The Reconstruction Amendments

Key Question: How did the Reconstruction Amendments define standards of citizenship? How did this impact African Americans?
Context:
- Civil War: Nearly 620,000 dead, including 180,000 Black men in the U.S. Army.
- Black women served as laundry washerwomen or nurses aides.
- 4 million newly liberated African Americans faced an uncertain future.
- Frederick Douglass: Abolition was just the beginning.
Reconstruction (1865-1877):
- Rebuilding Southern society after the war.
- Replacing slavery-based society with one including 4 million Black "new citizens."
- Began during the war as Northern armies took control of Southern land.
- Davis Bend, Mississippi: General Grant divided white land among freedmen, who elected their own officials.
- Elsewhere: Union Army required freedmen to sign contracts with former owners for wage labor.
Federal Government's Role:
- Sought to reintegrate Confederate states.
- Protect rights of free and formerly enslaved African Americans.
- Grant citizenship, equal rights, and political representation.
Freedmen's Bureau (March 1865):
- Provided relief, food, shelter, and education to 4 million "refugees" of slavery.
- Initially had the right to divide former white-owned plantations, but this was vetoed by President Johnson.
13th Amendment (1865):
- Officially abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.
14th Amendment (1868):
- Defined birthright citizenship in the United States.
- Granted equal protection to all people.
- Overturned Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) and related Black codes.
15th Amendment (1870):
- Prohibited denying or abridging a citizen’s right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
- Granted voting rights to Black men.

Impact of the Fifteenth Amendment

Key Question #2: How did the Fifteenth Amendment impact African Americans’ participation in American politics?
Enabled Black men's formal participation in American politics.
Thousands of African Americans (many formerly enslaved) participated in Southern politics during Reconstruction.
Nearly 2,000 African Americans served in public office during Reconstruction.
- 16 men were elected to Congress, including Senator Robert Smalls.
- Robert Smalls: Civil War hero who stole a Confederate ship, liberated 15 people, and influenced Lincoln on Black men serving in the armed forces.
- Hiram Revels: First Black man in the U.S. Congress and Senate (Mississippi, 1870), taking Jefferson Davis’s former seat.
- Key successes of Black Republican legislators: passing infrastructure and public education bills.
Many rights gained during Reconstruction were blocked during the Jim Crow era.
African Americans would reclaim these rights in the 1960s.
Black communities had to ensure their rights were protected and upheld.
- Union Leagues: Started in 1862 to re-elect Lincoln, then spread through the South to protect Black communities.
- Meetings often held in Black churches.
- Armed self-defense groups: Formed to protect voting rights, e.g., in Lincoln County, Georgia.

Reuniting Black Families

Key Question: How did African Americans strengthen family bonds after abolition and the Civil War?
After emancipation, African Americans sought to locate kin separated by the domestic slave trade.
- Used newspapers, word of mouth, and the Freedmen’s Bureau.
- Many were unable to locate lost family due to incomplete records, long distances, and frequent sales across state lines.
- It was almost impossible to find family sold to the deep South.
Some families never reunited, leading to