Reconstruction

United States HistoryMr. Sean W. Simon

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Reconstruction

Reconstruction can be divided into Presidential reconstruction and Congressional reconstruction. The process of reconstruction would be plagued by an intense debate between the Executive and Legislative branches over how to bring the rebel states back into the Union, how to treat ex-confederate leaders, and what to do to help the emancipated slaves. Meanwhile, the South’s infrastructure and economy had been seriously incapacitated by total war and would need completely rebuilt.

1. Reconstruction refers to the process of readmitting and rebuilding southern states, and assimilating and assisting freedmen.

Forty Acres and a Mule

These land grants were to come from the millions of acres abandoned by southern planters, or from lands confiscated by the federal government. Sherman believed the allotment of forty acres was sufficient to support a family. Many believed this would also help restore the southern economy, and provide employment and income for freedmen. The plan lost support however because many northerners worried that it was unconstitutional to confiscate or give away private property.

2. During the war, General Sherman recommended that the Union provide all emancipated slaves with forty acres and a mule.

Ten Percent Plan

President Lincoln started formulating his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, better known as the Ten Percent Plan, well before the end of the Civil War. It was considered a very lenient approach to reunification and reconstruction. Lincoln considered the Union to be unbreakable, and therefore concluded that the southern states had never actually separated from it, in this way justifying his plan for their quick and easy return. His Ten Percent Plan required that readmitted states abolish slavery and provide education for Africans Americans in order to regain representation in Congress. It also included the pardoning of former Confederates and financial compensation to Confederates for lost lands. Furthermore, it did not require any guarantee of social or political equality for African Americans. This marked the beginning of Presidential reconstruction.

3. President Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan required 10% of each state’s voters to take a loyalty oath to the Union before rejoining.

Radical Republicans

Although Lincoln's party controlled Congress, they did not agree with him about how to handle reunification and reconstruction. They insisted that the confederates should be treated as criminals for enslaving African Americans and for entangling the nation in war. Thus they favored punishment and harsh terms for the South. The lead spokesmen for the Radical Republicans were Representative Thaddeus Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner.

4. Radical Republicans thought President Lincoln’s plan too lenient, and wanted full citizenship and suffrage for freedmen, as well as Sherman’s land grants.

Thaddeus Stevens Charles Sumner

Wade Davis Bill

The Wade Davis Bill also required guarantees of equality for African Americans. President Lincoln blocked the bill though with a pocket veto. Lincoln’s resistance of the Wade-Davis Bill created a major rift between Congress and the President.

5. The Radical Republicans passed the Wade Davis Bill in 1864, requiring a majority of each state’s prewar voters to take the loyalty oath.

Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio

Freedmen's Bureau

A Freedmen’s Bureau School in North Carolina

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, also known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, was one thing that the President and Radical Republicans did agree on. It also helped by reuniting families separated by slavery and war, providing certificates to legalize marriages and legitimize children, negotiating labor contracts to guarantee fair wages and treatment, and representing African Americans in courts (thus setting the precedent that blacks had legal rights).

6. The Freedmen’s Bureau was created to provide food, clothing, healthcare, and education to black and white refugees in the South.

Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson was from Tennessee, and became the only Southern Senator to refuse to join the Confederacy when his home state seceded in 1861. He became Lincoln’s Vice President in 1864. As President he had little sympathy for African Americans, supporting neither black equality or suffrage. But he also carried a true dislike of the South’s wealthy planter class.

7. Andrew Johnson became President when Lincoln was assassinated in April of 1865, and mostly continued Lincoln's plan for reconstruction.

Thirteenth Amendment

Emancipation by Thomas Nast

During the last months of the Civil War, Lincoln and Congress were already working on the Thirteenth Amendment. By then the South was in a desperate situation and was trying to negotiate a peace settlement, but this effort failed because they refused to accept an amendment ending slavery. When the amendment was finally ratified after the war and after Lincoln’s death, it left many issues unaddressed. It did not grant African Americans the privileges of full citizenship, such as voting rights and access to free public education. These were privileges that even most northern blacks still did not enjoy. Southerners especially resisted these privileges for blacks because they did not want them to undermine white power and status in society.

8. In December 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery.

Black Codes

Convict labor

By the end of 1865 most Confederate states had met Johnson’s requirements for readmission to the Union. Although Congress was concerned about the lack of African American suffrage, they hoped that political rights would soon follow. However, black codes dashed those hopes. These laws kept blacks in servant and labor jobs. Some known as vagrancy laws allowed for the arrest and imprisonment of unemployed blacks, where they would be forced to do hard labor while incarcerated. All this took place despite the South being militarily occupied by the North.

9. Southern states passed laws known as Black Codes to limit the rights of blacks and keep them landless.

Civil Rights Act of 1866

Southern reaction to Freedmen’s Bureau

Before this Act, President Johnson had vetoed a bill to renew the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1866. These vetoes together created further tensions between the President and Congress. When Congress overruled the Presidents veto of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, it was the first time that such a two-thirds majority had ever been collected to pass legislation over a President. This marked the beginning of Congressional reconstruction.

10. President Johnson vetoed a bill to renew the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1866. Then Congress overruled his veto of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, guaranteeing civil rights for blacks.

Primary Terms

1. Reconstruction2. Forty Acres and a Mule3. Ten Percent Plan4. Radical Republicans5. Wade Davis Bill

6. Freedmen’s Bureau7. Andrew Johnson8. 13th Amendment9. Black Codes10. Civil Rights Act of 1866

Focus Questions

1. What were the primary concerns of southern reconstruction?2. How did General Sherman contribute to reconstruction?3. What were the characteristics of President Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan?4. Compare the Freedmen’s Bureau to Black Codes.5. Link the 13th Amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

Fourteenth Amendment

Under the Fourteenth Amendment, if any state refused to allow black people to vote, that state would lose the number of seats in the House of Representatives that were represented by its black population. It also countered the Presidents pardoning power by barring leading Confederates from holding federal or state offices.

11. Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866, guaranteeing equality under the law for all citizens.

Military Reconstruction Act

The Districts and their Governors

The Military Reconstruction Act of 1867 also forced southern states to guarantee black suffrage and to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before they could rejoin the Union.

12. The Military Reconstruction Act of 1867 divided the South into 5 military districts governed by former Union Generals.

Tenure of Office Act

Edwin Stanton

Presidents had always exercised the right to both appoint and remove their own cabinet members. However, with Congress and the President at such odds over Reconstruction, President Johnson had removed all of the Radical Republicans on his cabinet, except for one. Congress passed this act to protect Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

13. Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act in 1867, requiring Senate approval for the removal of presidential cabinet members.

Impeachment Trial

President Johnson

The impeachment was based on the grounds of Presidential wrongdoing in office. The House of Representatives however was one vote short of the necessary two-thirds majority needed to impeach.

14. When Johnson defied the Tenure of Office Act, Congress moved to impeach him but failed.

Election of 1868

President Grant

In this election, although Horatio Seymour lost the overall vote, he had actually won a majority of the white vote. That demonstrated to the Republicans the extreme importance of retaining African American suffrage, so as to ensure that it remained a determinant in future elections.

15. Republican Ulysses S. Grant defeated Democrat Horatio Seymour in the 1868 Presidential Election.

Fifteenth Amendment

The First Vote

The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were both ratified by 1870, but both contained loopholes that left room for evasion. States could impose voting restrictions based on literacy, property qualifications, grandfather clauses, or poll taxes, which in effect would exclude most African Americans.

16. The Fifteenth Amendment forbid the denial of suffrage on the grounds of race, color, or previous servitude.

Southern Politics

During Reconstruction, the Republican Party grew and dominated the southern state governments.

17. Scalawags were white Republicans who joined the party after the war, while Carpetbaggers were white and black northern men who relocated to the South for economic and political opportunity.

Black Politicians

The period of Congressional reconstruction saw considerable African American involvement in the southern government. Over 1500 blacks served as county, city and state officials. By 1877 two blacks served as Senators and 14 as Representatives. The South Carolina legislature ironically became the first and only with a black majority. In the North by comparison, there were no black Congressmen until the 1900’s.

18. Hiram Revels was the first black Senator ever.

Hiram Revels

Public Education

Tax funded public education was one of the great achievements of the Reconstruction South. However, it would be tainted by the policy of segregating blacks and whites instead of integrating them. This segregationist policy would carry over into most other areas of the South’s culture.

19. Reconstruction provided free public education, but unfortunately it was segregation based.

Black Churches

20. Black churches became the nucleus of freedmen communities and leadership.

Primary Terms

11. 14th Amendment12. Military Reconstruction Act13. Tenure of Office Act14. Impeachment15. Ulysses S. Grant

16. 15th Amendment17. Scalawags18. Carpetbaggers19. Hiram Revels20. Segregation

Focus Questions

6. Compare the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments.7. What were the characteristics of the Military Reconstruction Act?8. What was the purpose and result of the Tenure of Office Act?9. Compare scalawags and carpetbaggers.10. How involved were blacks in southern politics during reconstruction?

Sharecropping

Blacks were stuck in this system because they had little if any money or job skills, and so could not break off on their own. They had to grow what the landlord wanted, and purchase seed and supplies only from the landlord, usually at unfair prices on credit, thus inescapably indebting them to the landlord. Share-tenancy was similar to sharecropping, but the farmer could choose what crops to grow and could buy his supplies from whatever supplier he wanted, thus seeking out fairer rates.

21. Blacks typically became sharecroppers, tied to the land they worked, managed by their landlords, and paying their landlords a share of the crops grown.

Tenant Farming

Tenant farmers did not even have to live on the land that they rented.

22. Some blacks became tenant farmers, renting farmland but managing it completely on their own.

Ku Klux Klan

Comprised of dozens of loosely organized groups, the KKK sought to terrorize African Americans and their white supporters. They dressed in white robes and hoods, and did most of their work at night. They burned homes, churches, and schools. They beat, maimed and killed blacks and white sympathizers. Gangs on horseback scared potential black voters away from the polls.

23. The Ku Klux Klan emerged in Tennessee in 1866, and used terror and violence to keep blacks in subservient roles.

Enforcement Acts

One Vote Less

This law targeted the KKK and its terror tactics. Hundreds of clansmen were indicted for violating it, and violence in the South dramatically decreased in time.

24. The Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871 made it a federal crime to interfere with voting.

Slaughterhouse Cases

Attorney John Campbell

Although the Fourteenth Amendment gave citizens certain national rights, the Slaughterhouse Cases determined that the federal government would have no control over how a state chose to define rights for the citizens who resided there.

25. The Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873 restricted the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment.

United States v. Cruikshank

Cruikshank was a member of a group that wanted to restore white supremacy in Louisiana. A mob of these men killed over a hundred blacks in a violent attack, but Cruikshank’s conviction was overturned.

26. United States v. Cruikshank ruled that the 14th Amendment only protects citizens from states, not individuals.

Redeemers

A cartoon by Thomas Nast depicting the Democratic Party’s new emergence in the South

Redeemers earned their nickname from their desire to redeem the South from northern domination. This coalition helped the Democratic Party regain its power position in the South. The Republican Party then lost its control over the House of Representatives in 1874.

27. The Redeemers were a new coalition of southern Republicans and Democrats.

Civil Rights Act of 1875

Despite this act, subsequent Supreme Court civil right’s cases ruled that decisions about who could use public accommodations was a local issue, governed by state or local laws. Southern governments then used these rulings to deny blacks the use of public accommodations.

28. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 guaranteed blacks the rights to public transportation and facilities.

Compromise of 1877

President Hayes

The Compromise of 1877 included the removal of federal troops from the South, the rebuilding of southern railroads and ports with federal monies, and the appointment of southerners into high federal positions.

29. In 1876 the disputed presidential election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden was resolved when the Republicans took the Whitehouse in exchange for agreeing to end Reconstruction in the South.

New South

30. The idea of a New South called for industrialization and modernization alongside the South’s traditional agriculture.

Primary Terms

21. Sharecropping22. Tenant Farming23. KKK24. Enforcement Act25. Slaughterhouse Cases

26. US v. Cruikshank27. Redeemers28. Civil Rights Act of 187529. Compromise of 187730. New South

Focus Questions

11. Compare sharecropping and tenant farming.12. What purpose and tactics characterized the KKK?13. How did legislation and court rulings weaken the 14th Amendment?14. What was the cause and consequence of the Compromise of 1877?15. What characterized the New South?

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