Download Reconstruction - 8th Grade History

Reconstruction
By Mrs. Way- 8th Grade History
Reconstruction Under Lincoln
• Lincoln wanted to treat the South with respect
• Promised to reunify the nation “with malice (harm) toward
none, with charity for all”
• Came up with the Ten Percent Plan
• Must take an oath of loyalty to Union
• When 10 % of voters took the oath, the state could form a new
government
• State constitutions must ban slavery
• Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau
• Federal agency set up to assist former enslaved people
• Set up schools and hospitals for African Americans and gave
food, clothes, and fuel
Radical Republicans
• Those who thought the South should be punished.
• Wanted a more radical or extreme approach
• Proposed the Wade-Davis Bill which would make it
more difficult for Southern States to rejoin the
Union.
• Although the Bill passed Congress, President
Lincoln refused to sign it.
Reconstruction Under
Johnson
• When Lincoln was killed, Vice-President Democrat
Andrew Johnson became the president
• Johnson believed:
• Reconstruction was the job of the president, not Congress
• Johnson’s main goal was to have the Southern states
readmitted to the Union as quickly as possible
• States had to accept the supreme power of the federal
government
• States must adopt the 13th Amendment
• Did not attempt to meet the needs of formerly enslaved
people by helping them to gain land, voting rights, or equal
protection under the law.
Black Codes
• In response to the 13th Amendment, Southern states
passed laws known as black codes
•
Limited the freedom of former slaves
•
Black codes were very similar to slave codes
• African Americans were forbidden from:
• Owning guns
• Voting
• Serving on juries
• Running for political office
• And worse…...
Reconstruction According to
Congress- “Radical Reconstruction”
• Radical Republicans in Congress were not happy
about the Black Codes
• Demanded full and equal citizenship for African
Americans
Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866- a bill that
supported the rights granted to all citizens
Johnson chose to veto the bill (stop it from becoming
a law) because he was against giving African
Americans full citizenship
Bill became a law because House and Senate
overrode the veto
• Congress proposed the Fourteenth Amendment in
1866
• Stated that all people born in the United States were
citizens, had the same rights, and were to be granted
equal protection under the laws
• (excluded Native Americans on tribal lands)
Declared that any state that kept African Americans from
voting would lose representatives in Congress, ,meaning
that Southern states would lose power
Johnson refused to support the Fourteenth Amendment
• Republicans in Congress overruled and passed the
Reconstruction Acts of 1867
• Congress controlled Reconstruction by placing troops
from the US army in the Southern states
• Before Southern states could rejoin the Union, they
must:
• 1. Approve new state constitutions that gave the vote to all
adult men, including African Americans
• 2. Ratify the Fourteenth Amendment
By 1870, voters in all the Southern states had approved their
new constitutions, and former Confederate states were let
back into the Union
• Congress impeached Andrew Johnson in February
of 1868. Failed to convict by one vote, but Johnson
did not seek a second term
• Republican Ulysses S. Grant became the 18th
President
• Fifteenth Amendment- was ratified in 1870
• Stated that all US citizens could vote regardless of race,
color, or previous condition or servitude (excluding
Native Americans on tribal lands and women)
Life in the South During
Reconstruction
• Carpetbaggers- Nickname for white Northerners
who rushed to the South after the war
• These Northerners were wrongfully accused of
seeing only wealth or political power and to take
advantage of the defeated South
• Earned this nickname from their travel carpet bags
• Scalawags- Derogatory nickname for southern
whites who supported Radical Reconstruction
following the Civil War
Sharecropping
• Many former slaves had to take work wherever they
could get it
• Since cash was scarce after the war, the landowner
and the renter often split the proceeds from selling
the crop raised on the rented land
• Most North Carolina African Americans families
quickly became sharecroppers during Reconstruction
Ku Klux Klan
• Secret, racist terrorist organization that spread across
the South
• By 1868, the Klan existed in every state
• As many as 40,000 white North Carolinians may
have belonged to the Ku Klux Klan