Reconstruction

1. Reconstruction

2. Key Terms • Civil Rights Act • Fourteenth Amendment • Due Process • Equal Protection • Fifteenth Amendment • Impeachment • Carpetbagger • Scalawag • Hiram Rhodes Revels • “New South” • Sharecropping • Debt Peonage • Ku Klux Klan • Literacy Test • “Grandfather Clauses” • Poll Taxes • Solid South • “Jim Crow” Laws • Segregation • Plessy v. Ferguson • Reconstruction • Thirteenth Amendment • Freedmen • Freedmen’s Bureau • Andrew Johnson • Presidential Reconstruction • Radical Republicans • “Black Codes” • Congressional Reconstruction

3. President Lincoln had been assassinated by John Wilkes Booth • Andrew Johnson was the new President (Lincoln’s Vice President) • Reconstruction- To rebuild the South, Americans had to overcome a series of major political, economic, and social hurdles. (1865-1877) • Issues of Reconstruction • What to do with former slaves? • How to rebuild the Southern economy and rebuild the Union? • Freedman’s Bureau-Helped former slaves adjust to freedmen

4. Lincoln’s Plan • Favored a lenient Reconstruction plan • Ten-Percent Plan Government would pardon all Confederates, except high-ranking officials and those accused of crimes against prisoners of war. • Ten-Percentof voters had to swear allegiance to the Union. As soon as this happened the Confederate state could form a new state government and send representatives to Congress. • Radical Republicans wanted to destroy the political power of former slaveholders. Wanted African Americans to be given full citizenship and the right to vote. Wanted to punish the South

5. 13th Amendment • April 1864 the U.S. Senate proposed the Thirteenth Amendment prohibiting slavery throughout the United States. • 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

6. Johnson’s Plan • Mostly favored Lincoln’s plan • Major difference Johnson tried to break the planters’ power by excluding high-ranking Confederates and wealthy Southern landowners form taking the oath needed for voting privileges. • Each high ranking official had to personally request amnesty • Pardoned more than 13,000 former Confederates • Hoped for reconciliation between Northern and Southern Whites only!!!!!!!!

7. Black Codes • The end of the Civil War marked the end of slavery for 4 million black Southerners. But the war also left them landless and with little money to support themselves. White Southerners, seeking to control the freedmen (former slaves), devised special state law codes. Many Northerners saw these codes as blatant attempts to restore slavery

8. Black Codes • Each Southern state wrote its own “black codes” • Common “black codes” • Defined freedmen as “persons of color” • Prevented persons from • Voting • Serving on juries • Testifying in court against whites • Holding office • Serving on state militia’s • Also regulated freedmen’s marriages • Regulated labor contracts • Illegal for freedmen to travel freely • Illegal to leave their jobs

9. Black Codes • It forced former slaves to stay on plantations as workers. Black workers could also be whipped for showing disrespect to their employers-often their former master. The whole aim of the Black Codes was to preserve the structure of Southern society with as little disruption as possible.

10. Congressional Reconstruction • Most Republican’s were outraged at the actions of President Johnson. • Moderate Republican’s and Radical Republican’s worked together to shift the control of power from the executive branch to the legislature branch. • Civil Rights Act- bill to enlarge the Freedmen’s Bureau and prohibit discrimination based on race, thus overturning the Black Codes. It made all persons born in the United States into citizens, including Freedmen and guaranteed them the same rights as “white citizens” • President Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act • In mid 1866 congress overrode the President’s vetoes of the Civil Rights Act.

11. 14th Amendment • To counter the President’s veto of the Civil Rights Act, Congress rewrote the terms of the Civil Rights Act into the 14th Amendment. • The Amendment prevents states from denying African Americans or other minorities the rights and privileges of citizens, including a fair trial and equal protection of the law. • To be readmitted to the Union, each Southern state was forced to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment.

12. 14th Amendment • 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.

13. Johnson Impeached • Johnson failed to win support in the 1866 mid-term election • Congressed passed the Tenure of Office law stating that the President could not fire members of his Cabinet. • Johnson ignored the law and fired a member of his cabinet. • Johnson was successfully impeached by the House of Representatives in February 1868 • Later that same year Ulysses S. Grant was elected President

14. Reconstruction act of 1867 • The Act divided the former Confederate states into five military districts. • The states were required to grant African American men the vote and to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment in order to reenter the Union.

16. 15th Amendment • In 1870 Congress ratified the 15th Amendment • Which states that no one can be kept from voting because of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” • The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendment were put in place as a punishment to the south

17. Reconstruction Government • Under the Reconstruction Act of 1867, most southern governments were made up of former Whigs, a few former Democrats, black and white newcomers from the North and Southern African Americans. • Carpetbaggers-New arrivals from the North, came to exploit the South and help the freedmen. Others came for new business opportunities • Scalawags- Southern whites who supported Reconstruction. • Most important aspect of Reconstruction was the active participation of African-Americans in state and local government • 600 served as state legislators • Hiram Rhodes Revels- first African-American to sit in congress

19. Sharecropping • With the end of slavery most landowners were forced to sell off section of their land or enter into sharecropping. • Landowners would divide their land and assigned each head of household a few acres, along with seed and tools. Sharecroppers kept a small share of their crops and gave the rest to the landowners.

20. Sharecropping • If a sharecropper owed any money at all to the landlord for cash loans or the use of tools, he could not leave until the debt was paid. • In effect tying the freedmen to the land in a system of Debt Peonage.

21. The New south • The end of slavery did not mean the end of cotton it just meant that cotton would no longer be the number one crop. • The cultivation of new crops like fruits and vegetables was added to cotton • Most important of all, railroads, cotton mills, and steel furnaces were built and more people moved into Southern Cities. • Manufacturing increased in the south after the Civil War

22. Aftermath to reconstruction • The system that replaced Reconstruction in the South was one of racial segregation and white supremacy. • Refer to this period in American History as the “Nadir” or low point in American race relations.

23. Voting • Southerners passed a series of laws in the 1890’s designed to prevent African American from voting without violating the 14th and 15th Amendments. • Literacy Tests- test to determine if someone can read or not. African American had to pass a test before they could vote. • Poll Taxes- registration fees for voting. African Americans could not afford to pay the poll tax. • Grandfather Clause- these laws allowed people who had been qualified to vote at the beginning of 1867, without passing a literacy test or paying a poll tax.

24. Segregation laws • Separated blacks from whites. Whites and blacks attended different schools, rode in separate railways cars, ate in different restaurants, used different public toilets and water fountains.

25. Jim Crow • The laws establishing racial segregation in the South became known as the “JIM CROW LAWS”. Named after a character in earlier song-and-dance shows. • In 1890, Louisiana passed a “Jim Crow” law requiring railroads companies to “provide equal but separate” facilities to members of different races.

26. Plessy v. Ferguson • Homer Plessy sat in a railroad car for whites, Plessy was arrested and sent to jail. • The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. • The Supreme Court ruled that it was legal to separate races. Making segregation legal. • Segregation became legal

27. End of reconstruction • 1877 Northern troops left the South and local government entirely returned to local white Southern rule. • There are several reasons why Reconstruction failed to achieve complete equality for African Americans. • A legacy of racism • Economic dependence of African American • White terrorism (the Klan) • Loss of Northern interest in Southern Reconstruction.