American Yawp Chapter 15

Reconstruction

- The effort to restore southern states to the Union and to redefine African Americans' place in American society—began before the Civil War ended.

Radical Republicans

- African Americans and ____________________________________ pushed the nation to finally realize the Declaration of Independence's promises that "all men were created equal" and had "certain, unalienable rights."

Emancipation Proclamation

- Initially proposed as a war aim, Lincoln's ______________________________________ committed the United States to the abolition of slavery.

- However, it freed only slaves in areas of rebellion and left more than 700,000 in bondage in Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri as well as Union-occupied areas of Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia.

John Wilkes Booth

- Reconstruction changed when ________________________________________ shot Lincoln on April 14, 1865, during a performance of "Our American Cousin" at the Ford Theater. Treated rapidly and with all possible care, Lincoln succumbed to his wounds the following morning, leaving a somber pall over the North and especially among African Americans.

Andrew Johnson

- The assassination of Abraham Lincoln propelled Vice President _____________________________ into the executive office in April 1865.

- A states' rights, strict-constructionist and unapologetic racist from Tennessee, offered southern states a quick restoration into the Union.

- His Reconstruction plan required provisional southern governments to void their ordinances of secession, repudiate their Confederate debts, and ratify the Thirteenth Amendment.

Thirteenth Amendment

- To cement the abolition of slavery, Congress passed the _____________________________________ on January 31, 1865.

- Legally abolished slavery "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."

- Section Two granted Congress the "power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

- State ratification followed, and by the end of the year the requisite three-fourths states had approved the amendment, and four million people were forever free from the slavery that had existed in North America for 250 years.4

Black Codes

- South Carolina and Mississippi passed laws known as ___________________________ to regulate black behavior and impose social and economic control.

- These laws granted some rights to African Americans, like the right to own property, to marry or to make contracts.

- Denied fundamental rights. White lawmakers forbade black men from serving on juries or in state militias, refused to recognize black testimony against white people, apprenticed orphan children to their former masters, and established severe vagrancy laws.

- Effectively criminalized black leisure, limited their mobility, and locked many into exploitative farming contracts.

Thaddeus Stevens

- US Republican Congressman who believed in racial equality.

- The last ember of hope for land redistribution was extinguished when ____________________________ and Charles Sumner's proposed land reform bills were tabled in Congress.

Fourteenth Amendment

- The House of Representatives approved this on June 13, 1866.

- Section One granted citizenship and repealed the Taney Court's infamous Dred Scott (1857) decision.

- It ensured that state laws could not deny due process or discriminate against particular groups of people.

- Signaled the federal government's willingness to enforce the Bill of Rights over the authority of the states.

- Guaranteed women's suffrage.

Ulysses S. Grant

- In the 1868 Presidential election, former Union General ________________________ ran on a platform that proclaimed, "Let Us Have Peace" in which he promised to protect the new status quo.

Congressional Reconstruction Acts

- Through the provisions of the ____________________________________________________, black men voted in large numbers and also served as delegates to the state constitutional conventions in 1868.

- Black delegates actively participated in revising state constitutions.

- One of the most significant accomplishments of these conventions was the establishment of a public school system.

Hiram Revels

- At the federal level, _________________________ and Blanche K. Bruce were chosen as United States Senators from Mississippi.

P.B.S. Pinchback

- Served as Louisiana's Governor for thirty-four days after the previous governor was suspended during impeachment proceedings and was the only African American state governor until Virginia elected L. Douglass Wilder in 1989.

Special Field Order No. 15

- General William T. Sherman issued ___________________________ in which land in Georgia and South Carolina was to be set aside as a homestead for the freedpeople.

Freedmen's Bureau

- One of the main purposes of the ______________________________, however, was to redistribute lands to former slaves that had been abandoned and confiscated by the federal government.

- Even these land grants were short lived. In 1866, land that ex-Confederates had left behind was reinstated to them.

- Commissioner General Oliver O. Howard went to Edisto Island to inform the black population there of the policy change.

- The black commission's response was that "we were promised Homesteads by the government . . . You ask us to forgive the land owners of our island . . .The man who tied me to a tree and gave me 39 lashes and who stripped and flogged my mother and my sister . . . that man I cannot well forgive. Does it look as if he has forgiven me, seeing how he tries to keep me in a condition of helplessness?"

Oliver O. Howard

- Freedmen's Bureau Commissioner.

- He went to Edisto Island to inform the black population there of the policy change.

- The black commission's response was that "we were promised Homesteads by the government . . . You ask us to forgive the land owners of our island . . .The man who tied me to a tree and gave me 39 lashes and who stripped and flogged my mother and my sister . . . that man I cannot well forgive. Does it look as if he has forgiven me, seeing how he tries to keep me in a condition of helplessness?"

Booker T. Washington

- He famously described the situation, "it was a whole race trying to go to school. Few were too young, and none too old, to make the attempt to learn."

Fifteenth Amendment

- Guaranteed women's suffrage.

Jim Crow

- With the rise of ______________________, black churches would enter a new phase of negotiating relationships within the community and the wider world.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

- Leading women's rights advocate.

- Her and her partner in the movement, Susan B. Anthony, made the journey to advocate universal suffrage.

- They soon realized that their allies were distancing themselves from women's suffrage in order to advance black enfranchisement.

- Disheartened, _______________ and Anthony allied instead with white supremacists that supported women's equality.

- Many fellow activists were dismayed by _____________________ and Anthony's willingness to appeal to racism to advance their cause.

Women's Loyal National League

- Stanton formed the _____________________________________ in 1863, which petitioned Congress for a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery.

- The Thirteenth Amendment marked a victory not only for the antislavery cause, but also for the ______________________________________, proving women's political efficacy and the possibility for radical change.

National Woman Suffrage Association

- Stanton and Anthony formed this.

- This encouraged women to register to vote, which roughly seven hundred did between 1868 and 1872.

- Susan B. Anthony was one of them and was arrested but then acquitted in trial.

Civil Rights Act of 1866

- Republicans in Congress responded to the codes with the __________________________________________, the first federal attempt to constitutionally define all American-born residents (except Native peoples) as citizens.

- The law also prohibited any curtailment of citizens' "fundamental rights."

- African Americans gained citizenship rights like the ability to serve on juries as a result of the _______________________________________ and the Fourteenth Amendment.

Ku Klux Klan

- They emerged in the late 1860s as the most infamous of these groups.

- Was organized in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee and had spread to nearly every state of the former Confederacy by 1868.

- The Klan drew heavily from the antebellum southern elite, but Klan groups sometimes overlapped with criminal gangs or former Confederate guerilla groups.

Enforcement Acts

- The federal government responded to southern paramilitary tactics by passing the _______________________________ between 1870 and 1871.

- The acts made it criminal to deprive African Americans of their civil rights.

- The acts also deemed violent Klan behavior as acts of rebellion against the United States and allowed for the use of U.S. troops to protect freedpeople.

Morrill Land Grant

- Helped create colleges such as the University of California, Illinois, and Wisconsin.

Homestead Act

- This act meant to open the West to small farmers was often frustrated by the actions of Railroad corporations and speculators.

Rutherford B. Hayes

- Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, _______________________________ was given the presidency in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South. But by 1876, the vast majority of federal troops had already left.

- Won big without mentioning Reconstruction

- Ran against Democrat Samuel J. Tilden in presidential election.

Samuel J. Tilden

- Democrat in Presidential election against Hayes.

Compromise of 1877

- Democrats conceded the presidency to Hayes on the promise that all remaining troops would be removed from the South.

- In March 1877, Hayes was inaugurated; in April, the remaining troops were ordered out of the South.

- The ___________________________________ allowed southern Democrats to return to power, no longer fearing reprisal from federal troops or northern politicians for their flagrant violence and intimidation of black voters.