Political Reconstruction---The End of Reconstruction

Andrew Johnson

Lincoln chose him as his vice-presidential running mate for the election of 1864. Johnson was from Tennessee and was the only Southern senator who remained loyal to the Union.

12th Amendment

Requires the President & Vice President to run on the same ticket

13th Amendment

Abolished slavery (Passed on January 31, 1865)

14th Amendment

Provides citizenship, due process, and equal protection

15th Amendment

States the right to vote cannot be denied based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude

Reconstruction

A process to physically rebuild the South’s infrastructure (buildings, roads, railroads) and create new political and social institutions of the SOuth

Lincoln’s “Ten Percent Plan”

Required 10 percent of a states’s free men to swear loyalty to the Union before the state was readmitted to the Union

Goal of Reconstruction

To re-establish the South back into the Union

Andrew Johnson

Became president after Lincoln’s assassination and Congress did not meet for 8 months. He pardoned all Confederates who took an oath of allegiance to the US

Black codes

Laws used by Southern States that restricted the rights and freedoms of African Americans

Radical Republicans in Congress

Enacted laws to help freed slaves. The Freedmen’s Bureau and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 which gave citizenship to all persons born in the Us and not subject to any foreign power

Congress passing of the Reconstruction Act of 1867…

1. Divided the South in 5 military districts

2. Required Southern States to create new state constitutions

3. Allowed African Americans to vote

4. Southerners who supported the Confederacy were not allowed to vote temporarily.

5. Southern States had to guarantee equal rights to African Americans

   1. Southern states had to ratify the 14th Amendment (June 1886) which made African Americans citizens of the US and the state they lived in, and safeguard were put in place to prevent future military insurrections

President Johnson impeached….

When he was accused of violating the Tenure in Office Act for trying to fire Secretary of War Edwin Stanton

The 15th Amendment (1870) gave…

African American men the right to vote. The US failed to guarantee civil and political rights for all during Reconstruction

Freedmen’s Bureau provided:

• Food and clothes

• Medical attention

• Education/schools which had a lasting effect

• Information about registering to vote (it Promoted voting republican)

• Find lost family members

• Make slave marriages legal

• Get paid for the work they had done

• Sometimes even buy land

Sharecropping system

Quickly developed from former slaves working in the system

Sharecroppers

Farmed the land for a share of the crop. They rented their seeds, tools, and a mule. They owed money to the stores which kept them tied to the land. Landowners determined what would be planted (usually a cash crop such as cotton, rice, or tobacco) and took two-thirds of the crop.

Scalawag

A white Southerner who supported Republican Reconstruction policies

African American rights helped…

Ensured a stable black labor supply