RECONSTRUCTION

END OF THE WAR

• General Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox• The Confederacy lost around 260,000 men• The Union lost around 360,000 men• Nearly a half million other men were wounded in

battle

PREPARING FOR REUNION

• Lincoln wanted to make it easy for the southern states to rejoin the Union• He came up with the ten percent plan• This said that as soon as ten percent of a state’s voters swore

to be loyal to the US, the state could reorganize their government

• He also wanted to extend amnesty to those who vowed loyalty

• Congress wanted to be more strict by requiring 50 percent of voter’s to swear their loyalty• This disagreement start to cause a split in the Republican

Party

FREEDMEN’S BUREAU• The Freedmen’s Bureau was established to help

newly freed slaves to read and write• Many teachers, mostly women, from the North

came south to teach freedmen• The Bureau also helped freedmen find jobs and

set courts that would be more fare to freedmen

LINCOLN’S ASSASSINATION

• On April 14, 1865, President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at a theatre in Washington DC• There was a whole plot to kill the President, and

eventually four people will be hanged for their involvement• Lincoln’s successor was Vice President Andrew

Johnson, a southern Democrat

RECONSTRUCTION AMENDMENTS

• 13th amendment – banned slavery and forced labor in the United States

• 14th amendment – all people born or naturalized in the US are citizens

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

LIFE IN THE SOUTH

• Much of the South set up black codes to control African Americans, also known as Jim Crow laws• Many states passed a poll tax where people had to pay

to vote• They would also require literacy test before one could

vote

• Sharecropping was common in the South• This kept the free African Americans in a cycle of poverty

• The KKK was created right after the Civil War• This was a secret society set up to oppress and terrorize

African Americans

SEPARATE BUT EQUAL

• In 1896, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of segregation in the Plessy v. Ferguson case• This meant that it was OK for states to have separate

facilities for blacks and whites

• This idea of separate but equal stayed in place until the 1950s and 60s