Bell Ringer

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Vocabulary Word:

Reconstruction

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Synonym

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Reconstruction

The Rebuilding of the Union After the Civil War 1863-1877

The Emancipation Proclamation

• Those slaves were forever free.

• Slaves & Freemen could join the military.

• Took effect on January 1st, 1863.

• The first step of Reconstruction.

• Issued after the Battle of Antietam. (1862)

• Freed all slaves located in Confederate States.

What is Slavery?

“Slavery is enjoying the fruits of another man’s labor, without permission.”

How do you enjoy freedom?

“Give us land and then we can enjoy the fruits of our labor.”

• Sherman began to set aside land in plots of 40 acres and gave out the worn down mules from the military

April 9, 1865

Appomattox Court House, Virginia

“Blacks who have so heroically vindicated their manhood on the battle-field, where, in assisting to serve the life of the Republic, they have demonstrated in blood their right to the Ballot.”

“The restoration of the Rebel States to the Union must rest upon the principle of Civil and political equality of both races.”

April 14th, 1865

"Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment"

Oh Captain!My Captain!

Lesson Objectives

• What were the opposing views of Reconstruction in the wake of the Civil War? 

• Who supported these competing views and why?

• Was Reconstruction a success?  Why or why not?

The War Is Over

Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville train

'Til Stoneman's cavalry came and tore up the tracks again.

In the winter of '65, We were hungry, just barely alive.

By May the tenth, Richmond had fell, it's a time I remember,

oh so well,

Back with my wife in Tennessee, When one day she called to me,

"Virgil, quick, come see, there goes Robert E. Lee!"

Now I don't mind choppin' wood, and I don't care if ma money's

no good.Ya take what ya need and ya

leave the rest,But they should never have

taken the very best.

Like my father before me, I’m a working man,

Like my brother before me, who took a rebel stand.

He was just eighteen, proud and brave, But a Yankee laid him in his grave.

"The countryside looked for many miles like a broad, black streak of ruin and desolation, the fences all gone, lonesome smokestacks surrounded by dark heaps of ashes and cinders. The fields along the road wildly overgrown by weeds, and here and there a sickly patch of cotton or corn cultivated by Negro squatters." - Carl Schurz

The War Is Over?

Questions to be Answered during Reconstruction

• How would the South rebuild its society and economy?

• What would be the place in society of the freed blacks?

• How would the southern states reenter the Union?

• Who would be in charge, the President or Congress?

Conflicts Still Remain…

North hopes to continue economic progress

Southern Aristocracy still needed cheap labor supply

Lincoln believed the southern states had never left the Union because

the Constitution did not allow Secession

“With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds.”

Abraham Lincoln

2nd Inaugural Address

Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction 1863

• Full presidential pardons granted to most southerners who (1) took an oath of allegiance to the Union and US Constitution and (2) accepted the emancipation of slaves.

• A state government could be reestablished as soon as 10% of the voters in that state took the loyalty oath

This 10% Plan was seen by many northerners as too lenient

The Wade-Davis Bill was a more harsh response passed by a Radical

Republican led Congress.

With Lincoln’s untimely death, the conflict between the

Presidency and Congress over Reconstruction erupted.

The Wrong Man at the Wrong Time• A white

supremacist from Tennessee

• A Tailor by trade

• Self-educated man

• Became President after Lincoln’s Assassination

“Lick My Boots!”• Johnson changed plan

from 10% to 51%• State Conventions must

pass the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery

• Added that if a Southerner who owned property worth $20,000 or more they were excluded and must request a pardon personally before Andrew Johnson– Johnson hated this upper

class of Southerners and blamed them for starting the war

Johnson’s Plan

• Considered too lenient like Lincoln’s

• Clause allowed president to grant pardons, which he did regularly to former southern statesmen (Who else would run the South?)

• Johnson was willing to admit states once the portion that swore the loyalty oath had written a constitution and established a new government

• The South rushed to form new governments that they would have a say in forming before the new Congress returned

The South’s Response –

Black Codes

• Many states passed laws restricting the rights of freedmen.

• Vagrancy laws – forced former slaves to work for low wages for the same people who used to own slaves

Radical Republicans

• Believed the South should be punished for starting the war

• Hoped to protect the rights of freed men – especially suffrage and free labor

Race Riots Break out in South

• Increases great fear across North that Reconstruction is not working and freedmen are being exploited and attacked.

Election of 1866“Waving the Bloody Shirt”

• Angered by President Johnson’s policies and pardons many Radical Republicans were elected to Congress

• Gave the Radicals enough power to override Johnson’s actions

“Congress alone can do it. . . Congress must create states and declare whether they are to be represented.”

Thaddeus Stevens

Charles Sumner

Johnson & Congress Clash

• Congress extended the Freedmen’s Bureau over Johnson’s Veto

• Passed over Johnson’s Veto, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 designed to grant freedmen full legal equality and undercut the Black Codes

Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act– Stated that the President could not fire any

official approved by the Senate unless the Senate approved the firing.

Get Your Tickets!

Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton

Andrew Johnson was impeached by the House of Representatives but missed by two votes in the Senate to find him guilty

Radicals Make it Official13th Amendment – Abolished Slavery in the United

States (1865)

14th Amendment – defined citizenship to include freed blacks; guarantees due process of law and equal protection under law; Ties representation in the House to the proportion of male suffrage in a state’s population (overrides 3/5 clause. (1866)

15th Amendment – gave the right to vote to any male, regardless of race (1870)

Reconstruction Act of 1867

• Divided South in to 5 military districts and placed them under military rule

• Required states to ratify the 14th Amendment

• Guaranteed freedmen the right to vote in conventions to write new state constitutions

“Custodians of Freedom!”

• Equality Now Written into the Constitution!• The Federal government now became the protector of Civil Rights• Aggrieved citizens would not appeal to the Federal government

when their rights may had been violated• Enforcement Act – issued to enforce new rights (Secret Service

expanded to oversee the enforcement)

1865 Freedmen’s Bureau

• Established to educate newly freed slaves (Fisk, Howard University)

• Feed those suffering after the war

• Worked to help turn former slaves into wage earners – labor contracts

Freed Blacks rise to Government Positions during Radical

Reconstruction

First Black members of Congress

Hiram Revels was 1st Black

Senator

Realities and Responses to Reconstruction

• Carpetbaggers - Republicans from the North who took advantage of the broken South and packed their bags to gain politically and economically in the South

• Scalawags – Term for “rascals”, Southerners who quickly converted to Republicans

One view of Reconstruction

Changes in Southern Agriculture

• Debt peonage – Planters signed former slaves to labor contracts in which planters gave money to laborers in exchange for work. Kept the freedman in constant debt.

• Sharecropping – Farmers grew a crop on land owned by someone else in return for a percentage of the crop

• Tenant Farmers – Farmers who paid rent to use of land

“We hold this to be a government of white people, made and to be perpetuated for the exclusive benefit of the white race, and … that people of African descent cannot be considered citizens of the United States, and that there can, in no event, nor under any circumstances, be any equality between white and other races.”

“This is an institution of Chivalry, Humanity, Mercy and Patriotism, embodying in its genius and its principles all that is chivalric in conduct, noble in sentiment, generous in manhood and patriotic in purpose.” Our goals are “to protect the weak, innocent and defenseless, to protect and defend the constitution of the United States.”

Matching

“This is an institution of Chivalry, Humanity, Mercy and Patriotism, embodying in its genius and its principles all that is chivalric in conduct, noble in sentiment, generous in manhood and patriotic in purpose.” Our goals are “to protect the weak, innocent and defenseless, to protect and defend the constitution of the United States.”

“We hold this to be a government of white people, made and to be perpetuated for the exclusive benefit of the white race, and … that people of African descent cannot be considered citizens of the United States, and that there can, in no event, nor under any circumstances, be any equality between white and other races.”

The White’s “Social Club”

• Ku Klux Klan – group that formed primarily in the South in response to Congress’ pro-black legislation that promised to “defend the social and political superiority” of whites against the “aggressions of an inferior race.”

The Klan• Led by former Confederate

General Nathan Bedford Forrest

• Used violence and intimidation to prevent blacks from voting, holding office, and exercising their civil, political, and economic rights.

• President Grant sent troops to the South to stop the domestic violence of the KKK

• By 1876, white supremacists gain control over Southern states.

Reconstruction ends with a Compromise

• Election of 1876 : Hayes versus Tilden

• Election results were in dispute– Compromise – Rutherford B. Hayes would

become president if he promised to remove federal troops from southern states.

Colfax, La.

The Fourteenth Amendment restrains only state action. And the fifth section of

the Amendment empowers Congress only to enforce the prohibition on state

action. The amendment did not authorize national legislation on

subjects which are within the domain of the state. Private acts of racial

discrimination were simply private wrongs that the national government

was powerless to correct.

Which of the Following was an action supported by the radical Republicans

during Reconstruction?

A. Sharecropping by Freedmen

B. The Ku Klux Klan

C. Freedman’s Bureau

D. Black Codes

• It is clear that the Reconstruction period was going to be painful. President warned of this, but I don’t think that anyone understood what was coming. This after-war era was at the least, poor communication, and at the most, a war in itself. America’s foundation was set by compromise to make everyone content. The South needed slaves for their economy, but the North had thought of slavery as wrong long before the war. Once the North didn’t have their main source for income, they needed help, and they were too angry with the North to accept it.

• Carpet baggers may have been a controversial idea, but I believe they were right to do what they did. They moved south, and helped start the tenet farming and sharecropping systems. This put more cash into the south’s pockets, and re-boosted their agricultural production. I believe that if the south had accepted these people, there would be less of a debate on weather this time was a success or failure.

• But rather than accepting what they had for share croppers and tenet farmers, they set up the “Black Codes.” They made unpaid work punishment for blacks’ unlawfulness, which is practically lawful slavery, and is a violation of the 14th amendment. The Ku Klux Klan was also started and this caused many “Hate Crimes.” Yes it was a failure, but it was more successful. Look at us today; we have no slaves, we are very racially tolerant, and we are going to accept a black president for the first time ever. The hell that the radical republicans went through to make sure that the problem was being taken care of at the time made it so we didn’t have another civil war 20 years later because of something they “put off.”