US History- Reconstruction

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Chapter 3 CRISIS, CIVIL WAR, RECONSTRUCTION
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Chapter 3.4 The Reconstruction era

• why was a plan needed for Reconstruction of the
  South.
• how did freedmen adjusted to freedom and the
  Souths new economic system?

• 3. why did Reconstruction end?
• 4. What were the successes and failures of
  Reconstruction?

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Chapter 3.4 The Reconstruction era
1. Explain why a plan was needed for
Reconstruction of the South.
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THE RECONSTRUCTION ERA

• During the era of Reconstruction (1865-1877), the
  federal government struggled with how to return
  the eleven southern states to the Union, rebuild
  the Souths ruined economy, and promote the
  rights of former slaves.

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THE RECONSTRUCTION ERA

• The Constitution provided no guidance on
  secession or readmission of states.
• It was not clear whether Congress or the
  President should take the lead in forming
  Reconstruction policy.

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Charleston, South Carolina
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How will the Southern Economy Be Rebuilt?

• The Civil War devastated the Souths economy.
• Between 1860 and 1870, the Souths share of the
  nations total wealth declined from more than 30
  to 12.
• During Reconstruction, some people proposed using
  the land to benefit former slaves.

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How will the Southern Economy Be Rebuilt?

• General William Tecumseh Sherman proposed that
  millions of acres abandoned by planters, or
  confiscated by the federal government, should be
  given to former slaves Forty acres and a mule
  many northerners thought this might also
  restore the Souths productivity, reconstruct its
  economy and provide employment as well as income
  for many African American.
• Not everyone agreed.

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What Rights Will African Americans Have?

• The 13TH Amendment freed African Americans from
  slavery, but it did not grant them the privileges
  of full citizenship.
• The former slaves hoped that they would gain
  voting rights and access to education, benefits
  that most northern blacks also did not have.

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Chapter 3.4 The Reconstruction era
2. Compare the Reconstruction plans of Lincoln,
Johnson, and Congress.
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LINCOLN
JOHNSON
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PRESIDENT LINCOLN

• One of his first major goals was to reunify the
  nation.
• Throughout the war, he had felt some sympathy for
  the South and hoped that southern stats might
  easily rejoin the Union after the war.
• To this end, in 1863 he issued a Proclamation of
  Amnesty and Reconstruction, known as the
  Ten Percent Plan.

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PRESIDENT LINCOLN

• According to its terms, as soon as 10 of a
  states voters took a loyalty oath to the Union,
  the state could set up a new government.
• If the states constitution abolished slavery and
  provided education for African Americans, the
  state would regain representation in Congress.

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PRESIDENT LINCOLN

• Lincoln took the position that the Union was
  unbreakable and therefore the southern states had
  never really left the Union.

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JOHNSON

• Like Lincoln, Johnson wanted to restore the
  political status of the southern states as
  quickly as possible.
• He offered pardons and the restoration of land to
  almost any Confederate who swore allegiance to
  the Union and the Constitution.

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JOHNSON

• His main requirement was that each state ratifies
  the 13TH Amendment and draft a constitution that
  abolished slavery.
• He supported states rights, which would allow
  the laws and customs of the state to outweigh
  federal regulations, therefore, states would be
  able to limit the freedoms of former slaves.

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CONGRESS

• With the required two-thirds majority, for the
  first time ever, Congress passed major
  legislation over a Presidents veto and the Civil
  Rights Act of 1866 became law, which granted
  citizenship to African Americans and outlawed
  black codes.
• To protect freedmens rights from presidential
  vetoes, southern state legislatures, and federal
  court decisions, Congress passed the 14TH
  Amendment to the Constitution.

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CONGRESS

• It guaranteed equality under the law for all
  citizens any state that refused to allow black
  people to vote would risk losing the number of
  seats in the House of Representatives that were
  represented by its black population.
• The measure also counteracted the Presidents
  pardons by barring leading Confederate officials
  from holding federal or state offices.

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CONGRESS

• The Military Reconstruction Act of 1867 divided
  the 10 southern states that had yet to be
  readmitted into the Union into five military
  districts governed by former Union generals, how
  states could create their new state governments
  and receive congressional recognition.
• In each state, voters were to elect delegates to
  write a new constitution that guaranteed suffrage
  for African American men.
• Once the state ratified the 14TH Amendment, it
  could reenter the Union.

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Chapter 3.4 The Reconstruction era
3. Discuss how freedmen adjusted to freedom and
the Souths new economic system.
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Freedman Bureau Harpers Weekly
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FREEDMEN ECONOMICS

• For the first time, many African American men and
  women could legalize and celebrate their
  marriages, create homes for their families, and
  make choices about where they would reside
  thought these choices were restricted by black
  codes limiting what work they might do Life
  presented new problems and opportunities.
• Many African Americans headed for southern
  cities, where they could develop churches,
  schools, and other social institutions.

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FREEDMEN ECONOMICS

• Skilled men might find work as carpenters,
  blacksmiths, cooks, or house servants women took
  in laundry, or did child care or domestic work.
• Most often, black workers settled for what they
  had had under slavery substandard housing and
  poor food, in return for hard labor.

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FREEDMEN ECONOMICS

• The majority of African American families
  remained in rural areas.
• Freed people immediately realized the intrinsic
  value of learning to read and perform basic
  arithmetic.
• By 1866, there were as many as 150,000 African
  American students adults and children
  acquiring basic literacy.
• Three years later, that number had doubled.

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FREEDMEN ECONOMICS

• The Freedmens Bureau aided black colleges.
• It also encouraged the many northern churches and
  charitable organizations that sent teachers,
  books, and supplies to support independent
  schools.
• The black church was an important component of
  Reconstruction education.

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FREEDMEN ECONOMICS

• With freedom, black churches were established
  throughout the South and often served as school
  sites, community centers, employment agencies,
  and political rallying points.
• A considerable number of African American
  politicians began their careers as ministers.

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Chapter 3.4 The Reconstruction era
4. Summarize efforts to limit African Americans
rights and the federal governments response.
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AFRICAN AMERICANS RIGHTS

• Economic uncertainty in turn fueled the fire of
  white southerners outrage.
• Already resentful of the Republican takeover of
  local politics and of occupation by federal
  troops, white southerners from all economic
  classes were united in their insistence that
  African Americans not have full citizenship.
• During Reconstruction, dozens of loosely
  organized groups of white southerners emerged to
  terrorize African Americans.

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AFRICAN AMERICANS RIGHTS

• The best known of these was the Ku Klux Klan,
  formed in Tennessee in 1866.
• Klan members roamed the countryside, especially
  at night, burning homes, schools, and churches,
  and beating, maiming, or killing African
  Americans and their white allies.
• The Klan took special aim at the symbols of black
  freedom African American teachers and schools,
  churches and ministers, politicians, and anyone
  white or black who encouraged black people to
  vote.

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Nathan Bedford Forrest
A cartoon threatening that the KKK would lynch
carpetbaggers. From the Independent Monitor,
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 1868.
Three Ku Klux Klan members arrested in
Mississippi, September 1871, for the attempted
murder of an entire family
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AFRICAN AMERICANS RIGHTS

• Radical violence grew even more wide spread, in
  the North and as well as the South, after the
  15TH Amendment guaranteed all American men the
  right to vote.
• In Arkansas, Republican legislators were murdered
  In New Orleans, riots broke out.
• The United States Congress took action, passing
  Enforcement Acts also known as the Ku Klux Klan
  Acts, in 1870 and 1871.

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AFRICAN AMERICANS RIGHTS

• The acts made it a federal offense to interfere
  with a citizens right to vote.
• Congress Used the Ku Klux Klan Acts to indict
  hundreds of Klansmen throughout the South.
• After 1872, on account of the federal
  governments readiness to use legal action, there
  was a decline in violence against Republicans and
  African Americans.

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Chapter 3.4 The Reconstruction era
5. Explain why Reconstruction ended
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RECONSTRUCTION ENDS - I

• The end of Reconstruction did not come suddenly.
  
• As the 1860s ended, voters and politicians
  outside the South increasingly turned their
  attention to other pressing issues reforming
  politics and the economy, among other things.
• Also, the continued cost of military operations
  in the South worried many so slowly and quietly,
  beginning in 1871, troops were withdrawn from the
  South.

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RECONSTRUCTION ENDS - I

• In 1872, the Freedmens Bureau was dissolved and
  the 13TH, 14TH, 15TH amendments guaranteed
  African Americans rights, yet it was left to the
  courts to interpret how these new amendments
  would be applied.
• In a series of landmark cases, the Supreme Court
  chipped away at African American freedoms in the
  1870s.
• Slaughterhouse Cases (1873) and United
  States v. Cruikshank

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RECONSTRUCTION ENDS - II

• While the Klan intimidated with violence and the
  courts with legal interpretation, some southern
  Democrats devised a more subtle strategy for
  suppressing black rights.
• They put together a coalition to return the South
  to the rule of white men.
• The main focus of their strategy was compromise
  finding common issues that would unite white
  southerners around the goal of regaining power in
  Congress.

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RECONSTRUCTION ENDS - II

• These compromisers have become known as
  Redeemers, politicians who aimed to repair or
  redeem the South in the eyes of Congress.
• Sometimes their strategy is described as being
  designed to redeem or reclaim the South from
  northern domination.

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RECONSTRUCTION ENDS - III

• With the Radical Republicans loss of power, the
  stage was set to end northern domination of the
  South.
• The 1876 election of Ohio Republican Rutherford
  B. Hayes.
• Hayes was elected President by what became known
  as the Compromise of 1877.

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RECONSTRUCTION ENDS - III

• In return for his election the remaining federal
  troops were withdrawn from the South, a
  southerner was appointed to a powerful cabinet
  position, and southern states were guaranteed
  federal subsidies to build railroads and improve
  their ports.
• Federal Reconstruction was over.
• The South and the millions of recently freed
  African Americans were left to negotiate their
  own fate.

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Chapter 3.4 The Reconstruction era
6. Evaluate the successes and failures of
Reconstruction
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SUCCESSES vs. FAILURES

• Among the enduring changes to the South were the
  introduction of a tax-supported school system and
  an infusion of federal money to modernize
  railroads and ports.
• In addition, the economy expanded from one crop
  cotton to a range of agricultural and
  industrial products.

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SUCCESSES vs. FAILURES

• Reconstruction failed to heal the bitterness
  between North and South or to provide lasting
  protection for freed people.
• However, it did raise African Americans
  expectations of their rights to citizenship, and
  it placed before Americans the meaning and value
  of the right to vote.

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SUCCESSES vs. FAILURES

• Before the Civil War, no African American in the
  South, and only a small number in the North, had
  the right to vote.
• Few black southerners owned land with most
  working others land, without pay, and without
  hope of improving their lot.
• Most southern African Americans worked
  involuntarily in agriculture.

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SUCCESSES vs. FAILURES

• Reconstruction changed these things and gave them
  choices.
• Most importantly, the Freedmens Bureau helped
  reunite freed slaves with their families and
  promoted literacy within African American
  communities.
• The 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments provided hope
  for full inclusion in American society, though it
  would take later generations to use them to gain
  racial equality.

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SUCCESSES vs. FAILURES

• One of the ironies of reconstruction is that it
  gave the vote to black American men, while
  fragmenting the womens movement that had often
  been supportive of black freedom.
• Some felt the 15TH Amendment could not get
  ratified if it included womens suffrage, however
  in 1869 the National Woman Suffrage Association
  will win a huge victory in 1869, when the Wyoming
  Territory became the first political unit to
  extend the vote to women.

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SUCCESSES vs. FAILURES

• American politics were irrevocably sharpened by
  the Civil War and Reconstruction.
• The Republican Party, born out of the controversy
  over slavery, shunned by the white southerner but
  embraced by the northern and southern African
  American.
• The democratic Party came to dominate the white
  south. Following Reconstruction, the national
  Republicans became the party of big business a
  reputation that continues today.

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SUCCESSES vs. FAILURES

• During Reconstruction, Americans acquired a
  deeper meaning as the federal government asserted
  its authority not only over southern states, but
  over state laws in other regions as well.
• In the end, American voters and their
  representatives in government opted for a balance
  of power, at the expense of protecting freed
  people in the South.