The American People, Chapter 16 Notes

1. The American People,Chapter 16 Notes The Union Reconstructed

2. Key Challenges Facing Americans after the Civil War • Legal status of former Confederate states • Lincoln: States had never officially left, so president as commander in chief had authority to decide terms. • Congress: Rebelling states had broken ties and reverted to pre-statehood status. Congress Constitutionally authorized to admit new states. • Bigger issue: President had assumed larger authority, different branches were struggling to determine new balance.

3. Key Challenges Facing Americans after the Civil War • Southern industry and society devastated by war, while Northern industry more developed and stronger than ever. • Four million black freedmen redefining place in Southern society

4. Hopes and Goals among the Freedmen • Exercising newfound freedom of mobility, getting away from the plantation • Legalize marriage, as slave marriages were not recognized and could be dissolved by sale of a spouse • Choice of last names to reflect free status

5. Hopes and Goals among the Freedmen • Abandonment of airs masks and expressions of humility to placate whites • Education • Most important: Acquisition of own land

6. Forty Acres and a Mule • Some Union generals had placed liberated slaves in charge of confiscated and abandoned lands • Blacks had worked 40-acre plots in the Sea Islands off coast of S.C. and in Georgia for years • Control of land key to control of destiny. Without it, no real freedom existed because whites controlled ability to survive.

7. The White South’s Fearful Response • Whites experience loss of property, even emotional bonds with former slaves • Fear of rape, revenge, intermarriage (miscegenation) • Violence by black soldiers against whites extremely rare

8. The White South’s Fearful Response • “Black codes” established by state legislatures immediately after war to limit the new rights of freedmen • Testimony against whites, interracial marriage, right to bear arms, right of assembly and more severely restricted • Regulation of labor in the black codes intended to restore plantation-based society • Kentucky newspaper: “The tune…will not be ‘forty acres and a mule,’ but … ‘work nigger or starve.’”

9. National Reconstruction: The Presidential Plan • Vice President Andrew Johnson, Tennessee Unionist Democrat, assumes office of president following Lincoln’s assassination, April 14, 1865 • Continues Lincoln’s policy of leniency toward South and presidential authority over Reconstruction

10. National Reconstruction: The Presidential Plan • Pardons most former Confederates • For “restoration of all rights of property” • Readmission to Union requires ratification of 13th Amendment, which abolishes slavery, voids secession, repudiates Confederate debts

11. National Reconstruction: The Presidential Plan • All southern states readmitted and send delegates to Congress by end of 1865 • No provision for black suffrage; very little for civil rights, schooling, economic protection for freedmen

12. Congressional Reconstruction (The Republicans Strike Back!) • Congressman Thaddeus Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts take control, labeled “radicals” • Congress refuses to seat new members of Congress from old Confederate states • Joint Committee on Reconstruction investigates appalling treatment of freedmen.

13. Congressional Reconstruction (The Republicans Strike Back!) • Congress passes civil rights bills to protect black rights and preserve Freemen’s Bureau, 1866 • Johnson vetoes both bills, but Congress overrides vetoes, passes version of bills with weakened enforcement • Union army drags feet, fails to protect blacks in 1866 race riot in Memphis, TN

14. Fourteenth Amendment • Congress passes Fourteenth Amendment, 1866 (ratified by 3/4 of states by 1868) • Officially made blacks citizens of the U.S. • Federal government protected civil rights of all citizensfrom violations by states for the first time • (Previously, only federal government had to abide by the Bill of Rights)

15. Fourteenth Amendment • Made black males eligible to vote by counting them as whole persons • Ends 3/5 compromise of original Constitution • Provision made to punish states that deny the right to vote by reducing their representation in Congress • Ironically, without enforcement of right to vote, white Southerners exclude blacks but gain even more power in Congress

16. Fourteenth Amendment • Some consequences for former Confederates • Amendment central issue in 1866 Congressional elections, Republicans gain overwhelming majority

17. Reconstruction Acts • South divided into five military districts • Commanders have broad power to maintain order and protect civil and property rights • New process for readmitting a state – New state constitutions for South

18. Reconstruction Acts • Black men would participate in conventions, unreconstructed rebels would not • State constitutions must guarantee black male suffrage, elections would follow • Finally, states readmitted to Union after ratifying 14th Amendment

19. Reconstruction Acts • Johnson vetoes the acts, but overridden by Congress again • Johnson impeached by the House, survives by one vote in Senate trial • Shows moderate Republicans, less committed to civil rights, have upper hand

20. What Congress Did Not Do • Imprison Confederate leaders (with exception of Jefferson Davis) • Insist on long probation before readmission for Confederate states • Reorganize southern local governments • Mandate national program of education for ex-slaves

21. What Congress Did Not Do • Confiscate land and redistribute to freedmen • Prevent Johnson from taking land away from freedmen who had gained it during war • Provide economic help to black citizens (except indirectly)

22. What Congress Did Do • Granted blacks citizenship and the right to vote

23. Women and the Reconstruction Amendments • Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony advocate for 13th Amendment • Shocked when 15th Amendment excludes women from right to vote • Frederick Douglas supported women’s rights but pleas that this was “the Negro’s hour”

24. Women and the Reconstruction Amendments • Suffragists such as Lucy Stone agree with Douglas • Stanton and Anthony campaign against 15th Amendment on principle that all citizens should vote

25. The Freedmen’s Bureau • Issued emergency food rations • Clothed and sheltered homeless victims of the war • Established medical and hospital facilities • Provided funds to relocate thousands of freedmen and white refugees

26. The Freedmen’s Bureau • Helped African Americans search for relatives and get legally married • Helped freedmen get fair trials • Established schools staffed by blacks and idealistic northerners • Served as employment agency, ultimately “re-enslaving” freedmen as landless fieldworkers

27. Economic Freedom by Degrees • Contact labor Freedmen worked for white landowners for meager wages – no land of own • Sharecropping Freedmen worked a certain plot of land for white landowners and could keep half of the harvest, but spent most to buy goods from landlord’s store

28. Tenant farming • Much like sharecropping, but freedmen rented the land • Agreed to sell harvest to landlord rather than giving half of the harvest • Still heavily dependent on debt to buy goods from landlord • Poor whites faced similar conditions; many turned to white supremacist ideology

29. Black Self-Help Institutions • Black churches held together social fabric of community; ministers provided community leadership • Desire for education strong among freedmen • Unmarried white northern women were first teachers; sought to convert blacks to Congregationalism, white moral values

30. Black Self-Help Institutions • Successes tempered with frustration over limited resources, local opposition, absenteeism for fieldwork • Need for black teachers and preachers who better understood their communities led to founding of black universities • Opposition to black education led some black leaders to advocate emigration

31. Reconstruction in the States: Republican Rule • In wake of Congress’s Reconstruction Acts, Republicans dominate state constitutional conventions in fall of 1867

32. The Republican Coalition in the South • Bankers, industrialists and others interested in economic growth • Northern Republican capitalists keen to invest in land, railroads and new industries • Union veterans seeking warmer climate • Missionaries and teachers in Freedmen’s Bureau schools

33. Black Politicians • Often well-educated preachers, teachers, and soldiers from the north • Often self-educated tradesmen or representatives of the small landed class of southern blacks • In S.C., only 15 % owned no property at all • Black politicians more interested in gaining access to government and education than land redistribution

34. Accomplishments in the States • Universal male suffrage in all states • Republican governments financially and physically reconstructed the South: • Built infrastructure of roads, bridges, harbors, railroads, hospitals, asylums, etc. • Created state supported system of (segregated) schools

35. Weaknesses of Republican Rule • Corruption of “carpetbaggers” and “scalawags” – present, but not necessarily excessive • Tax rates and state debts increased • Class tensions, divisions among blacks weakened Republicans in Louisiana and S.C.

36. Violence and “Redemption” • Campaign of terror restores Democratic rule in N.C (1870), Mississippi (1875) • President Grant (R) gets Force Acts from Congress to protect voting rights and crack down on KKK • Grant abandons cause when advised support for blacks will hurt GOP in Ohio elections, 1875

37. Reconstruction, Northern Style • With Grant, Republicans shift from party of moral reform to one of material interest, economic growth • Organized labor asserts itself as industry expands • Republicans subsidize railroads while abandoning Freedman’s Bureau • Corruption pervades politics in New York (Boss Tweed) Congress (Crédit Mobilier), and Grant Administration

38. Election of 1876 • Republican Rutherford B. Hayes ekes out Electoral College victory • Democrat Samuel J. Tilden wins the popular vote • Votes disputed in Florida, Louisiana and S.C. • Stage set for showdown – another civil war?

39. The Compromise of 1877 • Hayes selected by Electoral College • Orders last federal troops out of the South • Supports economic and railway development in the South • Appoints former Confederate general to his cabinet, lets southerners handle race relations themselves