Reconstruction

1. Reconstruction SS8H6.c: Analyze the impact of Reconstruction on Georgia and other southern states.

2. Background • The South was left in ruins after the Civil War • Reconstruction was the time period when rebuilding began. • The South was ruled by the Union army and Southern states began to rejoin the Union. • Important questions: • What would be done with the 4 million newly freed slaves? • How could sectional differences and emotional war wounds be healed so that the nation could be reunited? • How could the South, which had suffered most of the war damage, resurrect itself and its economy? • What type of treatment would the defeated Confederacy receive from the victorious Union?

3. Freedmen • Former slaves were called freedmen • They faced being: Homeless, uneducated, and free for the first time in their lives. • The freedmen had no more than the clothes on their backs. • Once free they went from place to place looking for food, shelter, and work. • Some traveled because they were free • Others looked for lost family members • A new relationship existed between blacks and whites

4. Freedmen’s Bureau • Purpose: To help both former slaves and poor whites cope with the everyday problems by offering them clothing, food, and other necessities. • Original name: Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands • Created: March 1865 • Focus: Education • Schools started as a result of the Freedmen’s Bureau: Howard University (Washington, D.C.) and Morehouse College (Georgia), Clarke-Atlanta University

5. Farming after slavery • Farming continued to be the main source of income for Southerners but after the Civil War farming was to be done without slave labor. • Planters had to pay workers for their labor. • Some paid their former slaves a wage for their work. • Many planters did not have money to pay their workers, which led to sharecropping.

6. Sharecropping • A person planted crops on a landowner’s land and paid the landowner a share of the profit. • Most of the time there was little or no money left for the sharecropper after the debts (money owed to the landowner) had been paid.

7. Tenant Farming • Renting small plots of land to individual farmers was another type of farming • Not as popular as sharecropping because most people did not have enough money to buy the seeds and equipment needed to plant crops

8. Lincoln’s Reconstruction Plans • President Lincoln believed that the Southern states should be admitted back into the Union following some initial steps. • Only 10% of the voting population in each state needed to promise to be loyal to the Union. • The state had to outlaw slavery. • Many Northerners believed Lincoln was too lenient with the South and desired that the South be punished for the war.

9. Radical Republicans’ Reconstruction Plan • Radical Republicans were anti-slavery activists • They wanted the Confederates to be punished • Created a stricter bill called the Wade-Davis Bill that provided military leaders to govern the Confederate states until a series of actions allowed the states to return to the Union. • Congress passed the bill, but Lincoln vetoed it.

10. Andrew Johnson’s presidency • President Lincoln was assassinated in April of 1865 and Andrew Johnson became president. • He continued with Lincoln’s Reconstruction plan, but he believed that some extreme measures needed to take place. • Johnson did not let former Confederate officers and wealthy landowners vote. • He made Southern states ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, which officially ended slavery in the U.S.

11. Thirteenth Amendment • “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

12. Johnson impeached • Impeached-Charge a public official with an offense or misdemeanor committed while in office. • Congress impeached President Johnson after he tried to fire a Radical Repubican. • The Radical Republicans were not able to kick President Johnson out of office. • The impeachment was acquitted, but much of Johnson’s power was taken away.

13. Congressional Reconstruction • Lawmakers created the Freedmen’s Bureau • Congress passed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments • Fourteenth Amendment defines U.S. citizenship and includes newly freed slaves. • Fifteenth Amendment ensures that the right to vote cannot be denied to any U.S. citizen on account of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” • Women still could not yet vote and the voting age was 21.

14. Fourteenth Amendment • Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

15. Fifteenth Amendment • Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

16. Rev. Henry McNeal Turner and black legislators • In 1867 African Americans voted for the first time in Georgia. • In 1868 they helped elect twenty-nine African Americans to the Georgia House of Representatives and three African Americans to the Georgia Senate. • Notables: Henry McNeal Turner, Tunis Campbell, and Aaron Bradley. • All of these men were expelled on the grounds that although the Constitution had given them the right to vote, it did not specifically give them the right to hold political office.

17. Ku Klux Klan • Began in Pulaski, TN in 1865 as a social club for returning soldiers. • It quickly changed into a force of terror. • Secret organization that tried to keep freedmen from exercising their new civil rights. • Targeted blacks and often went out in robes and hoods. • KKK members killed many African Americans and also beat and killed whites who helped African Americans. • African American politicians were often targeted by the Klan.