Reconstruction

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• Reconstruction

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Reconstruction

• Definition Reunite the country and to build a
  Southern society not based on slavery
• Major questions
• What should be done to Southerners who rebelled?
• What should Southern states be required to do to
  be re-admitted into the Union?
• What should be done for the Freedmen?

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Lincolns Ten Percent Plan

• When 10 of the states voters took an oath of
  loyalty to the Union, the state could form a new
  government and constitution one than banned
  slavery
• Offered amnesty to white Southerners, but not
  Confederate leaders
• Grant the right to vote African Americans who
  were educated or had served in the Union army
• Would not force Southern states to grant
  equal rights to African Americans

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Radical Republicans

• Opposed Lincolns Plan
• Felt Lincolns plan was too mild Confederates
  needed to be punished
• Felt Congress should control the Reconstruction
  policy

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Wade-Davis Bill

• Harsher than the Ten Percent Plan
• Majority of white males in a state had to swear
  loyalty to the Union
• Only white males who didnt take up arms could
  vote at the state constitutional convention
  former Confederates could not hold office
• Both plans abolished slavery
• Lincoln refused to sign the bill!

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• Freedmans Bureau
• Government agency (part of the War Department)
  created at the end of the Civil War to help
  former enslaved persons
• Distributed food and clothing and provided
  medical care
• Established schools, provided transportation, and
  helped to acquire land

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Backlash

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Lincoln Assassinated

• April 14, 1865
• Fords Theatre in Washington D.C.
• John Wilkes Booth captured and shot to death

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Andrew Johnsons Restoration Plan White men
alone must manage the South

• Only southern Senator to support the Union during
  the war
• Supported state rights and had no desire to help
  African Americans

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• First part of plan Most Southerners granted
  amnesty once they swore an oath of loyalty to the
  Union
• Second part of plan Wealthy landowners and
  Confederate officials could only be pardoned by
  Johnson

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• Third part of plan Johnson appointed governors
  and required states to hold elections for state
  constitutional conventions (African Americans not
  allowed to vote) states must ratified the 13th
  Amendment

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Reaction to Johnsons Plan

• Radical Republicans opposed the plan
• Congress refused to seat new Southern
  representatives thus not admitting the states
  back into the Union
• Passed the 14th Amendment
• Passed the Reconstruction Acts of 1867
• Impeached Johnson

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Black Codes

• Passed in 1865-1866 by Southern state
  legislatures
• Aimed to control freed men and women and to
  enable plantation owners to exploit African
  American workers
• To Northerners, codes reestablished slavery in
  disguise

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13th Amendment

• Passed in January, 1865
• Amendment abolished slavery in all parts of the
  Union

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14th Amendment

• Passed in June, 1866
• Congress wanted to ensure that African Americans
  would not lose the rights that the Civil Rights
  Act of 1866 granted (act ended the Black Codes
  and contradicted the 1857 Dred Scott decision)
• Amendment granted full citizenship to all
  individuals born in the USA

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14th Amendment

• No state could take away a citizens life,
  liberty, and property without due process of
  law, and that every citizen was entitled to
  equal protection of the laws
• Note The term citizen did not include Native
  Americans

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First and Second Reconstruction Acts of 1867

• Congress took control of the Reconstruction
  process
• 10 Southern states divided into five districts
  controlled by the military
• States now had to ratify the 14th Amendment to be
  readmitted into the Union
• African American males permitted to vote in state
  elections
• Former Confederate leaders could not hold office

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Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

• Republicans opposed Johnsons plan -- too lenient
• Passed the Tenure of Office Act -- limited
  Johnsons power
• Trial began March, 1868 -- one vote short of the
  2/3 majority needed for removal

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Election of 1868

• Most Southern states rejoined the Union by 1868
• Ulysses S. Grant, a
• Republican, won the
• election gaining 214 of
• 294 electoral votes

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15th Amendment

• Passed in February, 1869
• Amendment prohibited the state and federal
  governments from denying the right to vote to
  any male citizen because of race, color, or
  previous condition of servitude
• Note Women were not granted to vote until the
  19th Amendment (1920)

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African Americans in Government
Some African Americans begin to hold office in
the House of Representatives and the Senate
Blanche K. Bruce
Hiram Revels
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Scalawags and Carpetbaggers

• Scalawags Southern whites who supported
  Republican policies during Reconstruction
• Carpetbaggers name given to Northern whites who
  moved to the South after the Civil War and
  supported the Republicans

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Jim Crow Laws

• Freedom does not mean equality
• Laws created to keep races apart

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Plessy v. Fergusion

• 1896 court case that upheld Jim Crow laws and
  segregation
• Separate, but equal
  legal

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Jim Crow Laws
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Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan is the name of a number of past and
present fraternal organizations in the United
States that have advocated white supremacy and
anti-Semitism and in the past century,
anti-Catholicism, and nativism.
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• The Klan's first incarnation was in 1866
• Founded by veterans of the Confederate Army, its
  main purpose was to resist Congressional
  Reconstruction, and it focused as much on
  intimidating "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags" as
  on putting down the freed slaves
• It quickly adopted violent methods, and was
  involved in a wave of 1,300 murders of Republican
  voters in 1868

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• A rapid reaction set in, with the Klan's
  leadership disowning it, and Southern elites
  seeing the Klan as an excuse for federal troops
  to continue their activities in the South
• The organization was in decline from 1868 to
  1870, and was destroyed in the early 1870s by
  President Ulysses S. Grant's vigorous action
  under the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (also known as
  the Ku Klux Klan Act).

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Some Improvements as a Result of Reconstruction

• By 1870 about 4,000 schools were established with
  approximately 200,000 students -- but, most
  schools segregated by race
• Some African Americans were able to buy land and
  farm most turned to sharecropping -- rented
  land, housing, and materials from a landowner in
  return for a percentage of their crop for most,
  sharecropping was little better than slavery

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Reconstruction Ends

• Election of 1876 marked the end to
  Reconstruction Why?
• Radical leaders disappeared
• Racial prejudice throughout the country was
  accepted
• Corruption in Grants administration weakened
  the Republicans
• Congress passed the Amnesty Act -- Act pardoned
  most former Confederates, thus now allowed to
  vote now more support for the Democratic Party

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• Election of 1876 disputed Compromise of 1877 --
  Hayes (Republican) won by narrow margin, but
  compromise included various favors to the South
  including ending Reconstruction by the federal
  government

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Reconstruction

• Success
• Helped the South recover from the war and begin
  rebuilding its economy
• African Americans gained greater equality
• Failure
• South still a rural economy and most people still
  poor
• U.S., especially the South, created a segregated
  society
• The slave went free stood a brief moment in the
  sun then moved back again toward
  slavery. -W.E.B. DuBois