Chapter 16

Reconstruction

1865-1877

After Slavery ( p.440-444)

• The south was in total disarray after they lost the civil war

• Politically –

• Economically –

• Socially -

• The roads, bridges, railroad tracks, government at every level, no courts, judges, sheriffs, police forces were all in tatters.

• $2 billion worth of labour was lost.

After Slavery ( p.440-444)

• Landowners – most were devastated by the south’s loss

• Widows – couldn’t make the plantations work

• Some hired former slaves for better wages and conditions

• Others were bankrupt after investing in the southern war effort

• No one wanted to buy their huge plantations

• Tenant farmers – farming land that they rented off the owners of the land

• Sharecropper – people who worked the owner’s land who received a share of the crops’ profits

After Slavery ( p.440-444)

• “Lincoln got praise for freeing us, but did he do it? He gave us freedom without giving us any chance to live to ourselves and we still had to depend on the southern white man for work, food, clothing, and he held us through our necessity and want in a state of servitude but little better than slavery.”

• Former slaves got to choose their own last names – some chose heroes ( like Lincoln ) while others adopted their former slave owner’s family name.

After Slavery ( p.440-444)

• Freedman’s Bureau

• Provided food and clothing to everyone after the civil war in the war ravaged south but mostly to help African Americans adjust to their new freedom

• Education

• Jobs

• land

Reconstructing the South ( p 445- 451)

• Lincoln believed the main task would be to restore the union

• Amnesty ( a pardon ) – with a pledge of loyalty to the USA

• Johnson ( lincoln’s replacement ) was not very successful in his real reconstruction plans

• Black Codes – severely limited the rights of African Americans and made it clear they would still be subordinate in the south

Reconstructing the South ( p 445- 451)

• Congress passed the civil rights bill – Johnson vetoed it and congress outvetoed his veto….

• 14th amendment – equal protection of the laws for all whites and African Americans

• “Congress must see to it that the man made free by the constitution is a freeman indeed; that he can go where he pleases, work when and for whom he pleases…go into the schools and educate himself and his children; that the rights and guarantees of the common law are his, and that he walks the earth proud and erect in the conscious dignity of a free man.”

Reconstructing the South ( p 445- 451)

• Carpetbag government – northerners who came south to try to profit off the reconstruction

• Some were honest while others were scammers

• Johnson was almost impeached because of his terrible efforts to sort out the south’s reconstruction

Restoring southern power ( p 453- 456)

• Ku Klux Klan – was formed in 1866

• Threatened carpetbaggers, teachers in African American schools

• They used beatings, murders, lynchings to back up their threats

Restoring southern power ( p 453- 456)

• After reconstruction – pretty similar to life before civil war

• Segregation – separating people based on their race

• “Jim Crow Laws” – new laws that legally segregated blacks from whites in everyday life

• “the new south” – an alliance between powerful white southerners and northern financiers.

• Together they rebuilt the south with railroads and industry

Restoring southern power ( p 453- 456)

• Few gains for African Americans

• New kind of slavery – sharecropping and tenant farming

• 14th and 15th amendments – constitutional changes that gave the principle of equality for all people

• 14th – defined citizenship to include African Americans

• 15th – the right to vote “shall not be denied…on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Presidents Lincoln, Johnson