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Chapter 17 Summary
Reconstruction and the New South
Section One - Reconstruction Plans
Reconstruction Period - time after the Civil War where the country needed to be repaired both
physically (cities, farms, factories and railroads were destroyed) and mentally (trust needed to
be reestablished between North and South and former slaves had to move towards citizenship)
Problems Faced After the War
● Southern states needed to be readmitted to the Union
● Economy and society in the South needed to be rebuilt
● Trust needed to be reestablished between North and South
● Freedmen (former slaves) were going to need homes, food, clothing, and jobs
● Country needed to recover from the assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Rival Reconstruction Plans
● Abraham Lincoln’s Plan (Ten Percent Plan) - Congress thought it was too soft.
○ Ten Percent Plan - When ten percent of the citizens of a former Confederate
state take an oath of loyalty to the United States, that state could come back into
the U.S. as long as they created a state constitution that banned slavery
○ Amnesty - Lincoln wanted to pardon all white Southerners who took the loyalty
oath except Confederate leaders
● Republican’s Plan (Wade-Davis Bill) - Lincoln vetoed it as too harsh
○ Sought to punish the South
○ To rejoin the Union, states had to
■ Have a majority of white males take the loyalty oath
■ Only white males who swore they did not fight against the Union could
vote in state elections
■ State had to ban slavery
■ Former Confederate leaders were banned from public office
● Andrew Johnson’s Plan
○ After Lincoln’s assassination at the hands of John Wilkes Booth, Vice-President
Andrew Johnson becomes President
○ Johnson was a Southerner who supported the North during the Civil War
○ Johnson’s Plan
■ Amnesty granted to most Southerners who took a loyalty oath
■ High ranking Confederates had to apply to the President for a pardon
■ Only loyal, pardoned whites could vote in state elections (Johnson was
against equal rights for blacks)
■ States had to ratify the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery
●
By the end of 1865, all former Confederate states except Texas, had new governments
and were ready to rejoin the Union.
Freedmen’s Bureau
● Freedmen’s Bureau (March, 1865) - created to help former slaves adjust to freedom
● Provided food, clothing and medical services and helped freed slaves find jobs/buy land
● Freedmen’s Bureau Schools - staffed mostly young white women from the North (15 to
20 years old), the schools held multi-age classes in literacy
●
Creation of Black Colleges - colleges and universities such as Atlanta University,
Howard University, Fisk University and Morehouse College were created to allow blacks
to get a college education
Section Two - Radicals in Control
African American Rights
● Race riots were held against blacks in the South. Black churches, neighborhoods, and
schools were burned in several cities
● Radical Republicans - Northerners in Congress who feel President Johnson’s
reconstruction plans were not going far enough to protect the freedmen (newly freed
blacks)
● Radical Republicans refuse to let newly elected Southerners to take their seats in
Congress in Washington, D.C.
Black Codes
● Black Codes - laws to control the freedom of free blacks in the South
● In many areas of the South, blacks not having a job (blacks were arrested and taken
to “labor camps” as punishment to work for no pay just like slavery). Couoldn’t have
guns or buy land in certain places.
● Civil Rights Act of 1866 - Radical Republican law that granted full citizenship to African
Americans and the power to enforce this was given to the federal government. This law
overturned black codes and the Dred Scott Case (1857)
● President Johnson vetoes Radical Republican bills because the Radical Republicans did
not allow the Southerners to vote in Congress and that Congress was overstepping its
powers and taking away local control.
● Congress overrode President Johnson’s vetoes
Fourteenth Amendment
● Congress feared that the Civil Rights Act would be overturned in Congress, so they
enacted the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868
● Fourteenth Amendment - Full citizenship given to all people born in the United States
except Native Americans. A way to remember it would be, “Blacks and whites have
equal rights.”
● Under the Fourteenth Amendment, if a state prevented a male citizen frmo voting,
the state could lose some of its representation in Congress. This justifies holding
Southerners out of Congress during the Reconstruction Era.
Republican Victory
● In the Congressional elections of 1866, President Johnson campaigned hard against the
Radical Republicans
● The Republicans easily won and took aim at President Johnson and his ideas
Radical Reconstruction
● President Johnson could veto the bills of the Radical Republicans, but they had enough
votes to override him
●
Checks and balances are upset - too much power in the hands of the Congress.
Reconstruction Acts of 1867
● Reconstruction Acts (1867) - threw out 10 state governments in the South that refused
to approve the 14th Amendment and created 5 military districts run by the army. Also
guaranteed black males the right to vote and banned Confederate officials from holding
political office. States had to create new constitutions and ratify the 14th Amendment to
be let back in the U.S. (and get seats in Congress)
● Many white Southerners refused to vote, but blacks did vote
● By 1870, all ten banned states were back in the Union (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida,
Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, Virginia, and Texas)
Impeaching the President
● President Johnson disapproved of Radical Reconstruction and he controlled the military
as commander-in-chief
● Congress feared Johnson would permit the military to not enforce their new laws
● Tenure of Office Act - Congress passes this law that it knows Johnson will not tolerate.
It bans him from firing officials, including his cabinet, without Senate approval. This is
seemingly unconstitutional.
● President Johnson fires Secretary of War Edwin Stanton without Senate approval. This
violated the Tenure of Office Act
● Impeachment - the House of Representatives formally impeached (charged with a
crime) President Johnson. He would now have to have a case in front of the Senate,
who would act as his jury. Should /3’s of the Senators vote guilty, Johnson would be
removed from office
● President Andrew Johnson remained as president by one vote - many moderate
Republicans refused to vote to impeach for what they considered differences of opinion not an actual law being broken.
● This was the first time a U.S. president was impeached (Clinton was the second)
● Johnson finished out his term in March of 1869 a powerless leader
Fifteenth Amendment
● Republicans chose Ulysses S. Grant as the President in 1868, who wins easily over
Democrat Horatio Seymour
● Fifteenth Amendment - Prohibits state or federal governments from denying the right to
vote because of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
● Republicans thought that blacks now would be able to protect their rights and privileges.
This turned out to be too optimistic.
Section Three - The South During Reconstruction
Reconstruction Politics
● At first, the Republican party controlled the South after the Civil War because of voting
blacks
●
Hiram Revels - First black person to be elected to Senate (1870)
Scalawags and Carpetbaggers
● Scalawags - Southern whites who who supported Republicans ideas for reconstruction
in the South. Viewed as traitors.
● Carpetbaggers - Northerners who moved South after the war to help rebuild and
supported Republican reconstruction plans. Named after the cheap luggage they
carried.
Resistance to Reconstruction
● Most Southern whites opposed efforts to expand rights of blacks.
● Ku Klux Klan - secret society who used fear and violence to oppose black rights and
those who supported them. Killed thousands of blacks and white supporters, burnt
schools, churches, and homes. Very powerful as many leaders of towns were members
and people were afraid to testify against them.
Education and Farming
● Blacks created their own schools in addition to those the Freedmen’s Bureau created
● In the late 1870s, 50% of white children and 40% of black children in the South were
enrolled in schools.
● Most blacks failed to get their own land because either they couldn’t afford it or whites
would not sell to them.
● Sharecropping - a system of farming in which a landowner rents a plot of land to a
sharecropper (farmer). In return, the sharecroppers had to provide a percentage of their
crops to the landowners.
● Often, there was little money left after paying the landowners, and often times, white
landowners cheated blacks out of money by falsely reporting debts to keep the
sharecroppers coming back year after year to work off debt.
● Sharecropping was not much better than slavery.
Section Four - Change in the South
The End of Reconstruction
● By the 1870s, many Northerners were beginning to lose interest in Reconstruction
● Mistreatment of blacks was on the rise as the North lost focus on the South
● Amnesty Act (1872) - allowed most former Confederates to vote again, effectively
allowing racist leaders to gain power in the South
● Ku Klux Klan (KKK) - uses elections to get its supporters and members in positions of
leadership in the South. In many towns, you had no chance as a businessman unless
you were a member of the KKK. These Democrats terrorized Republican voters.
● Panic of 1873 - Financial issues hit the U.S. during the Grant administration, causing
many Americans to want a change in leadership
● Federal Reconstruction Ends (1877) - President Rutherford B. Hayes tells people the
federal government would no longer try to influence Southern society.
Change in the South
● Blacks’ dreams for justice ends at the close of Reconstruction at the ends of the 19th
century
● Voting Restrictions - stopped blacks for voting and put racist white Democrats in charge
of the South. These laws do not technically discriminate against voters based on race
and therefore the 14th and 15th Amendments did not apply.
○ Poll Tax - Many Southern states required voters to pay a fee to vote, eliminating
poorer people (most blacks) from voting
○ Literacy Test - required voters to read and explain a portion of the state
constitution. Since many blacks couldn’t read, they were not permitted to vote.
Blacks were often given more difficult portions to read than whites.
○ Grandfather Clause - because poll taxes and literacy tests also eliminated many
potential white voters, it was decided that if people had a grandfather that voted,
they would not have to pass the literacy tests or pay the poll taxes.
○ KKK - terrorized potential black voters with violence and threats to stay away on
election day.
● No black voters in the South meant all white racists were elected and able to create
racist rules for society all over again.
Jim Crow Laws
● Segregation - separation of the races
● By the 1890s, segregation was common in the South in most places, both public and
private
● Jim Crow laws - Laws that required the separation of blacks and whites in public places
● Plessy vs. Ferguson (1894) - Supreme Court case in which Homer Plessy, a black
passenger on a Louisiana train was arrested for sitting in the “whites only” car. Supreme
Court decided that Jim Crow laws were legal as long as the facilities were “separate, but
equal.” Plessy lost the case and segregation in the South would now become the law of
the land, supported by the courts. The case wouldn’t be overturned until the Brown vs.
Board of Education case in 1954.
● Lynching - hanging of a person without trial or sometimes even a reason. Lynchings
became frequent in the South as African-Americans suspected of crimes or of some type
of “misbehavior” would attacked by white mobs (often with KKK backing).
Reconstruction’s Impact
● Reconstruction was both a success and a failure
○ Successes ■ Southern economy rebuilt
■ Education put in place for both blacks and whites for some
■ Blacks received temporary rights in government and society
○ Failures ■ End of Reconstruction saw blacks lose rights
■ Sharecropping is the main job of Southern blacks (no better than slavery)
■
■
Governments of South run by racist leaders and supported by the courts
No immediate future for blacks
W.E.B. DuBois, an African-American civil rights leader, wrote, “The slave went free; stood a
brief moment in the sun; then moved back towards slavery.”