Reconstruction

Reconstruction

• a political and social project:

  • re-incorporating rebel states into the Union

  • rebuilding the southern society without slavery

• the 12 year period (1865-77) when these projects dominated national politics

• critical period of nation-building, even a “second founding”

  • amendments 13, 14, 15 re-made the United States Constitution

    • individual, equal national citizenship and male suffrage

    • federal power over the states

  • they were imperfect and incomplete, but laid the groundwork of modern citizenship and governance in United States

• two key problems:

  • what would freedom mean in practice for African Americans?

  • how would white southern rebels be treated and reincorporated?

• this was bitterly contested in the government and on the ground

Wartime Reconstruction

• reconstruction began under Lincoln administration

  • emancipation and abolition, but reluctant to do more for racial equality

  • leniency to rebels, rapid re-incorporation of states

  • “radical” republicans wanted more

• Congress established Freedman’s Bureau, March 3, 1865, renewed until 1872

  • Freedman’s Bureau: an agency of the war department set up in 1865 to assist formerly enslaved people, freed from slavery by emancipation

    • chronically underfunded

    • first, humanitarian relief

    • later on…

      • mediators between black and white southerners

      • education and social work for freed people

• Lincoln was assassinated days after Lee’s surrender, April, 14, 1865

• reconstruction fell to Vice President Andrew Johnson and Congress

• the Reconstruction Act of 1867 divided the south into five military districts ran by the army

• President Andrew Johnson granted pardons to many Confederate leaders

• the combination of white intimidation, a large economic depression, and the Democratic Party winning control of the House of Representatives resulted in Reconstruction failing

• white southerners who joined the republican party and helped with eh reconstruction were called scalawags

• the goal of the wartime reconstruction was to encourage the states to stop fighting and rejoin the Union

  • he hoped that the simplicity and kindness of his plan would bring an early end to the war