Download Chapter 22 - Unabridged - The Ordeal of Reconstruction

Unit 3: Testing the New Nation
1820-1877
•
•
•
•
Chapter 16: The South and the Slavery Controversy, 1793-1860
Chapter 17: Manifest Destiny and Its Legacy, 1841-1848
Chapter 18: Renewing the Sectional Struggle, 1848-1854
Chapter 19: Drifting Toward Disunion, 1854-1861
• Exam: Chapters 16-19 – December 9th
• Chapter 20: Girding for War – The North and the South, 1861-1865
• Chapter 21: The Furnace of the Civil War, 1861-1865
• Chapter 22: The Ordeal of Reconstruction, 1865-1877
• Exam: Chapters 20-22 – December 23rd
• NO UNIT ESSAY
Chapter 22
The Ordeal of Reconstruction,
1865-1877
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as
God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to
bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle
and for his widow and orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just
and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural, March 4, 1865
I. The Problems of Peace
• The Rebels – To punish or not to punish?
• Jefferson Davis and other southern leaders
were arrested, but eventually released.
• All rebels leaders were finally pardoned by
President Andrew Johnson in 1868.
• Conditions of the “Old South”:
• Banks, businesses, factories, and the
transportation system was destroyed.
• The agriculture/slave society was
destroyed.
• Many white Southerners remained defiant.
Jefferson Davis
(top) and
Robert E. Lee
(bottom)
Charleston, South
Carolina, in Ruins, April
1865 Rebel troops
evacuating Charleston
blew up military supplies
to deny them to General
William Tecumseh
Sherman’s forces. The
explosions ignited fires
that all but destroyed the
city.
II. Freedmen Define Freedom
• Major Issues for African Americans:
• What would the new master-slave relationship
look like?
• Some minor violence from former slaves.
• Whites were forced to recognize the realities of
emancipation.
• Thousands of African Americans traveled for
the first time – test of freedom.
• Others searched for long-lost family members.
• Whole communities moved together in search
of opportunities.
• The church became the focus of many African
American communities.
• Emancipation meant education for many.
Educating Young Freedmen and Freedwomen, 1870s
Freed slaves in the South regarded schooling as the
key to improving their children’s lives and the
fulfillment of a long-sought right that had been
denied blacks in slavery. These well-dressed school
children are lined up outside their rural, one-room
schoolhouse alongside their teachers, both black and
white.
III. The Freedmen’s Bureau
• Freedmen’s Bureau was created March 3,
1865.
• GOAL: provide food, clothing, medical care,
and education both to freedmen and to white
refugees
• The bureau achieved its greatest successes in
education, but it struggled in many other
areas.
• EXAMPLE: attempted to settle former slaves on
forty-acre tracts confiscated from the Confederates.
• The white South resented the bureau and
continuously worked against it.
An anti-Freedman’s Bureau poster
VI. The Baleful Black Codes
• Black Codes were designed to regulate the affairs
of the emancipated blacks.
• Meant to ensure a stable and subservient labor force
• Extreme penalties for African Americans who
“jumped” their labor contracts.
• Committed them to work for the same employer for 1
year for very low wages.
• Some codes forbade a black person to serve on a jury
or own/lease land.
• No suffrage at all.
• Many former slaves were forced to earn a living as
sharecroppers, working for their former masters.
Sharecroppers Picking Cotton
Although many freed slaves found
themselves picking cotton on their
former masters’ plantations, they
took comfort that they were at least
paid wages and could work as a
family unit.
p468
p468
V. Presidential Reconstruction
• Lincoln’s 10 Percent Reconstruction Plan
• He believed the Southern states never legally withdrew from the Union.
• A state could be reintegrated into the Union when 10% of its population swore
allegiance and pledge to abide by emancipation.
• A new state government would then be created.
• Republicans feared the eventual restoration of the planter aristocracy.
• Radical Republicans rammed Wade-Davis Bill through Congress (1864).
• Required that 50% of a state’s voters take the oath of allegiance.
• Demanded stronger safeguards for emancipation than Lincoln’s plan.
• Lincoln “pocket-vetoed” the bill – Congress & President were split.
• Johnson followed Lincoln’s 10% Plan.
• Many Republicans felt as though he was allowing the planted aristocracy to regain
power.
Dates of Ratification
13th Amendment – 1865 – ended slavery
14th Amendment – 1868 – granted citizenship to black Americans
15th Amendment – 1870 – guaranteed suffrage to black men
IV. Johnson: The Tailor President
• Andrew Johnson: southerner who was NOT part of
the planter aristocracy.
• As a Congressman, he refused to secede with Tennessee.
• After Tennessee was recaptured by Grant’s forces, Johnson
was appointed war governor.
• Lincoln’s Union Party in 1864 needed an person who could
attract diverse votes, so he was added to the ticket.
• Was he qualified?
• He was capable intellectually, but he was tactless.
• He was a champion of states’ rights and the Constitution.
• He was a misfit:
• A Southerner who did not understand the North.
• A Tennessean who had earned the distrust of the South.
• Democrat who had never been elected president.
Andrew Johnson
17th President of the United States
Dates of Ratification
13th Amendment – 1865 – ended slavery
14th Amendment – 1868 – granted citizenship to black Americans
15th Amendment – 1870 – guaranteed suffrage to black men
VII. Congressional Reconstruction
• Many ex-Confederates entered Congress in
December, 1865.
• Many were Democrats, which enraged Radical
Republicans.
• The south came back with even more
representation: the slave was now five-fifths of a
person.
• Republicans had good reason to fear:
• Southerners might have joined with Northern
Democrats to take control of Congress and the White
House.
• President Johnson gave more cause for concern
when he announced that the rebellious states had
satisfied his conditions and were restored (1865).
Alexander Stephens
Vice-President of the Confederacy
Returned to Congress in 1865
VIII. Johnson Clashes with Congress
• February 1866: Johnson vetoed a bill extending the life of the
controversial Freedmen’s Bureau.
• In reaction, the Republicans passed the Civil Rights Bill of 1866:
• African Americans were given citizenship.
• Struck at the Black Codes
• Vetoed by President Johnson
• April: Congress overruled his veto and eventually created the 14th
Amendment (ratified 1868).
• Conferred civil rights, including citizenship, excluding the right to vote, on the
freedman.
• Reduced proportionately the representation of a state in Congress and the
Electoral College if it denied blacks the ballot
• Disqualified from federal and state office former Confederates who as federal
officeholders had once sworn “to support the Constitution of the United States”
• Guaranteed the federal debt, but not Confederate debts.
• Radical Republicans were disappointed that the 14th Amendment did not
grant the right to vote.
• All Republicans agreed no state should be admitted back into the Union without
first ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment.
An Inflexible President, 1866
This Republican cartoon shows
Johnson knocking African
Americans out of the
Freedmen’s Bureau by his veto.
Dates of Ratification
13th Amendment – 1865 – ended slavery
14th Amendment – 1868 – granted citizenship to black Americans
15th Amendment – 1870 – guaranteed suffrage to black men
IX. Swinging ‘Round the Circle with Johnson
• The battle between Johnson and Congress:
• There was controversy over “10 percent” governments in the south that had passed
the Black Codes.
• Johnson’s vetos had seemed to support these new southern governments.
• To radical Republicans, he seemed to be “unwinning” the Civil War.
• The crucial congressional elections of 1866 – Johnson needed more
Democrats in Congress.
• He “swung ‘round the circle” in 1866 to give inspiring speeches for Democratic
candidates.
• He actually did the opposite – Republicans won more than a 2/3 majority of both
houses of Congress.
• This meant they could easily override Johnson’s veto power, essentially nullifying the
power of the president.
X. Republican Principles and Programs
• By 1867, the Republicans had a vetoproof Congress and unlimited control of
Reconstruction policy.
• The Radicals: Charles Sumner in the
Senate, Thaddeus Stevens in the House
wanted radical social change in the
South.
• Moderate Republicans: respected states’
rights, but also preferred policies that
restrained the states from restricting
citizens’ rights.
• By 1867 both groups agreed on the
necessity to give black men the right to
vote.
Radicals: Thaddeus Stevens (left) & Charles Sumner
(right)
Note: Sumner is not being beat with a cane, which
was a sign that the north had won the Civil War.
XI. Reconstruction by the Sword
• The Reconstruction Act of 1867 divided the South into five military
districts.
• Each was commanded by a Union general and was policed by 20,000
union soldiers.
• Temporarily disenfranchised thousands of former Confederates.
• Stringent conditions for readmission: ratify 14th Amendment & grant
suffrage to black adult males.
• Moderates’ GOAL: create a population in Southern states that
would vote their states back into the Union and preserve civil rights
without Federal intervention – yeah right!
• Radical Republicans: only way to do this was 15th Amendment
(1870) which gave constitutional protection for the suffrage
provisions of the Reconstruction Act
• Question: Was military Reconstruction legal?
• Ex parte Milligan (1866): Supreme Court ruled that military tribunals
could not try civilians.
• Peacetime military rule seemed to contradict this ruling.
• When federal troops finally left a state, its government swiftly
passed back into the hands of white Redeemers, mostly Democrats
Southerners taking an oath of
loyalty as part of the requirement
for readmission to the Union.
Military Reconstruction, 1867
XII. No Women Voters
• The struggle for black freedom and the crusade
for women’s rights were one and the same in the
eyes of many women.
• After the war, Feminist leaders believed the time
had come for suffrage and equality, but they
were excluded from the 14th Amendment.
• When the 15th Amendment proposed to prohibit
denial of the vote on the basis of “race, color, or
previous condition of servitude,” Stanton and
Anthony wanted the word sex added to the list.
The dreams of Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (and
millions of other women) were not
fully answered as part of
Reconstruction.
XIII. The Realities of Radical Reconstruction in the South
• Moderates and many radicals first hesitated to grant
suffrage to the freedmen of the south.
• The 14th Amendment was the heart of the Republican
program for Reconstruction: it envisioned citizenship
without voting rights.
• 15th Amendment finally guaranteed suffrage.
• Northern states had withheld the ballot from their tiny
black minorities – hypocritical?
• Scalawags and carpetbaggers: allies of freedmen
• Scalawags—Southerners, former Unionists and Whigs
• Carpetbaggers—Northerners who packed their
possessions into a carpetbag suitcase and headed south
to seek personal power and profit in the “New South.”
Freedmen Voting, Richmond, Virginia,
1871 The exercise of democratic rights by
former slaves constituted a political
and social revolution in the South and
was bitterly resented by whites.
XIV. The Ku Klux Klan
• Deeply embittered by radical Reconstruction,
some Southern whites resorted to savage
measures.
• Secret organizations mushroomed, most notoriously
the Ku Klux Klan (founded TN, 1866)
• Used terror (flogging, mutilation, murder) against
African Americans.
• Force Acts (1870-1871) passed by Congress to
control this terrorism.
• Still, the white South openly defied the 14th and
15th Amendments.
• EX: Literacy tests, unfairly administered by whites to
the advantage of illiterate whites
XV. Johnson Walks the Impeachment Plank
• Radicals attempted to remove Johnson from
office with the Tenure of Office Act (1867).
• The new law required the president to secure the
consent of the Senate before he could remove his
appointees once they had been approved.
• Impeachment: Johnson abruptly dismissed
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in early 1868
without approval from the Senate.
• House immediately voted 126 to 47 to impeach
Johnson for “high crimes and misdemeanors” as
required by the Constitution.
• Charged him with various violations of the Tenure
of Office Act.
It won three Tony Awards and its film
adaptation won an Oscar.
The Impeached
Presidents of
the United
States Club –
VERY exclusive!
XVI. A Not-Guilty Verdict for Johnson
• The House conducted the prosecution, while Johnson
remained silent.
• Johnson’s attorneys argued that the president was testing
the constitutionality of the Tenure of Office Act by firing
Stanton
• May 16, 1868: by a margin of one vote, the radicals failed to
muster a two-thirds majority to remove Johnson.
• Several factors shaped the outcome:
• Fears of creating a destabilizing precedent
• Principled opposition to abusing the constitutional mechanism of
checks and balances
• Political considerations: Johnson would have been replaced by the
president pro tempore of the Senate, a truly radical Republican
who was not trusted by moderates.
President Andrew Johnson,
who was allowed to serve out
the rest of his term after
surviving impeachment.
XVII. The Purchase of Alaska
• Johnson’s administration achieved its most
enduring success in the field of foreign relations
by purchasing Alaska from Russia.
• Russia didn’t think Alaska was worth arguing
over/fighting for.
• 1867: Secretary of State William Seward signed a
treaty with Russia: bargain price!
• Why did the United States purchase Alaska?
• Russia had been friendly to the North during the Civil
War.
• America did not think they could offend their friend.
• The territory had furs, fish, and gold and other natural
resources, including oil and gas.
• So Congress accepted “Seward’s Folly.”
Alaska and the Lower Forty-eight States (a
size comparison)
XVIII. The Heritage of Reconstruction
• White Southerners: RESENTMENT ALL AROUND
• Republicans acted from a mixture of idealism and
political expediency: TAKE CONTROL AND HELP
FREEDMEN.
• In the end, Reconstruction didn’t really help the
freedmen and crushed the party in the South for a
century.
• Moderate Republicans were probably not realistic
enough with regards to how far the South would
go to resist change.
• Old South: Resurrection vs. Reconstruction?
Is This a Republican Form of
Government? by Thomas
Nast, Harper’s Weekly, 1876