Download The Era of Reconstruction

The Era of Reconstruction
The Plan Changes
Five days after the war ended, President Lincoln was shot and killed. He had planned to bring the nation
together quickly and fairly. After his death, the national government would treat the South more harshly.
The Civil War left much of the South in ruins. Fighting had destroyed houses and farms. Union armies had
burned cities and killed or wounded many people.
The end of slavery struck another serious blow to the Southern economy. That economy had been largely built
on farming. And much of that farming depended on the work of slaves. Moreover, many white landowners had
spent much of their wealth on buying slaves. Now the slaves were free. The slaveholders had lost their
investment.
The term reconstruction means “the act of rebuilding.” The period in U.S. history called Reconstruction refers
to the years from 1865 to 1877, following the Civil War. During this time, the U.S. government took control of
the states that had seceded. President Lincoln planned to reunite the country “with malice toward none, and
charity for all.” When Lincoln was assassinated, the job of rebuilding the nation fell to the new president,
Andrew Johnson. He wanted to admit the former Confederate states back into the Union quickly. But his plan
differed from Lincoln’s.
The Blacks Codes
White planters in the South wanted back the life they had had before the war. To reach this goal, white
legislatures passed laws called “Black Codes.” These laws limited the rights of black people freed under the
Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Freedmen, or former slaves, could not own or even rent land. They
could not meet together after sunset. They had to carry written proof that they had a job. They were not allowed
to leave their jobs before a contract ended. If they did not have jobs, black people could be arrested and fined.
They could be forced to work for planters to pay off their fines. When freedmen resisted these laws, they were
beaten and sometimes killed. New all-white societies, such as the Ku Klux Klan, used terror and violence to
enforce the Black Codes.
Not all white southerners supported the Black Codes. Some people tried to help African Americans. Other
southerners called them scalawags, or “worthless people.”
President Johnson wanted to make it easy for the southern states to rejoin the Union. He pardoned many former
Confederate leaders. That had not been part of Lincoln’s plan. Johnson thought the states should decide on the
rights of freedmen. Because the Black Codes were state laws, he did not believe the federal government should
take action to stop them.
In the South, tensions grew worse. Several riots targeted black people and the white people who were trying to
help them. In one riot, 37 men were killed and over a hundred injured. The police were among the rioters.
President Johnson’s plan was not working.
Congress Takes Control
Members of Congress were furious. They did not want the same people who had led the South before and
during the war back in power. In reaction to the Black Codes and rising violence, Congress seized control of
Reconstruction from Johnson.
Congressmen then took action to protect the rights of freedmen. They wrote the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments. These gave African Americans the rights of citizenship—including the vote.
Next, Congress divided the South into military zones and sent the army to keep order. With U.S. soldiers in
place, African Americans were able to vote for the first time. These new black voters helped to elect black men.
They also voted to put white men in office. These included scalawags from the South and northerners, called
carpetbaggers, who had come to the South after the war.
The newly elected governments overturned the Black Codes. They also set about rebuilding the South. They
built roads. They opened schools—often the first public schools in the area. And they laid tracks for railroads.
To fund these improvements, the government taxed white landowners. The landowners hated the new
governments.
African Americans yearned for a better life. They longed for land of their own. One short-lived policy offered
every freedman’s family 40 acres of land and a mule. But soon after, the government gave the land back to the
original owners. African Americans also wished for the same rights as other citizens. They sought education for
their children. They wanted fair wages for their work. And they hoped the law would protect them as it did
other Americans. Reconstruction brought such dreams to 4 million former slaves.
Sharecropping
Some white Southerners wanted to make the new situation work. Plantation owners had always depended on
slaves to work their fields. But now slavery was a thing of the past. The men and women that planters had once
treated as property were free.
For three years, the freed slaves would work the planter’s land. In return for this work, they would get a share of
the crop. Then, after three years, the planter would divide the fields. The former slaves would rent sections of
the land. They would be their own bosses and raise their own crops. They would pay for the land, seed, and
tools by giving the landowner a share of their crops. They would keep what was left of their crops. Many former
slaves agreed to this system. It became known as sharecropping.
But in some ways, life for sharecroppers did not change all that much. Again, African Americans worked the
land for a white landowner. As before, they used his tools and animals and planted his seeds. They lived in
shabby houses that slaves had lived in a few years earlier.
Sharecroppers kept a part of the crop they grew. Usually, this was not enough to live on. Often, the white
landowner did not give them a fair price for their crop. And the landowner charged the freedmen very high rates
for the use of his farming tools and equipment and for other supplies. In many cases, sharecroppers ended the
year owing money to the landowner.
Reconstruction Ends
In 1877, Reconstruction came to an end. The U.S. Army left the South. Soon, wealthy southern whites regained
power. White Southerners began to use fear to keep African Americans from voting. The Ku Klux Klan and
other terror groups could now act freely. They became strong all across the South. And Southern states passed
laws to separate blacks from whites and to limit the rights of African Americans. These became known as Jim
Crow laws. They prevented African Americans from voting. They passed new laws to create a segregated, or
separated, society. The sharecropping system became widespread. Black people again worked on land owned
by white men, and were paid with a share of the crops they had raised. This system kept many black workers in
debt to white landowners.
For almost 100 years after Reconstruction ended, life remained hard for African Americans. They struggled
against discrimination. They did not share the equal rights and opportunities guaranteed by the amendments to
the Constitution. They suffered from the lasting hardships left by slavery, the bitter Civil War, and the end of
Reconstruction.
Then, in the 1960s, hope returned. Black and white people from all over the nation joined a movement to fight
for equal rights for all Americans. And in a small Alabama town called Selma, Martin Luther King Jr. led a
civil rights march to regain the right to vote for black people. As a result, President Lyndon Johnson signed the
Voting Rights Act in 1965. The Civil Rights movement made progress toward fulfilling the dreams first held by
freedmen during Reconstruction.