TheReconstruction

Era

1863-1877

Lincoln’s Legacy

• In the last month of the war, President Lincoln had established a special bureau to assist former slaves and poor whites in the South

• The Freedmen’s Bureau gave food and clothing to former slaves and needy whites

• Helped set up 40 hospitals• Established 4,000 primary schools• Set up 61 industrial institutes• Provided 74 teacher training establishments (for both

black and white teachers hoping to help educate former slaves)

Southern Whites Limit the Freedoms of Ex-Slaves

• 13th Amendment is passed, abolishing slavery

• However, white-controlled state governments pass laws called Black Codes

•Allowed worker exploitation•Allowed whipping•Limited speech, travel, denied voting

rights, •Included imprisonment and barred them

from court testimony against whites

Southern Whites Limit the Freedoms of Ex-Slaves

•In the first two years after the Civil War, 5000 African-Americans are murdered by whites- often by lynching

•Secret organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, are founded by whites to intimidate Blacks

Common forms of Violence-Lynching and Whipping

CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION

• Northern Republicans are convinced that Johnson’s Plan is not working– Black Codes, the KKK, and Confederate

officials still in office at state and federal levels cited as evidence

• Andrew Johnson had only been President for a year when his program reached a dead end.

• Radical Republicans are the most critical of his administration.

Andrew Johnson vs. Congress

• Congress refused to recognize the state governments that Johnson had encouraged the creation of in his plan

• When the Radicals gained a 2/3 majority in Congress, they were able to override Johnson’s vetoes.

• Power passed from the Executive Branch into the hands of the Radical Republicans.

Thaddeus Stevens from Pennsylvania was the most vocal critic- leads the Radical Republicans

Known as Radical Reconstruction or

Congressional Reconstruction, this act was designed to

punish the South for the Civil War, increase the rights of

African-Americans, disfranchise ex-confederates, and delay the readmission of

states until republican governments established

The Reconstruction Act of 1867

CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION PLAN• More severe than the Presidential

Plan• Require the majority of voters in a

secessionist state to take an oath of loyalty and a second “Iron-clad” oath stating that they did not support the Confederacy

• Individual governments had to outlaw slavery

• Former confederate officials were banned from voting for state legislators

CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION PLAN

•Passed the 14th Amendment•All qualified voters, blacks included, were to elect a governor and a state legislature

•Other Reconstruction Acts follow to strengthen enforcement of the first act.

JOHNSON VETOES THE ACT

• Unfair to the South• Congress over-rides the veto• Invalidate the state

governments re-admitted under the Lincoln and Johnson Plans. Only Tennessee will escape because they ratified the 14th Amendment before the Act was passed.

TEN STATES UNDER MARTIAL LAW

•States that had not ratified the 14th Amendment were divided into five military districts

•Military oversees elections concerning new state constitutions and governments

•Once conditions met, Reconstruction will be complete

IMPEACHMENT CRISIS

•Johnson uses executive power to impede Congressional Reconstruction. –Replaced sympathetic radical military officials with conservatives

–Defied the Tenure of Office Act and fires Secretary of War Stanton, a radical sympathizer

Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War

Tenure of Office Act of 1867•The Tenure of Office Act,

passed over the veto of President Andrew Johnson on March 2, 1867, provided that all federal officials whose appointment required Senate confirmation could not be removed without the consent of the Senate.

IMPEACHMENT CRISIS

• House of Representatives voted to impeach Johnson

• Senate trial was held: Johnson’s lawyers argue that Tenure of Office Act is unconstitutional and he is not guilty of a crime indictable in court

• Johnson remains in office. The vote fell one vote short of the two-thirds needed to remove him from office

RECONSTRUCTION GOVERNMENTS

•Most states are re-admitted by 1870.

•Republicans will control the South until 1877–President U.S. Grant will uphold tough reconstruction policies

–Carpetbaggers and Scalawags–Southern Blacks

President Ulysses S. Grant: 18th President of the United States

RECONSTRUCTION ENDS

• Use of violence kept blacks away from the polls

• Northerners lost interest in Reconstruction

• Compromise of 1877- Rutherford B. Hayes is awarded the Presidency in exchange for a promise to remove federal troops from the south. Some troops remain but do not serve a political function

Rutherford B. Hayes- 19th President of the United States

Reconstruction Amendments•13th Amendment- Abolished

slavery•14th Amendment- Blacks are

citizens of the United States– Intended to strengthen 1866

Civil Rights Act

•15th Amendment- Prohibited denial of suffrage because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude

ACHIEVEMENTS & FAILURES OF RECONSTRUCTION

Achievements

• States restored to the Union and rebuilding begun.

• Public schools established

• 14th and 15th Amendments passed

Failures

• Failed to solve the problems of blacks– Too poor to afford

land, many former slaves are exploited under the sharecropping system

– Southern economic expansion is slowed by westward expansion

– “Jim Crow” laws passed to limit the rights of blacks

“Jim Crow”

• Southern state governments passed laws forcing segregation and creating barriers to voting rights, such as poll taxes and grand-father clauses.

• The Supreme Court will uphold “Jim Crow” in 1895 by its ruling in Plessy vs. Ferguson

Notable People who spoke out against “Jim Crow” laws

• Ida B. Wells: an anti-lynching crusader, appealed to the federal government to stop lynching

• Booker T. Washington: equality via vocational education- accepted social segregation

• W.E.B. DuBois: education is meaningless without equality- strive for higher education (college)

•Founded the NAACP

IDA B. WELLS

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON AND TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE

W.E.B. DuBois

Because Reconstruction was implemented by Republicans, white southerners voted for

Democratic candidates. This created a Bloc known as the

“Solid South.”

Separate but Equal (1896)

• Plessy v. Ferguson• Case fought because of Jim Crow laws (specifically

regarding railroad cars, in this case)• Court ruled that separate but equal was constitutional• Only one justice disagreed: John Marshall Harlan, a

Southerner. He said Constitution “is colorblind, neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.”