Unit Seven Reconstruction 1865-1877

1. Unit Seven Reconstruction 1865-1877 How did Reconstruction impact the social, political, and economic institutions of the United States? How did the Civil War and Reconstruction challenge the supremacy of the national government?

2. Reconstruction is…….. • Reconstructing of something: the act or process of reconstructing something, or being reconstructed • Something restored: something that has been reorganized, reformed, or restored • Video Clip

3. Lincoln’s Second Inaugural AddressMarch 4, 1865 • Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." • 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, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. • What is Lincoln’s message to the nation ?

4. Reconstruction Plans • At the end of the war the South was all but destroyed • The economy in a state of collapse • Land values plummeted • Confederate money worthless • 2/3rds of the transportation system ruined • Miles of twisted railroad track • Bridges gone • Freedom of slaves sent the agricultural system into chaos

5. South paid a high price for secession, war, and defeat • Battlefield casualties • Material and psychological wounds • Best agricultural land lay in waste- Northern Virginia, Shenandoah Valley, large sections of Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina

6. Towns and cities including Richmond, Atlanta, and Columbia, S.C. were in ruins • By 1865 cotton and African American slaves were no longer measures of wealth and prestige • Retreating Confederate troops destroyed most of the cotton to prevent it’s capture by federal troops • Any cotton left was confiscated by Union agents as contraband of war

7. Former slaves, many had fled to Union lines late in the war were determined to chart their own course in the reconstructed South as free men and women • It would take a generation for the Southern economy to recover • 1860, the South held 25% of the nation’s wealth- 1870 only 12% • Many white Southerners resented their conquered status, and white notions of race, class, and honor died hard

8. White North Carolinian- lost everything dear to him in the war- his sons, home, and slaves- recalled in 1865 that in spite of all of his tragedy he retained one thing: “They left me one inestimable privilege-to hate ‘em. I git up at half past four in the morning, and sit up until twelve at night, to hate ‘em” • Emancipation was the most difficult for the white South- especially the planter elite • Conquered and degraded and in their views robbed of their slave property

9. Whites responded by regarding African Americans more than ever as inferior to themselves • Antebellum South- white skin had defined a social bond that transcended economic class • Gave even the lowest poor white a badge of superiority over even the most skilled slave or prosperous free African American • Emancipation made whites redefine their world

10. The idea of political power and social equality for African Americans made racial order the consuming passion of most white Southerners during Reconstruction • Racism can be seen as one of the major forces driving Reconstruction and eventually undermining it

11. Until a new labor system in place, the South could not maintain agricultural output • President Lincoln and Congress had to address reconstruction • The decision on how and under what terms the Confederate states could rejoin the Union

12. Lincoln’s Plan

13. The reconstruction problem emerged shortly after the Civil War began • Union forces occupied Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana in 1862 • Lincoln appointed military governors for the regions and began to develop a plan to restore government in those states • Lincoln wanted a moderate policy-reconcile with the South instead of punishment for treason

14. December 1863, Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction • 1. general amnesty to all Southerners who took an oath of loyalty to the US • 2. accept the Unions proclamation concerning slavery • 3. when 10% of the state’s voters in the 1860 election had taken the oath they could organize a state government

15. Radical Republicans

16. Lincoln’s plan met opposition by the radical Republicans in Congress • Led by Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pa. and Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts • The radical Republicans did not want to reconcile with the South • They wanted to revolutionize Southern institutions, habits, and manners

17. Goals of the Radical Republicans • 1. prevent the leaders of the Confederacy from regaining political power • 2. to make the Republican Party a powerful institution in the South • 3. the federal government would ensure political equality for African Americans • When the Southern states were readmitted to the Union they would gain 15 seats in the House of Representatives

18. Former slaves before the war counted 5 to 3 in population under the 3/5ths Compromise, now they would count 1 to 1 • The ending of slavery would give the South more seats in the House-this would threaten Republican control unless African Americans could vote • Suffrage for African Americans would help the Republican Party win elections

19. The actions were not solely based on gaining political power • Many radical Republicans had been abolitionists before the war and played a key role in Lincoln making emancipation a goal of the war • They believed in political equality for African Americans

20. The Wade-Davis Bill • In between Lincoln and the Radical Republicans was a group of moderates • The Moderates thought Lincoln too lenient and the Radicals too extreme in giving support to African Americans • The summer of 1864, the Moderates and Radicals create a reconstruction plan

21. 1. require a majority of white adult men to take an oath of allegiance to the Union • 2. each state government would have to abolish slavery • 3. reject all debts the states had acquired as a member of the Confederacy • 4. not allow any former Confederate government officials or military officers to vote or hold public office

22. Congress passed the Wade-Davis Bill • Lincoln stooped it with a pocket veto • Lincoln felt a harsh peace would be counterproductive

23. The Freedmen’s Bureau

24. Lincoln; harsh reconstruction plan would alienate Southern whites, already hundreds of thousands homeless, unemployed, and hungry • Union had to deal with a large number of African Americans migrating North as the war progressed • As Sherman marched through Georgia and South Carolina, thousands of freedmen followed his troops looking for food and shelter

25. Sherman reserved all abandoned plantation land within 30 miles of the coast from Charleston to Jacksonville, Florida for use by the freedmen • Union troops settled 40,000 freedmen on a half a million acres • Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands

26. The Freedmen’s Bureau used army surplus supplies to feed and clothe refugees in the South • Prevented mass starvation in the South • Found work for freedmen on plantations, negotiated labor contracts with planters • Many Northerners supported the work of the Freedmen’s Bureau, felt former slaves should be given 40 acres and a mule

27. The Federal government should seize Confederate land and give to emancipated slaves • Taking plantation land and giving it to the freedmen appeared to be a violation of the nation’s commitment to individual property rights • Congress refused to take property

28. The Freedmen’s Bureau failed to give African Americans land to make a new start • The Freedmen’s Bureau did make a lasting impact, education • The Bureau worked closely with charities in the North to educate former slaves • Provided housing for schools, paid teachers, helped establish colleges to train African American teachers

29. Andrew Johnson

30. Lincoln was assassinated, Vice President Andrew Johnson became president • Johnson changes Reconstruction • Johnson, a former Democrat from Tennessee, elected to the US Senate • When Tennessee seceded, Johnson remained loyal to the Union, hero in the North

31. 1862, Lincoln named Johnson the Military Governor of Tennessee • Lincoln approved Johnson’s nomination as the VP in the election of 1864 • Hoped to bring some Democrats to vote Republican • Johnson felt a more moderate Reconstruction plan was needed

32. Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan • Summer of 1865 Congress was in recess • May, 1865 Johnson issued a new Proclamation of Amnesty • Pardon all Southern citizens who took an oath of loyalty to the Union • Return their property • Did exclude former military officers and officials of the Confederacy, along with plantation owners with property worth more than $20,000, felt they started the war

33. Those excluded could apply to Johnson individually for a pardon • The day of the Amnesty Proclamation, Johnson issued a proclamation for NC, as a model for how Johnson wanted to restore the South • 1. former Confederate states had to call a constitutional convention, revoke the ordinance of secession

34. 2. had to ratify the 13th amendment • 3. had to reject all Confederate debts • Most states meet Johnson’s requirements • Organized new governments and elected members to Congress • Congress convened it’s next session Dec. 1865 • Congress was upset that Southern voters had elected many former Confederate officers and political leaders, including Alexander Stephens, the former VP of the Confederacy • Moderate and Radical Republicans found this unacceptable and voted to reject new Southern members of Congress

35. Black Codes • New Southern state legislatures passed Black Codes • Laws to limit African American rights in the South • An attempt to keep African Americans in a state of slavery • Required African Americans to enter into annual labor contracts, leaving before contract expired led to forfeiture of wages already earned and subject to arrest by white citizens

36. Vagrancy, broadly defined, punishable by fines and involuntary plantation labor • Some states tried to stop African Americans from owing land • Laws specifically denied African Americans equality with white people in civil rights • Excluded African Americans from juries • Prohibited interracial marriages

37. African American children had to accept apprenticeships- could be whipped or beaten • Set specific work hours for African Americans • Required African Americans to get a license for non-agricultural work • The Black Codes angered many in the North

38. The Moderate-Radical Coalition • The election of former Confederates and the Black Codes prompted many moderates to join with the Radicals in opposition to Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan • Late 1865 House and Senate Republicans created the Joint Committee on Reconstruction • This committee was to make Congressional policy for rebuilding the Union

39. The Civil Rights Act of 1866

40. 1. citizenship to anyone born in the US except Native Americans • 2. allowed African Americans to own property • 3. African Americans to be treated equally in court • 4. gave the federal government the right to sue people who violated the rights of African Americans

41. 14th Amendment

42. Congress feared the Civil Rights Act of 1866 would be overturned in court • Republicans proposed the 14th amendment • 1. citizenship to all born or naturalized in the US • 2. no state may deny any person life, liberty, or property without due process of law • 3. no state may deny equal protection of the law

43. Equal Protection of the Law; the right of all persons to have the same access to the law and courts, and to be treated equally by the law and courts, both in procedures and in the substance of the law. • Due Process; legal fairness, legal safeguards, protection against deprivations, proteccion guarantees, protection of deprivation of accepted legal principles

44. Southern Violence

45. Violence in the South prompted Moderate Republicans to support the 14th amendment • May, 1866, Memphis, Tennessee • White mobs killed 46 African Americans • Burned 100s of black homes, churches, and schools • Congress ratified the 14th amendment June, 1866 sent it to the states for ratification

46. The Election of 1866 • Johnson wanted to make the 14th amendment an issue in the 1866 Congressional elections • Wanted Northern voters to elect a new majority in Congress that would support his reconstruction plan • Election started, violence in the South • July, 1866 white mobs attacked delegates to a convention in New Orleans supporting rights for African Americans

47. Johnson attacked the Radicals • The Radicals attacked the Democrats for causing the war and treason • Republicans won big- a 3 to 1 majority in Congress

48. Military Reconstruction ActVideo Clip

49. March 1867, Congressional Republicans passed the Military Reconstruction Act • This replaced Johnson’s reconstruction plan • 1. divided the South except Tennessee which had ratified the 14th amendment into five military districts • 2. a Union general was in charge of each district

50. 3. Confederate states were required to hold another state convention to write a constitution acceptable to Congress • 4. had to give suffrage to all adult male citizens regardless of race • 5. after the state ratified the new constitution it had to ratify the 14th amendment • 6. military officers supervised voter registration