Reconstruction Notes

Lincoln aimed for reunion and reconciliation.
Johnson believed the South never had the right to secede.
Johnson was a Southerner who resented Southern elites and was a racist.
Johnson appointed provisional governors and ordered state conventions to create new all-white governments.
These new governments resembled the old Confederate governments.

Sharecropping replaced slavery in many parts of the South.
Landowners provided housing, tools, and seeds.
Sharecroppers received a share of their crop (1/3 to 1/2), with the price often set by the landowner.
Freed blacks controlled their work.
Plantation owners had a steady workforce that couldn’t easily leave.
Poor white farmers also became sharecroppers.
Sharecropping tied workers to land they didn’t own.

Republicans in Congress took the lead in Reconstruction after 1867 because the South looked too similar to its pre-Civil War state.
Radical Republicans wanted expanded national government powers for equal rights.
Thaddeus Stevens wanted to redistribute land from Southern planters to former slaves.
The Civil Rights Bill defined persons born in the U.S. as citizens and established nationwide equality before the law regardless of race.
Andrew Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Bill.
Congress overrode Johnson's veto with a $2/3$ majority.

Congress passed the 14th Amendment.
It defines citizenship, guarantees equal protection, and extends the rights in the Bill of Rights to all the states.
The amendment had almost no Democratic support.
Congress had refused to seat representatives from the all-white governments that Johnson supported.

Congressional Republicans pushed the 15th Amendment.
It prohibited states from denying men the right to vote based on race.
States still had leeway to deny the franchise based on gender, literacy, or grandfather clauses.

The national government dictated who could vote and who was a citizen of a state, establishing equality under the law.
The national government became the "custodian of freedom."

Former slaves exercised their rights.
They participated in the political process through direct action, voting, and holding office.
Most African Americans were Republicans.
The Republican party dominated politics in the South.

Southern mythology, exemplified by Gone with the Wind, depicted northern Republican dominance and corruption by southern Republicans.
It portrayed northern carpetbaggers and southern scalawags dominating politics.
It falsely claimed that African American elected leaders were corrupt or puppets.
About 2,000 African Americans held office during Reconstruction, and the majority were not corrupt.
Pinckney B.S. Pinchback served as America’s first black governor in Louisiana (1872-1873) and went on to be a senator and a member of the House of Representatives.

Having African American officeholders ensured greater rights for African Americans.
Black juries and less discrimination in state and local governments providing basic services emerged.
Republican governments failed in the South.
Important achievements included a segregated school system that attempted to educate both black and white children.
They created a functioning government where both white and African American citizens could participate.

Schools and road repair cost money, leading to taxes, which made Republican governments unpopular.
White southerners couldn’t accept African Americans exercising basic civil rights, holding office, or voting.
Violence was used to return things to the way they were before Reconstruction.
The Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1866, becoming a terrorist organization targeting Republicans, both black and white.
The massacre at Colfax, Louisiana, resulted in the murder of hundreds of former slaves.
Intimidation and discriminatory voting laws led to fewer black men voting.
White Democrats took control of state governments in the South.
These politicians called themselves “Redeemers.”
Northern Republicans lost interest in Reconstruction.
The U.S. fell into an economic depression in 1873.
Northerners lost the will to fight for the rights of black people in the South.
By 1876, supporters of Reconstruction were in full retreat.
Democrats were resurgent, especially in the South.

The election of 1876 was contentious.
Democrats nominated Samuel Tilden, and Republicans chose Rutherford B. Hayes.
There were disputed electoral votes in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida.
A 15-man Electoral Commission was appointed to decide the winner.
The commission had 8 Republicans and 7 Democrats, leading to Hayes' victory.
Hayes’ people agreed to cede control of the South to the Democrats, stop meddling in Southern affairs, and build a transcontinental railroad through Texas.
This was called the Bargain of 1877, which effectively killed Reconstruction.

Without federal troops in Southern states and with white Democrats in control of Southern legislatures, states restricted the freedom of black people.
Jim Crow laws limited African Americans’ access to public accommodations and legal protections.
Laws took away black people’s right to vote.
Social and economic mobility among African Americans in the South declined.

For a brief moment, the United States was more democratic than it had ever been before.
An entire segment of the population was allowed to participate in politics.
The changes during Reconstruction echoed down to the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s which is sometimes referred as the second reconstruction.

Reconstruction granted former slaves political freedom and rights, especially the vote.
Providing land plots for economic independence would have required confiscation, which was too much for all but the most radical Republicans.
The question of what it really means to be “free” in a system of free market capitalism remains complicated.