Download Reconstruction - Mercer Island School District

Important For What It
Failed To Do
Reconstruction 1864-1877
Outline
1. The Residue of War (1860-1865)
2. Presidential Reconstruction (18651867)
3. Congressional/Radical Reconstruction
(1867-1877)
4. Abandoning Reconstruction (18771950?)
1. The Residue of
War
How wartime developments and
destruction affected post-war decisions
Lies, Damn Lies, and…
• Some Statistics:
• 285,000 dead Confederate Soldiers
• 4 million freed slaves with nowhere to go
and no resources
• How many wounded?
• How many maimed?
• Psychological costs?
• Damage to Southern Infrastructure
Cold Harbor
Charleston
“They won their freedom and not much
else”
Legal Legacy of the War
• Emancipation Proclamation,
• January 1, 1863
• Gettysburg Address,
• November 19, 1863
• Lincoln Assassinated,
• April 14, 1865
• Thirteenth Amendment,
• December 6, 1865
Practical Reconstruction,
Practical Emancipation
Out of necessity
• By 1862,
Lincoln had
named military
governors for
Tennessee,
Arkansas, and
Louisiana
Proclamation of Amnesty and
Reconstruction (1863)
• A rebel state could form a new state
government when 10% of those who had
voted in 1860 had taken an oath of
allegiance to the union.
• They also had to swear to support all laws
and proclamations regarding emancipation
• Some groups of Southerners, those
considered particularly traitorous, such as
military men who had been part of the army
before the war, and high officials of the
confederate government
Walking the Line
Presidential Reconstruction, 1865-1867
Not as obvious as it appears…
• In most wars, how
is peace made?
• Why might this not
work following the
American Civil War?
A Peculiar Problem
• Premise of the war:
The South has no
right to secede
• Technically they
never left…
• Do they need to be
re-admitted?
• The North never
recognized the
Confederacy as a
real government
• You cannot sign a
peace treaty with a
bunch of criminals,
traitors, or rebels
$1,000,000 Question
• How were the Southern States to be
brought back into the Union?
The Issues
• The Vote for Blacks?
• Land for freed Slaves?
• Loyalty of Southerners?
• Confederate Soldiers/Traitors?
• How to form new governments?
• Who should pay to rebuild the
Southern economy?
Lincoln and Reconstruction
• Moderate
• More concerned with
re-union than
slavery
• Puts forth a plan in
1863 Proclamation
of Amnesty and
Reconstruction
The Lincoln Plan
• Southern State governments accept
slave emancipation
• All southerners take an oath of loyalty
to the Union
• When 10% of the state has taken the
oath, they can form a state
government and will be readmitted
Congressional Resistance
•Republicans Control
Congress during the Civil
War when Southern
Democrats withdrew and
seceded
•Republican Congress
was determined to
maintain their influence
and not have their
industrial legislative
program overturned
Wade-Davis Bill (1864)
•
•
A majority (not
10%, but 51% had
to take the oath)
Appoint a provisional
governor to each
state to oversee the
creation of state
governments (South
not to be trusted)
• Former confederate soldiers could not vote
in this initial creation
Southern Reconstruction Plan - 1865
• Must put
Emancipation in
their new state
constitutions
• Wade-David bill
passed and Lincoln
vetoed it
• They didn’t work it
out before Lincoln
was assassinated
Andrew Johnson (not JohnsTon)
• Lincoln’s VP
• “War Democrat”
from Virginia
• Chosen to placate
South in 1860
election
• Initially continued
Lincoln’s moderate
policies
Johnson Clashes With Congress
• Johnson placates Southern
leaders in hopes of
extracting enough change
to satisfy the radicals in
Congress
• Doesn’t work - the South
makes few concessions,
begins passing the Black
Codes
• Congress becomes
increasingly alarmed
“Cannon Conquer, but they do
not necessarily convert”
Southern Resistance to Reconstruction
• “None of us realize that we are no longer
wealthy—yet thanks to the Yankees, the
cause of all this unhappiness, such is the
case. As long as I thought we would
conquer in our just cause, I cared nothing
for the loss of property for I felt as if we
would be rich if we had Our Rights & Our
Country left us—but now they are lost too, &
we have suffered in vain. In vain! There is
where the bitterness lies!”
• ~Amanda Worthington, Plantation mistress from
Mississippi
After the War
• “It seems
humiliating
to be
compelled
to bargain
and haggle
with our
servants
about
wages”
Post-War Anger
• “One mother
said she
trained her
children to
“fear God,
love the
South, and
live to
avenge her.”
Political Resistance
• Repealing vs. Repudiating Ordinances
of Secession
• Mississippi & Texas refuse to ratify 13th
Amendment
• Georgia ratified it on condition of slave
holders being compensated
• States refused to grant rights to
former slaves
• Passing of “Black Codes”
A less-than-hidden agenda…
• Legal for slaves to marry, own property, and sue in
court
• Required a special license for Blacks to work in any
area except agriculture
• Could not
serve on
juries and
could not
testify
against
Whites
• Vagrancy
Laws
• “[Reconstruction included] a striking
embodiment of the idea that although the
former owner has lost his individual right of
property in the former slaves, the blacks at
large belong to the whites at large.”
~Carl Schurz, Republican politician
What must Reconstruction do?
• Reconstruction must
“revolutionize
Southern
institutions, habits,
and manners….The
foundations of their
institutions must be
broken and relaid,
or all our blood and
treasure have been
spent in vein.”
• ~Thaddeus Stevens
• The Freedmen will
“be tyrannized over,
abused, and
virtually re-enslaved
without some
legislation by the
nation for his
protection.”
• ~Lyman Trumbull,
Senator
Retribution
Congressional (radical) Reconstruction
14th Amendment (Passed 1865)
▪Defined citizenship
and guaranteed
rights of the
Constitution, by
both the State and
Federal
government
▪Enforced suffrage for
all adults males
(nothing said
about race)
14th Amendment
• Ratifying the
14th
Amendment
was now the
only
requirement
for Southern
state readmittance to
Union
The Radical Congressional Program
• Punish Confederate leadership,
civilians and military
• Actively protect legal rights of Blacks
• Disenfranchise disloyal white
Southerners
• Confiscate land of wealthy
Confederates and distribute it to
freed Blacks
Conspiracy?
8 Men Out
“Johnson himself
was an
intemperate
and tactless
man, filled with
resentments
and
insecurities.”
Election of 1866
After 1866, radical Republicans in Congress puts together a specific
and coherent plan for Reconstruction (Democrats lost 9 seats)
Re-Admittance
• Under Lincoln and Johnson, all the
Southern states had prepared to reenter the Union.
• When Congress met in 1865, they
refused to seat Southern Congressmen
and senators sent by re-admitted
states.
• 10 States had satisfied the requirements for
re-admittance under Lincoln and Johnson
• Later, Congress rejected those governments
15th Amendment (1866)
Congress
added
another
requirement,
the 15th
Amendment
Forbade states and the federal government to deny
the suffrage to any citizen an account of “race,
color, or previous condition of servitude.”
Tenure of Office Act (1866)
• Designed to keep
the President from
interfering with
Congress plan for
Reconstruction
• Forbade him from
removing executive
branch officials
confirmed by the
Senate without the
consent of the
Senate.
Impeachment
• Johnson
considered the act
unconstitutional
• Violated it in
hopes of bringing
about a court case
• Congress used this
as a pretext to
impeach him
• House only
William Jefferson Clinton Impeachment
• 1999, Impeached by
House of
Representatives
• Acquitted by the
Senate
• Richard Nixon was
not impeached
The South Redeemed
The End of Reconstruction
Election of 1874
Blue=Democrats
House=Democrats
Senate=Republican
Upper South
• White majorities
• Almost completely re-enfranchised by
1872
• Easy to take control
Lower South
• Black majorities
• Intimidation and
violence to
undermine
reconstruction
• KKK & Knights of
the White Camellia
Strongest Weapon: Economic Pressure!
“Some planters refused to rent land
to Republican Blacks; storekeepers
refused to extend them credit;
employers refused to give them
work.”
~Alan Brinkley
Panic of 1873
• Collapse of the stock market
• Subsequent depression lasted 6 years
• Hurts Republicans in Congress
• Efforts turn to economic recovery and
away from Reconstruction and race
politics
D-O-N-E Done!
• 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments
• Blacks were free and had the Vote
• Take care of themselves
Election of 1876
Election of 1876
• Nearly dead-even Electoral college
vote with 4 contested states
• No procedures in Constitution for how
the Congress should determine winner
• Split legislature (Dem’s in house, Rep’s
in Senate) could not agree
• Popular vote had been for Democrat
Samuel J. Tilden
The Commission
• 5 Republicans from
Congress
• 5 Democrats from
Congress
• 5 Supreme Court
justices: 2 from
each party plus one
independent, David
Davis
‘His Fraudulency”
• Illinois legislature
elected Davis to
U.S. Senate
• Resigned from
Commission
• Seat was won by a
Republican justice
• Vote went on party
lines (8 to 7) for
Republican
candidate
Rutherford B Hayes
Compromise of 1877
• Democrats were going to filibuster
• Parties negotiated behind the scenes
• Democrats agree to drop filibuster in
exchange for several guarantees
•Included: withdraw
federal troops from
South and end
Republican military
governments – South
would be solidly in
Democratic hands
Evaluating Reconstruction
Can’t Please Anyone…
• “To many white Southerners,
Reconstruction was a vicious and
destructive experience—a period when
vindictive Northerners inflicted
humiliation and revenge on the
prostrate South.” – Alan Brinkley
View from the North
• Northerners “argued that their policies were
the only way to prevent unrepentant
Confederates from restoring southern
society as it had been before the war;
without forceful federal intervention, there
would be no way to forestall the
reemergence of a backwards aristocracy and
continued subjugation of blacks—no way, in
other words, to prevent the same sectional
problems that had produced the Civil War in
the first place.”
Evaluating Reconstruction
• Failure in most respects, at least in the
long run
• Failure to address issue of race, it
would be addressed dramatically 100
years later
• Embittered Americans about the race
issue, made them hesitant to deal with
it on a political level
Why failure?
• Inherent racism, North and South
• Deeply imbedded values of states
rights
• Respect for private property and free
enterprise made efforts at income
redistribution weak
The End of Reconstruction
Industry and Capitalism
1877-1914?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Mass production
Moving assembly line
The railroads
The corporation
Social Darwinism, Herbert Spencer
Carnegie, Gospel of Wealth
Monopolies
Immigration
Working conditions, women and children at
work, emerging unionism
Urbanization
• Conditions in the city
• Ethnic city
• Rise of mass consumption
• Leisure and sport
• Movies
• Rise of education
Populism
• Populism
• Silver and gold (standard)
Imperialism
• Hawaii and Samoa
• Spanish American war
• Philippines
• Opening China
• Boxer Rebellion
Progressivism
• Temperance
• Socialism
• TR
• Panama canal
WWI
• Neutrality
• Wilson
• 14 points