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Political Reunification. After the defeat of the Confederacy, our nation faced reconstruction , or the rebuilding of the Union. There were 3 major problems to solve : What were the 4 million freed slaves to do ? Most were farmers None owned land None had jobs
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Political Reunification • After the defeat of the Confederacy, our nation faced reconstruction, or the rebuilding of the Union. • There were 3 major problems to solve: • What were the 4 million freed slaves to do? • Most were farmers • None owned land • None had jobs • Readmission of Southern states • Lincoln’s Plan (mild) vs. Radical Plan (harsh) • Who determined how the states would be readmitted? • The President or Congress?
Freedmen’s Bureau • 1865 – Congress and Lincoln set up the Freedmen’s Bureau to feed, clothe, and educate the freed blacks in the South. • 40 hospitals • 4,000 primary schools • 61 vocational schools (industrial institutes) • 74 teacher training schools • Very successful at first; over 600,000 freedmen were attending school in 1866
Lincoln’s assassination • April 14th, 1865, five days after Lee surrendered to Grant, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., by John Wilkes Booth
Andrew Johnson • VP under Lincoln • From Tennessee, despised Southern wealthy planter class and regarded Confederates as traitors • Radicals thought Johnson would endorse their ideas for reconstruction, but he went with Lincoln’s Plan with one new condition, ratification of the 13th Amendment. • Barred slavery throughout the United States
President vs. Congress • 1866 – President Johnson vetoes two bills passed by Congress • Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, which expanded the powers of the Freedmen’s Bureau • Civil Rights Act of 1866, which declared all people born in the United States citizens (except the Native Americans) • Both vetoes were overridden by Congress
Black Codes • Laws created by Southern whites to keep the newly freed blacks oppressed • Prohibited blacks from voting • Prohibited blacks from sitting on juries • Prohibited blacks from testifying against whites • Prohibited blacks from owning guns • Imposed a curfew in some states • Required “passes” to travel • Limited occupations that could be held by blacks
Radicals control Congress • After congressional elections in 1866, the Radical Republicans gained a 2/3 majority in Congress • Opposed to slavery and Southern Black Codes • Led by Thaddeus Stevens • Proposed 14th Amendment, which granted citizenship to anyone born in the US (except Native Americans) • Passed by Congress but not ratified by the South at Johnson’s request • Eventually passed in 1868
First Reconstruction Act 1867 • Placed the southern states under military rule • 20,000 federal troops were sent to maintain order • Civilian courts were replaced with military courts • Governments were run by Generals • For readmission to the Union, states had to give black men the right to vote and they had to ratify the 14th Amendment • Vetoed by Johnson, but this time with the Congress under Radical Republican control, his veto was overridden
The South under Radical Reconstruction • Southerners hated the new government • Any southerner who cooperated with the new government was called a scalawag. • Northerners who moved to the south to help the freedmen or run for office were called carpetbaggers.
Tenure of Office Act 1867 • Passed by Congress to try to get rid of President Johnson • Required that Congress give 2/3 approval to the President removing cabinet officers (high level government employees) • Many thought it unconstitutional, so Johnson challenged it by firing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton • 1868 – Johnson impeached by the House, but not convicted by the Senate (by a margin of 1 vote)
Election of 1868 • Ulysses S. Grant is elected on the Republican ticket • Won easily on the electoral ballot, but narrowly in the popular vote • With 6 million votes cast, Grant won the popular vote by 310,000. Most of the 500,000 southern blacks that voted had voted for Grant. • To prevent the southern governments from limiting black suffrage, Congress passed the 15th Amendment, which gave black males the right to vote
Making a living out of nothing • Although some Radicals favored dividing up former plantations and redistributing the land among freed slaves, this plan did not have much support • Freedman turned to sharecropping, where they were given land, seed, and equipment to use in return for 2/3 of the profit at the end of the year • This allowed for some independence, but was like slavery in some ways. • How was sharecropping similar and different than slavery?
Blacks in politics • During reconstruction, 16 AA were elected to Congress • Hiram R. Revels (Miss.) was the first black US senator
Positive effects of Reconstruction • Black suffrage established • Property ownership no longer necessary to vote or hold office • Imprisonment for debts ended • Public school system established
Negative effects of Reconstruction • Segregation developed in southern and northern society • Southern debt was high and taxes were raised to pay for Reconstruction. • Dishonesty and corruption in politics were everywhere, north and south.
White Terror • Some southern whites feared political power blacks were gaining and resented federal rule of their states. • Secret societies like the Ku Klux Klan formed who broke up Republican meetings, burned churches and homes, terrorized blacks, scalawags, and carpetbaggers, and even killed.
Force Acts and Ku Klux Klan Acts • 1870/1871 – Congress passed a series of strict laws to punish anyone who used force or intimidation to prevent someone from voting and to regulate and monitor the KKK • More soldiers were sent south • 1872 – KKK disbanded (temporarily)
Reconstruction Ends in 1877 • Southerners called the period after Reconstruction a time of redemption • Northerners grew indifferent to the cause of Reconstruction; they got tired of the corruption and did not trust the Republican governments in the south • Republican Reconstruction governments were replaced with traditional white rule after a deal was struck during the election of 1876 • Rutherford B. Hayes (Rep.) was elected President by one electoral vote over Samuel J. Tilden (Dem. NY) • Republican and Democrats conspired to elect Hayes by allowing the south to “redeem” its governments
Redemption • New southern governments passed Jim Crow Laws that segregated society and allowed discrimination • Blacks had to ride in back seats in public transportation • Blacks had to attend separate schools, restaurants, and theaters. They also had to use separate hospitals, churches, and cemeteries
Redemption steals black suffrage • Laws implementing literacy tests and poll taxes deprived many blacks the right to vote • The literacy tests were supposed to limit voting to only those who could read and write, but blacks were given much harder questions to answer. • Poll taxes, or fees for voting, were often too expensive for poor blacks to afford • Poor whites got around the poll tax and literacy tests under grandfather clause laws, which said any man whose father or grandfather voted before January 1, 1867, could vote.
Plessy v. Ferguson • 1896 – Supreme court ruled that segregation laws were legal, as long as the facilities were “equal” • “Separate but equal” remained the law of the land until the 1950’s.
