Download Reconstruction - Humble Independent School District

Lincoln’s Plans for
Reconstruction
Pardon
Confederate
officials
Form new
governments
Send southern
representatives to
Congress
Freedmen’s Bureau
created to assist
former slaves
Presidential
Reconstruction
President Andrew
Johnson’s Plan: (based
on Lincoln’s)
 Ratify 13th Amendment
 Accept supreme power of
U.S. government
 Amnesty (forgiveness) to
southerners
 Return property
 Each state had to write a new
constitution: declare
secession illegal & abolish
slavery
Congressional Reaction
Radical Republicans:
 Nickname for party members leading
Congress
 Believed the federal gov’t should play
an active role in remaking South
Goals:
 Destroy South’s old ruling class
 Make it a place of small farms, free
schools, respect for labor, & political
equality for all
 Black codes –laws passed in the South
to limit the freedom of former slaves
 Northerners suspected Southerners were trying to
bring back the “Old South” (slavery)
Congressional Legislation
13th Amendment
 Abolished slavery
Civil Rights Act of 1866
 All persons born in the U.S.
are citizens
 All citizens are entitled to
equal rights
14th Amendment
 All born in the U.S. are
citizens
 All citizens granted “equal
protection of the law”
Congressional Legislation
Reconstruction Acts
South=5 military districts
Voting for all adult males
 Ratify 14th Amendment
15th Amendment
Cannot deny a person right
to vote on race, color, or
previous condition of
servitude
1870
1866
1868
1868
1868
1870
1868
1868
1870
1870
1868
1870
Date readmitted to the Union
Boundary of military
district
Presidential Impeachment
 Johnson tried to block
Congressional
Reconstruction
 Congress passed Tenure of
Office Act
 President cannot fire govt.
employees without permission
 Johnson suspended Sec. of War
& tried to hire a new one
 House of Representatives
impeached the President for
wrongdoing against public
office
 Avoided removal in the Senate by
one vote
African Americans in
Congress
 During Reconstruction,
more than 600 African
American served in state
legislatures
 14 U.S. Congressman from
Southern states
 Hiram Revels-1st African
American to serve as a
senator
 During the war he was a
minister in a church &
recruited blacks to fight for the
Union
From left to right: Senator Hiram R. Revels and
Representatives Benjamin S. Turner, Robert D. De Large,
Josiah T. Walls, Jefferson H. Long, Joseph H. Rainey, and
Robert Brown Elliot.
Contract System of
Labor
 Former slaves worked on
plantations as paid workers
with contracts
 Pros –
 Chose who to work for
 Families could not be split
up
 Cons –
 Wages were poor
 Workers cheated
 Punished for breaking
contracts
Sharecropping
 Most Americans (mostly freed
people) could not afford land
 Tenant farming
 Rent land to grow crops
 Sharecropper
 Worker who rents land from
the land owner
 Pays for seeds/supplies with
profits from sales
 Sharecropper cycle
 Forced to grow cash crops &
buy food on credit
 When crops were sold profit
didn’t pay debt, so debt
carried over to the next year
Fighting Reconstruction
 Groups like the White
League and Ku Klux Klan
 Secret southern group that did
not want African Americans
to have rights
 Their objective was to
restore Democratic control &
keep African Americans
powerless
 Attacked African-Americans
targeting those that owned land
or were prosperous
 Beat people, burned homes,
lynched people
The New-“Old South"
 About 500,000 freedmen voted in the South
during the 1868 election
 Most freedmen supported Grant
 Women were angered by the 15th
Amendment
 Uneducated former slaves received the
right to vote, but educated white women
did not
 Imposed poll taxes & literacy tests to
restrict African Americans from
voting
 Grant urged Congress to pass an anti-Klan
bill to stop the terrorizing of AfricanAmericans
 Bill led to a more fair election in 1872
Grant's Bad Decisions
Scandals within Grant’s
administration hurt the
Republican Party
Grant put unqualified
army friends & his wife’s
relatives in government
positions
Panic of 1873
 Many powerful Eastern banks
made bad loans, ran out of
money, & shut down
 Stock market temporarily closed &
RR industry suffered
Impact of the Panic of 1873
Run on the bank (1873)
 More than 18,000 companies
shut down & thousands lost
jobs
 Republicans lost power due to
public blame
 Democrats won victories in
1874 & tried to restore the
old south
 Rutherford B. Hayes wins
Election of 1876
 Republicans & Democrats claimed
victory in 3 southern states
 Compromise of 1877-solved the
election & gave concessions to
both sides in the South
Opening the Great Plains
 The frontier was the sparsely
populated area on the western
side of the nation
 The Great Plains was area
stretched from the Missouri
River to the Rocky Mountains
 Transcontinental RR carried
resources of the west to markets
in the East & brought miners,
ranchers and farmers west to
develop the western resources
further
 The U.S. government forced the
Native Americans on the Great
Plains onto Reservations
Growth & Expansion
 Homestead Act
 Government encouraged western
settlement
 160 acres of free land to anyone
who agreed to live on the land
for 5 years & improve it
 Morrill Act
 Federal land to fund public
colleges that taught agriculture &
mechanical arts
 Dawes Act
 Encourage Native Americans to
give up their traditional cultures
and become farmers
 Sent children to schools to be
“Americanized”
Post Reconstruction
South
 Restrict the rights of African
Americans when they passed
laws restricting their freedoms
 Literacy tests & poll taxes
 Prevent blacks from voting
 Jim Crow laws forced separation
of white & black people in
public places
 Segregation through separate
schools, restrooms, & seating
 Court case upheld these laws
by declaring them “separate but
equal” & not a violation of the
14th Amendment