Transcript Reconstruction

Reconstruction
Chapter 18
Things to look for during this presentation:
1) Name given to newly freed slaves and the
problems they faced
2) Name of Lincoln’s reconstruction plan and its
parts
3) What was created in response to Johnson’s
plan, and the people who opposed this new
creation
4) The plan for Radical Reconstruction
5) Pros and cons of Reconstruction
6) 4 things that were passed during this period
During the Civil War, much of the southern U.S. was destroyed,
especially the cities Richmond, VA and Atlanta, GA. As we
learned, Grant’s plan for “total war” was to destroy anything that
the South may use to fight the North.
What does reconstruct mean?
During the Civil War, much of the southern U.S. was destroyed,
especially the cities Richmond, VA and Atlanta, GA. As we
learned, Grant’s plan for “total war” was to destroy anything that
the South may use to fight the North.
What does reconstruct mean?
It was necessary to rebuild the South after all of the devastation
that was caused during the siege at Richmond and Sherman’s
march to the Atlantic Ocean.
After the Civil War had ended, the United States divided the south into
five military districts. The south needed to be rebuilt after the war had
concluded in1865.
There was now a new class of
4 million new people called
freedmen.
Who were they?
These people were not allowed
to own property or learn how
to read and write.
Where could they go?
A month before Appomattox
Court House, Congress helped to
create the Freedmen’s Bureau,
a government agency designed to
help former slaves. They gave
food and clothing to former
slaves (and poor whites) as well
as helped them find jobs.
The Freedmen’s Bureau help to establish
the public school system in the South and
created colleges for African Americans.
These include Morehouse College, Howard
University and Fisk University.
In 1863, Lincoln created the Ten
Percent Plan, which had 3 parts.
1) A southern state could create a
new government after 10 percent of
its population swore loyalty to the
United States.
2) The new government had to
abolish slavery.
3) After that, voters could elect
members of Congress to take part in
the national government.
Amnesty was offered to Confederates who swore loyalty to the
Union. What is amnesty?
But, this amnesty did not apply to the former leaders of the
Confederacy.
Lincoln’s plan was not liked by everyone, as some thought it was too
easy on the South.
But Lincoln never got to see his plan
through because he was assassinated
while watching a play at Ford’s Theatre
on April 14, 1865. The killer, John
Wilkes Booth, remained on the run until
April 26, when he was fatally shot.
Booth’s motivation for killing Lincoln was the President’s support of
extending voting right’s to African Americans.
Lincoln’s death cast a shadow of grief across the nation.
Wade-Davis Bill
• Proposed by the Republicans
1. Wanted harsher punishment for the South
2. Majority of white men must swear loyalty
oath
3. Former Confederate volunteers cannot vote or
hold political office.
• Lincoln refused to sign the bill.
th
13
Amendment
Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for
crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist
within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate
legislation.
Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865.
When Vice President Andrew Johnson
took office after Lincoln’s death, he
called for 3 things:
1) a majority of voters in each
southern state to pledge loyalty to
the United States.
2) each state had to ratify the 13th
Amendment (which banned
slavery throughout the nation),
which Congress had approved in
January 1865.
3) Former Confederate official may
vote and hold office
In response, many southern states
passed black codes, which limited the
rights of freedmen.
Black codes:
1. Allowed African Americans to marry and own some property;
2. African Americans could not: own guns, serve on a jury, or vote.
3. Some states said that African Americans could only work as
servants or farm laborers. Others said that they had to sign a
contract for a year’s work, and if they were arrested without a
contract they could be sentenced to work on a plantation.
Radical (Northern) Republicans accused the South of trying to
prolong slavery for as long as possible.
Riots against the freedmen broke out, with one of the worst being in
Memphis, TN. In 1866, angry whites burned homes, churches and
schoolhouses in the black sections of the city. More than 40 African
Americans were killed in the riots.
A similar riot broke out in New Orleans when freedmen met to
support their right to vote.
The Radical Republicans, led by Charles Sumner
and Thaddeus Stevens, had two main goals.
1)to break the rule of the wealthy planters that
had run the South for years
2) to give freedmen the right to vote.
Stevens
Sumner
Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866,
which gave citizenship to African Americans.
President Johnson vetoed the bill, but Congress
overrode the veto.
They were also concerned that the Supreme
Court would rule the act unconstitutional, as
they had in Dred Scott v. Sandford.
th
14
Amendment
Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to
the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the
State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law
which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty,
or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Passed by Congress on June 13th, 1866. Ratified on July 9th, 1868.
Republicans proposed
the 14th Amendment,
which declared “all
persons born or
naturalized in the
United States” as
citizens.
In the Congressional elections of 1866, Johnson tried to make the
14th Amendment an issue, painting the Republicans in a bad light.
His strategy backfired, as the Republicans ended up with the
majority in both houses of Congress.
With these new majorities, they could easily override a presidential
veto, which led to a period called Radical Reconstruction.
Reconstruction Act of 1867
1) threw out state governments that refused to ratify the 14th
Amendment (all Confederate states except TN)
2) Confederate states had to create new constitutions
3) Must ratify the 14th Amendment
4) Give African Americans the right to vote.
•In the end, the Republicans had control of all of the southern
state governments.
•Johnson, who did not support the Republicans, tried to limit the
effect of the new laws. He fired several military commanders
who supported Radical Reconstruction.
•House of
Representatives
voted to impeach
Andrew Johnson, or
bring formal charges
against him.
To remove him from office, he had to be found guilty by two thirds of
the Senate members.
Not all Republicans believed in the charges though, as the final vote
was 35 -19, one vote short of the two thirds needed to convict.
Johnson finished out his remaining two months.
The Republicans chose Ulysses
S. Grant, the Union’s greatest war
hero, as their nominee for the
1868 Presidential election.
By election day most African
American men were allowed to vote.
On that day, 500,000 of them did,
with most votes going towards
Grant, who won in a landslide.
th
15
Amendment
Section 1.
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied
or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race,
color, or previous condition of servitude-Section 2.
The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by
appropriate legislation.
Passed by Congress February 26, 1869. Ratified February 3, 187
The next
thing the
Republicans
wanted to do
was pass the
Fifteenth
Amendment,
which made
it illegal for
any state to
deny any
citizen the
right to vote
based on
African Americans in Baltimore, MD celebrate the Amendment.
“race, color,
or previous servitude.” The 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870. After
a long struggle and a long, bloody war, all African American men over
the age of 21 now had the right to vote.
African Americans now had a voice in Southern politics. They were
now becoming sheriffs, mayors and legislators in the new state and
local governments. Hiram Revels finished out Jefferson Davis’
unfinished term in Mississippi. Blanche K. Bruce became the first
African American to serve a full term in the Senate.
Hiram Revels
Blanche K. Bruce
Not everyone was happy with the advances that African Americans
were making though. Conservatives wanted the South to change as
little as possible, and resented the changes that were being forced
upon them. Some Southerners formed secret societies to help regain
their power. The most dangerous was the Ku Klux Klan, which
worked to keep African Americans and white Republicans out of
office. When threats and intimidation did not work, they turned to
violence, murdering hundreds of African Americans and their white
supporters.
There were many moderate
Southerners that disliked the
Klan’s methods, but couldn’t
do much to stop it.
The freedmen finally asked
for help from the federal
government.
In 1870, Congress made it
illegal to use force to keep
any person from voting. Even
though this curbed some of
the violence, the threat was
still there. Some African
Americans still voted and
held office, but many were
scared off.
From Harper’s Weekly, 1872
Pros and Cons of Reconstruction
PROS
• Both black and white
public schools built
• Women could now
own property
• Telegraph lines, roads
and bridges rebuilt
• 7,000 miles of RR
track laid between
1865 and 1879
CONS
• Southerners now had
to pay high taxes
(unlike before the war)
• Corrupt Southern
governments
• Dishonesty spread to
governments in the
North
There was also the problem of the continuing cycle of poverty.
Some Radical Republicans wanted to give each freedman “40 acres
and a mule,” but this was an unpopular plan among Americans, as was
splitting up plantations and dividing up the land among freedmen. In
the end they got “nothing but freedom.”
Some were lucky
enough to become
landowners, but most
had no other choice
but to return to
where they had lived
in slavery.
On the flip side,
some large land
owners had land, but
no people to work it.
Some freedmen turned to
sharecropping where
they rented a piece of
land to farm. To get a
share of the crop at
harvest time, the planters
provided seed, fertilizer
and tools. Sharecropping
offered some
independence, and most
of them hoped to own
their own land.
Unfortunately, many remained poor. They would get supplies based
on credit each Spring, and had to repay what was borrowed out of
their crop. If they did not have a good crop, it would not cover the
credit, which put them further into debt. Many independent farmers
lost their land and became sharecroppers.
Rutherford B. Hayes
By the 1870s, many northerners had tired of
rebuilding the South. They thought it was time
for them to run their own governments. The
Republicans were losing power after reports of
widespread corruption in Grant’s administration,
during his two terms as president.
Reconstruction ended with the election of 1876.
Samuel Tilden (D) won the
popular vote, but only had 184
electoral votes; one vote fewer
than was needed to win.
Three states, with 20 votes remaining, were left to
decide, with two of them being Republican.
Congress set up a special commission to make the
decision, but this commission was made up mostly
of Republicans. They decided to give the votes to
Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who agreed to
end Reconstruction.
Samuel Tilden
White southerners resented the Radical Republican policies and
military rule. The South would be the home of Democrats for the next
100 years. But as Reconstruction ended, the decline of black
southerner’s rights began.
Conservatives started passing
legislature to keep African
Americans from voting.
Many states passed a poll
tax, which charged people a
fee each time they voted.
How would this restrict their
right to vote?
Other states created literacy
tests, which required voters to
read and explain a portion of
the Constitution. What about
this one?
Poor whites couldn’t pass the literacy test, but to increase the number of
whites that voted, states passed “grandfather clauses”, which said that if
a voter’s father or grandfather was eligible to vote on January 1, 1867,
then they didn’t have to take the test. Since African Americans couldn’t
vote before 1868, the clauses ensured that only whites could vote.
In the South, the legal separation of
races, segregation, started in 1877.
These laws, known as Jim Crow laws,
separated blacks and whites in schools,
restaurants, theaters, trains, streetcars,
playgrounds, hospitals and even
cemeteries. They kept blacks in a
hopeless situation.
The term “Jim Crow” comes from a
exaggerated, highly stereotypical character
created in 1828. A white actor heard a black
person singing a song called “Jim Crow”. He
dressed in blackface makeup and became
extremely popular, traveling throughout the
country.
This derogatory term would continue to be used
in the United States well into the 1900s.
In 1896, the Supreme Court made a landmark decision, in the case of
Plessy v. Ferguson. In Plessy v. Ferguson, the court ruled that
segregation was legal, as long as the facilities for blacks and whites were
equal. Would this be possible in the South in 1896?
But even though this case was lost, the Constitution now recognized
African Americans as citizens. The laws that had been passed just after
the Civil War, during Reconstruction - especially the 14th Amendment would be used 100 years later during the Civil Rights movement of the
1960s.
During the years of Reconstruction, the South slowly started to rebuild
its economy. The term “New South” was used to describe a South that
was going to create its own resources instead of having to rely on the
North. By 1880, cotton production, which had fallen sharply during
the Civil War, was back up to the amount it was in 1860.
The South was still producing
The tobacco industry grew as well.
fewer textiles than the North, but James Duke’s American Tobacco
more factories were being built.
company eventually controlled
90% of the industry.
The South also used its mineral
resources. Large deposits of iron ore
and coal helped Alabama to become
the center of the steel industry.
Oil production began in Texas and
Louisiana
By the 1890s, the southern yellow pine became popular to use for
hardwood furniture and cypress shingles, when many northern forests
had been cut down.
But as much as the South’s economy and industries were expanding,
it simply could not keep up with the rapid growth in the North and
West.