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1865-1877
• Analyze the impact of Reconstruction on Georgia and
other southern states emphasizing Freedmen’s Bureau,
sharecropping and tenant farming, Reconstruction
plans, 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the
Constitution, Henry McNeal Turner and black
legislators, and the Ku Klux Klan.
Conflict between US government and
the South on:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
How ex-Confederate states will be re-admitted into the
Union
How the Southern economy will recover from the war
How the rights of Free Blacks will be protected
How Whites and Blacks will relate to each other
Whether the South will be transformed or back to the way
it was before the Civil War
Who will influence the future of the South
**Thousands of freedmen (former
slaves) faced great hardships.
**Homeless, uneducated, and free
for the first time, the freedmen had
little more than the clothes on their
backs.
• The U.S. government established the Freedmen’s
Bureau to help the struggling freedmen.
• Its first commissioner was Union General Oliver O.
Howard, who later founded Howard University in
Washington, D.C.
• Its purpose was to help former slaves and poor whites
cope with everyday problems. It provided education
and training and social services.
1. Landowners provided land, a house, farming tools
and animals, seed, and fertilizer
2. Workers agree to give share of crops to owner
3. During growing season, landowners let farmers buy
food, medicine, clothing, and other supplies on
“credit”
4. Left sharecroppers deeper in debt year after year.
1. Tenant farmers owned some agricultural equipment
and farm animals
2. Tenant farmers paid a prearranged cash price or a
share of the crop
3. Tenant farmers made “small” profit to live on
1.
Workers were Black freedmen and poor Whites
2.
Lives filled with hard work and hardships
3.
Kept landowners farm in operations without paying
for labor
4.
Landowners also risk increased debt
5.
Contributed to ruining soil by growing cotton or
tobacco continuously
• The South is left in ruins.
• Major cities and farms are destroyed.
• The South’s labor force was gone (Slaves were freed
and ¼ of the white male population had been killed.)
• Transportation system is destroyed as well.
• Reconstruction is the time period immediately
following the Civil War.
• The South will be physically reconstructed
• The South will be socially reconstructed
Reconstruction Plans
are next!!!
• Northern leaders disagreed on how to treat the South.
• There were two major plans for reconstruction
•The Lincoln Plan
•The Congressional Plan
• Also called Presidential Reconstruction or Ten-Percent
Plan.
• Lincoln wanted to restore the South on friendly terms.
He wanted it to be quick and easy
• 1/10th of the state’s voters had to take an oath to obey the U.S.
constitution
• Each southern state had to create a new state government
• Congress and many northerners thought the South
should be punished
• Congress passed the Wade-Davis Bill that required
southerners to denounce the Confederacy and pledge
that they had never supported it.
• President Lincoln vetoed the Congressional Plan.
• On April 15, 1865, just days after the Civil War ends,
President Lincoln is assassinated.
• Andrew Johnson becomes president and tries to
commit to Lincoln’s plan of treating the South with
friendship.
• Johnson adds several requirements to his plan
including the denial of a general pardon to those
southerners who owned property worth more than
$20,000 or who held high military positions.
• Between 1865 and 1870, Congress passed three
amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
• 13th Amendment: Abolished slavery in the United States
• 14th Amendment: Gave citizenship to freed slaves
• 15th Amendment: Guaranteed all citizen the right to vote,
regardless of race or previous condition of servitude ( slavery)
• Although the 13th Amendment abolishes slavery, it did
not abolish discrimination. Many southern states,
including Georgia, pass a number of laws known as
Black Codes.
• Black Codes were designed to restrict the rights of the
freedmen.
• The 14th Amendment was a direct response to Black
codes.
• Southern states were required to ratify (accept) this
amendment to rejoin the Union.
• The 15th Amendment granted all MALE citizens the
right to vote.
• In the 1868 election for Georgia’s General Assembly, African
Americans were elected for the first time.
• Henry McNeal Turner, an educated minister, who had worked
for the Freedmen’s Bureau, was elected by the people.
• Soon after the election, Georgia’s Democrats succeeded in
expelling the black members from office. Some businesses in
Milledgeville, the state capital, refused to serve the black
General Assembly members.
• General John Pope, the military commander in Georgia said “ if
you won’t do business with these African-American leaders, I am
sure the people of Atlanta will.”
• The capital of Georgia was moved to Atlanta in 1868.
• Because Henry McNeal Turner protested being denied his
office, he received many threats from the Ku Klux Klan.
• The Klan was a secret organization that tried to keep freedmen
from exercising their new civil rights. It was started in Tennessee.
• It began as a social club for returning soldiers, but quickly
changed into a force of terror.
• One of the main focuses of this group was to keep AfricanAmericans from voting in elections.
• In 1870 Georgia became the last Southern state to be
readmitted to the United States.
• With Reconstruction over, Georgia could now focus on regaining
its prosperity.