Download Reconstruction and Its Effects

Reconstruction and Its Effects
Chapter 12
Reconstruction
• 1865 – 1877
• Rebuilding the country – readmitting
southern states
• Lenient or harsh?
• Would the Civil War have been for
naught?
The Cast
• Radical Republicans
– Supported abolition before the Civil War and the War
– Moral issue -- equality of rights for Blacks
– Opposed Lincoln’s lenient reconstruction plan
– Minority - worked w/Republican majority to impose
harsher plan
•
•
•
•
Lincoln – Lenient plan
Johnson – follows Lincoln
Freed Blacks
Southern White power structure
Reconstruction Plans
Lincoln’s Plan
Johnson’s Plan
Radical Republican
Plan
Amnesty to all but a
few
10% Plan – 10% of a
states voters in 1860
had to swear a loyalty
oath before creating a
new constitution
Organize a state
government that bans
slavery
Did not required black
suffrage
Create a new
Constitution w/o 10%
rule
Officially denied
pardons, but granted
them
Disbanded the states
that came in under
Lincoln’s plan
Divided the South into
5 districts
Placed under military
rule
Required Southern
states to ratify the 14th
Amendment
Required to guarantee
suffrage
Did not require black
suffrage
Reconstruction Plans
Lincoln’s Plan
Johnson’s Plan
Executive Branch Argument
Presidential power to pardon placed
responsibility for Reconstruction in the
executive branch
Secession had been illegal so the states
did not have to be readmitted to the
Union
The states were “out of their normal
relationship to the Union”
Radical Republican
Plan
Legislative Branch
Argument
Congress had the
power to admit
new states to the
Union. Therefore
in had the
responsibility for
Reconstruction
Radical Republicans Impeach
Johnson
• Obstructing Radical Republican plan of
Reconstruction
• Violated Tenure of Office Act
• One vote kept him in office
Carpetbagger/Scalawags
• Carpetbaggers – Northerners who moved
to the South for “economic opportunity”
• Scalawags – Southern Democrats who
joined the Republican Party after the Civil
War
Amendments
• 13th Amendment
– Ended slavery
• 14th Amendment
–Equal protection under the law Civil Rights
• 15th Amendment
–right to vote
Freedmen’s Bureau
• Program set to help former slaves and
poor whites
–Hospitals
–Schools
–Training programs
–Distributed clothing
• Forty Acres and a Mule
Emancipated Slaves Exercise
Freedom
• Traveled
• Reunited with families
• Organized schools, colleges, universities,
churches
• Participated in politics
Sharecropping/Tenant Farming
• Sharecropping
–Use of land/tools/seed in
exchange for portion of crop
grown
• Tenant Farmer
–Cash paid for use of land
• Cycle of poverty
Becomes Tenant
Farmer if he has
leftover cash
1. Sharecropper
is given land and
seed by owner
2. Buys food
and clothing on
credit
6. Pays of debts
5. Sells remaining
crop at market
Crooked merchants
charge unfair fines
– Can’t leave until
debts are paid.
At the
mercy of
the market
Farming
methods
deplete
soil
4. Harvests crop and
gives landowner his
share
3. Plants crop
Southern Whites Regain Political
Power
• Black Codes
–Curfews, vagrancy laws, Labor
contracts, land restrictions
•
•
•
•
Amnesty Act of 1872
KKK
Infighting within the Republican Party
Supreme Court Decisions
– Limited equal protection – to a few basic rights
– Limited voting rights – what couldn’t be used to limit
voting rights
– Northern support fades
Successes and Failures of Reconstruction
Successes
Failures
Union is restored.
Many white southerners remain
bitter
The South’s economy grows
and new wealth is created in
the North.
The South is slow to
industrialize.
14th and 15th amendments
Southern state governments
and terrorist organizations
deny African Americans the
right to vote.
Organizations help many
black families
Many remain caught in a
cycle of poverty.
Southern states adopt a
system of mandatory
education.
Racist attitudes continue, in
the South and the North.