Topic 5.11 - Failure of Reconstruction

Explain how and why Reconstruction resulted in continuity and change in regional and national understandings of what it meant to be American.

redeemers

Southern conservatives who agreed on a political program of states’ rights, reduced taxes, reduced spending on social programs, and white supremacy

Rutherford B. Hayes

• 19th President of the United States

• defeated Samuel Tilden in the election of 1876

• Prior to that, he was governor of Ohio (Republicans chose him because he was removed from the corruption of the Grant administration)

Samuel J. Tilden

• Governor of New York

• Democrat candidate for president in 1876 (He lost to Rutherford B. Hayes)

• Fought the corrupt Tweed Ring (refers to a corrupt political machine in 19th-century New York City, led by William M. "Boss" Tweed, that engaged in bribery, graft, and embezzlement, allegedly defrauding the city of tens of millions of dollars)

Election of 1876

• Pitted Republican Rutherford B. Hayes against Democrat Samuel J. Tilden

• By this time, federal troops had withdrawn from all southern states (except 3)

Compromise of 1877

Informal deal worked out by the leaders of the two major political parties:

The Democrats got: Rutherford B. Hayes becomes president

The Republicans got: (1) Immediate end of federal support for Republicans in the South, and (2) Hayes’ support for building a Southern transcontinental railroad

Note: Hayes fulfilled the first part of the deal (removing federal military presence) shortly after his inauguration

Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

• Secret society formed to intimidate black people and white reformers

• Founded in 1867 by former Confederate general Nathaniel Bedford Forrest

• Responsible for murdering/beating thousands of freedmen and destroying/burning black-owned buildings and businesses to prevent the exercise of voting rights

Force Acts

• Passed in 1870 and 1871 by Congress to give federal authorities the power to stop the KKK and protect civil rights

Black Codes

• Codes of law the restricted the rights and movements of black people

• Adopted by several Southern state legislatures during Andrew Johnson’s administration

sharecropping

Amnesty Act of 1872