African Americans in the South Post-Civil War

Gains for Former Slaves

• 13th Amendment• 14th Amendment• 15th Amendment

• Able to travel/leave• Reunify with families• Educate themselves• Hold Political office• 40 acres and a mule

Republicans in the South• Scalawags – white southerners

who joined Republican party– Wanted industrialization– Supported Union in war– Disliked power of wealthy planters

• Carpetbagger – Northerner who moved to the South– Moral duty to help former slaves– Entrepreneurs or Land Seekers– Exploit South’s turmoil

• African Americans

• Did not have the same goals

Rights Slowly Taken Back• Lack of Political Majority• Former Confederate officials

elected when eligible • Resentment of Freedmen's

Bureau/ occupying troops • Johnson withdraws 40 acres and a

mule• Southern Homestead Act of 1866

set 44 million acres of poor land aside for freed blacks

• Passage of black codes and state voting laws limit rights of blacks

• Ku Klux Klan and other vigilante groups increased violence

Weakening of Radical Republicans

• Political scandals– Grant’s Administration accepted Bribes

• Economic problems– Panic of 1873

• Restoration of political rights to former Confederates

• Supreme Court Undid social/political changes– Slaughterhouse Case 1873– US vs. Cruikshank 1876– US vs. Reese 1876