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Reconstruction: The Dawn Without a Noon. 1865 - 1877. The Problems of Peace. Even before the fighting was over the debate began over how to reconstruct the shattered Union. What were the main questions facing the decision makers regarding southern reconstruction?. The Main Questions.
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Reconstruction:The Dawn Without a Noon 1865 - 1877
The Problems of Peace • Even before the fighting was over the debate began over how to reconstruct the shattered Union.
What were the main questions facing the decision makers regarding southern reconstruction?
The Main Questions • How would the South be rebuilt economically and socially? • How would the freed blacks be treated?
3. How would the former Confederate states be readmitted to the Union? 4. Who would control and direct the process of Reconstruction?
The Fate of the Confederate Leaders • Many of the Confederate leaders were imprisoned at the end of the war. Jefferson Davis’ Cabinet
Jefferson Davis was captured and put in irons – he will remain imprisoned for two years.
All were eventually pardoned and even Jeff Davis was given his citizenship back – posthumously, over a hundred years later.
Gone With the Wind • The southern economy was utterly destroyed at the end of the war.
Plantations were choked with weeds, cities were burned to the ground and factories and transportation were at a standstill.
The slave-labor system was gone and with it over $2 billion in capital.
Southern Pride • Many in the South refused to believe they were beaten and held strongly to the belief that their cause had been just.
Southerners also refused to recognize the federal government in Washington as their own.
South’s gonna do it agin…. • The Stars and Bars would be incorporated into many southern state flags.
The Fate of the Freedmen • Freedom for Southern blacks at the end of the Civil War came haltingly and unevenly in different parts of the conquered Confederacy.
Southern planters and slave owners used violence as well as legal means to keep blacks from being liberated.
Some blacks resisted liberation out of loyalty to their masters, while others rose in violence and looting against the defeated plantation owners.
Day of Jubilee • Upon receiving emancipation many former slaves celebrated their liberation by changing their names; going in search of lost loved ones; getting married; or just getting up and moving “because they could.”
"When freedom come, I didn’t know what dat was at fust. I rec’lec’s Uncle Charley Burns what drive de buggy for Marster Charles, come runnin’ out in de yard an’ holler ‘everbody free, everbody free’, an’ pretty soon some sojers come an’ de Capt’in reads a proclamation to all de folks,--white folks an’ us black folks, too. An’ law me, dat’s one time Marster Charles can’t open his mouth, ‘cause de Capt’in tell him to shut up, dat he would do de talkin’. Sarah Ford -- on the Patton Plantation near West Columbia, Texas
Exodusters • While most former slaves stayed in the south, some began to move north.
A popular destination was the new state of Kansas – this exodus was ended when steamboat captains conspired to refuse to carry blacks across the Mississippi River.
The Church and Education • Black churches, such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church became the focus the black community.
The church provided social services and most importantly became centers for education as former slaves sought what had long been denied them – the right to read.
The Freedmen’s Bureau • On March 3, 1865 Congress created the Freedmen’s Bureau to provide food, clothing, medical care and education to the former slaves.
The Bureau, led by General Oliver O. Howard, promised the freed slaves “forty acres and a mule.”
The Bureau did not come through on most of its promises, but it was successful in teaching over 200,000 former slaves to read.
In many cases the Bureau acted in cahoots with local planters to keep blacks tied to the old plantations.
Southern whites saw the Bureau as Federal interference in state affairs with the purpose of overturning the racial order.
President Johnson agreed with these white supremacist views and tried to kill the agency.
Presidential Reconstruction 1864-1866
Lincoln’s 10 Percent Plan. • December 1863 - Lincoln announces his plans for reconstruction:
Since he believed that the Southern states had never really left the Union, he believed the process of reconstruction should be fairly quick and easy.
He would grant a pardon to nearly all supporters of the Confederacy if they took an oath of allegiance to the Union. • All must pledge to accept emancipation.
When 10 percent of the voters in the 1860 presidential election took the oaths, the state could petition for reentry to the union.
Lincoln did believe in the granting of limited black suffrage - especially for union soldiers. • But the former slaves were not promised anything.
Wade-Davis Bill • Passed by Congress in 1864, it called for a majority of voters to take loyalty oaths - and to exclude all who had aided the Confederacy.
New state constitutions would have to guarantee equal rights to all blacks and all citizens. • Lincoln pocket-vetoed the bill, but signed the Freedman’s Bureau Bill creating the agency to protect and aid freed slaves.
Lincoln also worked to create the 13th Amendment (it was ratified after his death in 1865) - abolishing slavery everywhere in the US.
The controversy surrounding the Wade-Davis Bill revealed the deep differences between the Congress and the president.
The State Suicide Theory • Many Radicals in Congress believed in the idea that the southern states had committed political suicide by seceding and therefore forfeited all their rights.
These Republican congressmen saw the south as conquered territory. Thaddeus Stevens
When Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865 and Andrew Johnson became president, radicals believed Andrew Johnson would share their desire to punish the Planter Aristocracy.
President Andrew Johnson • Johnson was a states-rights Democrat from Tennessee who hated the aristocratic plantation class of the south but cared nothing for the slaves. • He was known as a champion of the poor mountain whites.
