Transcript Wartime Reconstruction

1863-1877

2.1 mil

880,000

2 out of 3


360,000
260,000
Number of Northerners
mobilized to fight for the Union
army
Number of Southerners
mobilized for the Confederacy
Number of Civil War deaths
that occurred from disease
rather than battle
Federal soldiers killed
Confederate soldiers killed
 To
determine the social,
political, economic status of
4 million ex-slaves

“To Bind Up the Nation’s Wounds”
◦ Lincoln’s second inaugural address deep
compassion for the enemy guided his thinking
about peace
◦ Lincoln’s plan for reconstruction (1863) was
designed to shorten the war and end slavery
◦ His Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction,
which included full pardons for rebels willing to
renounce secession and accept the abolition of
slavery, angered abolitionists



demanded that half of the voters in a rebel
state take an oath of allegiance to the US
before reconstruction could begin;
prohibited ex-Confederates from
participating in drafting new state
constitutions,
and guaranteed the equality of freedmen
before the law
 Lincoln
endorsed suffrage for
Southern Blacks for the first
time four days before his
assassination




Biggest problem facing the South was
transition from slave labor to free labor
What to do with federally occupied land?
Jan 1865, Gen Sherman set aside part of the
coastal land south of Charleston for black
settlement
He wished to be rid of the thousands
straggling after his army
 distributed food and clothing to destitute Southerners
and eased the transition of blacks from slaves to free
persons
 Congress also authorized the agency to divide abandoned
and confiscated land into 40-acre parcels, to rent them to
freedmen, and eventually sell them
 By June 1865 the bureau had situated nearly 10,000 black
families on a half million acres abandoned by fleeing
planters
◦ Wartime reconstruction failed
to produce agreement about
whether the president or
Congress had the authority to
devise and direct policy


Freedmen wanted economic independence,
restoration of family life, literacy, freedom of
worship
Whites believed that without the discipline of
slavery, blacks would be lazy, wild and
irresponsible

Johnson’s Program of Reconciliation
◦ He was the only senator from a Confederate state to
remain loyal to the Union
◦ Held the planter class responsible for secession
◦ Republicans did not like him as he had been a slave
owner and a defender of slavery, only a
begrudgingly acceptance of emancipation



Johnson’s plan was similar to Lincoln’s:
reconciliation, restoration of civil government in
the South, pardoning most ex-rebels
He differed from Lincoln in that he required the
states’ citizens to renounce the right of
secession, refuse to disown their Confederate
war debts, and ratify the Thirteenth Amendment
Johnson instructed military and government
officials to return to pardoned ex-Confederates
all confiscated and abandoned land, even if it
was in the hands of freedmen.



Summer 1865 delegates gathered across the
South to draw up new state constitutions
They wished to shape reconstruction rather
than the victorious Northerners
State governments adopted a series of laws
known as the Black Codes, which kept
blacks subordinate to whites by subjecting
black to every sort of discrimination and
attempting to limit them to farm work or
domestic service


Johnson refused to intervene and personally
pardoned 14,000 wealthy or high ranking exConfederates and he accepted new southern
state governments even when they failed to
satisfy his minimal demands for readmittance to the Union
Elections in the fall of 1865, Southerners
chose former Confederates to represent them
in Congress



Southerners miscalculated and assumed
Republicans would accept everything
Andrew Johnson accepted
The black codes became a symbol of the
South’s intention to restore all of slavery
but its name; Republicans remained
distrustful of ex-Confederates
Moderate Republicans did not champion
black equality, but they did wish slavery
and treason to be dead




Southern obstinacy forged unity among
Republicans
Republicans drafted two bills to strengthen
protection for the newly emancipated
Johnson vetoed the first bill, an extension
of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and Congress
failed to override the veto by a narrow
margin.
Johnson’s veto galvanized support for the
second bill, the Civil Rights Act, which
nullified Black Codes.


Johnson vetoed the bill again; Congress
overrided Johnson’s veto
Congress also submitted another bill to
extend the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau
and successfully overrode the president’s
veto.
 All native born and naturalized persons deemed
citizens; equal protection of the laws
 dealt with voting rights, giving Congress the
authority to reduce the congressional
representation of any state that withheld
suffrage from some of its adult male
population.
 Republicans stood to benefit by gaining black
votes or by lessening representation where
black suffrage was rejected
 The suffrage provisions ignored women



introduced the word “male” into the
Constitution; it provided for punishment for
any state denying suffrage on the basis of
race but not sex
Johnson advised southern states to reject
the Fourteenth Amendment
He made it the overriding issue of the
congressional election of 1866—the
opponents of the Fourteenth Amendment
gathered into a new conservative party, the
National Union Party


Fourteenth Amendment and escalating
violence
June 1866 Congress passed the
Fourteenth Amendment; two years later
it gained the necessary ratification of
three-fourths of the states


Whites in several southern cities when on
rampages against blacks, shocking north
and making it suspect southerners still
could not be trusted
Congressional 1866 election
overwhelming Republican victory



Every southern stated except Tennessee voted down
Fourteenth Amendment
March 1867 Congress overturned the Johnsonapproved southern state governments and initiated
military rule of the South
The Military Reconstruction Act divided the ten
unreconstructed Confederate states into five military
districts and place a Union general in charge of each
district to oversee political reform, which including
drawing up new state constitutions and guaranteeing
black suffrage.



When voters of each state had approved the
constitution and the state legislature had ratified
the Fourteenth amendment, the state could submit
its work to Congress
The Military Reconstruction Act of 1867
disappointed those who advocated the confiscation
and redistribution of southern plantations to exslaves.
Johnson vetoed the Military Reconstruction Act;
Congress overrode his veto on the same day,
dramatizing the shift in power from the executive
branch to the legislative branch of government