Transcript America`s History Seventh Edition

Presidential Bio….
Andrew
Johnson
1865-1869
I. The Struggle for National Reconstruction
A. Presidential Approaches: From Lincoln to Johnson
1. Lincoln
a) Had no guidance from the Constitution for what to do if
a state rebels
b) offered a Ten Percent Plan (restoration to Union when
10 percent of the state’s voters had sworn loyalty)
c) Confederate states rejected this plan, and Congress
proposed Wade-Davis Bill (required loyalty of a majority
of adult white men, no rebels in government, and
permanent disenfranchisement of CSA leaders)
d) Lincoln pocket-vetoed Wade-Davis; his assassination
plunged the nation into political uncertainty.
A. Presidential Approaches: From Lincoln to
Johnson
1. Johnson
a) “common man” from Tennessee, loyal to the Union during the
war
b) offered amnesty to all Southerners who swore allegiance
except CSA leaders
c) provisional governors for South and asked for ratification of
the Thirteenth Amendment
d) Republicans disliked Johnson and called him a traitor to the
Union
e) enacted Black Codes in the South (imposed penalties against
unemployed blacks, and set up efforts to take black children
from parents and apprentice them to former slave holders)
f) eased restrictions on ex-Confederates who wanted reenter
politics.
I. The Struggle for National Reconstruction
B. Congress Versus the President
1. Freedmen’s Bureau
a)
b)
c)
d)
Antiblack violence increased in the South under Johnson
March 1865, Freedmen’s Bureau had been established by Congress to
assist former slaves and was given direct funding in early 1866
Civil Rights Act of 1866 declared formerly enslaved people to be
citizens and granted them equal protection and rights of contract, with
full access to courts
bills were vetoed by Johnson; Congress overrode vetoes and passed
both; violence increased further.
2. Radical Republicans and the Fourteenth Amendment
a)
b)
Stated that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” were
citizens
1866 congressional elections gave Republicans a 3-to-1 majority;
Radical Republicans were led by Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA).
I. The Struggle for National Reconstruction
C. Radical Reconstruction
1. The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
a) Radicals passed strict stipulations for reentry to the
Union
b) August 1867, Johnson suspended Secretary of War
Edwin Stanton, a Radical, and replaced him with
Ulysses Grant
c) Grant publicly criticized Johnson’s decisions and
resigned so Stanton could resume position
d) political crisis within the administration ended with
Stanton barricading himself in his office
e) the House introduced articles of impeachment against
the president; after an eleven-week trial in the Senate,
the vote for impeachment failed by one vote.
2. Election of 1868 and the Fifteenth
Amendment
a) Grant was viewed as a war hero and a political hero
for his dislike of Johnson’s policies
b) wanted reconciliation between the states and won
easily
c) Republicans produced the Fifteenth Amendment:
federal government and states could not deny
citizens voting rights on the basis of race, color,
or “previous condition of servitude”
d) did not outlaw poll taxes or literacy tests (used in
northern and western states to keep immigrants and
poor from the polls).
In your composition
book…
• What is the event
taking place in this
image?
• What does the
image tell us about
the extent to which
Reconstruction
changed the lives of
African Americans
by 1870?
I. The Struggle for National Reconstruction
D. Woman Suffrage Denied
1. The movement splits
a) Frustration felt within the women’s movement when black
men were granted suffrage
b) northern men opposed suffrage for women
c) Equal Rights Association convention revealed some of the
women’s frustration (ex: Elizabeth Cady Stanton).
2. National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA)
a) Women’s rights supporters split over the issue of black
male suffrage
b) Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe organized American
Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) to support
Republicans’ efforts for black men
2. National Woman Suffrage
Association (NWSA)
a) Stanton and Susan B. Anthony created NWSA to
advocate for a suffrage amendment for women
b) legal challenges to the Constitution ruled that while
women were citizens, they could still be denied
suffrage by their states
c) Wyoming Territory granted women voting rights in
1869
d) Women’s suffrage could no longer be dismissed; it
had become a serious issue for national debate.
II. The Meaning of Freedom
A. The Quest for Land
1. Freed Slaves and Northerners: Conflicting Goals
a) Gaps between the goals of freedmen and of politicians
b) many Northerners believed that wage labor would overtake
the South; instead, former slaves wanted land
c) Republicans did not want to confiscate land, though former
slaves felt entitled to it
d) few states developed opportunities for freedmen to
purchase land; most were economically vulnerable to
discrimination.
2. Wage Labor and Sharecropping
a) Many former slaves had to work for former owners; received
a wage instead of food, clothing, shelter; extremely low
wages meant starvation
b) some black workers organized; black men wanted to keep
black women out of the fields and away from possible sexual
harassment by white men
c) sense among former male slaves that they now controlled
their wives’ labor
d) emancipation for black women was limited by familial
relations
e) system of sharecropping arose, in which freedmen worked as
renters, exchanging their labor for the use of land, house,
tools, and sometimes seed/fertilizer
f) as cotton prices declined in the 1870s, more and more
sharecroppers fell into permanent debt, which became a
pretext for forced labor, or peonage; industrialization did not
replace agriculture in the South.
Presidential Bio….
Ulysses S.
Grant
II. The Meaning of Freedom
B. Republican Governments in the South
1. Rejoining the Union
a) All southern states rejoined the Union between 1868 and 1871
b) Republican governments included African Americans, not
accepted by the ex-Confederates
c) 20th century historians viewed these governments as corrupt and
ignorant (racist notions of 19th-century observers); today’s
historians contend that they were progressive, eyeing reform in
education, family law, social services, commerce, and
transportation.
d) In the late 1860s, the southern Republican Party included whites
and blacks
e) Union League was a secret organization to pressure Congress
for freedmen’s causes
f) Freedmen’s Bureau played key role in creating colleges for
African Americans (Fisk, Tougaloo, and the Hampton Institute).
2. Scalawags and carpetbaggers
a) Ex-CSA men viewed the southern Republican Party as illegitimate
in the South
b) referred to southern whites who supported Reconstruction as
“scalawags”
c) denounced northern whites as “carpetbaggers,” self-seeking
interlopers who moved to the South with belongings in cheap
suitcases called carpetbags
d) many who came to the South did so for economic opportunity.
e) Southerners who supported the Republican Party wanted to get rid
of the planter-elite aristocracy that had ruled the states before the
Civil War
f) African Americans recruited former slaves to be part of the political
system. Many blacks were elected to office throughout the South
with plans to abolish the Black Codes and corporal punishment
g) establish humane prisons, hospitals and asylums; and
dramatically increase public education
II. The Meaning of Freedom
C. Building Black Communities
1. Churches
a)
b)
c)
Aided by northern missionaries and teachers, independent black
churches grew quickly
became center of black life in the South; joined black congregations in
the North to create National Baptist Convention and African Methodist
Episcopal Church
Operated as schools and meeting halls; black ministers were leaders of
their communities.
2. “Race uplift”
a)
b)
c)
d)
Teachers and charity leaders desired to build businesses and
institutions to serve black Americans; some wanted integration; others
wanted all-black schools/churches
Sen. Sumner (R-MA) argued for desegregation of public transportation,
hotels, and churches in 1870s
opponents feared that shared public spaces would lead to race mixing
and intermarriage
Civil Rights Act of 1875 required “full and equal” access to jury service,
transportation, and public accommodations, irrespective of race.
III. The Undoing of Reconstruction
A. The Republicans Unravel
1. The Depression of 1873
a) Global economic crisis triggered in part by Northern Pacific
Railroad declaring bankruptcy
b) crop prices fell, iron manufacturing fell 50 percent, half of
railroads were bankrupt, and construction of new railways
stopped
c) Republican policies in the South became too expensive (ex:
Freedmen’s Bureau)
d) northern and foreign investors no longer had the money to
ensure success of reforms
e) corruption in industries was increasing
f) failure of Freeman’s Savings and Trust Company (est. 1865),
had worked to help former slaves, new churches, and
charities in the South; risky investments and the depression
led to the bank’s failure.
2. The Disillusioned Liberals
a) Revolt emerged within Republican Party
b) led by “classical liberals” who advocated free
trade, smaller government, and limited voting
rights
c) formed the Liberal Republican Party in 1872
d) the second Grant administration had
numerous financial scandals, including Crédit
Mobilier, a sham corporation set up by
Union Pacific Railroad shareholders to
profit on grants from the federal
government.
III. The Undoing of Reconstruction
B. Counterrevolution in the South
1. “Redemption” and Nathan Bedford Forrest
a) Efforts by ex-Confederates to take back the South
from the Republican Party intensified amidst
economic crisis
b) terror campaign in which black politicians and
white supporters were hanged, beaten to death,
and shot
c) Forrest was a decorated Confederate general
I. born poor, he became a big-time slave trader
who gained wealth through cotton industry; was
known for participating in the slaughter of black
Union troops at Fort Pillow, TN.
2. Ku Klux Klan
a) Organization of ex-Confederates
who joined together in 1866
b) led by Forrest in Tennessee to target
Republicans in the state
c) tied to the Democratic Party
d) campaign of murder and terror
throughout the South.
3. Enforcement laws
a) Congress passed laws to control the
spread of violence
b) U.S. troops occupied part of South
Carolina to stop outbreak of violence
c) Republican Party began to suffer
political losses in the South as fear
and violence increased.
III. The Undoing of Reconstruction
C. Reconstruction Rolled Back
1. The Supreme Court Rejects Equal Rights
a) Slaughter-House Cases (1873): Court diminished the
power of the Fourteenth Amendment by arguing that it
offered only a few federal protections
b) civil rights violations were viewed as state issues, not within
the federal government’s jurisdiction; 1883 Court struck
down the Civil Rights Act of 1875.
2. The Political Crisis of 1877
a) Gov. Rutherford Hayes (R-OH) versus Gov. Samuel Tilden
(D-NY)
b) Tilden called for “home rule” for the South
c) Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana were only states
still ruled by Reconstruction governments;
2. The Political Crisis of 1877
a) Tilden led popular vote, Democratic Party fraud
claimed, Republicans called the three states as
electoral victories for Hayes
b) Democrats claimed victory in the three states for
Tilden
c) Congress had to debate two sets of electoral votes
for the three states
d) commission appointed, 8 Republicans 7 Democrats;
commission gave Hayes the presidency.
e) Hayes offered federal money for education,
economic growth, internal improvements in the
South. –Pacification of the South
f) Reconstruction ends.