Reconstruction and Daily Life

1. Reconstruction and Daily Life Chapter 18, Section 2

2. “Aged women and grayhaired men journeyed to Virginia from far-off Georgia hoping to…meet sons and daughters whom they bade farewell at the auction block. Many had the good fortune to find those they sought, and their greetings were pathetic [heart-breaking] beyond description.”

3. Leaving Plantations • Reasons to leave • Economic Opportunity • Family Ties • Marry and raise families • Why not?

4. Freedmen’s Schools • How? • Freedmen’s Bureau, Northern missionary groups, and African-American organizations • Where? • Warehouses, billiard rooms, former slave markets, churches, private homes • Who? • By 1869, >150,000 African-Americans were attending school and 20% of African-American adults could read

5. “Give us our own land and we take care of ourselves, but without land, the old masters can hire us or starve us as they please.”

6. Forty Acres and a Mule • Near the end of the war, General Sherman suggested that abandoned land in the south should be divided among the slaves. Started a widespread woman… • Didn’t quite work out because of amnesty agreements

7. Radical Republicans’ Plan • Land reform • Take land from plantation owners and redistribute to freedmen • Backlash • Many others believed civil and voting rights were enough. • Congress didn’t pass this plan

8. The Contract System • African Americans were paid and could pick their employers • Landowners provided land, tools, and seed • Low Wages • Abused and cheated by landowners

9. Sharecropping • Farmers… • (ex-slaves) rented land on credit in exchange for tools and seed • gave a share of their crops to the landowner • were forced to grow cash crops • had to buy supplies at inflated prices on credit

10. Violent Racism • Ku Klux Klan • Goals • Restore Democratic control in the South • Keep former slaves (and the Republican Party) powerless • Tactics • Horseback, robes, and lynchings • Implicitly supported by Southern military governors