Reconstruction

1. Reconstruction

2. What to Expect • To learn about the Era of Reconstruction • DBQ’s • Thematic Essay • Unit Assessment • Maybe a surprise quiz or two • Plenty of Cooperative Learning • Group Activities TTYN: Talk To Your Neighbor

3. B-D-A Activity

4. B-D-A Activity

5. B-D-A Activity

6. K-W-L What I Learned About Reconstruction What I Want to Learn about Reconstruction What I Know about Reconstruction

7. Reconstruction: 1865-1877 TTYN:What is freedom? According to former president James Garfield, “it is the bare privilege of not being chained.”

8. Small Group Activity • Resolved: The problem of political reconstruction arose, in theory at least, as soon as the Civil War began, because neither President Lincoln nor the Republican majority in Congress ever doubted that the South would be defeated. …as to what is to be the course of the government towards the southern states, after the rebellion shall have been suppressed. - Abraham Lincoln • Your Task: • In respect to the knowledge you gained during our unit on the Civil War, consider the following: • How should the South be reconstructed? • How should the Union be reconstructed? • Punitive? Legal Issues? Monetary Compensation? Slaves? Land? • Legal Participation? • Cast yourself as the president of a member of the Republican majority (a Northerner), how should the Union be reconstructed?

9. What was Reconstruction? • Reconstruction: the process (politically, economically, socially, and morally) of readmitting the former Confederate states to the Union after the conclusion of the Civil War

10. What was Reconstruction? • Status of the South

11. What was Reconstruction? • Status of the South

13. Negroes and the Meaning of Freedom • TTYN:What did freedom mean to the former slaves? • Escaping the injustices of slavery • Reclaim their identity • Family; reconnection with sold-off and displaced family members • Church – abandoned white churches, which will redraw the religious map • Education

14. Negroes And The Meaning of Freedom • What did freedom mean to the former slaves? • Political Freedom • “Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot.” • - Frederick Douglas • Political Participation • Held mass meetings as a method to demonstrate their liberation from the regulations of slavery • 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments

15. Negroes And The Meaning of Freedom • What did freedom mean to the former slaves? • Personal Freedoms • Free from white supervision, acquired dogs, guns, and liquor – all bared under slavery • No longer required to obtain a pass to travel • Left plantations in search of better jobs • Marriage

16. Negroes And The Meaning of Freedom • What did freedom mean to the former slaves? • Land • Value of land as a measure of a mans freedom • Many former slaves insisted that through their unpaid labor they had acquired a right to the land • ”was nearly all earned by the sweat of our brows”

17. Political Freedom

18. Northern Vision for the South • What did freedom mean to the former slaves? • Free Labor Vision • Emancipated blacks enjoying the • same opportunities for advancement • as northern workers • Combining Northern capital, Migrants, and • emancipated blacks – the Southern economy would be energized • The South would come to resemble a “free society” Bureau agent as a promoter of racial peace in the violent South

19. K-W-L What I Learned About Reconstruction What I Want to Learn about Reconstruction What I Know about Reconstruction

20. Reconstruction Inside Lincoln’s Mind “War, at the best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible. It has destroyed property, and ruined homes; it has produced a national debt and taxation unprecedented…It has carried mourning to almost every home, until it can almost be said that the ‘heavens are hung in black’. We accepted this war for an object, a worthy object, and the war will end when that object is attained. Under God, I hope it never will until that time.” - Lincoln TTYN:What is the ‘object’ that Lincoln is making reference to and what appears to be his position regarding ending the war?

21. Executive Mansion, Washington, July 18, 1864 To Whom it may concern: Any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace, the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery, and which comes by and with an authority that can control the armies now at war against the United States will be received and considered by the Executive government of the United States, and will be met by liberal terms on other substantial and collateral points; and the bearer, or bearers thereof shall have safe-conduct both ways. -Abraham Lincoln

22. 13thAmendment Passed by Congress January 31, 1865

23. Thirteenth Amendment • Amendment to abolish slavery • TTYN: With the Proclamation of Emancipation, why as the 13th Amendment necessary? • Fear that the proclamation would be discarded once the war came to an end. • Was the proclamation legally valid • That slavery only applied to those who came into Union areas • Had no effect upon the children of the slaves born after • “A King’s cure for all the evils.” • - Lincoln

24. Thirteenth Amendment • Passed a year earlier in the Senate • Failed to get the necessary 2/3 in the House – Republicans voted aye and the Dems nay (along party lines) • ‘64 mid-terms altered the situation – Republicans gain seats • Lincoln wanted to send a signal to the South that the border states could no longer be relied upon to uphold slavery

25. Thirteenth Amendment “I am President of the United States, clothed with great power. The abolition of slavery by constitutional provision settles the fate, for all coming time, not only of the millions now in bondage, but of unborn millions to come – a measure of such importance that those two votes must be procured. I leave it to you to determine how it shall be done; but remember that I am President of the United States, clothed with immense power, and I expect you to procure those votes.” --Lincoln

26. TTYN: In summary format, respond to the following question: Using the text below, to what extent did Reconstruction bring the Southern Negro the equality and freedom that slavery had denied them? AMENDMENT XIII Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865. Note: A portion of Article IV, section 2, of the Constitution was superseded by the 13th amendment. Section 1.Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2.Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

27. Reconstruction • Wartime Reconstruction • Lincoln’s 10% Plan (1863) • “…not ideal, but a beginning, a rallying point to attract others” • Political Goals • Did not desire to dictate • Pushed for new state constitutions that recognized the emancipation proclamation • Refused to adopt the radicals’ desire to punish the South

28. Reconstruction • Wartime Reconstruction • Lincoln’s 10% Plan (1863) • Amnesty and full restoration of rights, including property except for slaves, to all white southerners • Loyalty Oath – supporting emancipation • Full pardons to all those who took the oath, excepting those who had served at high levels in the Confederate Gov’t or army • When 10% of the voters of 1860 had taken the oath, they could elect a new state government

29. Lincoln’s Plan for Reconstruction • Restore the old relationship between the southern states and Union was the essence of reconstruction • Believed the task of reconstruction was the task of the President, not to Congress • To help re-establish loyal states • Seek the co-operation of the minority if white Southerners who remained faithful and to those who returned to their former allegiance

30. Lincoln’s Plan for Reconstruction • States needed to re-establish loyal state governments • Army would be withdrawn as soon as state governments were formed • Election of respectable citizens to Congress, not a “a parcel of Northern men….elected at the point of the bayonet” • Abolish slavery • No role in politics for blacks • Goal of Plan: Shorten the War

31. Lincoln’s Plan for Reconstruction • Conservatives hailed the 10% plan • Lincoln’s plan was NOT etched in stone …open to ideas • Believed that states who accepted reconstruction would devastate Confederate morale

32. Reconstruction…the other version • Radical Republicans Respond • Wade-Davis Bill (1864) • July 2, 1864 • Ben Wade and Henry Winter Davis • Reconstruction bill passes Congress • A rigid formula for bringing the seceded states back into the Union • Postponed any attempt at Reconstruction until all fighting was done

33. Reconstruction…the other version • Wade-Davis Bill (1864) • A majority (not one-tenth) of white male southerners to pledge support for the Union before Reconstruction could begin in any state • Denied suffrage to all those who had held civil or military office in the Confederacy • Emancipation by congressional fiat, which guaranteed blacks equality before the law.

34. Reconstruction…the other version • Wade-Davis Bill (1864) • TTYN: Recalling what we have learned about Lincoln and his position regarding Reconstruction and Emancipation, how will Lincoln respond to this bill? • Lincoln responds with a pocket veto • Pocket Veto – unsigned bills still on the president’s desk when Congress adjourns do not become law • “I must keep some consciousness of being somewhere near right: I must keep some standard of principle fixed within myself” • -Lincoln

35. Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, 1865, on the radical program for Reconstruction We hold it to be the duty of the government to inflict condign punishment on the rebel belligerents, and so weaken their hands that they can never again endanger the Union; and so reform their municipal institutions as to make them republican in spirit as well as in name.... We propose to confiscate all the estate of every rebel belligerent whose estate was worth $l0,000 or whose land exceeded two hundred acres in quantity....By thus forfeiting the estates of the leading rebels, the Government would have 394,000,000 of acres....Give if you please forty acres to each adult male freedman. Suppose there are one million of them. That would require 40,000,000 of acres.... The whole fabric of southern society must be changed....How can republican institutions, free schools, free churches, free social intercourse exist in a mingled community of nabobs and serfs; of the owners of twenty thousand acre manors with lordly palaces, and the occupants of narrow huts inhabited by "low white trash?".... The property of the rebels shall pay our national debt, and indemnify freedmen and loyal sufferers. • TTYN:What was the “Radical Republican” program for reconstructing the Union?

36. TTYN: Describe the impact of the Confiscation Act and the potential impact on the course of the war. The U.S. Congress took the first step toward freeing the slaves in August 1861. At that time, it passed a law that allowed the Union Army to seize enemy property that was used in the war effort. Slaves were considered property in the South and were often used as laborers in Confederate Army camps. In effect, the Confiscation Act enabled Union troops to take any slaves they found away from their owners. Such slaves became known as "contrabands." Another law passed in March 1862 forbade Union Army officers from returning fugitive slaves to their owners in the South. In July 1862, Congress passed an even stronger Confiscation Act that granted freedom to any slaves who came under the control of Union troops. They also gave the president power to use these freed slaves as laborers or even soldiers in the Union Army.

37. Pre-Cursor to Radical Reconstruction • The Second Confiscation Act • Formation of loyal state governments in South presented several issues • What to do with those who had voluntarily supported the Confederate government • Arrests, indictments, and trail for treason???? • Neither Lincoln nor Congress had the stomach for a season of mass trials and executions

38. The Second Confiscation Act • Confiscation Act - 1862 • Engaging in rebellion or insurrection – whose penalty was a fine, imprisonment, and confiscation of property, including slaves • Would have resulted in a vast social revolution

39. Radical Republicans • What they wanted • To make the process of political reconstruction relatively slow and complicated • Keep Southerners out of Congress a while longer in order to reduce their political influence • Consolidate their power within the Republican Parry • Use federal power to extend civil and political rights to Southern Negroes

41. Killing Lincoln On April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot while Watching a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington

42. Killing Lincoln • John Wilkes Booth • Three-pronged attack • Lincoln, Johnson, and Seward • Booth shot Lincoln in the back of the head • Words shouted by Booth as he ran from Ford’s Theater • “Sic sempertyrannis” (Thus always to tyrants) • 7:22 a.m., April 15, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was pronounced dead

43. Killing Lincoln • “Now he belongs to the ages.” • --Edwin Stanton, Sec. of War • How Lincoln’s death would impact the South • “Those of southern sympathies know now they have lost a friend willing – and more powerful to protect and serve them than they can now ever hope to find again.” • --Elizabeth Blair

45. Andrew Johnson

46. Andrew Johnson Takes Control • Who was Andrew Johnson? • VP, Democrat, TN • …and the only Senator from the South who remained loyal to the Union • TTYN: Think about our unit on Andrew Jackson and one of the primary causes of the Civil War, what was a major political position(s) of Southern politicians? • Believed in states’ rights • Wanted to breakup big plantations • Little sympathy for blacks

47. Andrew Johnson Takes Control • Announced that he would continue with Lincoln’s plan, but with a few changes • Kept the oath of allegiance…the loyalty oath • Take the oath and you would receive: • All rights to property (except slaves) • Amnesty and pardon • Civil and political rights • Immunity from prosecution for treason or conspiracy • Exemption from the Confiscation Act

48. Oath of Allegiance Citation: Oath of Allegiance for Jacob F. Strait.  31 August 1865.  Papers of the Gaston, Strait, Wylie and Baskin Families.  South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina. Transcription: HEADQUARTERS, UNITED STATES FORCES, PROVOST MARSHAL’S OFFICE. Chester, S.C., Aug. 31, 1865. I, Jacob F. Strait, do solemnly swear, in presence of Almighty God, that I will henceforth faithfully support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Union of the State thereunder, and that I will, in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all Laws and Proclamations which have been made during the existing Rebellion with reference to the Emancipation of Slaves – “So help me God.” Sworn to and subscribed before me, at Chester S.C., this 31 day of Aug., 1865. Jacob F. Strait Edw. Cahill Cap, Provost Marshal

49. Andrew Johnson Takes Control • Believed that reconstruction was the responsibility of the Executive Dept. • Announced that he would continue with Lincoln’s plan, but with a few changes • Kept the oath of allegiance…the loyalty oath • Announced that he would continue with Lincoln’s plan, but with a few changes • Kept the oath of allegiance…the loyalty oath

50. Johnson Takes Control • TTYN:What do you think the Radical Republicans response to Johnson’s initiative would be? In favor? Against? Explain