Download Chapter 17 - Merrillville Community School

Reconstruction
1863—1877


During the process of Reconstruction, many
Northern politicians, including President
Andrew Johnson, wanted to show no mercy
toward the South. These men wanted to punish
the South for seceding and for supporting
slavery, If you were a Northern legislator,
would you rule and rebuild the South with an
iron fist, or would you show mercy?
Explain
American Communities


In Hale County(Alabama) former slaves
showed an increased sense of
autonomy, expressing it through
politics and through their new work
patterns.
One planter described how freed people
refused to do “their former accustomed
work.”




Former slaveholders had to reorganize their
plantations and allow slaves to work the land
as sharecroppers, rather than hired hands.
Freed people organized themselves and were
elected to the state legislature.
These acts of autonomy led to a white
backlash, including nighttime attacks by Ku
Klux Klansmen intent on terrorizing freed
blacks and maintaining white social and
political supremacy.
KKK’s goal was to limit the political &
economic gains freedman during
Reconstruction

The Civil War confirmed that the federal
government took precedence over
individual states
The Politics of
Reconstruction




The South had been thoroughly defeated
and its economy lay in ruins.
The presence of Union troops further
embittered white Southerners.
The changed status of African Americans
freedom seemed like betrayal to white
supremacy.
The passion of most white Southerners was
re-establishing white supremacy & social
order

The major issue of Reconstruction was to
regularize relations between former
Confederates states and the United States
Government

Lincoln promoted a plan to bring states back
into the Union as quickly as possible protecting
private property and opposing harsh
punishments.


Amnesty was promised to those swearing allegiance.
State governments could be established if 10 percent
of the voters took an oath of allegiance.
 His plan was known as the 10% plan

Congress proposed the Wade-Davis bill in 1864
in response to Lincoln’s Reconstruction Plan

This bill required 50% of seceding state’s white male
citizens to take a loyalty oath before elections could
be held for a convention to rewrite the state’s
constitution



Lincoln used a pocket veto to kill a plan passed
by Congressional radicals
Redistribution of land posed another problem.
Congress created the Freedman’s Bureau and
passed the Thirteenth Amendment



Andrew Johnson, the new president, was a
War Democrat from Tennessee.
He had used harsh language to describe
southern “traitors” but blamed individuals
rather than the entire South for secession.
Johnson’s goal was to restore the Union as
quickly as possible

While Congress was not in session he granted
amnesty to most Confederates.



Initially, wealthy landholders and members of the
political elite had been excluded, but Johnson
pardoned most of them.
Johnson appointed provisional governors who
organized new governments.
By December, Johnson claimed that
“restoration” was virtually complete.


Radical Republicans wanted to remake the South in the
North’s image, advocating land redistribution to make
former slaves independent landowners.
Stringent “Black Codes” outraged many Northerners.


Restricted the rights of freedman
In December 1865, Congress excluded the southern
representatives.



Congress overrode Johnson’s vetoes of a Civil Rights
bill and a bill to enlarge the scope of the Freedman’s
Bureau.
 Fearful that courts might declare the Civil Rights Act
unconstitutional, Congress drafted the Fourteenth
Amendment.
Republicans won the Congressional elections of 1866
that had been a showdown between Congress and
Johnson over Reconstruction and the amendment.
Republicans reminded the Northern voters of Union
casualties was “waving the bloody shirt”

The First Reconstruction Act of 1867
Freed blacks
 Divided the South into five military districts
 Overturned the Presidential Reconstruction Process
 Southern states had to ratify the 14th amendment


A crisis developed over whether Johnson could
replace Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

In violation of the Tenure of Office Act, Johnson fired
Stanton.

The House impeached Johnson but the Senate
vote fell one vote short of conviction.

This set the precedent that criminal actions by a
president—not political disagreements—warranted
removal from office.

By 1868, eight of the eleven ex-Confederate states
were back in the Union.

Republicans nominated Ulysses Grant for president.

The Republicans attacked Democrats’ loyalties.


Democrats exploited racism to gather votes and used
terror in the South to keep Republicans from voting.
Republicans won with less than 53 percent of the vote.

The remaining unreconstructed states
(Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia) had to
ratify both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments to be admitted to the Union.



National citizenship included former slaves (“all persons
born or naturalized in the United States”).
“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall
not be denied or abridged on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude.”
The states ratified the amendments and
rejoined the Union in 1870.

Women’s rights activists were outraged that the
new laws enfranchised African Americans but
not women.

The movement split over whether to support a
linkage between the rights of women and African
Americans.
The more radical group fought against the passage of the
Fifteenth Amendment and formed an all-female suffrage
group.
 A more moderate group supported the amendment while
working toward suffrage at a state level and enlisting the
support of men.

1.
2.
3.
The 13th, 14th & 15th amendments are known as
the Civil War Amendments
On a separate piece of paper summarize each
amendment in YOUR own words.
Next draw a picture of the amendment’s
meaning.
The Meaning of
Freedom



For many freed people, the first impulse to
define freedom was to move about.
Many who left soon returned to seek work in
their neighborhoods.
Others sought new lives in predominantly
black areas, even cities.

Freedom for African Americans was:



Education
Church
Making their own work schedules


Freedom provided the chance to reunite with
lost family members.
The end of slavery allowed African Americans
to more closely fulfill appropriate gender
roles.


Males took on more authority in the family.
Women continued to work outside the home.



Emancipation allowed ex-slaves to practice
religion without white interference.
African-American communities pooled their
resources to establish churches, the first social
institution that they fully controlled.
Education was another symbol of freedom.
By 1869 over 3,000 Freedman’s Bureau schools taught
over 150,000 students.
 Black colleges were established as well.





African Americans sought economic selfsufficiency through land ownership.
The Freedman’s Bureau was forced to evict tens of
thousands of blacks that had been settled on
confiscated lands.
At war’s end most planters expected blacks to
work for wages in gangs, but this was
unacceptable to many ex-slaves.
Sharecropping came to dominate the southern
agricultural economy.




Sharecropping represented a compromise
between planter and former slave.
They worked a plot of land in return for a
portion of the crop
Sharecroppers set their own hours and tasks.
Families labored together on adjoining parcels
of land.



Former slaves organized politically to protect
their interests and to promote their own
participation.
Five states had black electoral majorities.
The Union League became the political voice of
former slaves.

This was the Republicans Party’s organizational arm
in the South


New leaders, drawn from the ranks of teachers
and ministers, emerged to give direction to the
black community as it fought for equal rights.
Most Freedmen supported the Republican
Party.
Southern Politics and
Society

Most northerners were satisfied with a
reconstruction that brought the South back
into the Union with a viable Republican
Party.
 Achieving this goal required active Federal
support to protect the African-American
voters upon which it depended.


Republicans also drew strength from:
 white, northern, middle-class emigrants called
carpetbaggers
 native southern white Republicans called scalawags
who were businessmen and Unionists from the
mountains with old scores to settle
The result was an uneasy alliance, with each group
pushing an agenda that was incompatible with the
plans devised by its allies.

Scalawags

Native southern whites who joined
the Republican Party & worked with
freedman and the Northerners who
came to make their fortune

a derogatory term (originally describing
worthless livestock)

Carpetbaggers


Applied to Northerners who went South during
Reconstruction, motivated by either profit or
idealism.
The name referred to the cloth bags many of them
used for transporting their possessions.

Throughout the South, state conventions that had a
significant African-American presence drafted
constitutions and instituted political and
humanitarian reforms.
 The new governments insisted on equal rights, but
accepted separate schools.

The Republican governments did little to assist African
Americans in acquiring land though they did help protect
the rights of black laborers to bargain freely.
Republican leaders envisioned promoting northern-style
prosperity and gave heavy subsidies for railroad
development.
 These plans frequently opened the doors to corruption and
bankrupted the states.



Many white southerners believed that the
Republicans were not a legitimate political
group.
Paramilitary groups like the Ku Klux Klan used
terror to destroy the Reconstruction governments
and intimidate their supporters.
Congress passed several laws to crack down on the
Klan.
 Ku Klux Klan Act

 Made the violent infringement of civil and political rights a
federal crime punishable by the national government

The Civil Rights Act of 1875 outlawed racial
discrimination in public places.



As wartime idealism faded and Democrats
gained strength in the North, northern
Republicans abandoned the freed people and
their white allies.
Conservative Democrats (Redeemers) won
control of southern states.
Between 1873 and 1883, the Supreme Court
weakened enforcement of the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments and overturned
convictions of Klan members.



The South grew more heavily dependent on
cotton.
The crop lien system provided loans in
exchange for a lien on the crop.
As cotton prices spiraled downward, cotton
growers fell more deeply into debt.

Merchants became the elite in the South.

The South emerged as an impoverished region.
Reconstructing the
North


Republicans like Lincoln believed that their
society was bound by a harmony of interests
without class conflict that allowed for social
mobility.
A violent railroad strike in 1877 suggested that
the North had undergone its own reconstruction,
shattering that harmony.


Fueled by railroad construction, the postwar
years saw a continued industrial boom that
concentrated industries into the hands of a few
big businesses.
Several Republican politicians maintained close
connections with railroad interests resulting in
the Crédit Mobilier scandal.


This was the worst scandal in the Grant Administration.
It created a dummy construction company to divert funds
intended for the construction of Union Pacific into the
hands of large investors




Pacific Railway Act gave huge grants to Union
Pacific & Central Pacific to build
transcontinental Railroads
The Union Pacific & Central Pacific were also
funded with land grants & subsidies from the
federal government
The Union Pacific employed mainly African
Americans & Irish
The Central Pacific employed immigrants from
Japan

Chinese Exclusion Act


Prohibited Chinese immigration to the United States
for 10 years
On May 10, 1869 the Union Pacific & the
Central Pacific were joined by a golden spike at
Promontory Point, Utah

The Republican Party underwent dramatic changes
because:
 the old radicals were dying or losing influence
 party leaders concentrated on holding on to federal
patronage
 a growing number of Republicans were appalled
by the corruption of the party and sought an
alternative.


The Liberal Republicans:
 were suspicious of expanding democracy
 called for a return to limited government
 proposed civil service reform to insure elites would
have federal posts
 opposed continued federal involvement in
Reconstruction
In 1872, Horace Greeley challenged Ulysses Grant for
the presidency. Grant easily won but the Liberal
Republican agenda continued to gain influence.

In 1873, a financial panic triggered the longest
depression in American history.

It was the result of commercial overexpansion and
speculative investing in Railroads

Prices fell, unemployment rose, and many
people sank deeply in debt.

Government officials rejected appeals for
relief.

This depression made Americans more aware
of & concerned with class interests.

.


As the election of 1876 approached, new scandals in
the Grant administration hurt the Republicans



Credit Mobilier
Whiskey Ring
Bribes for the sale of Indian trading posts
The Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden of New
York, a former prosecutor. Democrats combined
attacks on Reconstruction with attacks on corruption.
The Republican nominee, Rutherford B. Hayes of
Ohio, accused Democrats of treason and promised to
clean up corruption.




Tilden won more votes than Hayes, but both
sides claimed victory
In three southern states two sets of electoral
votes were returned
An electoral commission awarded the disputed
votes to Hayes.
Hayes struck a deal that promised money for
southern internal improvements and
noninterference in southern affairs


The remaining federal troops were removed
from the South
The remaining Republican governments in the
South lost power


Thomas Nast was a political cartoonist who
appeared in Harper’s Weekly
He attacked the dishonesty & corruption of the
Tweed Ring

Thomas Nast was a political cartoonist who
appeared in Harper’s Weekly

He attacked the dishonesty and corruption of the
Tweed Ring
President Lincoln’s Plan
 10% Plan
*
Proclamation of Amnesty and
Reconstruction (December 8, 1863)
*
Replace majority rule with “loyal rule” in
the South.
*
He didn’t consult Congress regarding
Reconstruction.
*
*
Pardon to all but the highest ranking
military and civilian Confederate
officers.
When 10% of the voting population in
the 1860 election had taken an oath of
loyalty and established a government, it
would be recognized.
President Lincoln’s Plan
1864  “Lincoln Governments”
formed in LA, TN, AR
*
*
“loyal assemblies”
They were weak and
dependent on the
Northern army for
their survival.
Wade-Davis Bill (1864)
 Required 50% of the number
of 1860 voters to take an
“iron clad” oath of allegiance
(swearing they had never
voluntarily aided the
rebellion ).
Senator
Benjamin
Wade
(R-OH)
 Required a state
constitutional convention
before the election of state
officials.
 Enacted specific safeguards
of freedmen’s liberties.
Congressman
Henry
W. Davis
(R-MD)
Wade-Davis Bill (1864)
 “Iron-Clad” Oath.
 “State Suicide” Theory [MA Senator
Charles Sumner]
 “Conquered Provinces” Position
[PA Congressman Thaddeus Stevens]
President
Lincoln
Pocket
Veto
Wade-Davis
Bill
Jeff Davis Under Arrest
th
13
Amendment
 Ratified in December, 1865.
 Neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude, except as punishment for
crime whereof the party shall have been
duly convicted, shall exist within the
United States or any place subject to
their jurisdiction.
 Congress shall have power to enforce
this article by appropriate legislation.
Freedmen’s Bureau (1865)
 Bureau of Refugees,
Freedmen, and
Abandoned Lands.
 Many former northern
abolitionists risked
their lives to help
southern freedmen.
 Called “carpetbaggers”
by white southern
Democrats.
Freedmen’s Bureau Seen
Through
Southern
Eyes
Plenty to
eat and
nothing to
do.
Freedmen’s Bureau School
President Andrew Johnson
 Jacksonian Democrat.
 Anti-Aristocrat.
 White Supremacist.
 Agreed with Lincoln
that states had never
legally left the Union.
Damn the negroes! I am
fighting these traitorous
aristocrats, their masters!
President Johnson’s Plan (10%+)
 Offered amnesty upon simple oath to all except
Confederate civil and military officers and those with
property over $20,000 (they could apply directly to
Johnson)
 In new constitutions, they must accept minimum
conditions repudiating slavery, secession and state debts.
 Named provisional governors in Confederate states and
called them to oversee elections for constitutional
conventions.
1. Disenfranchised certain leading Confederates.
EFFECTS?
2. Pardoned planter aristocrats brought them back
to political power to control state organizations.
3. Republicans were outraged that planter elite
were back in power in the South!
Growing Northern Alarm!
 Many Southern state
constitutions fell short of
minimum requirements.
 Johnson granted 13,500 special
pardons.
 Revival of southern defiance.
BLACK CODES
Slavery is Dead?
Black Codes
 Purpose:
*
*
Guarantee stable labor
supply now that blacks
were emancipated.
Restore pre-emancipation
system of race relations.
 Forced many blacks to
become sharecroppers
[tenant farmers].
Congress Breaks with the
President
 Congress bars Southern
Congressional delegates.
 Joint Committee on
Reconstruction created.
 February, 1866  President
vetoed the Freedmen’s
Bureau bill.
 March, 1866  Johnson
vetoed the 1866 Civil Rights Act.
 Congress passed both bills over
Johnson’s vetoes  1st in
U. S. history!!
Johnson the Martyr / Samson
If my blood is to be shed
because I vindicate the
Union and the preservation
of this government in its
original purity and character,
let it be shed; let an altar to
the Union be erected, and
then, if it is necessary, take
me and lay me upon it, and
the blood that now warms
and animates my existence
shall be poured out as a fit
libation to the Union.
(February 1866)
14th Amendment
 Ratified in July, 1868.
*
Provide a constitutional guarantee of the
rights and security of freed people.
*
Insure against neo-Confederate political
power.
*
Enshrine the national debt while repudiating
that of the Confederacy.
 Southern states would be punished for
denying the right to vote to black
citizens!
The Balance of Power in
Congress
State
White Citizens
Freedmen
SC
291,000
411,000
MS
353,000
436,000
LA
357,000
350,000
GA
591,000
465,000
AL
596,000
437,000
VA
719,000
533,000
NC
631,000
331,000
The 1866 Bi-Election
 A referendum on Radical Reconstruction.
 Johnson made an ill-conceived propaganda
tour around the country to push his plan.
 Republicans
won a 3-1
majority in
both houses
and gained
control of
every northern
state.
Johnson’s “Swing around
the Circle”
Radical Plan for Readmission
 Civil authorities in the territories were
subject to military supervision.
 Required new state constitutions,
including
black suffrage and ratification of the 13th
and 14th Amendments.
 In March, 1867, Congress passed an act
that authorized the military to enroll
eligible black voters and begin the
process of constitution making.
Reconstruction Acts of 1867
 Military Reconstruction Act
*
*
Restart Reconstruction in the 10 Southern states
that refused to ratify the 14th Amendment.
Divide the 10 “unreconstructed states” into 5
military
districts.
Reconstruction Acts of 1867
 Command of the Army Act
*
The President must issue all
Reconstruction orders through
the commander of the military.
 Tenure of Office Act
*
The President could not remove
any officials [esp. Cabinet members]
without the Senate’s consent, if the
position originally required Senate
approval.
 Designed to protect radical
members of Lincoln’s government.
 A question of the
constitutionality of this law.
Edwin Stanton
President Johnson’s
Impeachment
 Johnson removed Stanton in February, 1868.
 Johnson replaced generals in the field who were
more sympathetic to Radical Reconstruction.
 The House impeached him on February 24
before even
drawing up the
charges by a
vote of 126 – 47!
The Senate Trial
 11 week trial.
 Johnson acquitted
35 to 19 (one short of
required 2/3s vote).
The 1868 Republican Ticket
The 1868 Democratic Ticket
Waving the Bloody Shirt!
Republican “Southern
Strategy”
1868 Presidential Election
President Ulysses S. Grant
Grant Administration Scandals
 Grant presided over an era of
unprecedented
growth and
corruption.
*
Credit Mobilier
Scandal.
*
Whiskey Ring.
*
The “Indian
Ring.”
The Tweed Ring
in NYC
William Marcy Tweed
(notorious head of Tammany Hall’s political machine)
[Thomas Nast  crusading cartoonist/reporter]
Who Stole the People’s Money?
And They Say He Wants a Third Term
The Election of 1872
 Rumors of corruption
during Grant’s first
term discredit
Republicans.
 Horace Greeley runs
as a Democrat/Liberal
Republican candidate.
 Greeley attacked as a
fool and a crank.
 Greeley died on
November 29, 1872!
1872 Presidential Election
Popular Vote for President: 1872
The Panic of 1873
 It raises “the money
question.”
*
*
debtors seek
inflationary
monetary policy by
continuing circulation
of greenbacks.
creditors, intellectuals
support hard money.
 1875  Specie
Redemption Act.
 1876  Greenback Party formed & makes gains in
congressional races  The “Crime of ’73’!
Legal Challenges
 The Slaughterhouse Cases (1873)
 Bradwell v. IL (1873)
 U. S. v. Cruickshank (1876)
 U. S. v. Reese (1876)
Sharecropping
Tenancy & the Crop Lien System
Furnishing Merchant
 Loan tools and seed
up to 60% interest
to tenant farmer to
plant spring crop.
 Farmer also secures
food, clothing, and
other necessities on
credit from
merchant until the
harvest.
 Merchant holds
“lien” {mortgage} on
part of tenant’s
future crops as
repayment of debt.
Tenant Farmer
 Plants crop,
harvests in
autumn.
 Turns over up to ½
of crop to land
owner as payment
of rent.
 Tenant gives
remainder of crop
to merchant in
payment of debt.
Landowner
 Rents land to tenant
in exchange for ¼
to ½ of tenant
farmer’s future
crop.
Black & White Political Participation
Establishment of Historically
Black Colleges in the South
Black Senate & House Delegates
Colored
Rule
in the
South?
Blacks in Southern Politics
 Core voters were black veterans.
 Blacks were politically unprepared.
 Blacks could register and vote in states since
1867.
 The 15th
Amendment
guaranteed
federal voting.
th
15
Amendment
 Ratified in 1870.
 The right of citizens of the United States
to vote shall not be denied or abridged by
the United States or by any state on
account of race, color, or previous condition
of servitude.
 The Congress shall have power to enforce
this article by appropriate legislation.
 Women’s rights groups were furious that
they were not granted the vote!
The “Invisible Empire of the
South”
The Failure of Federal
Enforcement
 Enforcement Acts of 1870 & 1871
[also known as the KKK Act].
 “The Lost Cause.”
 The rise of the
“Bourbons.”
 Redeemers
(prewar
Democrats and
Union Whigs).
The Civil Rights Act of 1875
 Crime for any individual to deny full &
equal use of public conveyances and
public places.
 Prohibited discrimination in jury
selection.
 Shortcoming  lacked a strong
enforcement mechanism.
 No new civil rights act was attempted
for 90 years!
Northern Support Wanes
 “Grantism” & corruption.
 Panic of 1873 [6-year
depression].
 Concern over westward
expansion and Indian wars.
 Key monetary issues:
*
*
should the government
retire $432m worth of
“greenbacks” issued during the Civil War.
should war bonds be paid back in specie or
greenbacks.
1876 Presidential Tickets
“Regional Balance?”
1876 Presidential Election
The Political Crisis of 1877
 “Corrupt Bargain”
Part II?
Hayes Prevails
Alas, the Woes of Childhood…
Sammy Tilden—Boo-Hoo! Ruthy Hayes’s got my
Presidency, and he won’t give it to me!
A Political Crisis: The
“Compromise” of 1877