Reconstruction

  • Slavery and Reconstruction are part of modernity

What did Freedom mean in the Postwar South?

  • For Black Americans freedom meant:

    • Escape from the injustices of slavery (violence, rape, family separation, no education, confined movement and more)

    • Independent Black churches

    • Education

    • Political freedom

    • Land and property ownership (economic freedom)

  • According to white Southern landowners: formerly enslaved people were “Free, but free only to labor”

Freedmen’s Bureau (1865-1872)

  • Tasked with establishing schools, providing aid to the poor, settling disputes, and ensuring equal treatment under the law across the entire south with only 1,000 agents

  • Failures: Land reform

  • Successes: Education and Healthcare

Presidential Reconstruction (1865-1867)

  • Pardoned Southern Confederates

  • Southern states return to governing local affairs

  • Black Codes

  • Northern Republican pushback

Congressional Reconstruction Legislation

  • Led by Republicans (Moderates and Radicals)

  • Civil Rights Bill of 1866

  • Fourteenth Amendment

    • Citizenship Rights

  • Radical Reconstruction Act

Radical Reconstruction (1867-1877)

  • Johnson impeached but not removed from office

  • Ulysses S. Grant, Republican candidate for 1868 election

  • Fifteenth Amendment (1870)

    • voting rights for black men

  • Black political and community organizing in the Republican South

Black officeholders in the Republican South

  • Approximately 2,000 Black officeholders at all levels of government

  • House of Representatives

  • Senators

  • Governor of Louisiana

  • Local Positions

Public Schools born in the Republican South

Reconstruction Amendments

1865 - 13th Amendment: Abolished slavery throughout the United States “except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”

1868- 14th Amendment: All persons born or naturalized in the United States (excluding Native Americans) are both national and state citizens. Prohibited the states from abridging their “privileges and immunities” depriving any personal of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Prohibited the states from denying “equal protection of the laws”

1870 - 15th Amendment: Prohibited the states from depriving any person of the right to vote because of race (although leaving open other forms of disenfranchisement, including sex, property ownership, literacy, and payment of a poll tax)

Reconstruction Amendments redrew the boundaries of American freedom