Evaluating the Reconstruction Era

Lincoln’s Plan
- @@Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction@@ (1863)
- 10% allegiance oath
- Acceptance of the 13th amendment
- Freedmen’s Bureau
- Created by Congress to provide food, shelter, medical aid, and education for freed slaves and homeless whites
- Lincoln also supported extending the vote to black soldiers and other freedmen who were “very intelligent”
Johnson’s Plan
- Continuance of Lincoln’s 10% plan
- Wealthy confederates and former confederate leaders lose the right to vote and hold public office
- Acceptance of the @@13th amendment@@
Text of the 13th Amendment
- Section 1
- Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction
- Section 2
- Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation
Black Codes
- Southern states began adopting laws that restricted the rights and movements of former slaves
- Prohibited blacks from renting land or borrowing money to buy land
- Forced freedmen to work in various ways
- Prohibited blacks from testifying against whites in court and from serving on juries
Radical Republicans
- A faction withing the Republican Party who called themselves @@“Radicals”@@ and were opposed by the Moderate Republicans (led by Abraham Lincoln), the Conservative Republicans, and the pro-slavery Democrat Party
- Radicals strongly opposed slavery during the war and after the war distrusted ex-Confederates, demanding harsh policies for the former rebels, and emphasizing civil rights and voting rights for freedmen (recently freed slaves)
Congressional Reconstruction
- @@Civil Rights Act of 1866@@
- Written in reaction to Black Codes of Southern states
- ^^14th Amendment^^
- Created statute of “birthright citizenship” and “equal protection of the laws”
- ^^Reconstruction Acts of 1867^^
- Placed the South under military occupation
- ^^15th Amendment^^
- Protected the right to vote for all men
- @@Civil Rights Act of 1875@@
- Prohibited discrimination in public places and allowed blacks to serve on juries
End of Reconstruction
- By the 1870s, Radical Republicans lost its popularity and Southern conservatism (redeemers) was on the rise
- White supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan
- White terrorist groups use violence to intimidate black voters and white reformers, carpetbaggers, and scalawags
- Amnesty Act of 1872
- Gives the vote back to ex-confederates
Election of 1876 and Compromise of 1877
- Democrat Samuel Tilden versus Republican Rutherford B. Hayes
- Tilden won popular vote and was one electoral vote shy of a winning majority
- Compromise of 1877
- Hayes becomes President in return for the removal of all federal troops from southern states
Black Disenfranchisement
- Poll tax
- Pay to vote
- Literacy test
- Rigged, fake tests
- Grandfather clause
- If your grandfather could vote, you were excused from tax and test
- Ku Klux Klan
- Threats and terror
@@Plessy v. Ferguson - 1896@@
- Protected the constitutionality of state segregation laws
- “Separate but Equal”
- Segregation remained legal until the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision
- Only one dissenting justice, John Marshall Harlan, wrote:
- “In the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens”