Reconstruction in the South

1. Reconstruction and the New South Reconstruction in the South

2. The Freed Slaves • While the Civil War brought freedom to enslaved African Americans, they were not protected from exploitation or abuse • Federal troops often tried to force them to return to plantations as wage laborers • Plantations conspired to control wages • Legal system tilted against them • Former slaves that participated in the Union army had some advantages • Training in leadership • Economic advancement • Social respectability • Civic leadership • Churches, especially Baptist, became the foundation of African American communities • Fraternal, benevolent, and mutual-aid societies flourished in the South as well • Strong focus on literacy • Sharecropping was the primary occupation option for African Americans

3. African Americans in Southern Politics • Tensions emerged between the free black elite and ex-slaves • The free black elite fought redistribution of land • Ex-slaves complained that they were underrepresented in government • For the most part, these groups were able to find unity in the fight for full equality under the law • African Americans serving as elected officials was still a rare occurrence • Mostly served as state legislators • None ever elected governor • Pinckney Pinchback was elected Lieutenant Governor in Louisiana and served as governor when the white governor was indicted on corruption charges

4. Carpetbaggers and Scalawags • Top positions in southern state governments after the Civil War went mostly to white Republicans • Carpetbaggers • Northerners who allegedly rushed South with all their belongings in carpetbags to garb political power • Usually Union veterans who went South looking for economic and political opportunities • Many were also teachers, social workers, or ministers • Scalawags • White Republican native to the South • Hated even more than Carpetbaggers • Southerners who opposed secession from the start, and former Confederates who changed their minds about the direction of the South after the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse • Others were former Whigs who liked the Republican party’s economic plan for industrial and commercial expansion

5. The Radical Republican Record • Radical Republican Innovations: • Universal manhood suffrage • Reapportioning legislatures to more accurately reflect populations • Making more state office elective • More political power for African Americans and lower-class whites • Constructed extensive railroad networks • Infrastructure repaired and rebuilt • Established state-supported public schools • By 1877, 600,000+ black students were enrolled in southern schools • African Americans achieved equality under the law • “Down here everybody us demoralized. Corruption is the fashion.” • Henry Warmoth, Louisiana “carpetbag” governor

6. Religion and Reconstruction • Missionaries from the North strove for political and social equality for freed slaves • Used Christian principles to challenge notions of racial inferiority • There would still be plenty of debate in the South in the coming years as to whose side of the conflict God was on