Transcript H106A: "The New South and the Old West"

The “New South” and the “Old
West”
Failure to implement truly radical
measures during reconstruction failed
to truly help southern Blacks while
thoroughly angering and alienating
southern whites.
I. After Appomattox: The
Ultimate Questions
• How do you reconstruct the Union?
• How far should the federal government go
to insure Black freedom and civil rights?
II. Philosophies of
Reconstruction
• Presidential
--quick restoration with minimal protection
for southern Blacks
• Congressional
-- “loyal” southern governments to replace
ex-confederates
--Southern Blacks need basic rights of
American citizenship
III. Presidential Reconstruction
• Lincoln’s 10% plan
• Battle over who had the
power to reconstruct the
Union
• Andrew Johnson’s
background
--hated southern planters
--no friend of Blacks
• Johnson’s Reconstruction
Plan (May, 1865)
IV. Radical Republicans Gain
the Upper Hand
• Johnson’s
controversial vetoes
• Johnson’s opposition
to the 14th amendment
• The “Swing Around
the Circle” (1866)
• Republicans won vetoproof majorities in the
1866 election
V. Congressional Reconstruction
(Begins in 1867)
• Reconstruction Act of
1867
• Military rule of the south
• Readmission of states with
guarantees of Black
suffrage
• Exclusion of exConfederates from
government office
• Radicals wanted
redistribution of land to
Blacks—too radical
VI. The Impeachment Crisis
• Johnson tries to obstruct
congressional
reconstruction with
executive privilege
• Tenure of Office Act
• Johnson tries to remove
Secretary of War Stanton
• Impeachment and Trial in
the Senate
• Process neutralized
Johnson
VII. Reconstruction in the South
• A Condition of Ruin
• “Forty Acres and a Mule”
• Blacks resist gang labor
after the War
• Development of
Sharecropper system
• Black Codes
• The Segregated South
• Freedmen faced violence
if they tried to vote
VIII. The Southern Republican
Party
• Hastily organized for 1868
elections
• Three constituencies:
--southern Blacks
--northern businessmen
--poor, white farmers
• Some success, some
corruption
• Blacks held only limited
political offices in the
south
IX. The Fifteenth Amendment
• Highpoint of
Reconstruction era
• Ratified in 1870
• Ambiguous wording
allowed the future use of
literacy tests, poll taxes,
and property requirements
• Worked to divide the
feminist movement
X. Grant and the Retreat from
Reconstruction
• Rise of the Ku Klux Klan
between 1868-1872
• Inconsistent use of federal
troops to protect Black
voters
• Northern disenchantment
with “propping up”
corrupt southern state
governments
• Open southern appeal to
white supremacy after
1872
X. Retreat from Reconstruction
(cont.)
• Grant administration
facing charges of
corruption
-- Credit Mobilier scandal
• Radical Republicans dying
or out of office
• Civil service reform
replaces Black civil rights
as the major political issue
of the time
XI. The Compromise of 1877
• The election of 1876
• Tilden vs. Hayes
• Disputed votes in the
electoral college
• Electoral commission fell
under Republican control
• Hayes’ victory in
exchange for southern
“home rule”
• Eliminates Republican
party in the south
• Presidency of Hayes
XII. The “New South”
• Redemption
governments
• Laissez-faire policies
and white supremacy
• Northern industry
attracted to no taxes
and low wages for
workers
• Corrupt governments
XII. “The New South” (cont.)
• Lynchings common
• Poor whites neglected just
as much as Blacks
• Some Blacks continue to
vote until the 1890’s
• Supreme Court decisions
between 1875-1896 gutted
Reconstruction
--Plessy v. Ferguson
(1896)
XII. “The New South” (cont.)
• Signs of sectional healing:
Battlefield reunions
• Sectional reconciliation
made possible by northern
abandonment of Black
rights
• “Lost Cause” myth also
helps reconcile the two
regions
• Blacks bore the burden of
sectional reconciliation
XIII. “New South” Economic
Growth
• Increase in southern
cotton mills
• Growth of southern
tobacco industry
--Duke family
• Thriving Lumber
industry
• Other southern
industries
XIV. Voices in Opposition to
Southern Racism
• Booker T. Washington
• W.E.B. DuBois
--The Niagara
Movement (1905)
• Ida Wells
• Henry McNeal Turner
• Frances E. W. Harper
XV. “The Old West”
• Competing
perceptions of the
“Old West”
• Best to view the “Old
West” as a series of
frontiers
• Geography and
climate played a huge
role in this area
XVI. Mining the West
• Scattering of
settlements in nonagricultural areas
• History of western
strikes
• Deadwood, South
Dakota
• Admission of new
western states
XVII. Western Indian Wars
• Life and disunity of
the western tribes
• The Chivington
massacre (1864)
• The Battle of the Little
Big Horn (1876)
• The retreat of the Nez
Perces and Chief
Joseph
XVII. Western Indian Wars
(cont.)
• Capture of Apache Chief
Geronimo in 1886
• The Ghost Dance and
Wounded Knee (1890)
• The extinction of buffalo
herds
• Eastern concerns for
Indian welfare
--Helen Hunt Jackson’s A
Century of Dishonor
• The Dawes Act of 1867
XVIII. The Cattle Frontier and
Cowboys
• The history of cattle
raising
• The “average” cowboy
• Mexican origins of the
cowboy life
• Abilene and Dodge City,
Kansas
• The disintegration of the
cattle drive
--Invention of barbed wire
(1873)
XIX. The Farming Frontier
• “Sodbusters”—the least
romantic of the western
frontiersmen
• The importance of the
railroad
• Plains farmer faced a grim
struggle with danger,
adversity and monotony
• Last Indian territory
opened to settlement in
1889
XIX. The Farming Frontier
(cont.)
• Egalitarian gender roles
on the frontier
• The competition of
“bonanza” farms
• The western farmers’
conspiracy theory
• 1890 U.S. census =
“frontier closed”
• The historical theory of
Frederick Jackson Turner