NE

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”