Reconstruction

Reconstruction TimelineDuring War:

Lincoln’s “10% Plan” (Dec 1863)

Election of 1864

Lee Surrenders (Apr 1865)

Lincoln Assassinated

Post War13th Amendment (Dec. 1865)

14th Amendment (July 1868)

Impeachment (Feb. 1868)

15th Amendment (March 1870)

Compromise of 1877

Composition of the Union Party, 1864

Presidential Election, 1864 (by county)

* What were the freedpeople’s expectations?* What would southern whites who had supported the rebellion have to do to have their citizenship restored?* To what extent would whites comply with efforts to guarantee the civil rights of former slaves?* Who in Washington, D.C. would be in charge of Reconstruction – the President or Congress?

Questions as Reconstruction began...

Ford’s Theater, Washington DC

Police blotter reporting the assassination of Lincoln

The hanging of four of Booth’s eight convicted co-conspirators (including one woman) in July 1865

Main ideas for Reconstruction

1 The future of political and economic power for freed slaves.

2 The future of North-South economic and political relations

Presidential Reconstruction

• Lincoln’s attempt to reunify the nation

• Lincoln’s (Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction) “10% plan” - Dec 1863– requirements– omissions– political concerns more important

than moral.

CongressmanThaddeus Stevensof Pennsylvania

Andrew Johnson

Johnson’s Reconstruction Program• Requirements

– take loyalty oath to have rights reconfirmed - return of all property but slaves

• Confederate officials & $20,000 property owners excluded

– only those who swore could vote

– would revoke martial law once a new constitution drafted & officials elected

• Omissions– individual pardons granted to all who ask

Johnson’s Reconstruction Program• Fails to live up to his rhetoric

– more lenient than Lincoln

– no requirement to ratify 13th Amendment (ending slavery)

– ignores the issue of the articles of secession

– fails to require that Confederate states renounce their war debt

• Speeds readmission of Southern States into Union– completed summer of 1865!

• Angers Republican dominated Congress

Civil Rights Act of 1866

• Response to black codes• Defined all persons born in

the United States as citizens and listed certain rights that all citizens possessed

• Established federal government as final arbiter of citizenship rights. States could not discriminate against blacks

• Johnson’s veto pushes moderate politicians to support radicals

Congressional Reconstruction 1866-77

1 citizenship and suffrage for former slaves.2 a requirement that southern states ratify

the Fourteenth Amendment before readmission.– More rigorous tests for readmission to the Union– Wade-Davis Bill

3 military occupation of the defeated south– Destroy power of the Southern planter class through

confiscation and redistribution of land

Military Reconstruction of the South, 1866-1877five districts and commanding generals

Congressional Reconstruction, 1866-1877

• Republicans during Reconstruction– Conservative: supported

Johnson’s policies– Moderate: problems

with Johnson’s policies– Radical: opposed

Johnson’s policies

• Johnson’s Veto of Civil Rights Act of 1866

Thaddeus Stevens,Radical leader inthe House of Representatives

“A Man Knows a Man,” Harper’s, April 22, 1865

“Radical” Reconstruction• Military Reconstruction

– Divided former Confederate states (except Tennessee) into five military districts

– Invalidated Lincoln and Johnson governments– States required to

• Hold new constitutional conventions• Create new state governments that allowed black male

suffrage and ratified 14th Amendment (twelve states had rejected ratification by March 1867)

– President • Required to issue orders through General of the Army• Prohibited from replacing federal officials who

opposed his policies

The Freedmen’s Bureau, created 1865; staffed by officers of the Union Army, literally stood between freed slaves and their former masters

The South under Reconstruction

• The Experience of Freedom– African Americans’

responses to emancipation• Moving around; rebuilding

families, churches, schools• Demanding social change:

refusing to defer, challenging discrimination

– White southerners’ reaction• Insistence on racial separation• Violence against blacks: race

riots, Ku Klux Klan

The South under Reconstruction

• Black Codes: statutes passed at local and state level throughout the South and designed to control freed blacks– Allowed freedpeople to

• Marry• Own property• Make contracts• Testify against each other

– Restrictions• Segregated public places• Prohibited intermarriage• Barred testimony against whites or service on juries• Prohibited from leaving plantations without permission

Political cartoonist Thomas Nast criticizes the Black Codes in Harper’s Weekly, 1866

The South under Reconstruction

– Land and Labor• Blacks lacked access

to land ownership; whites’ need for labor

– Sharecropping– Crop-lien system

• Problems– Falling cotton prices,

economic stagnation of agriculture

– Lack of southern industrial growth

– Corruption

The South under Reconstruction• The Ku Klux Klan

– Secret organization formed in 1866• Most members were small-scale farmers

and workers• Leaders were planters, merchants, lawyers

– Major goals of Klan and similar groups• Restore white supremacy• Destroy the Republican party in the South

– Tactics• Intimidation of black and white Republicans• Punishment of blacks• Destruction of black churches and schools

Fourteenth Amendmentratified 1868

• Fourteenth Amendment (passed Congress, June 1866; ratified July 1868)– Defined federal citizenship– Extended prohibition of federal interference with basic

civil rights (Bill of Rights) to protection against actions by state governments

• States could not deny rights without due process or deny equal protection of the laws

• States that refused black men the right to vote could have representation reduced

– Former Confederates excluded from politics until restored by 2/3 vote of Congress

Seward’s Folly

Ticket to Johnson’s impeachment trial, March 1868

Johnson’s Impeachment 1868

• Impeachment: Constitution, Article I, Sections 2 & 3– House brings charges (impeaches)– Senate holds trial with Chief

Justice of the Supreme Court presiding

• 2/3 vote convicts and president removed

• Johnson impeached for violating 1867 law prohibiting removal of federal officials– Vote to convict failed by one vote– Rationale for failed conviction

Ulysses S. Grant

as president

The inauguration of Ulysses S. Grant, March 4, 1869

Grant Administration

• Problems – Corruption– Liberal Republican challenge in

Election of 1872– Panic of 1873 and onset of economic

depression

• Reconstruction policies– Northern indifference/ southern

violence– Enforcement Acts, 1870-1871

• Protected black voters and provided for federal supervision of southern elections

• Ku Klux Klan Act: strengthened sanctions against those who impeded black suffrage

Fifteenth Amendmentratified 1870

• Black Enfranchisement: – In 1869, Congress

approved amendment extending the right to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”

African-American men voting during Reconstruction

The Fifteenth Amendment Adopted (1870 lithograph)

Freed slaves in Charleston, S.C.

Reconstruction’s last phase

• Civil Rights Act of 1875– Outlawed racial segregation in transportation

and public accommodations– Prevented exclusion of blacks from jury service

Struck down by U.S. Supreme Court in 1883 Civil Rights Cases: 14th Amendment does not prohibit discrimination by individuals, only states

The Collapse of Reconstruction

• Redemption– The Republican party

in the South• Tenuous political

position• Freedmen voted,

elected to Congress and other offices

• Policies of modernization, but high taxes spurred opposition

“Redeemers” and the Southern Democratic Party

Victories by

Democrats in

state elections

“redeemed” those

states from

Republican rule.

“Redeemers”

often benefited

from actions

of the Klan and

other terrorist

organizations.

The Compromise of 1877• Election of 1876

Rutherford B. Hayes (Rep.)

Samuel J. Tilden (Dem)– 20 disputed electoral

votes • 19 in South Carolina,

Louisiana, and Florida

• One in Oregon

– Fifteen-member commission (8 Republicans, 7 Democrats) awarded all disputed votes to Hayes

1 vote

8 votes 4 votes

7 votes

Compromise of 1877– Democrats dropped

Tilden’s claims to votes in exchange for

• End to federal intervention in the South

• Federal subsidies for Southern railroads and canals

– Hayes elected, Reconstruction ended

Analyzing Reconstruction

• Consider main goals1 Slavery ended but blacks become 2nd class

citizens; lose the vote after 18902 Confederacy dead; Rebs = Americans3 Modernization speeds up in North

– Business booms; era of Free Enterprise

– South becomes poor “Third World” backwater

– Texas best off in South, but still poor