Reconstruction

Overview

• Praiseworthy experiment in interracial democracy

• New laws, new constitutional amendments

• Permanently altered federal system and definiton of American citizenship

• Reconstruction altered relationship between state and federal governemnt

Rebuilding the South

• After Civil War, South was in ruins

  • homes burned, properties abandoned, etc.

• Situation was desperate

• Federal government was struggling to…

  • rejoin 11 southern states into the Union

  • rebuild the economy

  • promote rights of former slaves

Presidential Reconstruction (1865-1866)

• Gradual citizenship for African Americans and to proceed as South never seceded

• Southern states had to meet the following criteria:

  1. 10% Plan of those who had voted in 1860 election took oaths of allegiance

  2. Accept 13th amendment

  3. States adopted new constitutions abolishing slavery

  4. Freedmen’s Bureau: provided basic needs to slaves & poor whites

• Quickly restore Southern representation in Congress as he felt southern states had never left the Union

• Considered compensating Confederates for lost property

• Lincoln was open to suggestions from Congress, but was assassinated before his plan was implemented

  • forced Vice President Johnson into presidential office

Johnson’s Plan for Reconstruction

• Similar to Lincoln’s plan with certain differences

  • favored Southern elections and allowing representation back in Congress

• Johnson was NOT open to suggestions from Congress

  • vetoed laws that supported black freedom

• Johnson didn’t want African Americans to vote

  • felt government should only consist of white men

• Johnson allowed states to institute “Black Codes,” which were laws that limited the rights of new citizens to vote our own land

• Congress was controlled by Radical Republicans, who wanted harsher terms for reconstruction

• Johnson was eventually impeached

Johnson vs. Congress

• Republicans aren’t happy with Johnson because he was sympathetic to the South

  • born in NC, vetoes major legislation protection the rights of African Americans

• Johnson took two major missteps:

  1. Blocks Freedmen’s Bureau

  2. Vetoes Civil Rights Act of 1866

Black Codes

• Origins wre found in the Slave codes, which were a set of rules based on the concept that enslaved people were property, not humans

• Enacted in 1865 & 1866, laws were designed to replace the social controls of slavery

• Southern states were forced to support 13th amendment, and they began to limit the rights of African Americans

• States made it illegal for African Americans to hunt, own a gun, and made them sign long term labor contracts

Congressional Reconstruction (1867-1870)

• Radical Republicans take more abrasive approach to reconstruction

  • wanted full & immediate citizenship for African-Americans

• 14th amendment (1868) = Birthright and equal citizenship under the law

• Reconstruction Act (1867) = South is governed by military from the North until they complied completely

• New state governments were required to grant African American males the right to vote

• Southern states had to ratift the 14th amendment

  • amendment prohibited many former Confederate government officials from holding office

  • also granted equality for all citizens

Grant Wins Election

• 15th amendment is passed which guarantees male suffrage

• Signs of hope as African Americans take full advantage of new opportunities in politics & education

  • many African Americans elected as state and local officials

• Women played a prominent role in abolitition; but didn’t support 15th amendment because they weren’t included to vote

Fifteenth Amendment (1870)

• Declared that states could not keep citizens from voting because of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” (slavery)

States During Reconstruction (Lack of Trust)

• Southern leaders tried to reassert control in their state governments

  • plantation owners still controlled majority of land & exploited African Americans

• When Radical Republican reconstruction plans took effect, these individuals were barred from holding office

  • Republicans headed the new state governments in the South

  • many white southerners resented Republican control and role of African Americans in government

• Southerners called the few white southerners in republican government Scalawags

• Republican northerners who came to the south to take part in reconstruction were referred to as Carpetbaggers

• Their goal was to seek out financial/political opportunities in the south controlled by Northern Republicans

The Grant Administration

• Force Acts: passed, gave federal government power to combat the KKK and to take military action to enforce 14th and 15th amendments

• 1870: Congress created Department of Justice, allowed federal prosecution if states failed to uphold federal laws

• Enforcement Acts: intended to allow federal government to enforce 14th and 15th amendments

• 1872: Grant was reelected

  • his 2nd term was faced with several scandals

    • Gold Scandal involving Federal Treasury

    • Credit Mobiler Scandal, involved Vice President accepting payments

    • Whiskey Ring involving private secretary

Civil Rights Act (1875)

• Guaranteed African Americans equal treatment in public transportation and public accommodations

• U.S. Supreme Court declared this act unconstitutional in 1883

• Enacted March 1, 1875: Civil Rights Act affirmed that all men were equal and prohibited racial discrimination in public places and facilities

End of Reconstruction

• 1870s: Many Republicans retreated from both the racial egalitarianism and broad definiton of federal power spawned by Civil War

• Southern corruption and instability

• Northern Republicans became conservative

Solid South & Election of 1876

• Republican party was weakned in 1870s due to corruption in Grant administration

• South voted democratic in reaction to Radical Republican Reconstruction

• For next 100 years, Democratic Party would dominate voting in the South, giving them the term the Solid South

• Solid South gave Democratic Party national power

  • Democrat Samuel Tilden ran against Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in presidential election

  • a bipartisian congressional comission debated over outcome in early 1877, negotiated acceptance of Hayes’ election

• Compromise of 1877

  • democrats agreed to go with Hayes’ presidency if Hayes…

    1. Withdrew remaining federal troops from the South

    2. Named a Southerner in his cabinet

    3. Support federal spending on South

After Federal Troops Withdrawn from South…

• More progress African Americans gained, more angry white southerners got

• Sharecropping- former slaves worked for their old masters in exchange for some crops

• KKK established in 1866

  • used violence to scare African Americans

• Jim Crow Laws: informal segregation evolves into systematic state segregation. Public facilities were segregated, social mobility is eliminated and the repression of suffrage

Poll Taxes

• In order to be elegible to vote, people had to pay a tax before registering

• Targeted newly freed slaves

• Without jobs, they had no income to pay a tax

Literacy Tests

• Voters had to show their ability to read or write before being allowed to vote

• Targeted newly freed slaves

More Discrimination in the South

• Grandfather Clauses

  • allowed white men to be able to vote if their grandfather was able to vote

    • exempted them from literacy test

• Jim Crow Laws replaced “Black Codes”

  • actual laws that established segregation based on race

  • forbade African Americans from sharing many facilities with whites

Supreme Court Responses to Discrimination

• Supreme Court cases descisions (1883)

  • court rules that slavery was abolished in 13th amendment

  • Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): court ruled that segregation was legal as long as African Americans had access to “equal but seperate” facilities