HIST-222: Reconstruction

Postwar South in ruins; questions about reintegration, citizenship, and equality.
Reconstruction framed around citizenship and civil rights; moment of revolutionary possibility and violent backlash.
African Americans and Radical Republicans pushed toward realizing the Declaration of Independence promises; whites largely granted legal freedom with limited rights.

Lincoln’s Presidential Reconstruction sought quick restoration with lenient terms; oath threshold of 10\% of a state's voters allowed loyal Unionist governments.
Emancipation Proclamation (fall 1863) linked to war aims; Thirteenth Amendment (ratified January\ 31,\ 1865) abolished slavery except as punishment for crime.
Lincoln assassinated (April\ 14-15,\ 1865]); Andrew Johnson’s plan favored rapid restoration with limited federal interference; Black Codes emerged to control Black labor and movement.
Congress responded with Civil Rights Act (1866); Fourteenth Amendment (ratified 1868) establishing birthright citizenship and equal protection; Reconstruction Acts (1867) dissolved state governments and created five military districts.
Johnson impeached by House; Senate acquitted; Republicans gained power to direct Reconstruction;
1868 presidential election: Grant vs. Seymour; Republicans relied on Black votes; 15th Amendment (ratified 1870) secured Black male suffrage.
1868–1870s: Black men voted in large numbers; public schools established in all former Confederate states; Black officeholders increasingly visible.
Scalawags (white Southern Republicans) and Carpetbaggers (Northern arrivals) supported Reconstruction; Black delegates helped rewrite constitutions.

Land reform attempts: Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15 promised land; Freedmen’s Bureau sought to redistribute confiscated land but policy shifted to wage labor in many areas; 1866 land reform setbacks left most freedpeople without land.
Family reconstitution and kinship restoration central to freedom; marriage formalization; pursuit of family reunification persisted into the 20th century.
Education and religious life: rapid growth of Black churches; schools became community centers; anti-racist organizing roots.
Economic life: shift from slave to free labor; vagrancy laws and contract labor linked Black labor to exploitation; some Black land and business initiatives emerged, but many faced entrenched white power.
Public leadership: Black Americans served at local, state, and federal levels; created institutions and networks to sustain freedom.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony pushed for universal suffrage; 1863–1866 collaboration with abolitionists via American Equal Rights Association (AERA).
1866 National Women’s Rights Convention merged into AERA; tension over whether Black male suffrage or universal suffrage should take precedence; some support split along racial lines.
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments debated in women’s movement; Stanton and Anthony eventually formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) (New Departure strategy) while others supported the suffrage framework of the Fifteenth Amendment via AWSA.
Women’s suffrage faced setbacks after the Supreme Court’s 1875 ruling; Northern women’s activism shifted strategies, emphasizing moral suasion and civic reform.
Southern and Black women navigated new roles; women’s associations grew, while Black women faced heightened discrimination yet expanded public presence in community leadership.

Violence undermined biracial democracy; white supremacist violence aimed at Black political progress.
Riots in Memphis, New Orleans (1866); other clashes in Laurens (1870 ), Colfax (1873), Yazoo City (1875), Hamburg (1876).
Klan and other vigilante groups used terror to suppress Black voting and political activity; violence often unprosecuted.
Enforcement Acts (1870-1871) aimed to curb KKK violence and protect civil rights; federal troops deployed to restore order temporarily.
By 1876-1877, Redeemers regained control in many states; federal commitment waned, and violence persisted.

War and emancipation disrupted the Southern economy; slavery’s end dismantled the slave-based wealth system.
North-centered industrialization grew; tariffs and finance reforms (federal banking, greenbacks, Morrill Act) reshaped the national economy.
South faced deep poverty; sharecropping and debt peonage rose; land and labor systems persisted under new legal forms.
War-era innovations (Transcontinental Railroad, land grants) and federal education funding (Morrill Act) spurred growth in the North and West.
Economic tension fed political conflict; corruption and market crashes (e.g., Black Friday in 1869) intensified resentment toward federal policy in the West and South.

By 1870s, economic depression and violence weakened support for Reconstruction.
Redeemers (White Southern Democrats) promoted local white rule; bartered with Black citizens to limit protections.
Mississippi Plan (1875) and other tactics suppressed Black political power.
1876 election contested; Compromise of 1877 resolved the presidency in exchange for removal of federal troops from the South.
Post-1877: federal protection for Black rights ended; white supremacist rule solidified in many Southern states.

Reconstruction achieved union restoration and abolition of slavery, but Black Americans remained second-class citizens.
Women’s political rights lagged; economic and political power in the South realigned around white supremacy and new labor arrangements.
North and South united around economic growth rather than full citizenship and civil rights for all.

Visuals and documents illustrating Reconstruction politics and violence (e.g., Harper’s Weekly depictions of voting, Kin-based and civil rights statutes, and Freedmen’s Bureau imagery).
Key amendments and acts: Thirteenth Amendment (1865), Fourteenth Amendment (1868), Fifteenth Amendment (1870); Civil Rights Act (1866); Enforcement Acts (1870–1871).

Core text: The American Yawp (reconstruction chapter) and associated primary sources listed within.