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The Era of Reconstruction The Plan Changes Five days after the war ended, President Lincoln was shot and killed. He had planned to bring the nation together quickly and fairly. After his death, the national government would treat the South more harshly. The Civil War left much of the South in ruins. Fighting had destroyed houses and farms. Union armies had burned cities and killed or wounded many people. The end of slavery struck another serious blow to the Southern economy. That economy had been largely built on farming. And much of that farming depended on the work of slaves. Moreover, many white landowners had spent much of their wealth on buying slaves. Now the slaves were free. The slaveholders had lost their investment. The term reconstruction means “the act of rebuilding.” The period in U.S. history called Reconstruction refers to the years from 1865 to 1877, following the Civil War. During this time, the U.S. government took control of the states that had seceded. President Lincoln planned to reunite the country “with malice toward none, and charity for all.” When Lincoln was assassinated, the job of rebuilding the nation fell to the new president, Andrew Johnson. He wanted to admit the former Confederate states back into the Union quickly. But his plan differed from Lincoln’s. The Blacks Codes White planters in the South wanted back the life they had had before the war. To reach this goal, white legislatures passed laws called “Black Codes.” These laws limited the rights of black people freed under the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Freedmen, or former slaves, could not own or even rent land. They could not meet together after sunset. They had to carry written proof that they had a job. They were not allowed to leave their jobs before a contract ended. If they did not have jobs, black people could be arrested and fined. They could be forced to work for planters to pay off their fines. When freedmen resisted these laws, they were beaten and sometimes killed. New all-white societies, such as the Ku Klux Klan, used terror and violence to enforce the Black Codes. Not all white southerners supported the Black Codes. Some people tried to help African Americans. Other southerners called them scalawags, or “worthless people.” President Johnson wanted to make it easy for the southern states to rejoin the Union. He pardoned many former Confederate leaders. That had not been part of Lincoln’s plan. Johnson thought the states should decide on the rights of freedmen. Because the Black Codes were state laws, he did not believe the federal government should take action to stop them. In the South, tensions grew worse. Several riots targeted black people and the white people who were trying to help them. In one riot, 37 men were killed and over a hundred injured. The police were among the rioters. President Johnson’s plan was not working. Congress Takes Control Members of Congress were furious. They did not want the same people who had led the South before and during the war back in power. In reaction to the Black Codes and rising violence, Congress seized control of Reconstruction from Johnson. Congressmen then took action to protect the rights of freedmen. They wrote the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. These gave African Americans the rights of citizenship—including the vote. Next, Congress divided the South into military zones and sent the army to keep order. With U.S. soldiers in place, African Americans were able to vote for the first time. These new black voters helped to elect black men. They also voted to put white men in office. These included scalawags from the South and northerners, called carpetbaggers, who had come to the South after the war. The newly elected governments overturned the Black Codes. They also set about rebuilding the South. They built roads. They opened schools—often the first public schools in the area. And they laid tracks for railroads. To fund these improvements, the government taxed white landowners. The landowners hated the new governments. African Americans yearned for a better life. They longed for land of their own. One short-lived policy offered every freedman’s family 40 acres of land and a mule. But soon after, the government gave the land back to the original owners. African Americans also wished for the same rights as other citizens. They sought education for their children. They wanted fair wages for their work. And they hoped the law would protect them as it did other Americans. Reconstruction brought such dreams to 4 million former slaves. Sharecropping Some white Southerners wanted to make the new situation work. Plantation owners had always depended on slaves to work their fields. But now slavery was a thing of the past. The men and women that planters had once treated as property were free. For three years, the freed slaves would work the planter’s land. In return for this work, they would get a share of the crop. Then, after three years, the planter would divide the fields. The former slaves would rent sections of the land. They would be their own bosses and raise their own crops. They would pay for the land, seed, and tools by giving the landowner a share of their crops. They would keep what was left of their crops. Many former slaves agreed to this system. It became known as sharecropping. But in some ways, life for sharecroppers did not change all that much. Again, African Americans worked the land for a white landowner. As before, they used his tools and animals and planted his seeds. They lived in shabby houses that slaves had lived in a few years earlier. Sharecroppers kept a part of the crop they grew. Usually, this was not enough to live on. Often, the white landowner did not give them a fair price for their crop. And the landowner charged the freedmen very high rates for the use of his farming tools and equipment and for other supplies. In many cases, sharecroppers ended the year owing money to the landowner. Reconstruction Ends In 1877, Reconstruction came to an end. The U.S. Army left the South. Soon, wealthy southern whites regained power. White Southerners began to use fear to keep African Americans from voting. The Ku Klux Klan and other terror groups could now act freely. They became strong all across the South. And Southern states passed laws to separate blacks from whites and to limit the rights of African Americans. These became known as Jim Crow laws. They prevented African Americans from voting. They passed new laws to create a segregated, or separated, society. The sharecropping system became widespread. Black people again worked on land owned by white men, and were paid with a share of the crops they had raised. This system kept many black workers in debt to white landowners. For almost 100 years after Reconstruction ended, life remained hard for African Americans. They struggled against discrimination. They did not share the equal rights and opportunities guaranteed by the amendments to the Constitution. They suffered from the lasting hardships left by slavery, the bitter Civil War, and the end of Reconstruction. Then, in the 1960s, hope returned. Black and white people from all over the nation joined a movement to fight for equal rights for all Americans. And in a small Alabama town called Selma, Martin Luther King Jr. led a civil rights march to regain the right to vote for black people. As a result, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The Civil Rights movement made progress toward fulfilling the dreams first held by freedmen during Reconstruction.