The Reconstruction Era

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The Reconstruction Era
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The Nation Moves Toward Reunion

• Union politicians
• Debated on Reconstruction
• Lincoln
• Goal was to reunify the nation
• Some
• Harsh Reconstruction
• Punish the South

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The Freedmens Bureau Aids Southerners

• designed to aid freed slaves and relieve the
  Souths immediate needs
• Delivered food and healthcare
• Began to develop a public school system for both
  black and white southerners
• Reunite families separated by slavery

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President and Congress Clash

• Lincoln 10 Percent Plan
• A state could be re-entered back into the Union
  if 10 percent of the voters of the 1860 election
  gave an oath of loyalty
• Radical Republicans
• Favored punishment
• Wade-Davis Bill (pocket-veto) did not sign it
• Iron-clad oath 50 (future loyalty and past
  purity)

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Andrew Johnson

• 13th Amendment south had to accept it
• Ended slavery
• New president promised to uphold the states
  rights
• Freedmens Bureau vetoed
• Civil Rights Act vetoed
• Tenure of Office Act vetoed
• Fired Secretary of War Stanton
• Impeached
• Act of bringing charges against an official
• Senate narrowly voted not to remove him

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The Reconstruction South

• Radical Republicans
• Divided the South into 5 military districts
• Under the command of Union generals
• Condition of readmission
• Required to grant the vote of African American
  men
• Passed 14th Amendment
• Guaranteed full citizenship and rights for every
  person born in the U.S.

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African Americans Gain Political Rights

• Radical Reconstruction
• Many white southerners were not eligible to vote
• African American men
• Signed up to vote
• 1868
• Many southern states had elected officials and
  were dominated by a strong Republican Party
• 15th Amendment
• No laws guaranteed the right to vote to African
  Americans
• No male citizen could be denied the right to vote

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Freedmen Rebuild Their Lives

• First time
• Celebrate their marriages
• Make choices on where to reside
• Freed women
• Care for families and leave field labor
• Importance of education

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The Ku Klux Klan Uses Terror Tactics

• Used terror and violence against African
  Americans and their white supporters
• Chief goal of Klan attacks
• Keep African Americans from voting

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Reconstruction Comes to an End

• After a decade
• Northerners began to lose interest
• 1873
• Series of bank failures
• Political scandals during the Grant
  administration
• 1871
• Troops were withdrawn
• 1872
• Congress dissolved the Freedmens Bureau

12
Southern Democrats Regain Power

• One by one
• Southern states reinstated wealthy white southern
  men as governors and sent former Confederate
  leaders to the U.S. Congress
• 1874 Elections
• Republicans lost control of the House of
  Representatives

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Black Codes

• Tried to restrict the movement of the new
  freedmen
• Vagrancy
• Prohibited to enter towns without permission
• Could not marry whites

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Election of 1876 Ends Reconstruction

• Presidential election
• Signaled the end of Reconstruction
• Democratic Candidate
• Samuel Tilden
• More popular votes
• Republican Candidate
• Rutherford B. Hayes
• Electoral vote in dispute
• Florida South Carolina Louisiana
• Congressional committee declared Hayes the winner
• Promised to remove troops from the South

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Historians Evaluate Reconstruction

• Was Reconstruction a success or failure?
• Some things were changed forever
• Radical Republicans failed in most of their aims
• Political rights
• Failed
• Voting Rights for African Americans
• Taken away
• De jure segregation
• Legal separation of the races

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What were the Reconstruction goals of the Radical
Republicans?

• To bring the South back into the Union through
  punitive reorganization

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What political gains did African Americans make
in the early phases of Reconstruction?

• They became full citizens with the attendant
  rights, including, for adult males, the right to
  vote

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How did the influence of Radical Reconstruction
in the South erode?

• Norths waning interest in the Reconstruction
• A national economic downturn
• Political scandal in the Grant administration
• Emergence of white Democratic power in the South