Aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction

1
Aftermath of the Civil War andReconstruction

• Rebuilding the United States of America
• Plan for Reconstruction
• Race, gender and class under Reconstruction
  Policies
• Impact of Reconstruction and long-lasting
  effects of Reconstruction policies and politics

2
Reconstruction during war

• Reconstruction as an issue as early as 1863
• How to treat southern leaders? How would states
  be let back into the Union?
• 4 questions
• Who would rule in the South?
• Who would rule in the federal government
  congress or the president?
• What rights would freedmen get?
• Would Reconstruction attempt to preserve the old
  republic or attempt to reinvent the Union?

3
Reconstruction during war

• Lincolns ideas were lenient toward the South
• Pardoned most officials
• 10 of voting public had to sign oaths of loyalty
  to the US and the states would simply rejoin the
  Union
• Why? Do you see any correlation to Lincolns
  hesitancy to call for emancipation?
• Backlash in Congress by Republicans who believed
  the South deserved a harsher punishment
• Wade-Davis Bill 1864
• Confederate states as conquered enemies
• Majority, not 10 oath of loyalty
• Lincoln vetoed
• Lincoln did not have support of many Republicans
  for his reelection in 1864

4
Thirteenth Amendment

• January 13, 1865
• Thirteenth Amendment passed by Congress
• Abolished involuntary servitude everywhere in US
• Declared that congress shall have power to
  enforce this outcome by appropriate legislation
• Passed narrowly 119-56 (2 votes more than
  necessary 2/3rds)
• Based largely on a petition for a constitutional
  amendment by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B.
  Anthony and Womens Loyal National League

5
Freedmens Bureau

• Created on March 3, 1865
• Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned
  Lands
• Federal agency based on social reform this was
  unprecedented (we are still 30 years away from
  the Progressive Era)
• Supplied food, medical supplies, built schools
  and tried to sort out confiscated land
• Intended to aid both blacks and whites displaced
  in the South during and after war
• By the beginnings of Reconstruction, primary
  focus was on helping newly freed slaves become
  citizens contracts with former masters,
  housing, education for children

6
End of Civil War

• Devastation of nation - Psychological effects of
  war
• Chance for reconstruction to bring about a social
  revolution
• Many changes did occur in politics, in law, in
  representation
• But much stayed the same

7
Chance for real reform?

• Underlying problems never dealt with
• Realities of economic power, racism and judicial
  conservatism limited the potential of
  Reconstruction policies
• Racism does not go away because the Confederacy
  surrendered
• In fact, racism and societal divisions will only
  increase
• By 1880 and the end of Reconstruction, the
  country is more polarized and there is more
  racial hatred and antagonism than any time
  previously in our country
• Why?

8
End of Civil War and Ideas of Freedom

• What did Freedom mean?
• How is freedom defined?
• How did freed slaves understand and view freedom?

9
End of Civil War and Ideas of Freedom

• Hope but also skepticism and fear
• our forever was going to be spent living among
  the Southerners, after they got licked.
• Why did Freedmens Bureau try to get freed men
  and women to stay in the South rather than
  migrate north?
• Freedom personal freedom important, changed
  location, changed living arrangements, changed
  employer
• Freedom to move right to mobility
• New concept of wage work white workers in
  factories had been upset for years about wage
  work and the loss of their provider status and
  threat to masculinity
• Black men viewed wage work as liberation, as
  their path to become their families providers
• Different economic ideologies in the nation

10
Newly Freed Slaves

• Families
• Any surprise that family reunions were main
  goals?
• Growth of churches and community organizations

11
Independence, Liberty, Freedom

• Free blacks faced many obstacles
• Had to be cautious
• How do you choose your employer?
• Knew that hostility toward them would not
  disappear
• Why did many slaves stay with their master? They
  now worked for wages, but many remained living in
  the same place and doing the same work

12
Black communities and societies

• Desire for land
• Owning land was denied to them for so long
• Land was also symbolic
• Land was equated with self-sufficiency and a
  chance to gain compensation
• Were promised 40 acres
• President Johnson rescinded this and returned
  land to original owners
• Land redistribution a strongly debated political
  issue
• Many Congressional leaders were willing to give
  blacks land if they promised to grow cotton
  cash crop to bolster the economy
• Many blacks desired land to build a
  self-sufficient farm for their family and
  establish their independence

13
Black communities and societies

• Education seen as major avenue to civil rights
  and social advancement
• Remember, under slavery, many slaves learned to
  read and saw the power of literacy and education
  and deeply wanted their children to get an
  education
• First acts in new black communities
• Build schools
• Classes ran night and day children and adults
• Sat on dirt floors, used discarded, torn books
• Willing to pay 1-1.50 a month very expensive
  at time
• Freedmens Bureau and reformers active in this
  cause as well
• School funded by northern white philanthropists
• Largely women involved in this movement
• Great impact on bringing the Womens Movement
  into the South
• Strong network of women of both races throughout
  north and south

14
Education

• Many of the leading African American political
  leaders during Reconstruction were educated
• Considered educated elite class
• Education helped the growth of the black middle
  class in a relatively short amount of time
• Founded colleges and universities as well as
  primary schools

15
Black Families

• Husbands and wives quickly established their own
  homes
• Marriage as a civil right
• Need access to full civil rights marriage as
  first step
• Also asserted right to raise their own children
• This was essential oftentimes, the state would
  take away children from black parents Knew
  importance of family
• Family on a personal level
• Family for social respect
• Family for political rights
• Family key to full civil rights

16
Black communities and societies

• Fight for black mens political rights
• Why?
• Women in slavery did same work as men,
  oftentimes, black husbands and wives had more
  equality in home why not fight for rights of
  both men and women
• Effect on womens rights movement at the time

17
Black women

• Race v. gender v. class who to side with?
• How do you identify yourself?
• Sadly, forced to choose in US at this time
• Black women were in a tough situation
• Many strongly believed in equalities for all
  races and all genders, but it is difficult to
  fight two controversial wars at once
• Spread too thin, neither would work
• Many black women decided to fight for racial
  equality first
• Significant reason that the womens rights
  movement was not very strong during
  Reconstruction but would gather more strength
  later (post-1877)

18
Black Women in Reconstruction South

• Typically portrayed as powerless no legal
  rights, no property rights, no voting rights, no
  economic rights
• However Laura Edwards Gendered Strife and
  Confusion
• did have power and say in own communities and in
  families
• Filed court petitions
• Sued as mothers, as wives fit idea of
  virtuous American woman
• Fought to run own household and to raise own
  children
• Glenda Gilmore Gender and Jim Crow
• invisible web of power
• awesome book (during and after reconstruction,
  even under Jim Crow laws when black men are
  disenfranchised)

19
Class and economic issues

• Where to find work?
• Sharecropping
• Could not afford to buy land
• Sharecropping farmers kept part of their crop
  and gave the rest to the landowner while living
  on his property and the landlord provided food
  and supplies
• Black farmers did have some bargaining power
• Seemed promising at first
• Proved to be a disaster sharecroppers spiraled
  into debt as owners grew richer
• Depression and poor economy in South

20
Reconstruction Plans

• President Johnson
• Johnson had owned slaves and had not favored
  emancipation and was not particularly concerned
  with promoting civil rights
• Johnson also wanted to punish the wealthy white
  elites in the South who had started the civil war
• Prevented many from taking the oath of loyalty
  high ranking Confederate officers, officials and
  political leaders, all Confederates whose taxable
  property was worth more than 20,000
• Wanted to change class relations
• Eliminate old aristocracy and put small farmers
  in charge of south
• Class-based reasons for Reconstruction, not
  race-based
• Soon, this plan failed and many planters and
  aristocrats regained power and influence

21
Black Codes

• State legislatures only vaguely redefined their
  laws
• Many slave laws remained in place but slave was
  replaced with freedmen
• Laws required
• Former slaves to carry passes
• Observe a curfew
• Give up hope of entering many occupations
• Vagrancy laws and restrictive labor contracts
  bound freedpeople to the plantation

22
Congressional Reconstruction Plans

• Republicans in Congress very upset with Johnsons
  policies and these Black Codes
• Congress in charge of readmitting the states
  they wanted to seize this power and redefine
  Reconstruction
• Radical v. Moderate view of Reconstruction
• How much should south be punished?
• Radicals Julian, Stevens and Sumner (the
  emancipation guys) wanted to redefine the south
• Wanted activist federal government
• Wanted beginnings of racial equality

23
Congress v. Johnson

• Congress proposed to extend the Freedmens Bureau
  and proposed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (first
  civil rights act)
• Johnson vetoed both bills congress did override
  the veto and both became law
• 1866 hopes for Compromise dashed

24
Divisive issue

• Divided public and violence
• Daily media reports of anti-black violence
• Memphis 40 blacks killed and 12 schools burned
• Convinced Congress that more needed to be done
  Congress needed to act and come to a compromise
  between radical and conservative Republicans

25
14th Amendment

• Conferred citizenship on freedmen
• Prohibited states from abridging their
  constitutional privileges and immunities
• Barred any state from taking a persons life,
  liberty or property without due process
• Barred from denying equal protection under the
  laws
• Declared Confederate debt null and void
• Barred confederate leaders from holding office
• Dealt with representations
• Would blacks be allowed to vote in the south
• Now that blacks were a full rather than 3/5ths of
  a person, this entitled the south to more
  representation
• Declared that if a southern state refused to
  allow black men to vote, then their
  representation would be reduced

26
Reconstruction and southern society

• After much debate, the First Reconstruction Act
  1867 was passed in Congress
• Black men gain vote
• Whites bared from office by 14th amendment cannot
  vote while new state governments are being formed
• Southern states forced to ratify 14th amendment
• Second, Third and Fourth Reconstruction Acts in
  1867-68 outlined details of voter registration
  boards, adoption of constitutions, and the
  administration of good faith oaths by southerners

27
Problems/Inconsistencies in formal reconstruction
plans?

• Why wasnt reconstruction successful? Did this
  not seem like good policies?
• Failure of redistribution
• Highly unpopular
• Caused more and more resentment and stronger and
  stronger racism
• Spurred even greater violence against blacks

28
Grant as President in 1868

• Supported Reconstruction
• Endorsed black suffrage in the South (note
  Republicans did not support black suffrage in the
  North)
• Why was this?
• Democrats opposed Reconstruction and renewed
  sectional conflict by 1868

29
15th Amendment

• Radical Republicans wrote this amendment
• Became law in 1870
• Forbade states to deny the right to vote on
  account of race, color or previous condition of
  servitude
• wording did not guarantee the right to vote
  allowed states to restrict voting by other means
• Poll tax
• Property owning as limitation to voting
• Education level
• Left door open for states to develop numerous
  qualification tests
• Ironic impact stricter voting laws and lower
  percentage of eligible voters

30
This poster celebrates the signing of the
Fifteenth Amendment with a scene depicting
Frederick Douglass, Robert Smalls, Abraham
Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Hiram Rhoades
Revels gathered at a table together.
31
15th Amendment

• Many believed that the 15th Amendment symbolized
  the end of Reconstruction
• 1870 ready for peace and tired of sectional
  fighting

32
Reconstruction and Political Representation

• African Americans vote in large numbers
• Many African American men run for office
• very few black men stayed away from the polls
• Why?
• Largely voted Republican
• Power in Republican party in the South

33
Radical Members of the First South Carolina
Legislature after the Civil War, 1876

• Under Reconstruction directly after the Civil
  War, each southern state was required to revise
  its constitution and elect a new state
  government.
• Because African Americans were given the right to
  vote under the Reconstruction Act of 1867, these
  state governments often changed dramatically.
• In 1868 half of the members of Louisiana's house
  were African-American. In 1871 and 1872 Alabama
  had twenty-seven black representatives, Georgia
  twenty-six, Mississippi thirty, and Virginia
  twenty-one. Pictured here are radical members of
  the reconstructed South Carolina legislature.
  Fifty members were black or bi-racial and
  thirteen were white.

34
Reconstruction and Politics in South

• Blacks and the Republican Party
• 265 out of total of 1000 Republican officials in
  South were black
• Dramatic and powerful numbers and dramatic and
  powerful impact
• Eliminated property qualifications for voting
• Tuned appointed positions into elected positions
• Supported public schools and hospitals
• Broadened womens rights in property owning and
  divorce
• Republicans triumphed in state legislatures

35
Reconstruction under Republicans

• Industrialization
• Racial Equality under the law but not in
  reality
• Black leaders at the time fought to fund public
  schools but did not fight segregation
• Black leaders did not press for revolutionary
  social changes
• Why?
• How did this effect the outcome of
  Reconstruction?
• Myth of negro rule
• Racist propaganda
• Rallying cry for a return to white supremacy
• Propaganda Carpetbaggers (immigrants from the
  north living in south) and scalawags (southerners
  who cooperated with Republicans)

36
Reconstruction Class, Gender, Race

• Class issues economy worsened, poor whites even
  poorer
• Who will poor whites blame?
• How whites regain power and Democrats regain
  power in South by late 1870s?

37
Reconstruction Class, Gender, Race

• Gender
• White and black families
• Class largely separated gender roles indoor v.
  outdoor, inside v. outside, wage work v. home
  work all based on class more now
• More predominant
• Fragment womens rights movement along class and
  racial lines northern middle class women
  activists did not understand the problems of poor
  whites and blacks in southern society

38
Reconstruction and Social Reform Movements

• Abolitionism over
• Dedicated to Freedmens Bureau
• Sanitation issues continue and sanitation reform
  efforts
• Womens movement suffers many setbacks during
  this time almost too much upheaval in society
• Some urban reform movements and labor reform
  movements especially take off

39
Reconstruction and Society

• Class and gender issues certainly powerful
• Racial ideology predominant force in society, in
  a way never even imagined under slavery
• Racism drastically intensified to levels never
  seen before
• Why?

40
Reconstruction and Racism

• Racism intensified during Reconstruction
• After reconstruction even
• White resistance

41
Racism

• Fueled racism
• Ku Klux Klan
• Started in 1866
• Violence against African Americans occurred
  before the Klan, but this was a highly organized
  terrorist group that carried out brutal attacks
• Political and racial reasons for the Klan
• Hated Republicans and many white Republicans
  victims of attack as well
• Many men who lost their political power under
  Reconstruction formed and supported the Ku Klux
  Klan

42
Impact of Ku Klux Klan

• Political
• Killed and attacked many Republicans
• Republicans in fear
• Start to lose power in the South
• Social
• Racism intensified
• Violent racism

43
Republicans lose power in South

• Fiscal problems
• Lack of land redistribution
• Mistakes and poor judgment
• Racial hostility
• Terror
• Failed to alter Souths social structure or
  distribution of wealth
• Only a matter of time before old leaders return
  because fundamental aspects of society and
  politics were not changed with Reconstruction

44
New ideas of racism and racist ideology

• Slaves may have threatened individual families
  but did slaves threaten entire communities
  identities
• Strange things start to happen
• Accusations of rape
• Myth of black rapist

45
Reconstruction Race, Gender, Class

• Reconstruction society is one of the clearest
  examples of the interplay of race, class and
  gender ideologies and why you cannot study one
  without studying all three
• Accusations of rape and myth of black rapist
• How did poor whites try to better themselves?
• How did poor white women gain respect accuse
  black man of white
• Power in all levels of society to manipulate
  these three ideologies and use the backdrop of
  the Reconstruction policies to do so

46
Race, Gender, Class

• Post-reconstruction
• Even more interesting
• Under Jim Crow laws, black men are completely
  disenfranchised
• Same time that Victorian womanhood ideology is
  dominant
• Black women use this ideology to create a sphere
  of power and influence invisibly in their
  society
• After 1896 and black men are enfranchised again
  dynamics change once again
• Ideas of femininity and masculinity
• Manliness v. masculinity and where race and class
  and gender intersect
• The years following Reconstruction are absolutely
  fascinating in terms of race, class and gender
  issues

47
Reconstruction in many ways

• South tried to reconstruct slavery and plantation
  life

48
The Old Plantation Home 1872This print presents
a romanticized view of slave conditions. Despite
the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which
formally abolished slavery after the Civil War,
many whites still perceived African Americans as
a childlike race of people who had benefited from
the structure of slavery.
49
Impact of Reconstruction

• Policies
• Implications
• Societal developments

50
Impact of Reconstruction

• Do you think it was successful?
• Reconstruction a main goal was to provide civil
  rights and legal rights to freed slaves
• Reconstruction ended with the disenfranchisement
  of black voters
• Ended with the influx of Jim Crow laws and harsh
  segregationist policies
• In effect, that is what came out of 12 years of
  Reconstruction
• What else?
• Blacks learned about political process, about how
  to campaign, about how to organize, better able
  to fight next battle for civil rights

51
End of Reconstruction

• When was official end of reconstruction?
• Was this really the end?
• What did the end of reconstruction mean?

52
End of Reconstruction

• Retreat from Reconstruction
• Liberal Republican revolt
• New idea of best men should lead
• Market forces should dictate economy
• Government should stop interfering in Southern
  politics northerners and southerners started to
  believe this Why?
• Rise in immigration 3 million immigrants
  entered from 1865-73
• Increased suspicion and hostility toward
  foreigners and all non white, native-born
  Americans
• Panic of 1873 severe economic conditions
• West and race relations Chinese, Native
  Americans

53
End of Reconstruction

• Reconstruction of racism defining who was white
  and who was not white
• West white supremacy ideology in land occupied
  by Indians and Hispanics
• Fueled racial violence in the West
• Supreme Court played part in ending
  Reconstruction policies
• Ruled in Slaughterhouse cases
• declared that state citizenship and national
  citizenship were different
• weakened 14th Amendment
• voting was under state citizenship not national
• Bradwell v. Illinois denied Myra Bradwell the
  right to practice law based on her gender
• Ruled that the 14th Amendment did not apply to
  women
• In official ruling, referred to womens role in
  the home

54
End of Reconstruction

• Compromise of 1877
• No clear winner in 1876 election Hayes
  (republican) v. Tilden (democrat)
• Democrats allowed Hayes to be president and cut a
  deal, a compromise
• Rescinded many Reconstruction policies
• Removed federal troops from south
• Promised federal aid to south to build railroad
  and other improvements
• Reconstruction, in effect, was over
• Blacks were again disenfranchised in the south

55
(No Transcript)
56
End of Reconstruction

• With the end of one thing comes the beginning of
  the next
• After reconstruction
• Preview of late 1880s-90s and early 1900s
• Discrimination continues, intensifies
• Reform efforts also intensify
• Start of Progressive Era
• Most put Progressive Era in late 1880s, about 10
  years after official end to reconstruction

57
History of the United States 1490s-1870s

• 400 years of history studied in these 5 weeks of
  class
• What did we learn?
• Any prevailing themes?
• Any repetitive themes?
• How far did the US come in 400 years?
• Positives and negatives of US progress
• Implications for today

58
US History 101-31Summer II 2006

• Wed, Aug 2
• Your presentations of your final projects!!!