Ch.16

1. Lincoln’s 10% Plan for Reconstruction—1863

 Lincoln favored a mild Reconstruction to heal the wounds of the war as quickly as

possible. He recommended that since Southern states had never legally withdrawn from

the Union, they could form state governments and send representatives and senators to

Congress when at least 10% of those who had voted in 1860 swore allegiance to the

Union and accepted emancipation. All but a few Confederate leaders were to be

pardoned.

 Radical Republicans in Congress thought Lincoln’s plan was not harsh enough. They

feared that the planter aristocracy and enslavement of blacks would be restored.

2. Congress’s Wade-Davis Plan for Reconstruction—1864

 This bill required 50% of the voters in each state to swear that they had never supported

the Confederacy (not likely) and to swear allegiance to the Union. This bill would have

also imposed military governors on each Southern state.

 Lincoln vetoed the Wade-Davis bill. In retaliation, Congress refused to seat

representatives from Louisiana, which had followed Lincoln’s 10% plan.

3. 13 TH Amendment

 Ratified in December 1865, the 13th Amendment banned the practice of slavery.

 Written Text: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for

crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United

States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

4. John Wilkes Booth

 Five days after Appomattox (April 14), Booth shot Lincoln at Ford’s Theater in

Washington.

 The assassination at the moment of victory solidified Lincoln’s reputation in the North.

 Southerners came to see the assassination as a disaster for them as Lincoln favored a

moderate policy on Reconstruction.

5. President Andrew Johnson—Background & Personality

 Johnson was born into a poor family and then orphaned. He never attended school, but

his wife taught him to write. He was a champion of poor whites against Southern

aristocrats (although at one point Johnson owned eight slaves).

 He refused to secede with his own state of Tennessee at the start of the Civil War;

Lincoln’s Union Party needed to gain support from Democrats and so chose Johnson as

the vice presidential candidate.

 Johnson was hotheaded, contentious, and stubborn. Throughout his presidency Congress

kept overriding his vetoes, basically governing over his head.

6. Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction in May 1865 (Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan)

 See New York Times article from May 19, 1865 here.

 Johnson’s plan for “reconstruction” was similar to Lincoln’s (10%); HOWEVER:

 Pardoned all white Confederates and gave land back to plantation owners.

 On December 6, 1865, Johnson declared the southern states had met his conditions for

Reconstruction and declared the Union restored. Congress did not agree.

7. Ex-Confederates return to the U.S. Congress

 On December 4, 1865, the 39 th Congress convened, with some unexpected visitors from

the southern states.

 Alexander Stephens, the former CSA Vice-President and recently released ex-prisoner,

showed up to Congress as if the previous, bloodied four-years never occurred. A handful

of other ex-Southern generals, colonels, and rebels had expected to reclaim their roles in

Congress as well. Congressional Republicans formed a Joint Committee on

Reconstruction, which resulted in the refusal to admit Southern members.

8. Ex. Parte Milligan – 1866 (NOT IN OPENSTAX)

 The Supreme Court ruled that military tribunals could not try civilians, even during

wartime, in areas where civil courts were open. This was a response to some of Lincoln’s

actions during the Civil War.

9. Election of 1866

 Urging voters to repudiate the 14th Amendment and to elect a new Congress sympathetic

to his views, Johnson campaigned around the country, the “swing around the circle.” But

Johnson, humorless and defensive, probably hurt his cause with his weak performance.

 The Republicans “waved the bloody shirt,” stirring up wartime hatreds, and achieved

smashing victories, winning almost two-thirds of the House and four-fifths of the Senate.

10. The Freedmen’s Bureau—1865

 This was intended to be a social welfare agency providing food, clothing, medical care,

and education to both freedmen and poor whites. The Bureau established 4,000 schools in

the South. Its greatest success was in teaching 200,000 freedmen how to read.

 Its greatest failure had to do with land distribution. Although the Bureau was authorized

to distribute land confiscated from Confederates, little of this was done.

11. General Oliver O. Howard (NOT IN OPENSTAX)

 Howard was the head of the Freedmen’s Bureau and a friend of African Americans. He

later helped to desegregate his Washington, D.C., church and to found an all-black

college (later named Howard University in his honor).

12. American Missionary Association (AMA)

 The group has powerful historical roots with their original founders being those who

defended the African slaves who had mutinied against their Spanish captors on the

Amistad and sailed the ship into U.S. waters to seek protection. The organization was

officially incorporated in 1846 when three missionary antislavery societies merged.

 In the Civil War, as Unions armies freed slaves, the AMA would open schools and

churches for the freed people. These schools were INTEGRATED! They taught freed

people and poor whites. It represented a symbolism of the relative success of

Reconstruction.

 After public schools were finally developed in the South during Reconstruction, the

AMA handed over their schools to the public system education. They then turned their

attention towards post-secondary institutions.

 The AMA founded nine predominantly black colleges: Atlanta University, Dillard

University, Fisk University, Hampton Institute (now Hampton University), Howard

University, Huston-Tillotson College, LeMoyne College (now LeMoyne-Owen College),

Talladega College, and Tougaloo College; it was also instrumental in founding the

racially integrated Berea College.

13. Black Codes

 In order to keep the freedmen in economically and socially subordinate positions and to

secure an inexpensive source of labor, many Southern states passed Black Codes. The

first was enacted by Mississippi in 1865.

 Congressional Republicans protested that these returned blacks to a condition little better

than slavery.

 The Black Codes were in effect for only a few years. Congressional action to pass civil

rights legislation guaranteeing the rights of the freedmen (the Civil Rights Bill of 1866,

the 14th Amendment) effectively nullified the codes. Carpetbag governments in many

states repealed the Black Codes.

14. Civil Rights Bill of 1866

 This bill sought to weaken the Black Codes. It made blacks US citizens with rights equal

to whites.

 The Civil Rights Bill was passed over President Johnson’s veto. It was the first major

piece of legislation passed over a presidential veto.

15. The 14th Amendment—4 provisions

 It provided citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the US.

 It asserted that states may not deprive citizens of life, liberty, or property without due

process and that all citizens are entitled to the equal protection of the laws.

 It declared that any state depriving male citizens of the vote would have its representation

in Congress reduced (a provision never enforced).

 It repudiated the Confederate war debt and stated that slave owners were not to receive

compensation for their slaves.

16. “State Suicide” and “Conquered Province” Theories (NOT IN OPENSTAX)

 Senator Charles Sumner, Radical Republican leader in the Senate, advocated the state

suicide theory. He said that when the Southern states rebelled, they committed suicide as

states and reverted to the status of territories, becoming subject to federal supervision.

Congress has the power to determine when a territory may be admitted to the Union.

 Representative Thaddeus Stevens, Radical Republican leader in the House, supported the

conquered province theory. The South, he said, had left the Union; the North had

defeated it in war and now ruled the South like a conquered nation. The North could do

anything it wished with the South, even rule it permanently as a colony.

17. Military Reconstruction Act of 1867

 This act, passed over Johnson’s veto, invalidated the governments imposed under the

10% plan and imposed military governors. (Tennessee, having ratified the 14th

Amendment, was excepted.)

 To be readmitted to the Union, a state would have to allow blacks and whites to elect

delegates to a state convention that would write a new state constitution granting black

suffrage. That constitution would have to be ratified by voters and approved by Congress.

When the new state legislature ratified the 14th Amendment, Congress would readmit the

state to the Union.

18. Tenure of Office Act—1867

 Radical Republicans were angry at what they saw as Johnson’s interference with their

plans for Reconstruction. They passed the Tenure of Office Act to limit his power and

provide grounds for removing him from office.

 This act forbade the president from firing top government officials without the consent of

the Senate. Johnson proceeded to fire Secretary of War Stanton.

19. Impeachment of President Johnson—1868

 Johnson was impeached by the House for violating the Tenure of Office Act, for seeking

to disgrace Congress (his campaign in 1866), and for failure to enforce the

Reconstruction acts.

 The Senate failed by one vote to reach the two-thirds vote needed to convict Johnson.

 The significance of this was that it preserved the American tradition of the president’s

independence from Congress.

20. Election of 1868 – Ulysses S. Grant

 To no one’s surprise, Johnson did not receive the Democratic nomination to run for

President. Instead, the Democratic Party chose Horatio Seymour.

 Ulysses S. Grant (real name Hiram Ulysses Grant), the Civil War hero who won the war

for the North, was the clear choice for the Republican Party.

 Grant’s election victory was due to a larger Northern population but more significantly,

the newly enfranchised freedmen who were now able to vote under Military

Reconstruction. Furthermore, due to Military Reconstruction, Texas, Virginia, and

Mississippi had not ratified the 14 TH Amendment and thus, were not allowed to vote. This

assured Grant’s clear victory in the Electoral College.

21. Waving the Bloody Shirt/Vote As You Shot

 Following the Civil War, the Republicans aroused old wartime animosities to win votes.

Representative Ben F. Butler literally waved before the House a bloodstained nightshirt

of a carpetbagger flogged by Klan members.

22. 15th Amendment—1870

 This amendment granted the vote to black men as well as white. Republicans supported it

because they worried that once Southern states were readmitted, they would amend their

state constitutions and deny the vote to blacks.

 Republicans also wanted to ensure that blacks—who were loyal Republicans, having

been freed by Republican President Lincoln—were able to vote so that Republicans could

maintain political control.

 Feminist leaders, who had in many cases put aside their struggle while the fight for

emancipation continued, pressed unsuccessfully to have the 15th Amendment protect

voting rights for women as well.

23. American Equal Rights Association (AERA)

 The AERA was founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony during the

Eleventh National Women’s Rights Convention in 1866. Their purpose was to “to secure

Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of

race, color or sex.”

 The AERA conducted two campaigns in New York and Kansas in 1867 for the purposes

of women’s suffrage and increasing African Americans rights. Abolitionists disproved of

the campaigns because they felt as though women were taking the spotlight away from

African Americans obtaining citizenship and ending slavery. To an extent, abolitionists

were telling women to take a back seat for now; it was not their turn.

 Furthermore, the Kansas campaign had ended in disaster. Stanton and Anthony were

accused of seeking help from a known racist, which further alienated abolitionists and the

AERA President, Lucretia Mott.

24. National Woman Suffrage Association

 When the Fifteenth Amendment did not extend voting suffrage to women, Stanton and

Anthony urged support for a 16 th amendment, which would grant women the right to vote.

This led to a schism in the AERA, resulting in Stanton and Anthony to leave and form the

National Woman Suffrage Association. Conservative feminists and suffragists formed the

American Woman Suffrage Association out of the ashes of the AERA. In 1890, the two

groups came together to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

25. Minor v. Happersett, 1874

 In 1874, Virginia Minor, an officer of the NWSA, brought a case before the Supreme

Court declaring the Fourteenth Amendment extended the right of citizenship to women

and thus, the right to vote. Minor attempted to register to vote in St. Louis in 1872. She

was denied the right to vote due to a Missouri state law.

 The Supreme Court unanimously declared the Constitution does not extend defined

privileges and immunities of citizenship. In other words, women born in the U.S. are

citizens of the United States (this is afforded in the Constitution); however, the

Fourteenth Amendment nor the Constitution define what privileges will be extended to

women because they are not defined explicitly.

 See this source for more information.

26. Black Leaders in Reconstruction Governments

 Hiram Revels—A free man born in the North, Revels, a college-educated minister, was

the first African American to serve in Congress (though only for part of one term). He

was elected to the Senate from Mississippi. While in the Senate, he supported racial

equality through compromise and moderation.

 Blanche K. Bruce—Bruce was the first African American elected to a full term in

Congress, representing Mississippi in the Senate. Bruce was known for supporting the

rights of black Civil War veterans and blacks in the military. He tried unsuccessfully to

integrate the US Army.

 Robert Smalls—As a slave Smalls was forced into service in the Confederate navy. There

he led a mutiny that seized his ship and turned it over to Union forces. Elected from

South Carolina to the House of Representatives, Smalls spoke out for legislation barring

discrimination in the military and in favor of posting federal troops to control the Red

Shirt militias, South Carolina’s version of the KKK.

27. Corruption in the Southern Government

 Many of the Southern-Republican governments instituted important reforms, building

roads and schools, expanding the legal rights of women, and guaranteeing civil liberties.

However, many of these governments were marked by graft, corruption, and high taxes

(as were many governments in the North at this time).

 This is an understatement: THERE WAS CORRUPTION EVERYWHERE. It is

historically inaccurate to suggest there was more corruption in the South than the North

during Reconstruction.

28. Land redistribution

 General Sherman, as part of his scorched earth tactics on his March to the Sea, enacted

Special Field Orders No. 15. This order gave freed slaves and their families 40 acres and

a mule. After Johnson entered the Presidency, he revoked this field order and

redistributed the majority of land back to its original owners (plantation owners).

29. Crop-lien system

 A credit system used widely on Southern cotton farms from the 1860s through the 1930s.

 The farm owner would give out lines of credit to those working on the cotton farm. This

credit was in the form of borrowing tools, seeds, shelter, food, and water.

 The crop-lien system was subject to high levels of corruption and abuse by tenant

farmers. It would often result in economic slavery when debts could not be paid.

30. Sharecropping

 This is an economic arrangement under which a landless person contracts with a

landowner to work a piece of land. The landowner advances the sharecropper money for

food, seed, fertilizer, etc. In return, the landowner receives a share of the crop, usually

50%.

 Both blacks and poor whites often ended up as sharecroppers, often tied to the land for

generations by accumulated debts.

31. Ku Klux Klan & Knights of the White Camellia (“Invisible Empire of the South”)

 These secret societies used force and terror to prevent blacks from voting and exercising

their rights. Scalawags and carpetbaggers were also targets.

32. Carpetbaggers

 Carpetbaggers were Northern whites who went south after the Civil War, some to help

the freedmen and some to pillage the South. Since so many former Confederates were

disenfranchised, the carpetbaggers dominated the governments of the South during

Reconstruction.

33. Scalawags

 These were Southern whites who cooperated with the carpetbag governments.

34. Force Acts—1870-1871

 These federal laws were intended to use federal troops to halt abuses by the KKK and

other groups. Specifically, these acts sought to protect black voters and supervise

Southern elections.

 The Klan was effectively suppressed by 1872, but the North was not willing to maintain

the military presence that would have been needed to protect the rights of the freedmen.

35. White Redeemers

 At the end of military Reconstruction, blacks lost political power. All-white governments,

known as Redeemer governments, returned to power and reestablished white dominance.

36. Panic of 1873

 This was one of the first global depressions brought on by industrial capitalism, and

lasted for most of the 1870s.

 The panic was set off by several major factors such as staggering inflation following the

Civil War (see Currency Controversy below), a boom in land speculation due to the

exponential increase in railroad increase, and the demonization of silver (See Crime of

’73 below).

 Jay Cooke & Company, a major banking establishment in the US, had invested millions

into the railroad industry. By mid-to-late 1873, the firm has lost its credibility to its

interests, despite its intention to financially support the Northern Pacific Railway (second

transcontinental railroad), and declared bankruptcy.

 Despite global disruptions from the Franco-Prussian War, two major city fires (Chicago

and Boston) had put severe economic strain on the US economy as well.

 Prior to the 1930s economic depression, the Panic of 1873 was referred to as the “Great

Depression.”

37. The Currency Controversy (NOT IN OPENSTAX)

 Hard versus Soft Money: Hard money advocates, generally creditors who had lent money

to others, wanted currency backed by gold; they opposed inflation. Soft money

advocates, usually debtors, wanted soft money (paper money not backed by gold) and

inflation so they could pay their debts back with cheaper dollars.

 Greenbacks: Paper currency not backed by gold and hence subject to depreciation.

During the Civil War, the North had issued $450 million in greenbacks. The 1875

Resumption Act required the government to withdraw greenbacks from circulation and

back all paper currency with gold, a victory for hard money advocates.

 Silverites: With greenbacks out of the picture, those who wanted inflation asked that

paper currency also be backed by silver. With more specie in the government treasury,

more paper dollars could be issued, leading to inflation.

38. Crime of ’73 (NOT IN OPENSTAX)

 The Crime of ’73 was the demonetization of silver. For years previously, the government

had used both silver and gold for coinage. At the official ratio of 16 ounces of silver = 1

ounce of gold, the government had received very little silver for coinage; silversmiths

offered better rates. When huge silver strikes were made in Nevada and Colorado, silver

prices dropped, and silver interests denounced the demonetization of silver as a crime and

demanded a return to the “Dollar of Our Daddies.”

39. The Whiskey Ring

 Treasury officials were taking bribes to allow a group of whiskey distillers to evade

excise taxes. Grant’s personal secretary was implicated, but Grant gave a deposition that

helped clear the secretary.

 The cause of this and other scandals can be tied to a lowering of ethical standards during

the Civil War and the ascendance of materialistic values. While Grant was personally

honest, he was blindly devoted to friends who too often were not. He did not hold his

administration to the highest standards of morality.

40. Crédit Mobilier Railroad Scandal

 The Union Pacific Railroad was established to build the eastern section of the

transcontinental railroad. It created a dummy corporation, the Crédit Mobilier, to do the

actual construction, charging the federal government nearly twice the actual cost of the

project. When the scheme was discovered, the company tried to bribe Congress and

Grant’s vice president with gifts of stock to stop the investigation.

 This caused a huge scandal and led to greater public awareness of government corruption.

But no one went to jail.

41. The 1883 Supreme Court Rules on Civil Rights

 The Supreme Court consolidated five cases into one ruling (due to their similarity),

declaring the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. This would spur Jim Crow laws

and effectively bar Congress from fixing racial segregation. Though it did not use the

language as a much more notorious case would two decades later, the Civil Rights Case

Ruling legalized “separate, but equal.”

 The five consolidated cases were United States v. Stanley, United States v. Ryan, United

States v. Nichols, United States v. Singleton, and Robinson and wife v. Memphis &

Charleston R.R. Co.

42. Election of 1876

 This election pitted Rutherford B. Hayes, a liberal Republican and Civil War general,

against Samuel Tilden, Democrat and reformer who had prosecuted the Tweed Ring.

Both favored hard money, civil service reform, and an end to Reconstruction. The

Republicans waved the bloody shirt while the Democrats harped on the corruption of the

Grant administration.

 Hayes received only 165 electoral votes; Tilden received 264,000 more popular votes

than Hayes and 184 of the 185 electoral votes needed to win. Twenty electoral votes were

disputed, and an electoral commission on a party-line vote gave all twenty to Hayes.

43. The Compromise of 1877

 The electoral commission awarded all disputed votes to the Republican Hayes. This

decision had to be ratified by Congress, but the Democrats controlled the House.

Negotiations ensued.

 The major agreement was that Democrats (mostly from the South) would acquiesce to the

commission decision, giving Hayes the presidency if federal troops were removed from

the South. In addition, the Democrats won some patronage appointments, and the South

received some federal funds for internal improvements.

44. The Solid South

 Emancipation and Reconstruction had been imposed by the Northern Republicans. In

response, the South voted overwhelmingly for Democrats through the 1960’s.

45. Literacy Tests, Poll Tax, & Grandfather Clause (NOT IN CH. 16, but important to know!)

 These were all techniques to reduce black voting. Literacy tests were not equally difficult

for blacks and whites and were often not fairly administered.

 The poll tax was a tax to be paid before one could vote. Poor blacks often could not

afford it. In some states, whites were sent reminders of due dates for this tax while blacks

were not.

 To prevent poor whites from being disenfranchised by the literacy test and poll tax, the

grandfather clause allowed a man to vote if his grandfather was eligible to vote prior to

Reconstruction. This, obviously, benefited only whites.