Transcript Reconstruction

What is Reconstruction?
• The period of rebuilding after the Civil War
during which Confederate states were
readmitted into the Union
President Lincoln’s Plan – 10% Plan
• He didn’t consult Congress
regarding Reconstruction
• Pardon to all but the highest
military and civilian
Confederate officers
• When 10% of voting
population in the 1860
election had taken an oath of
loyalty and established a
government, it would be
recognized
Presidential Reconstruction
• President Andrew
Johnson
– Jacksonian Democrat
– Anti-Aristocrat
– White Supremacist
– Agreed with Lincoln
that states had never
legally left the Union
President Johnson’s Plan –
10% and then some
• To re-enter the Union, 10% had to take a simple
oath; except Confederate civil and military
officers and those with property over $20,000
(they could apply directly to Johnson)
• In new constitutions, they must set minimum
conditions repudiating slavery, secession, and
state debts
• Named provisional governors in Confederate
states and called them to oversee elections for
constitutional conventions
Effects of Johnson’s Plan
1. Disenfranchised certain leading
Confederates
2. Pardoned planter aristocrats and brought
them back to political power to control
state organizations
3. Republicans were outraged that the
planter elite were back in power in the
South!
• Many Southern
states fell short
of the
requirements,
and Johnson
granted 13,500
special pardons
Congress Breaks with the
President
• Congress bars Southern Congressional
delegates
• Joint Committee on Reconstruction created
• February 1866  President vetoed the
Freedmen’s Bureau Bill
• March 1866  Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights
Act
• Congress passed both bills over Johnson’s
vetoes  1st in U.S. History!
Radical Republican Reconstruction
• Civil Authorities in the territories were
subject to military supervision
• Required new state constitutions, including
black suffrage, and the ratification of the
13th and 14th Amendment
• In March 1867, Congress passed an act
that authorized the military to enroll eligible
black voters and begin the process of
constitution making
Military Reconstruction Act
• Restart Reconstruction in the 10 Southern
states that refused to ratify the 14th
Amendment
• Divide the 10 “unreconstructed states” into
5 military districts
Command of the Army Act
• The President must issue all
reconstruction orders through the
commander of the military
Tenure of Office Act
• The President could not remove any
officials (especially Cabinet members)
without the Senate’s consent, if the
position originally required Senate’s
approval
– Designed to protect the radical members of
Lincoln’s government
– A question of the constitutionality of this law
Johnson’s Impeachment
• Johnson removed
Stanton in February
1868
• Johnson replaced
generals in the field
who were more
sympathetic to
Radical
Reconstruction
Edwin Stanton
• The House impeached him in February
before even drawing up the charges by a
vote of 126-47
• 11 week trial in the Senate
• Johnson acquitted 35 to 19 (one vote short
of the required 2/3 vote)
Freedmen’s Bureau (1865)
• Created to help former slaves adjust to life as
freedmen
• Many former northern abolitionists risked their
lives to help southern freedmen
• Called “carpetbaggers” by white southern
Democrats
Morehouse College
• Founded in 1867 to teach freed slaves
how to read and write
• Originally located in Augusta, GA but
moved to Atlanta and became Atlanta
Baptist Seminary
• First college instruction introduced in 1897
and the name was changed to Morehouse
College
40 Acres and a Mule (efforts to
redistribute land to freedmen)
• During the war Sherman promised former slaves
who helped the army 40 acres and an army
mule
• Freedmen settled abandoned land, but in 1865
Johnson ordered the land returned to original
owners and former slaves were evicted
• Some land was set aside, but it was unsuitable
for farming (1866 Southern Homestead Act)
The Black Codes
• Purpose:
– Meant to keep black laborers where they were
by limiting their ability to move about
– Restore pre-emancipation race relations
The Black Codes
• Forced many blacks to become
sharecroppers
• How was sharecropping similar to slavery?
Resistance to Racial equality
• Some whites formed hate
groups, such as the KKK
• Between 1868 and 1871, the
Klan killed several thousand
people
• Klan violence prevented
African-Americans from voting
and returned Democrats to
power in the South
13th Amendment
• End of Slavery
14th Amendment
• Protected rights of African-Americans
15th Amendment
• Gave black males the right to vote
Election of 1876
• Presidential Election of 1876:
Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican)
v. Samuel Tilden (Democrat)
• Rutherford B. Hayes lost popular
vote and electoral votes were
disputed, so Congress appointed
a commission to deal with the
problem
• The Commission, which was
mostly Republican, voted Hayes
to be President
Compromise of
1877
• Compromise of 1877: Democrats agreed to
accept Hayes as President if they got
some things in return
• - federal troops removed from Louisiana
and South Carolina
• - Hayes had to appoint a conservative
southerner to his Cabinet
• The acceptance of this compromise
marked the end of Reconstruction in the
South