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Transcript
The Ordeal of Reconstruction 1865-1877 How to Rejoin the Nation? • After the war, there were many questions over what to do with the free Blacks, and how to reintegrate the Southern states into the Union, what to do with Jefferson Davis, and who would be in charge of Reconstruction? • The Southern way of life had been ruined, as crops and farms were destroyed, the slaves had been freed, the cities were burnt down, but still, and many Southerners remained defiant. Reelected President Lincoln proclaims “with malice towards none and charity for all” What about the freedman? • Thousands of ex-slaves roamed the streets, some stayed on plantations. • Some went to Kansas (Exodusters) , 1878-1880 a mass exodus to Kansas. • “Forty acres and a mule” debate • Church became and integral part of Southern Black life “Forty acres and a mule” • In January 1865 General William T. Sherman met with twenty African American leaders who told him that land ownership was the best way for blacks to secure and enjoy their newfound freedom. On 16 January that year, Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15. The order reserved coastal land in Georgia and South Carolina for black settlement. Each family would receive forty acres. Later Sherman agreed to loan the settlers army mules. Six months after Sherman issued the order, 40,000 former slaves lived on 400,000 acres of this coastal land. In March Congress seemed to indicate plans for widespread land reform when it authorized the Freedmen’s Bureau to divide confiscated land into small plots for sale to blacks and loyal Southern whites. Less than a year after Sherman’s order, President Andrew Johnson intervened, and ordered that the vast majority of confiscated land be returned to its former owners. This included most of land that the freedmen had settled. The Federal government dispossessed tens of thousands of black landholders. In Georgia and South Carolina, some blacks fought back, driving away former owners with guns. Federal troops sometimes evicted blacks by force. In the end only some 2,000 blacks retained land they had won and worked after the war. The Freedman’s Bureau • In order to train the unskilled and unlettered freed Blacks, the Freedman’s Bureau was set up on March 3, 1865. Union General Oliver O. Howard headed it. • The bureau taught about 200,000 Blacks how to read (its greatest success), since most former slaves wanted to narrow the literary gap between them and Whites. • However, it wasn’t as effective as it could have been, as evidenced by the further discrimination of Blacks, and it expired in 1872 after much criticism by racist Whites. The 17th President • Andrew Johnson came from very poor and humble beginnings, and he served in Congress for many years (he was the only Confederate congressman not to leave Congress when the rest of the South seceded). • He was feared for his reputation of having a short temper and being a great fighter, was a dogmatic champion of states’ rights and the Constitution, and he was a Tennessean who never earned the trust of the North and never regained the confidence of the South. Lincoln’s 10% Plan • Since Abraham Lincoln believed that the South had never legally withdrawn from the Union, restoration was to be relatively simple. In his plan for restoring the union, the southern states could be reintegrated into the Union when only 10% of a state’s voters from the 1960 election took an oath to the Union, and also acknowledge the emancipation of the slaves, in effect ratify the 13th Amendment. This is known as Presidential Reconstruction. • Lincoln’s plan was very forgiving to the South, and ironically would have provided Southern states with more political power in Congress. Congressional “Radical Reconstruction” • The Congressional Radical Republicans felt punishment was due the South the Southern States. Radical Republicans feared that the leniency of the 10 % Plan would allow the Southerners to re-enslave the newly freed Blacks, so they rammed the Wade-Davis Bill through Congress. • It required 50% of the states’ voters to take oaths of allegiance and demanded stronger safeguards for emancipation than the 10% Plan. • However, Lincoln pocket-vetoed the bill by letting it expire, and the 10% Plan remained. President Johnson’s “Restoration Plan” • It became clear that there were now two types of Republicans: the moderates, who shared the same views as Lincoln and the radicals, who believed the South should be harshly punished. – When Lincoln was assassinated. This left the 10% Plan’s future in question. – When Andrew Johnson took power, the radicals thought that he would do what they wanted, but he soon proved them wrong by basically taking Lincoln’s policy and issuing his own Reconstruction proclamation…… certain leading Confederates were disfranchised (right to vote removed), the Confederate debt was repudiated, and states had to ratify the 13th Amendment. The Black Codes • • In order to control the freed Blacks, many Southern states passed Black Codes, laws aimed at keeping the Black population in submission and workers in the fields; some were harsh, others were not as harsh. Blacks who “jumped” their labor contracts, or walked off their jobs, were subject to penalties and fines, and their wages were generally kept very low. • • The codes forbade Blacks from serving on a jury and some even barred Blacks from renting or leasing land, and Blacks could be punished for “idleness” by being subjected to working on a chain gang. Making a mockery out of the newly won freedom of the Blacks, the Black Codes made many abolitionists wonder if the price of the Civil War was worth it, since Blacks were hardly better after the war than before the war. They were not “slaves” on paper, but in reality, their lives were little different. Presidential Reconstruction • In December, 1865, when many of the Southern states came to be reintegrated into the Union, among them were former Confederates and Democrats, and most Republicans were disgusted to see their former enemies on hand to reclaim seats in Congress. • During the war, without the Democrats, the Republicans had passed legislation that had favored the North, such as the Morrill Tariff, the Pacific Railroad Act, and the Homestead Act, so now, many Republicans didn’t want to give up the power that they had gained in the war. • Northerners now realized that the South would be stronger politically than before, since now, Blacks counted for a whole person instead of just 3/5 of one, and Republicans also feared that the Northern and Southern Democrats would join and take over Congress and the White House and institute their Black Codes over the nation, defeating all that the Civil War gained. • On December 6, 1865, President Johnson declared that the South had satisfied all of the conditions needed, and that the Union was now restored. 13th Amendment Johnson battles Congress over Reconstruction • • Johnson repeatedly vetoed Republican-passed bills, such as a bill extending the life of the Freedman’s Bureau, and he also vetoed the Civil Rights Bill, which conferred on blacks the privilege of American citizenship and struck at the Black Codes. As Republicans gained control of Congress, they passed the bills into laws with a 2/3 vote and thus override Johnson’s veto. • • In the 14th Amendment, the Republicans sought to instill the same ideas of the Civil Rights Bill: (1) all Blacks were American citizens, (2) if a state denied citizenship to Blacks, then its representatives in the Electoral College were lowered, (3) former Confederates could not hold federal or state office, and (4) the federal debt was guaranteed while the Confederate one was repudiated (erased). The radicals were disappointed that Blacks weren’t given the right to vote, but all Republicans agreed that states would not be accepted back into the Union unless they ratified the 14th Amendment. Radicals create the 14th Amendment • • In the 14th Amendment, the Republicans sought to instill the same ideas of the Civil Rights Bill: (1) all Blacks were American citizens, (2) if a state denied citizenship to Blacks, then its representatives in the Electoral College were lowered, (3) former Confederates could not hold federal or state office, and (4) the federal debt was guaranteed while the Confederate one was repudiated (erased). The radicals were disappointed that Blacks weren’t given the right to vote, but all Republicans agreed that states would not be accepted back into the Union unless they ratified the 14th Amendment. The 1866 “off year” elections • • In 1866, Republicans would not allow Reconstruction to be carried on without the 14th Amendment, and as election time approached, Johnson wanted to lower the amount of Republicans in Congress, so he began a series of “Round the Circle “ speeches. However, as he was heckled by the audience, he hurled back insults, and generally denounced the radicals, and in the process, he gave Republicans more men in Congress than they had before—the opposite of his original intention. Radical Republicans in charge • • • By then, the Republicans had a vetoproof Congress and nearly unlimited control over Reconstruction, but moderates and radicals still could not agree with one another. In the Senate, the leader of the radicals was Charles Sumner, long since recovered from his caning by Preston Brooks, and in the House, the radical leader was Thaddeus Stevens, an old, sour man who was an unswerving friend of the Blacks. The radicals wanted to keep the South out of the Union as long as possible and totally change its economy and the moderates wanted a quicker Reconstruction. What happened was a compromise between the two extremes. Thaddeus Stevens The Reconstruction Act of 1867 • The Reconstruction Act of March 2, 1867 divided the South into five military zones, temporarily disfranchised tens of thousands of former Confederates, and laid down new guidelines for the readmission of states (Johnson had announced the Union restored, but Congress had not yet formally agreed on this). – All states had to approve the 14th Amendment, making all Blacks citizens. – All states had to guarantee full suffrage of all male former slaves. • • The 15th Amendment, passed by Congress in 1869, gave Blacks their right to vote. All created by the Radical “Joint Committee on Reconstrcution” Creating Radical Regimes in the Old Confederacy • In the case Ex parte Milligan (1866), the Supreme Court ruled that military tribunals could not try civilians, even during wartime, if there were civil courts available. • By 1870, all of the states had complied with the standards of Reconstruction, and in 1877, the last of the states were given their home rule back, and Reconstruction ended. • The end of Reconstruction was part of the Compromise of 1877—the two presidential candidates were at a stalemate and the only way to break the stalemate was with a deal. In the deal, the North got their president (Rutherford B. Hayes) and the South got the military to pull-out from the South thus ending Reconstruction. • “Radical regimes” were in charge of the Old Confederate states until 1877. Southern State Readmission What about the ladies? • Women suffrage advocates were disappointed by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, since they didn’t give women suffrage. – After all, women had gathered petitions and had helped Blacks gain their rights. – Frederick Douglass believed in the women’s movement, but believed that it was now “the Negro’s hour.” • As a result, women advocates like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony campaigned against the 14th and 15th Amendments—Amendments that inserted the word male into the Constitution for the first time ever. Carpetbaggers and Scalawags Carpetbaggers and Scalawags Helpful and corrupt • Carpetbaggers were northerners that went South to help with the Radical governments while scalawags were Southerners that participated in Radical southern governments • Some carpetbaggers / scalawags were corrupt and also helped themselves to some government cash Freedman in office • During Reconstruction, black men were elected to political office for the first time. They served at the local, state, and national level, although at a ratio below that of the black percentage of the population. • In 1870 the Reverend Hiram Revels of Mississippi, a Republican, became the first black person elected to the U.S. Senate. He served for only one year. In addition to Revels and Senator (1875-1881) Blanche K. Bruce, also from Missouri, fifteen black men served in the House of Representatives during the Reconstruction era. • It would be nearly 100 years until the next black, Republican Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, was elected to the U.S. Senate (serving 1967-1979). Hiram Revels The Ku Klux Klan • Begun by Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forest in 1866 the “Invisible Empire of the South,” or Ku Klux Klan, was an organization that scared Blacks into not voting or not seeking jobs… and often resorted to violence against freedman and the freedman’s supporters. • This radical group undermined much of what abolitionists sought to do. The KKK • During the late 1860s, some Southern veterans of the defeated Confederacy created the Ku Klux Klan. This organization's original goal was to deny African Americans the same rights and opportunities as white people in the South. The American Civil War and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, to the United States Constitution had granted African Americans freedom and equality with whites. The members of the KKK hoped to keep African Americans from enjoying those rights. KKK actions • To exercise social, political, and economic power over African Americans, Klan members utilized violence or threats of violence. KKK members, at times, threatened, injured and murdered African Americans who attempted to become educated, who tried to vote, who befriended whites, who sought to leave the South, or who sought better paying jobs. During this period, members of the Klan began to wear white robes as a way to intimidate African Americans and conceal their identities. Because of organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, some white Southerners were able to reestablish their dominance over Southern society. The Ku Klux Klan and other similar organizations slowly declined during the 1870s and the 1880s, as terrorism was replaced by the legal system of segregation and repression that came to be called Jim Crow. Trying to quiet the Klan • The Force Acts of 1870 and 1871 attempted to stop Klan violence. • By the end of Reconstruction (1877) various methods, such as literacy test, poll tax and the grandfather clause would keep blacks from voting in the South until the 1960s Impeaching a President • • • • • Radical Republicans were angry with President Johnson, and they decided to try to get rid of him. In 1867, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, which provided that the president had to secure the consent of the Senate before removing his appointees once they had been approved by the Senate (one reason was to keep Edwin M. Stanton, a Republican spy, in office). The Command of Army Act also stated that the President had to issue orders by way of the General in chief. When Johnson dismissed Stanton early in 1868, the Radical Republicans impeached him. Johnson was acquitted by one vote. (35-19 vote) The Purchase of Alaska • In 1867, Secretary of State William H. Seward bought Alaska from Russia to the United States for $7.2 million, but most of the public jeered his act as “Seward’s Folly” or “Seward’s Ice-box.” • Only later, when oil and gold were discovered, did Alaska prove to be a huge bargain. 1868 Presidential election • In 1868 the Republicans ran U.S. Grant while Democrats ran Horatio Seymour. • Grant lauded Reconstruction and “waved the Bloody shirt” to win election. • Clearly Grant was elected by the freedman’s vote Grantism (Political corruption) • • Grant, an easy-going fellow, apparently failed to see the corruption going on, even though many of his friends wanted offices and his cabinet was totally corrupt (except for Secretary of State Hamilton Fish), and his in-laws, the Dent family, were especially terrible. Two notorious millionaires were Jim Fisk and Jay Gould. – In 1869, the pair concocted a plot to corner the gold market that would only work if the treasury stopped selling gold, so they worked on President Grant directly and through his brother-in-law, but their plan failed when the treasury sold gold. Grantism continued • The infamous Tweed Ring (AKA, “Tammany Hall) of NYC, headed by “Boss” Tweed, employed bribery, graft, and fake elections to cheat the city of as much as $200 million. – Tweed was finally caught when The New York Times secured evidence of his misdeeds, and later died in jail. – Samuel J. Tilden gained fame by leading the prosecution of Tweed, and he would later use this fame to become the Democratic nominee in the presidential election of 1876. – Thomas Nast, political cartoonist, constantly drew against Tammany’s corruption. Grantism • The Credit Mobilier, a railroad construction company that paid itself huge sums of money for small railroad construction, tarred Grant. – • A New York newspaper finally busted it, and two members of Congress were formally censured (the company had given some of its stock to the congressmen) and the Vice President himself was shown to have accepted 20 shares of stock. In 1875, the public learned that the Whiskey Ring had robbed theTreasury of millions of dollars, and when Grant’s own private secretary was shown to be one of the criminals, Grant retracted his earlier statement of “Let no guilty man escape.” – Later, in 1876, Secretary of War William Belknap was shown to have pocketed some $24,000 by selling junk to Indians. 1872 Presidential Election • By 1872, a power wave of disgust at Grant’s administration was building, despite the worst of the scandals not having been revealed yet, and reformers organized the Liberal Republican Party and nominated the dogmatic Horace Greeley. – The Democratic Party also supported Greeley, even though he had blasted them repeatedly in his newspaper (the New York Tribune), but he pleased them because he called for a clasping of hands between the North and South and an end to Reconstruction. • The campaign was filled with more mudslinging (as usual), as Greeley was called an atheist, a communist, a vegetarian, and a signer of Jefferson Davis’s bail bond (that part was true) while Grant was called an ignoramus, a drunkard, and a swindler. – Still, Grant crushed Greeley in the electoral vote and in the popular vote was well. Presidential Election of 1876 • Grant almost ran for a third term before the House derailed that proposal, so the Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes, dubbed the “Great Unknown” because no one knew much about him, while the Democrats ran Samuel Tilden. – The election was very close, with Tilden getting 184 votes out of a needed 185 in the Electoral College, but votes in four states, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, and part of Oregon, were unsure and disputed. – The disputed states had sent in two sets of returns, one Democrat, one Republican. Bargain of 1877 • • The Electoral Count Act, passed in 1877, set up an electoral commission that consisted of 15 men selected from the Senate, the House, and the Supreme Court, which would count the votes (the 15th man was to be an independent, David Davis, but at the last moment, he resigned). In February of 1877, the Senate and the House met to settle the dispute, and eventually, Hayes became president as a part of the rest of the Compromise of 1877. True to a compromise, both sides won a bit: – For the North—Hayes would become president if he agreed to remove troops from the remaining two Southern states where Union troops remained (Louisiana and South Carolina), and also, a bill would subsidize the Texas and Pacific rail line. End of Reconstruction – For the South—military rule and Reconstruction ended when the military pulled out of the South. – The Compromise of 1877 abandoned the Blacks in the South by withdrawing troops, and the Congress’ last attempt at protection of Black rights was the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which was mostly declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the 1883 Civil Rights cases. The Legacy of Reconstruction • As Reconstruction ended and the military returned northward, whites once again asserted their power. – Literacy requirements for voting began, voter registration laws emerged, and poll taxes began. These were all targeted at black voters. – Most blacks became sharecroppers (providing nothing but labor) or tenant farmers (if they could provide their own tools). • In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but equal” facilities were constitutional. – Thus “Jim Crow” segregation was legalized • • • Many Southerners regarded Reconstruction as worse than the war itself, as they resented the upending of their social and racial system. The Republicans, though with good intentions, failed to improve the South, and the fate of Blacks would remain poor for almost another century before the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s secured Black privileges.