Chapter 21: The Ordeal of Reconstruction, 1865–1877

Freedmen’s Bureau

Created to aid newly emancipated slaves by providing food, clothing, medical care, education, and legal support. Its achievements were uneven and depended largely on the quality of local administrators.

“10 percent” Reconstruction plan

Introduced by President Lincoln, it proposed that a state be readmitted to the Union once 10 percent of its voters had pledged loyalty to the United States and promised to honor emancipation.

Wade-Davis Bill

Passed by congressional Republicans in response to Abraham Lincoln’s “10 percent” Reconstruction plan, it required that 50 percent of a state’s voters pledge allegiance to the Union and set stronger safeguards for emancipation. Reflected divisions between Congress and the president, and between radical and moderate Republicans, over the treatment of the defeated South.

Black Codes

Laws passed throughout the South to restrict the rights of emancipated blacks, particularly with respect to negotiating labor contracts. Increased Northerners’ criticisms of President Andrew Johnson’s lenient Reconstruction policies.

Civil Rights Bill

Passed over Andrew Johnson’s veto, the bill aimed to counteract the Black Codes by conferring citizenship on African Americans and making it a crime to deprive blacks of their rights to sue, testify in court, or hold property.

Fourteenth Amendment

Constitutional amendment that extended civil rights to freedmen and prohibited states from taking away such rights without due process.

Reconstruction Act

Passed by the newly elected Republican Congress, it divided the South into five military districts, disenfranchised former Confederates, and required that Southern states both ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and write state constitutions guaranteeing freedmen the franchise before gaining readmission to the Union.

Fifteenth Amendment

Prohibited states from denying citizens the franchise on account of race. It disappointed feminists, who wanted the amendment to include guarantees for women’s suffrage.

Ex parte Milligan

Civil War–era case in which the Supreme Court ruled that military tribunals could not be used to try civilians if civil courts were open.

Redeemers

Southern Democratic politicians who sought to wrest control from Republican regimes in the South after Reconstruction.

Woman’s Loyal League

Women’s organization formed to help bring about an end to the Civil War and encourage Congress to pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery.

Union League

Reconstruction-era African American organization that worked to educate Southern blacks about civic life, built black schools and churches, and represented African American interests before government and employers. It also campaigned on behalf of Republican candidates and recruited local militias to protect blacks from white intimidation.

scalawags

Derogatory term for pro-Union Southerners whom Southern Democrats accused of plundering the resources of the South in collusion with Republican governments after the Civil War.

carpetbaggers

Pejorative used by Southern whites to describe Northern businessmen and politicians who came to the South after the Civil War to work on Reconstruction projects or invest in Southern infrastructure.

Ku Klux Klan

An extremist, paramilitary, right-wing secret society founded in the mid-nineteenth century and revived during the 1920s. It was antiforeign, antiblack, anti-Jewish, antipacifist, anti-Communist, anti-internationalist, anti-evolutionist, and antibootlegger, but pro–Anglo-Saxon and pro-Protestant. Its members, cloaked in sheets to conceal their identities, terrorized freedmen and sympathetic whites throughout the South after the Civil War. By the 1890s, Klan-style violence and Democratic legislation succeeded in virtually disenfranchising all southern blacks.

Force Acts

Passed by Congress following a wave of Ku Klux Klan violence, the acts banned clan membership, prohibited the use of intimidation to prevent blacks from voting, and gave the U.S. military the authority to enforce the acts.

Colfax Massacre

On Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, a posse of white Democrats overpowered local militia and attacked the Grant Parish courthouse in Colfax, Louisiana, killing about 150 freedmen. The perpetrators, however, were later exonerated in an 1875 Supreme Court decision, United States v. Cruikshank, which established a narrow reading of the Fourteenth Amendment. By allowing such crimes to go unpunished, Colfax marked the nadir of Reconstruction and quashed civil protections for Southern blacks.

Tenure of Office Act

Required the president to seek approval from the Senate before removing appointees. When Andrew Johnson removed his secretary of war in violation of the act, he was impeached by the House but remained in office when the Senate fell one vote short of removing him.

Seward’s Folly

Popular term for Secretary of State William Seward’s purchase of Alaska from Russia. The derisive term reflected the anti-expansionist sentiments of most Americans immediately after the Civil War.

Oliver O. Howard

(1830-1909) Union general put in charge of the Freedmen’s Bureau during Reconstruction. ______ later founded and served as president of Howard University, an institution aimed at educating African American students.

Andrew Johnson

(1808-1875) Seventeenth president of the United States, North Carolina-born _______ assumed the presidency after Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. Much to the disgust of radical Republicans in Congress, _______, a Democrat, took a conciliatory approach to the South during Reconstruction, granting sweeping pardons to former Confederates and supporting Southern Black Codes against freedmen. In 1868, _______ was impeached by the House of Representatives for breaching the Tenure of Office Act. Acquitted by the Senate, he remained in office to serve out his term.

Thaddeus Stevens

(1792-1868) Pennsylvania congressman who led the radical Republican faction in the House of Representatives during and after the Civil War, advocating for abolition and, later, the extension of civil rights to freed blacks. He also called for land redistribution to break the power of the planter elite and to provide African Americans with the economic means to sustain their newfound independence.

Hiram Revels

(ca. 1827-1901) First African American U.S. senator, elected in 1870 to the Mississippi seat previously occupied by Jefferson Davis. Born to free black parents in North Carolina, _____ worked as a minister throughout the South before entering politics. After serving for just one year, he returned to Mississippi to head a college for African American males.

Edwin M. Stanton

(1814-1869) Secretary of war under Presidents Lincoln and Johnson, ______ advocated for stronger measures against the South during Reconstruction, particularly after widespread violence against African Americans erupted in the region. In 1868, Johnson removed ______ in violation of the 1867 Tenure of Office Act, giving pretense for radical Republicans in the House to impeach him.

Benjamin Wade

(1800-1878) A founder of the Republican party and senator from Ohio from 1851 to 1869. A passionate abolitionist, he pressured President Lincoln throughout the Civil War to pursue harsher policies toward the South. He co-sponsored the Wade-Davis Bill in 1864, which required 50 percent of the registered voters of a Southern state to take a loyalty oath as a precondition for restoration to the Union, rather than the 10 percent proposed by Lincoln. As president pro tem of the Senate in 1868, he was next in line for the presidency should Andrew Johnson be impeached, and the prospect that someone of such radical views might become president may have contributed to the failure of the effort to impeach Johnson.

William Seward

(1801-1872) U.S. senator and secretary of state under Abraham Lincoln. An avid opponent of slavery, ______ was a leading candidate for the Republican nomination in both 1856 and 1860. Later, as one of Lincoln’s closest advisers, he helped handle the difficult tasks of keeping European nations out of the Civil War. He is best known, however, for negotiating the purchase of Alaska, dubbed "______’s Folly" by expansion-weary opponents of the deal.