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RECONSTRUCTION
1865-1877
The restoration of the former
Confederate states to the Union
What Could Have Happened: chaos and vengeance
• imprisonment of Confederate leaders
• former rebel troops wage a guerilla war
• slaves rage a racial war
What Did Happen: political stalemate
• political conflict with some violence
• Constitutional Amendments and legislative
reform
• impeachment crisis
“It is intended to revolutionize their principles and feelings… a radical reorganization in
Southern institutions, habits, and manners…or all our blood and treasure have been
spent in vain.”
~ Thaddeus Stevens, Pennsylvania Representative
Questions to Consider
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What issues (both short and long term) need to
be addressed?
What other issues do you assume exist? Preexisting conflicts – are they addressed?
Who is capable of and responsible for
addressing them?
What are the priorities of reconstruction? Who
decides what the priorities are?
Who or what is expendable or can be sacrificed
in this process?
How can you measure the efficacy or success of
the recovery plan? Pragmatism vs. ideology
When does it end?
Lincoln’s 10% Plan
“With Malice toward none, with charity
for all, with firmness in the right, as God
gives us to see the right, let us strive on to
finish the work we are in, to bind up the
nation's wounds. “
1863 Proclamation of
Amnesty and Reconstruction
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Oath of allegiance and acceptance of
emancipation by 10% of 1860 voters
Excluded Confederate officials and
officers
Excluded blacks
Attempt to undermine the Confederacy and build a southern Republican Party
Radical Republicans
Wade-Davis Bill
Passed by Congress in July of 1864,
introduced by Radical Republicans, OH
senator Benjamin F. Wade and MD
representative Henry Winter Davis
• majority of eligible voters required to
swear oath of allegiance to the Union
• repeal secession
• abolish slavery
Pocket-vetoed by Lincoln
Andrew
Johnson
Southern Senator,
remained in Congress
Anti-Confederate
Military governor of TN
Self-educated Jacksonian
Anti-agricultural elite
Supporter of
emancipation
Johnson’s Plan
May 1865: AL, FL, GA, MS, NC, SC and TX still not readmitted
Leniency
Requirements and Powers
Pardon and amnesty for
southerners taking oath of
allegiance
Elect delegates to state
conventions
All property except slaves
returned
Call regular elections
Confederate civil and military
leaders and wealthy property
owners disqualified from
taking the oath
Proclaim secession illegal
Power to the “humble men,
the peasantry and yeomen of
the South”
Ratify the Thirteenth
Amendment
Governments of Southern States
status quo ante bellum
Confederate officers and large planters assumed state offices
Former Confederate congressmen won election to Congress
BLACK CODES
Insure a landless, dependent black labor force
through contracts
Legalized segregation
Banned intermarriage, jury service by blacks,
testimony against
whites
Southern law allowed marriage to
blacks, ownership of property and right
to testify against other blacks
Defended by Johnson
Congressional
Reconstruction
Democrats;
Radical, Moderate and Conservative
Republicans
1865 – extend Freedmen’s Bureau
1866 (March) – Johnson vetoed it:
the Constitution did not sanction
military trials of civilians in peacetime,
nor care for “indigent persons”
1866 (February) – Congress passed
Civil Rights Act of 1866 guaranteeing
African American citizenship
Vetoed by Johnson;
Overridden by Congress
Freedmen’s Bureau Act then passed
over a presidential veto
Midterm Election 1866: Republican Landslide
Radical Republican Agenda:
African American suffrage
Federal support for public schools
Confiscation of Confederate estates
Extended military occupation of the South
Three Reconstruction Acts passed over
Presidential Veto
Reconstruction Act of 1867
All Reconstruction governments except TN were invalidated
Remaining 10 states divided into 5 military districts
Black males and enfranchised whites elect delegation for new
constitution
Grant African American suffrage and ratify 14th Amendment to
be re-admitted
Temporary military occupation
No prosecution of Confederate leaders
No confiscation or redistribution of property
Impeachment Crisis
March 1867
Congress passed Tenure of Office Act which
prohibited the president from removing any
executive officer confirmed by the Senate without
Senate approval. (Eventually the law was declared
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.)
February 21st, 1868, Johnson fired Secretary of War
Edwin M. Stanton, the last of several pro-Radical
military officers Johnson had fired
House approved 11 articles of impeachment, 9
based on Tenure of Office and 2 others for
unbecoming conduct
7 Republican Senators voted with the Democrats
and Johnson was spared conviction by one vote
Reconstruction Amendments
Amendment and
date of
Congressional passage
Thirteenth
January 1865
Fourteenth
June 1866
Fifteenth
February 1869
Provisions
Ratification by the States
Prohibited slavery in the United
States
December 1865
• Citizens are all persons born or
naturalized in the U.S.
• loss of congressional
representation for states that
denied suffrage to any male
citizens
• disqualified prewar Confederate
officeholders from holding state
or national office
July 1868 after Congress made
ratification a prerequisite for readmission of ex-Confederate
states to the Union
Prohibited denial of suffrage due
to race, color or previous
condition of servitude
March 1870; ratification required
of VA, TX, MS and GA for
readmission to the Union
Carpetbaggers and Scalawags
According to Democrats, there were three types of Republicans
Scalawags – poor, ignorant, white southerners who supported the Republicans
Some former Whigs; mostly small farmers from the mountains (NC, BA, AL, AR); former Unionists who didn’t
support the planter elite seeking their own economic improvement; no interest in black rights
Carpetbaggers :
northerners who had come south for wealth and power
Former Union soldiers seeking land, factories, RR work or warmer climate;
they held 1 in 3 political offices; recruited the black vote to the polls
Hordes of uneducated freedmen:
Backbone of southern Republicanism; 8 out of 10 Republican votes
Sought land, education, civil rights and political equality
Held only 1 in 5 political offices
No black governors; only 2 Senators; 6% House members were black
Black lawmakers sought equal rights; most freedmen sought land
White Counterattacks
Ex-Confederates decried the “horror of Negro domination”
NC constitutional convention delegates called “Ethiopian
minstrelsy…baboons, monkeys, mules…and other jackasses”
by democratic newspapers
Political Tactics – employed after readmission
• contested elections
• backed dissident Republican factions
• elected Democratic legislators
• lured away scalawags
Violent Vigilantism
• shooting, murder, rape, arson, and “severe and inhuman beating”
• 1866 six Confederate veterans formed KKK
• by 1868 the Klan was a domestic terrorist organization targeting black voters
Emancipation
Urban black population tripled as blacks left farms
seeking lost family members and economic opportunity
Black Churches:
worship, relief, schools, political activism
Education:
Freedmen’s Bureau schools, Howard, Atlanta,
Fisk Universities and Hampton Institute
By 1877, 80% of blacks remained illiterate
Sharecropping – Crop Lien Economy
40 acres and a mule
1866 Southern Homestead Act
Obstacles to Black Landownership:
Lack of capital
White opposition to selling to blacks
Preservation of a captive labor force
The Abandonment of Reconstruction
The Election of U.S. Grant, 1868
• popular candidate but incompetent President
• surrounded by fraud, bribery and corruption (“Grantism”)
Liberal Revolt
• radicals and others revolted; formed Liberal Republican Party
• Horace Greeley 1872 Candidate for President
• civil service reform, end to “bayonet rule”, qualified leaders
Panic of 1873
• Railroad speculation caused bank failure and five-year depression
• bankrupt businesses, 3 million unemployed, labor violence
• sound money vs. easy money and repayment of the debt
• Specie Resumption Act, 1875 (Senator John Sherman)
• Bland-Allison Act, 1878
End of Reconstruction
The Supreme Court
• Ex Parte Milligan (1866)
• Texas v. White (1869)
• Slaughterhouse decision (1873)
• U.S. v. Reese (1876)
• U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876)
•Invalidated the Civil Rights Act of 1875 and the KKK Act of 1871 (1883)
• Plessy v. Ferguson (1898)
Redemption: the return of Democrats to power
• Republican coalition crumbled
• Democrats rewrote state constitutions
• cut budgets, lowered taxes
• eliminated social programs
• limited rights of tenant farmers and sharecroppers
• directed at blacks severe penalties for misdemeanors
• restored conditions of slavery and prompted black exodus
Election of 1876: Hayes (Republican) vs. Tilden (Democrat)
• Contested electoral outcome
• Decided by electoral commission, certified by the House
“When you turned us
loose, you turned us loose
to the sky, to the storm, to
the whirlwind, and worst
of all… to the wrath of our
infuriated masters… The
question now is, do you
mean to make good to us
the promised in your
Constitution?”
Frederick Douglass
Don’t forget…
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What issues (both short and long term) need to be addressed?
What other issues do you assume exist? Pre-existing conflicts –
are they addressed?
Who is capable of and responsible for addressing them?
What are the priorities of reconstruction? Who decides what the
priorities are?
Who or what is expendable or can be sacrificed in this process?
How can you measure the efficacy or success of the recovery
plan? Pragmatism vs. ideology
When does it end?
Choose AT LEAST three to address in your next journal entry…