Module 1 – Emancipation & Reconstruction

 Freedmen’s Bureau (1865)

Federal agency created to help freedpeople with food, clothing, medical care, education, and labor contracts.

Significance: Showed new federal power but was resisted by many white southerners.

Field Order 15 (1865)

General Sherman issued Field Order 15 which took property from confederate landowners and gave it to freedpeople. He did it to punish confederate landowners. After 5 years, all the land went back to the previous owners.

Robert Smalls

Born enslaved, Escaped by sailing the Confederate ship to Union forces, became Union naval captain and politician
Significance: Symbol of Black achievement and citizenship.

13th Amendment (1865)

Abolished slavery

Significance: Major step in redefining citizenship.

Black Codes

laws that were trying to recreate the structures of slavery as closely as possible. Included vagrancy laws (proof of employment) and apprenticeship laws (black orphans were forced to work for free).

Significance: Tried to recreate slavery.

Sharecropping

landowners rented land to freedpeople, who paid by giving a share of their crops. Sharecroppers relied on the landowner for tools and supplies.
Significance: led to debt and exploitation

Andrew Johnson

• Grew up poor and hated wealthy slaveowners. Was a white supremacist and hated emancipation. Did not intervene with the passing of Black Codes. Granted 13,000 pardons to Confederates who begged him for the right to vote. 

 Freedpeople Petition for Land, 1865

Freedpeople petitioned the federal government for land after emancipation.

Significance: Showed desire for economic independence and efforts to claim full citizenship.

Richard H. Cain, Federal Aid for Land Purchase, 1868

Richard Cain Urged federal aid for land ownership for freedpeople; 

Significance: Connects to Reconstruction goals of redefining citizenship and rebuilding the South.

Jourdan Anderson Writes to His Former Enslaver, 1865

Letter from freedman to former enslaver refusing return to labor
Significance: Illustrated freedpeople exercising autonomy and asserting new rights