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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