Transcript 4.4 Reconstruction and Its Effects

4.4 Reconstruction and Its
Effects
How did the federal government’s
efforts to rebuild Southern society
after the war collapse?
The Politics of Reconstruction
• The Freedman’s Bureau was an agency
established by Congress to help former
slaves in the South
• It was part of Reconstruction, the period
during which the US began to rebuild after
the Civil War, and the process of bringing
Southern states back into the nation
• It lasted from 1865 to 1877
Continued
• During the war, Lincoln made a plan for
Reconstruction that was easy on the South
• It included pardoning Confederates if they would
swear allegiance to the Union
• Lincoln’s plan angered the Radicals, a group of
Republicans who wanted to destroy the political
power of former slaveholders
• After Lincoln died, his vice-president, Andrew
Johnson, took office with a similar plan to
Lincoln’s
Continued
• However, Radical Republicans thought both
plans were too easy on the South
• Republicans in Congress won a struggle with
the President to control Reconstruction
• They created the Freedman’s Bureau to give
food and clothing to former slaves as well as set
up hospitals and schools
• Congress also passed the Civil Rights Act of
1866, which said states could not enact laws
that discriminated against African Americans
Rights for African Americans
• Congress also passed the Fourteenth
Amendment, which gave African
Americans citizenship
• Johnson urged Southern states not to
ratify it because they had no say in
creating it; Congress responded with the
Reconstruction Act of 1867, which said no
state could re-enter the Union until it
approved the 14th Amendment
Continued
• Congress began to look for a way to
impeach the president; Johnson had
removed a cabinet member and Congress
said he did it illegally
• Johnson was impeached, but he avoided
removal from office by one Senate vote
• In 1868, Ulysses S. Grant was elected
president with the help of African American
votes in the South
Continued
• In 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment was
ratified, which banned states from denying
the vote to African Americans
• By 1870, all former Confederate states
were back in the Union; their governments
were run by Republicans
Goals for Reconstruction
• Three groups of Republicans had different
goals:
– Scalawags: white Southerners who were
small farmers who didn’t want wealthy
planters to regain power
– Carpetbaggers: Northerners who had moved
South
– African Americans who voted for the first time
mostly voted Republican
Continued
• During Reconstruction, many former slaves
moved to the cities and organized schools and
churches
• Many voted, and some were elected to office,
with Hiram Revels being the first AfricanAmerican senator
• Many wanted to farm their own land, having
been promised ‘forty acres and a mule’ by
General Sherman, which was not upheld
Continued
• Many Southern planters wanted to return to the
plantation system and tried to ensure African
Americans could not own land
• To survive, many former slaves became
sharecroppers, a system where landowners give
a few acres of land to their farm workers and the
croppers keep only a small portion of their crops
• Tenant farming also rented land from
landowners for cash
The Collapse of Reconstruction
• Many Southern whites did not like African
Americans voting
• Some formed secret groups such as the Ku Klux
Klan (KKK) that used violence to keep African
Americans from voting
• Congress passed the Enforcement Acts to stop
the violence, but also gave the vote to former
Confederates, so Democrats began to gain
power and eventually pushed federal troops out
of the South after a five year Depression and
election of Repub. Rutherford Hayes as
President in 1876