Reconstruction

1. Reconstruction Reuniting a Broken Nation

2. The Problems of Peace Reconstruction: The process of rebuilding the South and reunifying the Union.

3. Presidential Reconstruction • Lincoln’s 10% Plan: Ten percent of Southern voters would be required to take an oath of loyalty before the state would be readmitted to the Union. • The intention was to bring the South back into the Union as quickly and painlessly as possible – to heal the wounds of the war.

4. Congress’s Plan for Reconstruction • Wade-Davis Bill: Required that more than 50 percent of white males take an “ironclad” oath of allegiance before the state could call a constitutional convention. The bill also required that the states abolish slavery.

5. The Martyrdom of Lincoln • On April 14, 1865, President Lincoln was shot and killed at Ford's Theater by John Wilkes Booth.  Andrew Johnson took over as President.

6. A President Watching A President Future President Teddy Roosevelt, 6 years old

7. Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan • Johnson essentially followed Lincoln’s 10% plan, adding the following stipulations: • Leading Confederates were to be disenfranchised • The states must protect the rights of freedmen

8. Scalawag Southerners who joined the Republican party after the war and supported Reconstruction. Southern whites accused the scalawags of betraying the South. Carpetbagger Northerners who moved to the South during Reconstruction, seen with a "carpet bag" (suitcase) in their hand. Some came to honestly help the South, but were seen to be outsiders exploiting the broken South. Carpetbaggers and Scalawags

9. Military Reconstruction • The Reconstruction Act: Divided the South into 5 military districts. U.S. soldiers would be stationed in each to make sure things stayed under control. • To be readmitted, States must pass the Reconstruction Amendments: • 13th Amendment: Officially ended slavery in the United States • 14th Amendment: Gave citizenship to all freedmen • 15th Amendment: Gave suffrage to all freedmen • When the soldiers finally did leave (Compromise of 1877), power slid back to the white Southerners who found new tricks to achieve their old ways.

10. All Men Are Created Equal?

11. Freedmen Define Freedom Freed blacks, or "freedmen" were in a perplexing situation. • They'd heard that they were free, but most still stayed on the plantation where they'd always lived because they had nowhere else to go. • Some blacks fled northward, away from the memory of slavery. • Some blacks let their frustrations erupt by destroying white homes, land, etc. Sometimes, the white master even had the table turned on him and was whipped by his former slaves.

12. The Freedman’s Bureau • The freed slaves were largely unskilled, uneducated, and untrained. Congress created the Freedmen's Bureau sought to remedy those shortfalls. • The bureau was essentially an early form of welfare, providing food, clothing, health care, and education. • The Freedmen's Bureau's success was minimal at best. • Unsurprisingly, Southerners disliked the bureau.

13. With many white Southerners unable to vote (until taking the oath of allegiance to the U.S.) black Congressmen were elected.

14. The Introduction of Jim Crow • White Southerners now had a problem: without slavery, how could they ensure a stable labor force? • Sharecropping: A system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crop produced on the land (e.g., 50% of the crop). Most sharecroppers were in continuous debt.

15. The Introduction of Jim Crow • Black Codes: Local laws passed to keep freedmen in a subservient position, banning them from juries, holding local office, and arresting them for “idleness.” • Jim Crow Laws: Laws that created segregation of the races in public places (schools, RR, restaurants, doctors offices, etc.). • Plessy v. Ferguson: Upheld the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal.” Homer Plessy

16. The Ku Klux Klan • Upset whites were driven underground. They started the "Invisible Empire of the South", better known as the "Ku Klux Klan" in Tennessee (1866). • The KKK thrived on fear—horses were masked, men were masked, no one knew exactly who was in it. • They burnt crosses, threatened blacks who didn't "know their place", and lynched then murdered blacks. • Nathan Bedford Forrest - First Grand Wizard of the KKK

17. Ku Klux Klan

18. Saving the Dumb White Folk ‘Cause a mah dear ol’ granpappy I gitstuh vote! Southern whites used a variety of methods to disenfranchise blacks: • Poll taxes: Taxes required at the polls that would limit blacks’ ability to vote. • Literacy Tests: Tests that were meant to test someone’s ability to read, and therefore vote. Purposefully made more difficult for black voters. • “Grandfather clause“: Anyone whose grandfather had been able to vote could also vote. This meant whites were grandfathered in (regardless of their ability to read), blacks not.

19. A little fun A “White Literacy Test” C M SNAKS? M R SNAKS? S, M R SNAKS. M R Not. S A R ... C M B D Is? – M R SNAKS. L I B!

20. Literacy Test!

21. The Heritage of Reconstruction • To many in the South, the shame of Reconstruction was worse than the war. • The war and Reconstruction also bred generations of animosity. • The lot of many Southern blacks, despite good intentions, was likely as bad, or even worse, than before the war.