Download America`s History Seventh Edition

James A. Henretta
Eric Hinderaker
Rebecca Edwards
Robert O. Self
America’s History
Eighth Edition
America: A Concise History
Sixth Edition
CHAPTER 15
Reconstruction
1865–1877
Modified by Teddi baker
Copyright © 2014 by Bedford/St. Martin’s
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1. What is the event taking place in this image? (Answer:
The image depicts a celebration that took place in
Baltimore, Maryland, in May 1870 to mark the passage
of the Fifteenth Amendment, which forbade the states
from denying citizens the right to vote on the grounds of
race, color, or “previous condition of servitude.”)
2. Who are the figures depicted at the top of the image
between the American flags? Why are they presented
there? (Answer: The figures are three African American
leaders—Martin Robison Delany, the first African
American commissioned field officer in the U.S. Army;
Frederick Douglass, a famed abolitionist and best-known
African American leader of the day; and Hiram Rhodes
Revels, the first African American to serve in the U.S.
Senate. The three are placed there to recognize their
accomplishments, but also to celebrate the major roles
they played in bringing an end to slavery and ratifying
the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution.)
3. What does the image tell us about the extent to
which Reconstruction changed the lives of African
Americans by 1870? What does it reveal about what
African Americans expected in the future? (Answer:
Participants in the parade include African Americans in
military uniforms, in suits and top hats, and in fancy
dresses, revealing that at least some had gained access
to jobs that paid wages sufficient to acquire such things.
The image also includes many whites who also appear to
be celebrating the amendment’s passage, illustrating
that it was not just a black celebration, but an American
one. These images suggest that African Americans
hoped that they would continue to advance toward full
inclusion in American society and the ability to pursue
their own version of the American dream. It suggests
that there was still great optimism about Reconstruction
in 1870.)
I. The Struggle for National
Reconstruction
A. Presidential Approaches: From Lincoln to Johnson
1. Lincoln– Had no guidance from the Constitution
for what to do if a state rebels; offered a Ten
Percent Plan (restoration to Union when 10 percent
of the state’s voters had sworn loyalty);
Confederate states rejected this plan, and
Congress proposed Wade-Davis Bill (required
loyalty of a majority of adult white men, no rebels in
government, and permanent disenfranchisement of
CSA leaders); Lincoln pocket-vetoed Wade-Davis;
his assassination plunged the nation into political
uncertainty.
• 2. Johnson – Was a self-styled “common man” from
Tennessee; was loyal to the Union during the war;
offered amnesty to all Southerners who swore
allegiance except CSA leaders; provisional governors
for South and asked for ratification of the Thirteenth
Amendment; Republicans disliked Johnson and called
him a traitor to the Union; enacted Black Codes in
the South (imposed penalties against unemployed
blacks, and set up efforts to take black children from
parents and apprentice them to former slave
holders); eased restrictions on ex-Confederates who
wanted reenter politics.
I. The Struggle for National
Reconstruction
B. Congress Versus the President
1. Freedmen’s Bureau– Anti-black violence
increased in the South under Johnson; in March 1865,
Freedmen’s Bureau had been established by
Congress to assist former slaves and was given direct
funding in early 1866; Civil Rights Act of 1866 declared
formerly enslaved people to be citizens and granted
them equal protection and rights of contract, with full
access to courts; bills were vetoed by Johnson;
Congress overrode vetoes and passed both; violence
increased further.
• 2. Radical Republicans and the Fourteenth
Amendment – Stated that “all persons born or
naturalized in the United States” were citizens;
1866 congressional elections gave Republicans
a 3-to-1 majority; Radical Republicans were
led by Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA).
I. The Struggle for National
Reconstruction
C. Radical Reconstruction
1. The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson– Radicals
passed strict stipulations for reentry to the Union; in
August 1867, Johnson suspended Secretary of War
Edwin Stanton, a Radical, and replaced him with
Ulysses Grant; Grant publicly criticized Johnson’s
decisions and resigned so Stanton could resume
position; political crisis within the administration ended
with Stanton barricading himself in his office; the House
introduced articles of impeachment against the
president; after an eleven-week trial in the Senate, the
vote for impeachment failed by one vote.
• 2. Election of 1868 and the Fifteenth Amendment –
Grant was viewed as a war hero and a political hero
for his dislike of Johnson’s policies; wanted
reconciliation between the states and won easily;
Republicans produced the Fifteenth Amendment:
federal government and states could not deny
citizens voting rights on the basis of race, color, or
“previous condition of servitude”; did not outlaw poll
taxes or literacy tests (used in northern and western
states to keep immigrants and poor from the polls).
I. The Struggle for National
Reconstruction
D. Woman Suffrage Denied
1. The movement splitssplits – Frustration felt
within the women’s movement when black men
were granted suffrage; northern men opposed
suffrage for women; Equal Rights Association
convention revealed some of the women’s
frustration (ex: Elizabeth Cady Stanton).
• 2. National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) – Women’s
rights supporters split over the issue of black male suffrage;
Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe organized American Woman
Suffrage Association (AWSA) to support Republicans’ efforts
for black men; Stanton and Susan B. Anthony created NWSA
to advocate for a suffrage amendment for women; legal
challenges to the Constitution ruled that while women were
citizens, they could still be denied suffrage by their states;
Wyoming Territory granted women voting rights in 1869; fears
were dispelled that women would “unsex” themselves or
abandon their families if they were allowed to vote. Women’s
suffrage could no longer be dismissed; it had become a
serious issue for national debate.
II. The Meaning of Freedom
A. The Quest for Land
1. Freed Slaves and Northerners: Conflicting
GoalsGoals – Gaps between the goals of freedmen
and of politicians; many Northerners believed that
wage labor would overtake the South; instead,
former slaves wanted land; Republicans did not
want to confiscate land, though former slaves felt
entitled to it; few states developed opportunities for
freedmen to purchase land; most were
economically vulnerable to discrimination.
• 2. Wage Labor and Sharecropping – Many former slaves had
to work for former owners; received a wage instead of food,
clothing, shelter; extremely low wages meant starvation;
some black workers organized; black men wanted to keep
black women out of the fields and away from possible sexual
harassment by white men; was a sense among former male
slaves that they now controlled their wives’ labor;
emancipation for black women was limited by familial
relations; system of sharecropping arose, in which freedmen
worked as renters, exchanging their labor for the use of land,
house, tools, and sometimes seed/fertilizer; as cotton prices
declined in the 1870s, more and more sharecroppers fell into
permanent debt, which became a pretext for forced labor, or
peonage; industrialization did not replace agriculture in the
South.
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1. Describe the central action of this image.
(Answer: Three generations of an African
American family look at the photographer as a
white man arrives in a horse-drawn cart.)
2. Consider the positive and negative attributes
of sharecropping. (Answer: For freedmen, this
system provided an opportunity to work land, in
hopes of turning a profit, but without the social
controls that slavery had created and enforced
[the foreman, the restrictions on marriage, fears
of being sold away from family members];
inability of freedmen to afford their own land
left their families at the constant mercy of the
landlord and the strength of the cotton harvest.)
3. What does the presence of a white man in
this image indicate about sharecropping in the
post-Civil War South? (Answer: Sharecropping,
like slavery, was a relationship between land
owners and laborers in the South that
contributed to further disharmony between the
races; an inherently unequal relationship
between he who owned the land and those who
worked it; the law was always on the side of the
white landlord.)
II. The Meaning of Freedom
B. Republican Governments in the South
1. Rejoining the Union – All southern states rejoined the Union
between 1868 and 1871; Republican governments included
African Americans, not accepted by the ex-Confederates;
twentieth-century historians viewed these governments as corrupt
and ignorant (racist notions of 19th-century observers); today’s
historians contend that they were progressive, eyeing reform in
education, family law, social services, commerce, and
transportation. In the late 1860s, the southern Republican Party
included whites and blacks; Union League was a secret
organization to pressure Congress for freedmen’s causes;
Freedmen’s Bureau played key role in creating colleges for African
Americans (Fisk, Tougaloo, and the Hampton Institute).
• 2. Scalawags and carpetbaggers – Ex-CSA men viewed the
southern Republican Party as illegitimate in the South;
referred to southern whites who supported Reconstruction as
“scalawags”; denounced northern whites as “carpetbaggers,”
self-seeking interlopers who moved to the South with
belongings in cheap suitcases called carpetbags; many who
came to the South did so for economic opportunity.
Southerners who supported the Republican Party wanted to
get rid of the planter-elite aristocracy that had ruled the
states before the Civil War; African Americans recruited
former slaves to be part of the political system. Many blacks
were elected to office throughout the South with plans to
abolish the Black Codes and corporal punishment; establish
humane prisons, hospitals and asylums; and dramatically
increase public education.
II. The Meaning of Freedom
C. Building Black Communities
1. ChurchesChurches – Aided by northern
missionaries and teachers, independent black
churches grew quickly; became center of black life
in the South; joined black congregations in the
North to create National Baptist Convention and
African Methodist Episcopal Church; operated as
schools and meeting halls; black ministers were
leaders of their communities.
• 2. “Race uplift” – Teachers and charity leaders
desired to build businesses and institutions to serve
black Americans; some wanted integration; others
wanted all-black schools/churches; Sen. Sumner (RMA) argued for desegregation of public
transportation, hotels, and churches in 1870;
opponents feared that shared public spaces would
lead to race mixing and intermarriage; Civil Rights Act
of 1875 required “full and equal” access to jury
service, transportation, and public accommodations,
irrespective of race.
III. The Undoing of Reconstruction
A. The Republicans Unravel
1. The Depression of 1873– Global economic crisis
triggered in part by Northern Pacific Railroad
declaring bankruptcy; crop prices fell, iron
manufacturing fell 50 percent, half of railroads were
bankrupt, and construction of new railways
stopped; Republican policies in the South became
too expensive (ex: Freedmen’s Bureau); northern
and foreign investors no longer had the money to
ensure success of reforms; corruption in industries
was increasing; failure of Freeman’s Savings and
Trust Company (est. 1865), had worked to help
former slaves, new churches, and charities in the
• 2. The Disillusioned Liberals – Revolt emerged
within Republican Party; led by “classical
liberals” who advocated free trade, smaller
government, and limited voting rights; formed
the Liberal Republican Party in 1872; the
second Grant administration had numerous
financial scandals, including Crédit Mobilier, a
sham corporation set up by Union Pacific
Railroad shareholders to profit on grants from
the federal government.
III. The Undoing of Reconstruction
B. Counterrevolution in the South
1. “Redemption” and Nathan Bedford Forrest–
Efforts by ex-Confederates to take back the South
from the Republican Party intensified amidst economic
crisis; terror campaign in which black politicians and
white supporters were hanged, beaten to death, and
shot; Forrest was a decorated Confederate general;
born poor, he became a big-time slave trader who
gained wealth through cotton industry; was known for
participating in the slaughter of black Union troops at
Fort Pillow, TN.
• 2. Ku Klux Klan – Organization of exConfederates who joined together in 1866; led
by Forrest in Tennessee to target Republicans
in the state; tied to the Democratic Party;
campaign of murder and terror throughout
the South.
• 3. Enforcement laws – Congress passed laws
to control the spread of violence; U.S. troops
occupied part of South Carolina to stop
outbreak of violence; Republican Party began
to suffer political losses in the South as fear
and violence increased.
III. The Undoing of Reconstruction
C. Reconstruction Rolled Back
1. The Supreme Court Rejects Equal Rights–
Slaughter-House Cases (1873): Court diminished the
power of the Fourteenth Amendment by arguing that it
offered only a few federal protections; civil rights
violations were viewed as state issues, not within the
federal government’s jurisdiction; 1883 Court struck
down the Civil Rights Act of 1875.
• 2. The Political Crisis of 1877 – Gov. Rutherford Hayes (R-OH)
versus Gov. Samuel Tilden (D-NY); Tilden called for “home
rule” for the South; Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana
were only states still ruled by Reconstruction governments;
Tilden led popular vote, Democratic Party fraud claimed,
Republicans called the three states as electoral victories for
Hayes; Democrats claimed victory in the three states for
Tilden; Congress had to debate two sets of electoral votes for
the three states; commission appointed, 8 Republicans 7
Democrats; commission gave Hayes the presidency. Hayes
offered federal money for education, economic growth,
internal improvements in the South. Hayes ordered Union
troops out of the South; Reconstruction ended.
• 3. Pacification of the South – Secret talks
agreed to a “pacification of the South”; Hayes
had publicly indicated his desire to offer
federal money for education, economic
growth, and internal improvement; Hayes
ordered Union troops out of the South;
Reconstruction ended.