Chapter 21 test

The end of the war raised questions about consequences for Confederate leaders.

− Jefferson Davis was imprisoned for two years.

− He and other secession leaders were ultimately released when it was determined no Virginia court would convict them.

− President Johnson pardoned all Confederate leaders in 1868

Once free, former slaves celebrated

Tens of thousands of Black people took to the roads, testing their freedom or looking for lost spouses, children, and parents.

− Emancipation thus strengthened the Black family.

− Many sought work in towns and cities, where Black communities could provide protection and support.

− From 1878 to 1880, 25,000 Black people from Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi, known as “Exodusters,” sought land in Kansas

Freed Black people formed new churches

Education, long denied them, became one of the highest priorities of freed Black people’

On paper, the Bureau was intended as a sort of welfare agency, providing food, clothing, medical care, and education to freedmen and white refugees.

The Freedmen’s Bureau’s greatest successes were in education.

− It taught two hundred thousand how to read.

− It largely failed to settle Black people on land of their own

Johnson moved to Tennessee at age seventeen and became active in politics.

− He was a champion of poor white people in their struggles against planter aristocrats

− As a member of Congress, he refused to secede even when his state of Tennessee did, winning favorable attention in the North but not in the South.

− He was appointed war governor of Tennessee after it was redeemed by Union troops

In 1863, Lincoln proclaimed his “10 percent” Reconstruction plan.

− A state could be reintegrated into the Union when 10 percent of its total voters from the 1860 election had taken an oath of allegiance to the United States and pledged to abide by emancipation.

− The state would then establish a new government and Lincoln would recognize it.

Congressional Republicans countered with the Wade-Davis Bill in 1864.

− It required 50 percent of a state’s voters to take the oath of allegiance and demanded stronger safeguards for emancipation.

− Lincoln pocket-vetoed it.

Johnson agreed with Lincoln.

− He quickly recognized several of Lincoln’s 10 percent governments.

− On May 29, 1865, he issued his own Reconstruction proclamation to provide for rapid restoration.

− It disfranchised some leading Confederates and called for state conventions to repeal ordinances of secession, repudiate Confederate war debts, and ratify the Thirteenth Amendment.

The new Southern state governments sanctioned by Johnson promptly passed laws known as Black Codes to ensure a stable and subservient labor force

President Johnson and Congress clashed in February 1866 when Johnson vetoed a bill extending the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau.

Fearing Southerners in Congress might one day repeal the civil rights law, Republicans next secured its provisions in a proposed 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

− It conferred civil rights, including citizenship, on freedmen.

− It reduced proportionately a state’s representation in Congress and in the Electoral College if it denied Black men the vote.

− It disqualified former Confederates from state and federal office if they had previously sworn allegiance to the United States.

− It guaranteed the federal debt while repudiating all Confederate debts.

Both groups agreed on the necessity to guarantee Black men the right and ability to vote.

In 1869, Congress passed the 15th Amendment (ratified in 1870), prohibiting states from withdrawing the right to vote on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments proved deeply disappointing to advocates of women’s rights.

Feminists were outraged when the Fourteenth Amendment inserted the word “male” into the Constitution for the first time, in regard to voting rights.

− Likewise, the Fifteenth Amendment did not prohibit denying the right to vote on the basis of sex.

Radical regimes took steps to create and fund public schools, streamline tax systems, launch public works, and guarantee property rights to women.

Those who persisted in exercising their rights to vote and participate in politics were flogged, mutilated, and sometimes murdered.

In 1867, the Russians offered, as they had previously in 1850, to sell Alaska.

The Russians preferred the Americans as a buyer because they sought to strengthen the United States as a buffer against threats from Britain.

Later that year, Secretary of State William Seward signed a treaty transferring Alaska to the United States for a price of $7.2 million.