plan for Reconstruction that they could both
support, known as the Wade-Davis Bill.
– Requires majority of white southern males of
former confederate states take an oath of
allegiance to the Union
– No one who supported the Confederacy could
serve in the new government
• Lincoln blocked it -pocket veto, fearing a
harsh peace would alienate many whites in
the South.
Notes
• The south is in chaos
• In March 1865, Congress established the
Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and
Abandoned Lands, known as the
Freedmen’s Bureau.
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Feeding and clothing war refugees in the South
30,000 rations a day for a year
Helped former slaves find work on plantations
Established schools in the South.
– Laws against educating slaves during the
Civil War meant that most ex-slaves did not
know how to read and write
Notes
• After Lincoln’s assassination, Andrew
Johnson (a Southern Democrat) became
president.
– He remained loyal to Lincoln’s moderate policy to
bring the South back to the Union.
• members of Congress -angered that Southern
voters had elected dozens of Confederate
leaders to Congress.
• Congressional Republicans -angry that the new
Southern legislatures had passed laws known
as black codes.
Notes
• black codes
– intended to keep African Americans in a
condition similar to slavery
• They required African Americans to
enter into annual labor contracts. Those
who did not could be arrested for
vagrancy and forced into involuntary
servitude. Several codes
• established specific hours of labor and
also required them to get
• licenses to work in nonagricultural jobs
Voting Rights
• Other laws were passed to keep blacks
from voting.
• One law said former slaves had to pay a
tax to vote. It was called a poll tax.
• Another law was passed that said a
person could only vote if their
grandfather had voted. These laws were
called the Grandfather Clause.
Radical Republicans
• The Black Codes angered many Republicans
in Congress who felt the South was returning
to its old ways.
• The Radical Republicans wanted the South to
change more before they could be readmitted
to the Union.
• They were angry at President Johnson for
letting the South off so easy.
Notes
• In March, congressional Reconstruction
began with the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1866.
– Citizenship
– Own property
– Equal under the law
Notes
• Fearing that the Civil Rights Act might
later be overturned in court, the
Radicals introduced the Fourteenth
Amendment to the Constitution.
– Citizenship
The 14th Amendment
• The 14th Amendment guaranteed
citizenship to all people born or naturalized
within the U.S. except for the Indians.
• It said that state governments could not
“deprive any person of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law.”
Notes
• After the Republicans won approximately
a three-to-one majority in Congress, they
began to enact their own Reconstruction
program in place of Johnson’s.
• In March 1867, Congress passed the
Military Reconstruction Act, which
essentially nullified Johnson’s programs
and divided former Confederacy into 5
military districts.
Figure 7
Notes
• In the meantime, each former
Confederate state had to hold another
constitutional convention to design a
constitution acceptable to Congress.
• To restrict Johnson’s power further,
Congress passed two new laws: the
Command of the Army Act and the
Tenure of Office Act.
Notes
• After Johnson challenged the Tenure of
Office Act, the House of Representatives
voted to impeach Johnson.
• Impeachment is the process of charging a
public official with a crime.
• The next step was to try the president in
the Senate.
• By a single vote, Republicans failed to
convict Johnson.
• He was one vote short of conviction, and
finished his term quietly.
Notes
• Republican Ulysses S. Grant won the
1868 election.
• Congressional Republicans moved
rapidly to expand their Reconstruction
program.
• 1870 Congress passed the Fifteenth
Amendment.
– The 15th Amendment gave African
American men the right to vote.
– Women’s rights activists were angry
because the amendment did not also grant
women the right to vote.
Notes
• Southerners, particularly supporters of
the Democratic Party, called the
Northerners who traveled to the South
after the Civil War and supported the
Republicans carpetbaggers.
• Some white Southerners did work with
Republicans and supported.
Reconstruction.
– The other Southerners called them
scalawags
Notes
• Having gained the right to vote, African
American men entered into politics with
great enthusiasm.
– They served as legislators and
administrators for nearly all levels of
government.
Notes
• The Republican governments in the
South instituted a number of reforms that
included:
– repealing the black codes
– establishing state hospitals and institutions
for orphans
– rebuilding roads, railways, and bridges
damaged during the Civil War
– providing funds for construction of new
railroads and industries in the South
Notes
• Unable to strike openly at the
Republicans running their states, some
Southern Democrats and opponents of
Reconstruction organized secret societies
to undermine Republican rule.
– The largest of these groups was the Ku
Klux Klan.
• The KKK was a secret society opposed to
African Americans obtaining civil rights,
particularly the right to vote.
Ku Klux Klan
• The KKK used violence and intimidation to
frighten blacks.
• Klan members wore white robes and hoods
to hide their identities.
• The Klan was known to have murdered many
people.
• Congress passed three Enforcement Acts in
1870 and 1871, one of which outlawed the
activities of the Klan.
Notes
• Eventually, Grant’s lack of political
experience helped to divide the
Republican Party and to undermine public
support for Reconstruction.
– In addition, the nation endured a
staggering and long-lasting economic
crisis.
Notes
• In the 1870s, Democrats began to regain
power in the South.
• They did so in the following ways:
– intimidation and fraud
– defining elections as a struggle
between whites and African Americans
– promising to cut the high taxes the
Republicans had imposed
– accusing Republicans of corruption
Notes
• In 1876 the presidential election pitted
Republican Rutherford B. Hayes against
Democrat Samuel Tilden.
– On Election Day, twenty electoral votes
were disputed.
– Congressional leaders worked out a deal
known as the Compromise of 1877.
(unwritten deal that settled the Election,
pulled federal troops out of state politics in
the South, and ended Reconstruction)
– Hayes then took office. (LINK)
Segregation and Jim Crow
Laws
• Starting in 1881, blacks had to stay in
separate hotels, sit in separate parts of
theaters, ride in separate rail cars, and
have separate schools, libraries, and
parks. This is known as segregation.
• Segregation - the legal separation of
blacks and whites in public places
• Jim Crow Laws - laws that forced
segregation (LINK)
Plessy v. Ferguson
• The Supreme Court ruled segregation was legal
in Plessy v. Ferguson.
• They said that segregation was fair as long as
“separate-but-equal” facilities were provided for
African Americans.
• In practice, the African American facilities were
usually “separate-and-unequal.”
• It would take until the 1965, 100 years after the
Civil War ended, for Jim Crow laws to be
outlawed and blacks to finally realize legal
equality in America.
Notes
• Tenant Farmers –paying rent for the land
they farmed
– Many worked for wages or became
Sharecroppers (farmer who works
land for an owner who provides
equipment and seed and receives a
share of the crop).
– The Civil War had ended slavery, but
Reconstruction had left many African
Americans trapped in poverty.
Figure 8
40 Acres and Mule
• During Reconstruction, ex-slaves were
promised 40 acres of land and a mule.
• Unfortunately, the government never came
through with their promise.
• During the riots in the 1960’s, people were
overheard saying, “That’s for my 40 acres
and a mule,” as they stole something from a
store.
• Film maker Spike Lee’s company is called 40
Acres and a Mule.
Notes
• Many Southern leaders called for the
creation of a “New South”—believing the
region needed a strong industrial economy.
– Some parts of the South did witness
great economic changes, while other
parts remained agrarian and changed
only a little.
• The collapse of Reconstruction ended
African American hopes of being granted
their own land in the South.