Download Reconstruction - Elizabeth School District

Reconstruction
What it was like in the South…
Civil War 1861-1865
• Fought between the United States and the
Confederate States of America
• Caused primarily by Sates’ Rights and
slavery in the Southern states and
• The United States defeated the
Confederate States of America
The Civil War, 1861-1865
1. How to rebuild the
South?
2.How to bring
Southern states back
to the United States?
3.How to bring former
slaves into the United
States as free
people?
Major questions following
the Civil War
• Led by Thaddeus
Stevens and Charles
Sumner
• Abolitionists before the
war
• Critical of Johnson’s
Reconstruction Plan
• Determined to reform
the country based on
equal rights
• Civil Rights Act of
1866
• “equal benefits of all
laws enjoyed by white
citizens”
• Tried to extend the
freedmen’s bureau
Radical Republicans
In order to rejoin the Union What really happened
• Southern state could rejoin
the union once it had
written a new state
constitution.
• Elected a new state
Government
• Repealed its act of secession
• Canceled war debts
• And ratified the 13th
Amendment
• Radical Republicans
insisted
• Southern states must grant
freedmen the right to vote
• Johnson denied this idea
• Would have an fierce
battle for the election of
1866
• Radical Republicans and
congress would
eventually take over
Reconstruction
Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan
1867 Reconstruction Plan
• Reconstruction acts
• Acts outline how the
process for states to become
part of union again
• South is divided into 5
military districts
• Each controlled by federal
troops
Congress and
Reconstruction
• Election boards in each state
would register male voters both
black and white
• Only those who supported the
Union
• Men who supported the
confederacy where not allowed to
vote
• Voters elected people to write
new state constitution
• Voters elected state legislatures
which were required to ratify
the 14th Amendment
• 15th Amendment
• “The right of citizens … to
•
vote shall not be denied or
• Abolished all forms
abridged by the US or by any
slavery in the USA forever
state on account of race,
color or previous condition of
• 14th Amendment
servitude”
• Grants citizenship to all
former slaves
• Right to due process
• Equal protection under the
law
13th Amendment
Three Big Amendments
• Grant vs. Seymour
• White Southerners
• Poor famers get the vote
• Confederate supporters can’t
vote
• Southern Democrats
• Newly registered cast first
ballots in 1868
• Loose badly, out numbered
badly
• Freedmen and poor farmers
1st time voting
• Most became Republicans
• Scary time to be a voter
• Threatened for voting
Voting and 1868
Johnson and Grant President
• Voters choose delegates
• ¼ of delegates are
African Americans who
are elected
• Banned racial
discrimination and
guaranteed the vote for
African Americans
• 1/5 of elected officials
Republicans and
Freedmen
Southern State
Governments
• At first supported taxes
on public schools
• Most schools were
segregated even though
that was against the law
• New Government wanted
to increase the economy
• Unfortunately $ that was
suppose to go to roads and
rebuilding fell into corrupt
hands
• Industry and trade led to the
rebirth of some southern
cities most of the South still
remained dependent on
agriculture
Rebuilding
• Planters (owners of the
land) divided their
property into small
plots that they rented to
workers (tenant
framers) who would
grow crops on that land.
• Some cases tenant
farmers would pay a
share of their crop as
rent instead of cash
Tenant Farmers
• Looked promising to both
blacks and whites
• Hope was to work hard
enough to earn enough
money to eventually buy
their own land
• Led instead to a life of
debt
• Borrow money from land
owner to buy the food,
tools, and supplies they
needed
• Never made enough
money to ever pay back
their debt
Share Cropping
Good
• Travel
• Right to get married
• Pursue what use to be denied to
them
• Education, reading, jobs, moving,
land, politics
• Freedmen’s Bureau
• Assists former salves and poor
whites living in the South
• Food, clothing, education and
medical care
• Republicans and Politics
• Tuskegee Institute -1st black
College
Bad
• Black Codes
• Restricts blacks freedom
opportunities
• Spell out rights
• Ensures a workforce
• Maintains social order
• End of Reconstruction
• Democrats regain the south
• Poll taxes, literacy tests
• Jim Crow Laws
• Segregated black from whites
• “Separate but equal”
Life in the South for Blacks
Ku Klux Klan
White Southern Democrats
• Created by white
supremacists
• “opposed to negro
equality, both social and
political”
• Terrorized blacks and
white republicans
• New Government illegal
because so many
confederate supporters
couldn’t vote or run for
office
• Raising taxes to pay for
schools and other
improvements
• Included burning of school,
attacks on the Freedmen’s
Bureau, murder, lynching,
etc.
• Lost land because of taxes
• Didn’t accept the idea
that slaves were free
Resistance in the South
• Southern states
become more
democratic
• Gains that blacks
made in years passed
become limited
• Northern states and
people lose interest
• Jim Crow laws
• Segregation in the
South
• Tuskegee Institute
• Amnesty- pardon of
former Confederates
• Lynching's KKK
• Plessey v. Ferguson
Reconstruction Ends 1877