Reconstruction Kramer
Section 1: Reconstruction Plans Differ
At the end of the Civil War, the U.S. faced the problems of:
What to do with 4 million newly freed black people in the South who lacked land, jobs, and skills other than farming.
What to do with the Southern states, whether to welcome them back or punish them as conquered territories.
Constitutional question of who (President or Congress) had the authority to decide how Confederate states would be readmitted to the Union.
Lincoln Hopes to Heal Wounds
Lincoln believed Confederate states had never legally seceded, viewing secession as unconstitutional, and aimed to restore the Union quickly with a mild Reconstruction.
He thought the war was to prove that secession was unconstitutional.
Lincoln believed it was individuals who had rebelled.
The Constitution gave the President the power to pardon individuals.
December 1863: Lincoln announced his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, granting pardons to Confederates who swore allegiance to the Union, excluding high officials and those accused of crimes against prisoners of war.
Under the proclamation, a Confederate state could form a government and send representatives to Congress once 10% of those on the 1860 voting lists took an oath to uphold the Constitution.
Many Northerners and Radicals wanted the power of the slave-owning class destroyed and Southern black people granted full citizenship, including the right to vote.
The Radicals Propose Their Plan
July 1864: Radicals in Congress adopted the Wade-Davis Bill, proposing Congress, not the President, be responsible for Reconstruction.
For a state government to be acceptable, a majority of those eligible to vote in 1860 would have to take an ironclad oath to support the Constitution and swear they had never supported the Confederacy.
Lincoln pocket-vetoed the Wade-Davis Bill by ignoring it until Congress adjourned within ten days, leading it to automatically fail.
The Radical Republicans issued a proclamation calling Lincolns pocket veto a stupid outrage and declaring the authority of Congress to be supreme.
The Radicals believed that Confederate states had seceded and were now territories seeking admission to the Union and Congress controlled territorial matters, not the President.
After the 1864 elections, Arkansas and Louisiana, acting under Lincoln's plan, sent representatives to Washington, but the Radicals barred them from taking their seats.
Historians believe that had Lincoln lived, he might have been able to deal with this difficult situation better than his successor, Vice-President Andrew Johnson.
Johnson Continues Lincoln's Policy
Andrew Johnson continued Lincoln's plan of Reconstruction.
Johnson was always aware that he had not been elected but had become President as a result of Lincoln's assassination.
He scorned people who had had an easier time.
His political ideas combined Jefferson's and Andrew Jackson's thoughts.
Like them, Johnson disliked cities and manufacturing, distrusted banks and bondholders, and feared wealth not based on land.
Johnson surprised everyone by continuing Lincoln's Reconstruction plan.
He declared any state could be readmitted to the Union if it declared its secession illegal, swore allegiance to the Union, promised not to pay Confederate debts, and ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery.
Southern states quickly took advantage of the terms.
Within months, all states except Texas held constitutional conventions, set up governments, and elected representatives to Congress.
December 1865: Newly elected Southerners arrived in Washington to take their seats; some had been in the Congress of the Confederacy, cabinet, or rebel generals.
Johnson gave them all pardons, a gesture that shook the Radicals deeply.
Johnson's Vetoes Enrage Republicans
President Lincoln established a special bureau to assist former slaves and poor whites in the South, urged by Josephine Griffing.
The Freedmen's Bureau gave food and clothing to former slaves and needy whites and set up over forty hospitals, four thousand primary schools, sixty-one industrial institutes, and seventy-four teacher-training establishments.
The backbone of the bureau's schools was its women teachers, both black and white.
Charlotte Forten, a black teacher from Philadelphia, taught in Georgia and observed the students' eagerness to learn.
By 1869 about 600,000 African Americans of all ages were in elementary schools.
Life was not always pleasant for the students or the teachers.
February 1866: Congress voted to continue and enlarge the Freedmen's Bureau by backing it with more money.
One month later, Congress passed the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, which gave blacks citizenship and forbade states from passing discriminatory laws.
President Johnson vetoed both measures, initiating his battle with Congress over Reconstruction.
Johnson believed Congress had gone far beyond anything contemplated by the authors of the Constitution.
The Radicals believed that Johnson was protecting Southerners who had no intention of giving blacks their full rights because Southern states passed repressive laws.
The Black Codes Keep Freed Slaves Down
Black codes were laws aimed at regulating the economic and social lives of freed slaves immediately after the war.
Blacks could legally marry, own property, sue in court, and go to school.
Blacks could not serve on juries, carry weapons, testify against whites, or marry whites and had to obey a curfew and needed permits to travel and were not allowed to start their own businesses.
In some states, blacks could not rent or lease farmland, and in South Carolina, blacks needed special licenses to work other than as servants or farm laborers.
The codes confirmed the Radicals' darkest suspicions about the South.
Northern voters began asking themselves if they had won the war after all.
The black codes were part of a historical pattern to keep African Americans from gaining economic and political power.
It was not until the Twenty-fourth Amendment was ratified in 1964 that the use of poll taxes to prevent African Americans from voting was abolished.
Section 2: The Radicals Gain Control
Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction program reached a dead end.
Congress refused to recognize the state governments that he had encouraged.
When the Radicals gained a two-thirds majority in Congress, they were able to override Johnson's vetoes thus power passed from the executive branch into the hands of the Radical Republicans.
The Battle Gets Hotter
Thaddeus Stevens hated slavery, and in time he came to hate white Southerners as well and wanted equality of man before his Creator.
The Fourteenth Amendment Is Adopted.
In mid-1866 the moderate Republicans joined with the Radicals to override the President's veto of the bill extending the Freedmen's Bureau.
Leaders in Congress finished drafting the Fourteenth Amendment to take the place of the Civil Rights Act that Johnson had vetoed.
The first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment made all persons born or naturalized in the United States citizens of the country.
All were entitled to equal protection of the law, and no state could deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
The amendment did not grant black citizens the right to vote but stated that if a state barred black people from taking part in elections, that state would lose some of its seats in Congress.
Another provision of the Fourteenth Amendment barred most Southern leaders from holding federal or state offices, but the ban could only be lifted by a two-thirds majority of Congress.
The South Rejects the Amendment.
Congress adopted the Fourteenth Amendment and sent it to the states for their approval.
Johnson believed that the amendment was too harsh and that the Southern states should be guided gently back to partnership in the Union and that Congress did not have the constitutional power to treat states in this way.
All of them except Tennessee did not ratify the amendement.
Congress was now convinced that stronger measures were called for.
The Radicals Control Congress
The congressional elections focused partly on who should control Reconstruction: the President or the Radicals.
Johnson went on a speaking tour, urging voters to elect to Congress those men who agreed with his policy of an easy Reconstruction.
His trip was a disaster because he was his own worst enemy.
In addition, race riots erupted in Memphis, Tennessee, and New Orleans, Louisiana, strengthening the belief that the federal government had to protect freed slaves against their former masters.
The voters gave the Radicals a two-thirds majority in Congress, which meant that Radicals could now override Presidential vetoes.
1867: Radicals they began putting their policy into effect.
The First Reconstruction Act
The act divided all of the seceded states except Tennessee into five military districts that replaced the civilian courts by military tribunals.
Each district was placed under a major general to oversee the drawing up of new constitutions in the states that were under his control.
The constitutions were required to give black males the right to vote and states had to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before being readmitted to the Union.
Johnson vetoed the First Reconstruction Act, saying that it was without precedent and without authority and in clear conflict with the plainest provisions of the Constitution, but Congress overrode the veto.
The First Reconstruction Act stunned Southern whites because they could not bring themselves to regard black people as equals; they did not want to give blacks more civil rights than were absolutely necessary and passed harsh, unjust laws against their ex-slaves.
Twenty thousand federal troops were sent to the South during the spring and summer of 1867 to keep law and order.
Tenure of Office Act
Radical leaders wanted to get rid of President Johnson because they felt that Johnson was not carrying out his constitutional obligation to enforce the First Reconstruction Act. and he removed military officers who were helping black people and members of his cabinet appointed Confederates to positions in their departments.
The Radicals decided to lay the groundwork for impeachment, that is, to charge a public official with misconduct in office.
They made a bold attempt to seize control of the Presidency by passing the Tenure of Office Act. The law stated that Presidents could not remove cabinet officers they had themselves appointed without first obtaining a two-thirds vote of the Senate, breaking the act would be a high misdemeanor.
Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, a Radical sympathizer.
Johnson Is Impeached
February 24, 1868: House voted to impeach the President.
The trial lasted from mid-March to May 26, 1868.
Two questions to be decided at Johnson's trial:
Tenure of Office Act did not apply to Stanton because he had been appointed by Lincoln, not Johnson, meaning no criminal act was committed.
Johnson was accused of intemperate language and of having brought disgrace, ridicule, contempt, and reproach on Congress, but he did personally stood for the tyrannical slave power.
Massachusetts senator stated that Johnson personally stood for the tyrannical slave power and Keeping him in the Presidency would mean leaving loyal Unionists of the South at the mercy of their enemies
The Radicals were trying to change the way the Constitution worked, destroy the federal government's system of checks and balances, and to make the executive branch answerable to the legislature.
Johnson was saved by one vote.
Grant Is Elected
The Democrats nominated the wartime governor of New York, Horatio Seymour.
The Republicans nominated Ulysses S. Grant, the hero of the Civil War.
November: Grant was elected President with an impressive majority vote of 214 to 80 in the electoral college.
With almost 6 million ballots cast, Grant led by only 310,000 for the popular vote.
About 500,000 Southern blacks had voted, most of them for Grant.
The Radicals feared that Southern whites might try to limit black suffrage in the future.
The Radicals introduced the Fifteenth Amendment, which states that no one can be kept from voting because of race or color or for having once been a slave.
Most Northern states at this time barred blacks from voting, so these states also were affected by the Fifteenth Amendment it was ratified in 1870.
Section 3: Radical Reconstruction Is Enforced
The period of Radical Reconstruction lasted from 1867, when the First Reconstruction Act was passed, to 1877, when the last federal troops were withdrawn from the South, although Reconstruction was not uniform.
Plantations Are Divided
Thaddeus Stevens and other Radicals had promised every freedman forty acres and a mule and intended to take the plantations belonging to the chief rebels and redistribute the land.
Moderate Republicans considered private property a basic American right that could not be taken away without due process of law. Congress made no land provisions for the freed people.
Consequenlty, two land arrangements developed in the South: sharecropping and tenant farming.
Plantation owners had land but no workers or cash to hire them.
Blacks and poor whites were able to work but had no land or tools.
Landowners divided their land and gave each worker a few acres, seed, tools, and food to live on. When the crops were harvested, the grower gave a share to the landowner.
Sharecropping provided some independence for ex-slaves by allowing them to keep part of what they produced.
In theory, people who saved a little and bought their own tools could drive a better bargain with landowners and become tenants and and outright owners of their farms but rarely it worked that way unless they diversified.
By the time sharecroppers had shared their crops and paid their debts, they rarely had any money left thus they kept Southern farmers dependent on one or two crops.
African Americans Serve in Government
704,000 blacks and 660,000 whites were registered to vote under Radical Reconstruction.
In 1860, the last year before the Civil War, 721,000 voters were registered-all of them white.
Out of one hundred twenty-five Southerners elected to Congress during Reconstruction, only sixteen were black.
South Carolina was the only state where blacks were a majority in the state legislature.
No state elected a black governor.
Many of the blacks elected to office were ministers or teachers who had gone to school in the North or self-educated.
Two senators and fourteen representatives were at least as well prepared as the whites with whom they sat.
Hiram Revels of Mississippi served in the U.S. Senate.
Many Eastern cities did not require citizenship to vote, so the same reasoning was applied to black citizens as well.
Scalawags and Carpetbaggers Profit
The Radical Reconstruction governments in Southern states were supported by scalawags and carpetbaggers.
Scalawags were white Southerners who joined the Republican party.
Wanted the South to industrialize as quickly as possible and believed this could best be done under the Republicans.
Opposed slavery and secession and did not want the former planter aristocracy to return to power.
Selfish individuals who hoped to get themselves into office with the help of black voters and then steal as much as they could and were considered traitors by most white Southerners.
Carpetbaggers were Northerners who moved to the South after the war.
Teachers and members of the clergy who felt a moral duty to help former slaves.
Union soldiers who preferred to live in the warm climate of the South.
Business people who hoped to start new industries.
Dishonest adventurers.
State Governments Bring Mixed Results
Many political and social conditions were improved.
There was widespread corruption.
Southern states also eliminated property qualifications for voting and for holding office which gave poor whites their first chance to take part in politics.
New constitutions abolished imprisonment for debt.
Reconstruction governments wrote the region's first laws establishing a system of public schools, although New Orleans had a segregated system.
Reconstruction governments faced the immense problem of rebuilding a land that had been devastated by war.
Little capital was available in the South, the state governments borrowed funds by selling bonds in the North.
Southern credit was so poor, that for every bond sold, the Reconstruction government often received only while the Northern investor received .
Taxes on real estate kept going higher and higher, which made it harder than ever for planters to get out of debt, especially after the I 873 depression.
Government costs was graft and bribery.
Secret Societies Oppose Reconstruction
Most white Southerners found it very difficult to accept the idea of African Americans voting and taking part in government because therefore found it very difficult to accept the idea of
African Americans voting and taking part in government, blaming black people for the high taxes and because of the federal troops in the South
A few white Southerners turned to terrorism and violence through secret societies, of which the most notorious was the Ku Klux Klan, who simply warned blacks not to vote before burining black-owned cabins and churches.
Between I868 and 1871, the Klan and other secret groups are reported to have killed several thousand men, women, and children, most of them blacks and leader tried to get the organization to disband.
To curtail Klan violence, Congress passed several acts in 1870 and 1871. These are commonly called the Force Acts that allowed for the federal supervision of elections in Southern states and giving the president the power to declare martial law in areas where the Klan was active.
May 1872: Congress passed the Amnesty Act, returning the right to vote and to hold federal and state offices to Confederate leaders.
Congress allowed the Freedmen's Bureau to expire.
Reconstruction governments were replaced by governments that represented traditional white rule.
Section 4: Reconstruction Efforts Come to an End
The Radical plan of Reconstruction for the South ended in 1877 because of not giving them help in achieving economic independence and white resistance along with Northern indifference and the Republican party was torn by scandal and corruption.
The North Is Indifferent
Achieved freedom, blacks should now take care of themselves, Northerners were weary of the trouble in the South, as well as pressing for civil rights in the South would have raised embarrassing questions about segregation in the North, Northern business interests wanted stability in the South, and the Republican party no longer needed the black vote.
Grant's Administration Is Corrupt
Considerable graft in Reconstruction governments was matched corruption that existed at the national level.
President Grant was an honest man but struggled with politics, surrounding himself with crooked individuals and scandals erupting such as as the Treasury Department scandal, the Whiskey Ring, as well as accepting bribes from merchants and the secretary of the navy had taken bribes from shipbuilders, and the secretary of the interior had had dealings with land speculators.
A Depression Strikes the Nation
The nation was hit by a depression in I 873 after economy had been expanding; people in railroads and manufacturing thought business would always be good and borrowed enormous amounts of money and built new facilities quickly.
Many bankers and businessmen became over-extended and in September 1873 Jay Cooke and Company, a major banking firm, went bankrupt, setting off a series of financial failures.
Five-year depression: Three million workers lost their jobs and interest in black welfare declined.
The 1876 Election Is Disputed
1876: Republicans chose stodgy governor of Ohio, Rutherford B. Hayes instead of Grant for a third term.
Democrats put up one of their leaders, Governor Samuel J. Tilden of New York.
Tilden carried the popular vote but needed 185 electoral votes to win, and 20 electoral votes were in dispute.
An electoral commission was appointed to deal with the problem and ultimately votes were given to Hayes, who became President with a minority of the popular vote.
Southern Democrats would accept Hayes if troops would be withdrawn from FL, LA, and SC, if they got federal money for building a railroad extending from TX to the West Coast and or improving their rivers, harbors, and bridges, and conservative Southerner in the cabinet, leading to Hayes peacefully being inaugurated.
White Supremacy Is Restored
Blacks in the South continued to vote and were occasionally elected to office, the Southern states adopted a policy of rigid legal separation of whites and blacks, keeping them from the polling booths.
Poor whites forced to leave farms to work in coal mines, iron and steel foundries, and cotton mills and needed backcountry roads, credit facilities, schools, and hospitals.
Farmers became active in the Populist movement and under the leadership of Governor Pitchfork Ben Tillman of South Carolina made a deal with the Democratic party to improve the economic conditions of poor whites.
New voting regulations adopted in all Southern states within Fourteeth and Fifteenth Amendments, but they contained subtle discrimination such as testing the ability to read as well as literacy tests, laws calling for poll taxes but literacy and poll laws also impacted poor whites with grandfather clause helping them bypass it.
Most Southern blacks stopped voting.
"Separate but Equal."
Segregation in all public facilities put into effect; called Jim Crow laws.
Jim Crow law passed in 1881 in Tennessee, providing that whites and blacks had to ride in separate railway cars with Jim Crow being applied to schools, hospitals, restaurants, railroad stations, parks, playgrounds, water fountains, entrances to factories and theaters, and taxi cabs.
In 1896, in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that such separation of the races was legal if facilities might be separate but equal in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, leading public facilities in the South that were separate but far from equal for the 58 years leading ti Brown vs Board of Education.
Reconstruction Fails to Achieve Equality
Purpose of Radical Reconstruction was to give black Americans equality while Southern black people the vote to would en- able them to protect themselves but was flawed because there wasn't economic help through , leading to the assessment that Radical Reconstruction should not be written off as a failure given historian Kenneth Stampp says Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were the greatest achievements of Reconstruction because it enabled black people after a long struggle to achieve full political and civil rights.
Section 1: Reconstruction Plans Differ
Problems After the Civil War
At the end of the Civil War, the U.S. faced the problems of:
What to do with 4 million newly freed black people in the South who lacked land, jobs, and skills other than farming.
What to do with the Southern states, whether to welcome them back or punish them as conquered territories.
Constitutional question of who (President or Congress) had the authority to decide how Confederate states would be readmitted to the Union.
Lincoln Hopes to Heal Wounds
Lincoln believed Confederate states had never legally seceded, viewing secession as unconstitutional, and aimed to restore the Union quickly with a mild Reconstruction.
He thought the war was to prove that secession was unconstitutional.
Lincoln believed it was individuals who had rebelled.
The Constitution gave the President the power to pardon individuals.
December 1863: Lincoln announced his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, granting pardons to Confederates who swore allegiance to the Union, excluding high officials and those accused of crimes against prisoners of war.
Under the proclamation, a Confederate state could form a government and send representatives to Congress once 10% of those on the 1860 voting lists took an oath to uphold the Constitution.
Many Northerners and Radicals wanted the power of the slave-owning class destroyed and Southern black people granted full citizenship, including the right to vote.
The Radicals Propose Their Plan
July 1864: Radicals in Congress adopted the Wade-Davis Bill, proposing Congress, not the President, be responsible for Reconstruction.
For a state government to be acceptable, a majority of those eligible to vote in 1860 would have to take an ironclad oath to support the Constitution and swear they had never supported the Confederacy.
Lincoln pocket-vetoed the Wade-Davis Bill by ignoring it until Congress adjourned within ten days, leading it to automatically fail.
The Radical Republicans issued a proclamation calling Lincolns pocket veto a stupid outrage and declaring the authority of Congress to be supreme.
The Radicals believed that Confederate states had seceded and were now territories seeking admission to the Union and Congress controlled territorial matters, not the President.
After the 1864 elections, Arkansas and Louisiana, acting under Lincoln's plan, sent representatives to Washington, but the Radicals barred them from taking their seats.
Historians believe that had Lincoln lived, he might have been able to deal with this difficult situation better than his successor, Vice-President Andrew Johnson.
Johnson Continues Lincoln's Policy
Andrew Johnson continued Lincoln's plan of Reconstruction.
Johnson was always aware that he had not been elected but had become President as a result of Lincoln's assassination.
He scorned people who had had an easier time.
His political ideas combined Jefferson's and Andrew Jackson's thoughts.
Like them, Johnson disliked cities and manufacturing, distrusted banks and bondholders, and feared wealth not based on land.
Johnson surprised everyone by continuing Lincoln's Reconstruction plan.
He declared any state could be readmitted to the Union if it declared its secession illegal, swore allegiance to the Union, promised not to pay Confederate debts, and ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery.
Southern states quickly took advantage of the terms.
Within months, all states except Texas held constitutional conventions, set up governments, and elected representatives to Congress.
December 1865: Newly elected Southerners arrived in Washington to take their seats; some had been in the Congress of the Confederacy, cabinet, or rebel generals.
Johnson gave them all pardons, a gesture that shook the Radicals deeply.
Johnson's Vetoes Enrage Republicans
President Lincoln established a special bureau to assist former slaves and poor whites in the South, urged by Josephine Griffing.
The Freedmen's Bureau gave food and clothing to former slaves and needy whites and set up over forty hospitals, four thousand primary schools, sixty-one industrial institutes, and seventy-four teacher-training establishments.
The backbone of the bureau's schools was its women teachers, both black and white.
Charlotte Forten, a black teacher from Philadelphia, taught in Georgia and observed the students' eagerness to learn.
By 1869 about 600,000 African Americans of all ages were in elementary schools.
Life was not always pleasant for the students or the teachers.
February 1866: Congress voted to continue and enlarge the Freedmen's Bureau by backing it with more money.
One month later, Congress passed the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, which gave blacks citizenship and forbade states from passing discriminatory laws.
President Johnson vetoed both measures, initiating his battle with Congress over Reconstruction.
Johnson believed Congress had gone far beyond anything contemplated by the authors of the Constitution.
The Radicals believed that Johnson was protecting Southerners who had no intention of giving blacks their full rights because Southern states passed repressive laws.
The Black Codes Keep Freed Slaves Down
Black codes were laws aimed at regulating the economic and social lives of freed slaves immediately after the war.
Blacks could legally marry, own property, sue in court, and go to school.
Blacks could not serve on juries, carry weapons, testify against whites, or marry whites and had to obey a curfew and needed permits to travel and were not allowed to start their own businesses.
In some states, blacks could not rent or lease farmland, and in South Carolina, blacks needed special licenses to work other than as servants or farm laborers.
The codes confirmed the Radicals' darkest suspicions about the South.
Northern voters began asking themselves if they had won the war after all.
The black codes were part of a historical pattern to keep African Americans from gaining economic and political power.
It was not until the Twenty-fourth Amendment was ratified in 1964 that the use of poll taxes to prevent African Americans from voting was abolished.
Section 2: The Radicals Gain Control
Congressional Refusal and Radical Majority
Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction program reached a dead end.
Congress refused to recognize the state governments that he had encouraged.
When the Radicals gained a two-thirds majority in Congress, they were able to override Johnson's vetoes thus power passed from the executive branch into the hands of the Radical Republicans.
The Battle Gets Hotter
Thaddeus Stevens hated slavery, and in time he came to hate white Southerners as well and wanted equality of man before his Creator.
The Fourteenth Amendment Is Adopted.
In mid-1866 the moderate Republicans joined with the Radicals to override the President's veto of the bill extending the Freedmen's Bureau.
Leaders in Congress finished drafting the Fourteenth Amendment to take the place of the Civil Rights Act that Johnson had vetoed.
The first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment made all persons born or naturalized in the United States citizens of the country.
All were entitled to equal protection of the law, and no state could deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
The amendment did not grant black citizens the right to vote but stated that if a state barred black people from taking part in elections, that state would lose some of its seats in Congress.
Another provision of the Fourteenth Amendment barred most Southern leaders from holding federal or state offices, but the ban could only be lifted by a two-thirds majority of Congress.
The South Rejects the Amendment.
Congress adopted the Fourteenth Amendment and sent it to the states for their approval.
Johnson believed that the amendment was too harsh and that the Southern states should be guided gently back to partnership in the Union and that Congress did not have the constitutional power to treat states in this way.
All of them except Tennessee did not ratify the amendement.
Congress was now convinced that stronger measures were called for.
The Radicals Control Congress
The congressional elections focused partly on who should control Reconstruction: the President or the Radicals.
Johnson went on a speaking tour, urging voters to elect to Congress those men who agreed with his policy of an easy Reconstruction.
His trip was a disaster because he was his own worst enemy.
In addition, race riots erupted in Memphis, Tennessee, and New Orleans, Louisiana, strengthening the belief that the federal government had to protect freed slaves against their former masters.
The voters gave the Radicals a two-thirds majority in Congress, which meant that Radicals could now override Presidential vetoes.
1867: Radicals they began putting their policy into effect.
The First Reconstruction Act
The act divided all of the seceded states except Tennessee into five military districts that replaced the civilian courts by military tribunals.
Each district was placed under a major general to oversee the drawing up of new constitutions in the states that were under his control.
The constitutions were required to give black males the right to vote and states had to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before being readmitted to the Union.
Johnson vetoed the First Reconstruction Act, saying that it was without precedent and without authority and in clear conflict with the plainest provisions of the Constitution, but Congress overrode the veto.
The First Reconstruction Act stunned Southern whites because they could not bring themselves to regard black people as equals; they did not want to give blacks more civil rights than were absolutely necessary and passed harsh, unjust laws against their ex-slaves.
Twenty thousand federal troops were sent to the South during the spring and summer of 1867 to keep law and order.
Tenure of Office Act
Radical leaders wanted to get rid of President Johnson because they felt that Johnson was not carrying out his constitutional obligation to enforce the First Reconstruction Act. and he removed military officers who were helping black people and members of his cabinet appointed Confederates to positions in their departments.
The Radicals decided to lay the groundwork for impeachment, that is, to charge a public official with misconduct in office.
They made a bold attempt to seize control of the Presidency by passing the Tenure of Office Act. The law stated that Presidents could not remove cabinet officers they had themselves appointed without first obtaining a two-thirds vote of the Senate, breaking the act would be a high misdemeanor.
Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, a Radical sympathizer.
Johnson Is Impeached
February 24, 1868: House voted to impeach the President.
The trial lasted from mid-March to May 26, 1868.
Two questions to be decided at Johnson's trial:
Tenure of Office Act did not apply to Stanton because he had been appointed by Lincoln, not Johnson, meaning no criminal act was committed.
Johnson was accused of intemperate language and of having brought disgrace, ridicule, contempt, and reproach on Congress, but he did personally stood for the tyrannical slave power.
Massachusetts senator stated that Johnson personally stood for the tyrannical slave power and Keeping him in the Presidency would mean leaving loyal Unionists of the South at the mercy of their enemies
The Radicals were trying to change the way the Constitution worked, destroy the federal government's system of checks and balances, and to make the executive branch answerable to the legislature.
Johnson was saved by one vote.
Grant Is Elected
The Democrats nominated the wartime governor of New York, Horatio Seymour.
The Republicans nominated Ulysses S. Grant, the hero of the Civil War.
November: Grant was elected President with an impressive majority vote of 214 to 80 in the electoral college.
With almost 6 million ballots cast, Grant led by only 310,000 for the popular vote.
About 500,000 Southern blacks had voted, most of them for Grant.
The Radicals feared that Southern whites might try to limit black suffrage in the future.
The Radicals introduced the Fifteenth Amendment, which states that no one can be kept from voting because of race or color or for having once been a slave.
Most Northern states at this time barred blacks from voting, so these states also were affected by the Fifteenth Amendment it was ratified in 1870.
Section 3: Radical Reconstruction Is Enforced
Enforcement Period
The period of Radical Reconstruction lasted from 1867, when the First Reconstruction Act was passed, to 1877, when the last federal troops were withdrawn from the South, although Reconstruction was not uniform.
Plantations Are Divided
Thaddeus Stevens and other Radicals had promised every freedman forty acres and a mule and intended to take the plantations belonging to the chief rebels and redistribute the land.
Moderate Republicans considered private property a basic American right that could not be taken away without due process of law. Congress made no land provisions for the freed people.
Consequenlty, two land arrangements developed in the South: sharecropping and tenant farming.
Plantation owners had land but no workers or cash to hire them.
Blacks and poor whites were able to work but had no land or tools.
Landowners divided their land and gave each worker a few acres, seed, tools, and food to live on. When the crops were harvested, the grower gave a share to the landowner.
Sharecropping provided some independence for ex-slaves by allowing them to keep part of what they produced.
In theory, people who saved a little and bought their own tools could drive a better bargain with landowners and become tenants and and outright owners of their farms but rarely it worked that way unless they diversified.
By the time sharecroppers had shared their crops and paid their debts, they rarely had any money left thus they kept Southern farmers dependent on one or two crops.
African Americans Serve in Government
704,000 blacks and 660,000 whites were registered to vote under Radical Reconstruction.
In 1860, the last year before the Civil War, 721,000 voters were registered-all of them white.
Out of one hundred twenty-five Southerners elected to Congress during Reconstruction, only sixteen were black.
South Carolina was the only state where blacks were a majority in the state legislature.
No state elected a black governor.
Many of the blacks elected to office were ministers or teachers who had gone to school in the North or self-educated.
Two senators and fourteen representatives were at least as well prepared as the whites with whom they sat.
Hiram Revels of Mississippi served in the U.S. Senate.
Many Eastern cities did not require citizenship to vote, so the same reasoning was applied to black citizens as well.
Scalawags and Carpetbaggers Profit
The Radical Reconstruction governments in Southern states were supported by scalawags and carpetbaggers.
Scalawags were white Southerners who joined the Republican party.
Wanted the South to industrialize as quickly as possible and believed this could best be done under the Republicans.
Opposed slavery and secession and did not want the former planter aristocracy to return to power.
Selfish individuals who hoped to get themselves into office with the help of black voters and then steal as much as they could and were considered traitors by most white Southerners.
Carpetbaggers were Northerners who moved to the South after the war.
Teachers and members of the clergy who felt a moral duty to help former slaves.
Union soldiers who preferred to live in the warm climate of the South.
Business people who hoped to start new industries.
Dishonest adventurers.
State Governments Bring Mixed Results
Many political and social conditions were improved.
There was widespread corruption.
Southern states also eliminated property qualifications for voting and for holding office which gave poor whites their first chance to take part in politics.
New constitutions abolished imprisonment for debt.
Reconstruction governments wrote the region's first laws establishing a system of public schools, although New Orleans had a segregated system.
Reconstruction governments faced the immense problem of rebuilding a land that had been devastated by war.
Little capital was available in the South, the state governments borrowed funds by selling bonds in the North.
Southern credit was so poor, that for every bond sold, the Reconstruction government often received only while the Northern investor received .
Taxes on real estate kept going higher and higher, which made it harder than ever for planters to get out of debt, especially after the I 873 depression.
Government costs was graft and bribery.
Secret Societies Oppose Reconstruction
Most white Southerners found it very difficult to accept the idea of African Americans voting and taking part in government because therefore found it very difficult to accept the idea of
African Americans voting and taking part in government, blaming black people for the high taxes and because of the federal troops in the South
A few white Southerners turned to terrorism and violence through secret societies, of which the most notorious was the Ku Klux Klan, who simply warned blacks not to vote before burining black-owned cabins and churches.
Between I868 and 1871, the Klan and other secret groups are reported to have killed several thousand men, women, and children, most of them blacks and leader tried to get the organization to disband.
To curtail Klan violence, Congress passed several acts in 1870 and 1871. These are commonly called the Force Acts that allowed for the federal supervision of elections in Southern states and giving the president the power to declare martial law in areas where the Klan was active.
May 1872: Congress passed the Amnesty Act, returning the right to vote and to hold federal and state offices to Confederate leaders.
Congress allowed the Freedmen's Bureau to expire.
Reconstruction governments were replaced by governments that represented traditional white rule.
Section 4: Reconstruction Efforts Come to an End
Reasons for the End of Reconstruction
The Radical plan of Reconstruction for the South ended in 1877 because of not giving them help in achieving economic independence and white resistance along with Northern indifference and the Republican party was torn by scandal and corruption.
The North Is Indifferent
Achieved freedom, blacks should now take care of themselves, Northerners were weary of the trouble in the South, as well as pressing for civil rights in the South would have raised embarrassing questions about segregation in the North, Northern business interests wanted stability in the South, and the Republican party no longer needed the black vote.
Grant's Administration Is Corrupt
Considerable graft in Reconstruction governments was matched corruption that existed at the national level.
President Grant was an honest man but struggled with politics, surrounding himself with crooked individuals and scandals erupting such as as the Treasury Department scandal, the Whiskey Ring, as well as accepting bribes from merchants and the secretary of the navy had taken bribes from shipbuilders, and the secretary of the interior had had dealings with land speculators.
A Depression Strikes the Nation
The nation was hit by a depression in I 873 after economy had been expanding; people in railroads and manufacturing thought business would always be good and borrowed enormous amounts of money and built new facilities quickly.
Many bankers and businessmen became over-extended and in September 1873 Jay Cooke and Company, a major banking firm, went bankrupt, setting off a series of financial failures.
Five-year depression: Three million workers lost their jobs and interest in black welfare declined.
The 1876 Election Is Disputed
1876: Republicans chose stodgy governor of Ohio, Rutherford B. Hayes instead of Grant for a third term.
Democrats put up one of their leaders, Governor Samuel J. Tilden of New York.
Tilden carried the popular vote but needed 185 electoral votes to win, and 20 electoral votes were in dispute.
An electoral commission was appointed to deal with the problem and ultimately votes were given to Hayes, who became President with a minority of the popular vote.
Southern Democrats would accept Hayes if troops would be withdrawn from FL, LA, and SC, if they got federal money for building a railroad extending from TX to the West Coast and or improving their rivers, harbors, and bridges, and conservative Southerner in the cabinet, leading to Hayes peacefully being inaugurated.
White Supremacy Is Restored
Blacks in the South continued to vote and were occasionally elected to office, the Southern states adopted a policy of rigid legal separation of whites and blacks, keeping them from the polling booths.
Poor whites forced to leave farms to work in coal mines, iron and steel foundries, and cotton mills and needed backcountry roads, credit facilities, schools, and hospitals.
Farmers became active in the Populist movement and under the leadership of Governor Pitchfork Ben Tillman of South Carolina made a deal with the Democratic party to improve the economic conditions of poor whites.
New voting regulations adopted in all Southern states within Fourteeth and Fifteenth Amendments, but they contained subtle discrimination such as testing the ability to read as well as literacy tests, laws calling for poll taxes but literacy and poll laws also impacted poor whites with grandfather clause helping them bypass it.
Most Southern blacks stopped voting.
"Separate but Equal."
Segregation in all public facilities put into effect; called Jim Crow laws.
Jim Crow law passed in 1881 in Tennessee, providing that whites and blacks had to ride in separate railway cars with Jim Crow being applied to schools, hospitals, restaurants, railroad stations, parks, playgrounds, water fountains, entrances to factories and theaters, and taxi cabs.
In 1896, in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that such separation of the races was legal if facilities might be separate but equal in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, leading public facilities in the South that were separate but far from equal for the 58 years leading ti Brown vs Board of Education.
Reconstruction Fails to Achieve Equality
Purpose of Radical Reconstruction was to give black Americans equality while Southern black people the vote to would en- able them to protect themselves but was flawed because there wasn't economic help through , leading to the assessment that Radical Reconstruction should not be written off as a failure given historian Kenneth Stampp says Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were the greatest achievements of Reconstruction