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Reconstruction
January 26, 2009
U.S. History
Reconstruction
• Time period following the Civil War (18651877); during which the United States began to
rebuild.
• Process the federal government used to readmit
the defeated Confederate states to the Union.
Freedmen’s Bureau Acts
• 1865-66
• Legislation Passed the Act in
order to help freed slaves and
war refugees.
• Established hospitals,
schools, helped negotiate
labor contract, and protect
them from former masters.
• The Howard School, founded in
1867 by African American Citizens
of Fayetteville, NC.
A Letter
“To My Old Master”
• Wrote in 1865
• To Master Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring,
Tennessee.
• Author former slave Jourdon Anderson.
•
Binder, Frederick M. and Reimers, David M. The Way We Lived. “To My Old Master.”
Page: 301-302. Houghton Mifflin Company, New York. 2004.
3 Plans for Reconstruction
• Lincoln, Johnson, and Members of the
Congress all had different ideas about how the
Reconstruction process should be handled.
Lincoln’s Plan
• Lenient Reconstruction
Policy
• December 1863
announced Proclamation
of Amnesty and
Reconstruction, also
known as Ten Percent Plan
• Pardon Confederates who
would swear allegiance to
the Union. When 10% of
those pardon who had
voted in 1860 took the
oath than that state could
send Representatives and
Senators to Congress.
Lincoln’s Plan Cont.
• Arkansas, Louisiana,
Tennessee, and Virginia
moved toward readmission to
the Union.
• Lincoln’s Plan angered the
Radical Republicans.
• Senator Charles Sumner of
Massachusetts and Thaddeus
Stevens of Pennsylvania.
(Read about Stevens on page
193)
Radical Republicans
• Destroy the political power of former
slaveholders. Wanted AA to be given full
citizenship and right to vote.
• July 1864 the Wade-Davis Bill was passed by the
Radicals.
• Lincoln Vetoed the bill.
Johnson’s Plan
• Lincoln was assassinated
before he could
implement his plan for
Reconstruction.
• May 1865 Johnson, who
was Lincoln’s successor
announced his plan for
Reconstruction.
Johnson’s Plan Cont.
• Johnson’s plan called for those who were high
ranking officials and those who committed
crimes against POW’s would not have to take
the oath under the union and would still get
voting privileges.
• “white men alone must manage the South.”
• Seven remaining ex-Confederate states agreed to
Johnson’s plan.
• Johnson’s plan upset the Radicals.
Johnson’s Plan Cont.
• Congress refused to admit the new Southern
Legislators.
• Feb. 1866 Congress voted to enlarge and
continue the Freedmen’s Bureau.
• Congress passed Civil Rights Act of 1866.
• Johnson vetoed both the Freedmen’s Bureau and
the Civil Rights Act.
Congressional Plan
• Radical and moderate Republicans begin to work
together to stop Johnson’s plan and shift the control
from the executive branch to the legislature.
• They overrode the vetoes in 1866.
• Congress drafted the 14th Amendment. (Read on page
193-194)
• Johnson advised the southern states to reject the
amendment all but Tennessee rejected it. The
amendment was not ratified until 1868.
Congressional Plan Cont.
• 1866 Republicans gain control of Congress.
• Passed Reconstruction Act of 1867. This stated
that Congress did not recognize state
governments formed under Lincoln and
Johnson’s plan---except Tennessee who ratified
the 14th amendment.
• Johnson vetoed the Reconstruction legislation
but Congress overrode the veto.
Kentucky in 1860 and 1870
• http://www.pbs.org/wg
bh/amex/reconstruction
/states/sf_states_pop_k
y.htmlAmerican
Experience |
Reconstruction: The
Second Civil War
Johnson Impeachment
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Radicals wanted Johnson out.
Secretary of War Edwin Staton removed from office.
Tenure of Office Act
House– 11charges of impeachment; 9 of which based
on the violation of Tenure of Office Act.
March 1868
11 weeks
Not predictable
Vote 35 to 19– one vote short of the 2/3rd majority
which was needed to convict Johnson.
Ulysses S. Grant Elected
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Civil War Hero
Won by 310,000 votes
500,000 Southern AA voted, majority voted for Grant.
????? Introduced 15th Amendment; ratified by the
states in ??????
• Republican dominated governments
• 1870 Confederate states complete the process to be
back in the Union. Reconstruction did NOT end.
Conditions in Post-War South
• Economic Struggle
• Property plummeted in value. Many small farms
ruined.
• Confederate Bounds
• Population devastated
1/5th of adult white males died in the war
Ten of thousands Southern AA also died.
Conditions in Post-War South
• Public work programs—repair physical damage
and provide social services.
• Economic problems were most difficult to
change. Southern governments raised taxes!
Politics in the Post-War South
• 3 groups in South make up the Republican
Party—scalawags, carpetbaggers, and African
Americans.
• Scalawags
• Carpetbaggers
• African Americans—voting rights
– 8 out of 10 support the Republican party.
Politics in the Post-War South
• Look on page 195 at the Political cartoon
• Lack of unity in the Republican party
• Republican governors start to appoint white
Democrats to office.
• White Southerners refuse to accept blacks’ new
status.
Former Slaves Improve their Lives
• What were slaves to do?
– No land, no jobs, no tools, no money, and little skills
besides farming.
How would former slaves get food, clothing, and were
would they live?
Southern cities populations doubled due to slaves
migrating to the cities to find jobs.
Former Slaves Improve their Lives
• Many AA wanted an education and due to the
Freedmen’s Bureau Act they could receive an
education.
• AA founded their own churches.
Blacks in Reconstruction
• Voted
• Held office in local, state,
and federal governments.
• Out of 125 southerners
elected to Congress 16
were AA. –Hiram Revels
was the 1st AA to be
Senator.
Blacks in Reconstruction
• 1871 Texas passed a law prohibiting railroads
from making distinctions between groups of
passengers.
• Many of these laws were not enforced.
• Property
40 Acres and A Mule
• 1865 General Sherman
promised former slaves
who followed his army,
40 acres per family and
the use of army mules.
• 40,000 freed slaves
settled on 400,000 acres
in Georgia and South
Carolina.
40 Acres and A Mule
• Forty Acres and a Mule
• As Union soldiers advanced through the South, tens of
thousands of freed slaves left their plantations to follow
Union general William Tecumseh Sherman's army.
• To solve problems caused by the mass of refugees,
Sherman issued Special Field Orders, No. 15, a temporary
plan granting each freed family forty acres of tillable land
on islands and the coast of Georgia. The army had a
number of unneeded mules which were also granted to
settlers.
• News of "forty acres and a mule" spread quickly; freed
slaves welcomed it as proof that emancipation would finally
give them a stake in the land they had worked as slaves for
so long.
• The orders were in effect for only one year.
40 Acres and A Mule
• In the Field, Savannah, Georgia, January 16th, 1865.
• Special Field Orders, No. 15.
• I. The islands from Charleston, south, the abandoned
rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the
sea, and the country bordering the St. Johns river,
Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement of
the negroes now made free by the acts of war and the
proclamation of the President of the United States.
• In August of 1865 Johnson ordered that original
landowners reclaim their land.
• Thaddeus Stevens believed former slaves deserved part
of that land. His plan failed.
Restoration of Plantations
• Planter class wanted to restore the plantation
system.
• Planters wanted almost complete control over
their laborers.
• Many AA refused to work in the fields.
• White planters did not want former slaves
acquiring their own land.
Sharecropping and Tenant Farming
• Many former slaves were economically forced to
become sharecroppers.
• Sharecropping
http://
• Tenant Farming
• Sharecropping contract
• Sharecropping and Tenant Farming
Collapse of Reconstruction
• Some whites refused to register to vote.
• Whites formed violent groups to intimidate AA.
• Ku Klux Klan –most notorious and widespread. The
groups goals were to destroy the Republican party
,throw out the Reconstruction governments, to aid the
planter class, and to prevent AA from exercising their
political rights.
• Killed several thousand men, women, and children.
Some were whites who wanted to help AA but the
majority were AA.
Collapse of Reconstruction
• Congress passed a series of Enforcement Acts
in 1870 and 1871.
• May 1872 Congress passed the Amnesty Act.
• Freedmen’s Bureau Act expires
• Southern Democrats regain political power.
Scandals and Money Crises Hurts
Republicans
• Scandals in North takes attention away from the
South.
• Grant, who was elected to a second term in
1872, was never found guilty of wrong doings.
• Grants appointees were dishonest
• Scandals involved Grants vice-president, private
secretary, and secretary of war.
Scandals and Money Crises Hurts
Republicans
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Bank failures—Panic of 1873
Five Year Depression
Dispute of Currency
Currency from paper back to gold
Economy improves in 1879
Democrats “Redeem” the South
• “Redemption” –what the Democrats called their
return to power.
• Election of 1876 between Rutherfod B. Hayes
(Rep.) and Samuel J. Tilden (Dem.).
• Gov. Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote but
didn’t carry the electoral votes.
• The commission gave Hayes the win.
Democrats “Redeem” the South
• Republicans struck a deal with Southern
Democrats not to delay the approval of Hayes.
• COMPROMISE OF 1877
In the deal Southern Democrats got the removal of
federal troops in Louisiana and South Carolina. Hayes
was then peacefully inaugurated. This compromise
meant the END of Reconstruction in the South.
The End of Reconstruction
• Congress didn’t protect the rights of AA.
• 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments help lie the
foundation to the 20th century civil rights
legislation.
• AA—in reconstruction voted, held political
office, and made important achievements.
• Most white Americans put Reconstruction
behind them and turned their attention to the
expansion on the western frontier.