4.4 Reconstruction and Its Effects

1. 4.4 Reconstruction and Its Effects How did the federal government’s efforts to rebuild Southern society after the war collapse?

2. The Politics of Reconstruction • The Freedman’s Bureau was an agency established by Congress to help former slaves in the South • It was part of Reconstruction, the period during which the US began to rebuild after the Civil War, and the process of bringing Southern states back into the nation • It lasted from 1865 to 1877

3. Continued • During the war, Lincoln made a plan for Reconstruction that was easy on the South • It included pardoning Confederates if they would swear allegiance to the Union • Lincoln’s plan angered the Radicals, a group of Republicans who wanted to destroy the political power of former slaveholders • After Lincoln died, his vice-president, Andrew Johnson, took office with a similar plan to Lincoln’s

4. Continued • However, Radical Republicans thought both plans were too easy on the South • Republicans in Congress won a struggle with the President to control Reconstruction • They created the Freedman’s Bureau to give food and clothing to former slaves as well as set up hospitals and schools • Congress also passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which said states could not enact laws that discriminated against African Americans

5. Rights for African Americans • Congress also passed the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave African Americans citizenship • Johnson urged Southern states not to ratify it because they had no say in creating it; Congress responded with the Reconstruction Act of 1867, which said no state could re-enter the Union until it approved the 14th Amendment

6. Continued • Congress began to look for a way to impeach the president; Johnson had removed a cabinet member and Congress said he did it illegally • Johnson was impeached, but he avoided removal from office by one Senate vote • In 1868, Ulysses S. Grant was elected president with the help of African American votes in the South

7. Continued • In 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, which banned states from denying the vote to African Americans • By 1870, all former Confederate states were back in the Union; their governments were run by Republicans

8. Goals for Reconstruction • Three groups of Republicans had different goals: • Scalawags: white Southerners who were small farmers who didn’t want wealthy planters to regain power • Carpetbaggers: Northerners who had moved South • African Americans who voted for the first time mostly voted Republican

9. Continued • During Reconstruction, many former slaves moved to the cities and organized schools and churches • Many voted, and some were elected to office, with Hiram Revels being the first African-American senator • Many wanted to farm their own land, having been promised ‘forty acres and a mule’ by General Sherman, which was not upheld

10. Continued • Many Southern planters wanted to return to the plantation system and tried to ensure African Americans could not own land • To survive, many former slaves became sharecroppers, a system where landowners give a few acres of land to their farm workers and the croppers keep only a small portion of their crops • Tenant farming also rented land from landowners for cash

11. The Collapse of Reconstruction • Many Southern whites did not like African Americans voting • Some formed secret groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) that used violence to keep African Americans from voting • Congress passed the Enforcement Acts to stop the violence, but also gave the vote to former Confederates, so Democrats began to gain power and eventually pushed federal troops out of the South after a five year Depression and election of Repub. Rutherford Hayes as President in 1876