Reconstruction and the New South

Reconstruction and the New South Chapter 15

The Problems of Peacemaking • The Aftermath of War and Emancipation • The “Lost Cause” = sense of loss for southern whites

Competing Notions of Freedom

Competing Notions of Freedom cont’d • Freedman’s Bureau

Issues of Reconstruction • Northern Beliefs • Inter-party Disagreement

Lincoln’s Plans for Reconstruction • President Lincoln = Moderate (10% Plan) • Radical Republicans outraged by Lincoln’s program

The Death of Lincoln

Johnson and “Restoration” • Plan resembled Wade-Davis Bill, in order to gain re-admission, states had to • By the end of 1865 all the seceded states had formed new governments and prepared to join the union as soon as Congress recognized them.

Radical Reconstruction (Congressional Reconstruction) • The Black Codes

The Fourteenth Amendment • imposed penalties on states that denied suffrage to any adult male inhabitants

*Fake Smile* The Congressional Plan • The Plan:

The Fifteenth Amendment • Grandfather Clause • Impeaching the President and Assaulting the Courts

The South in Reconstruction • The Reconstruction Governments • Carpetbaggers

The Reconstruction Governments Cont’d • Largest contingency of southern Republicans were black freedmen

Education • Landownership and Tenancy • biggest goal of freedmen’s bureau was reform in landownership in the South

Landownership and Tenancy Cont’d • number of blacks owning land grew from none to 20%... • many blacks became “tenants”...

Incomes and Credit • black per capita income rose from about one-quarter of white per capita income to about one half of white per capita income in the first few years following the war and after this initial increase, it hardly rose at all.

Incomes and Credit Cont’d • Crop-lien system • The African-American Family in Freedom

The Grant Administration • Johnson’s presidency had left the country in political turmoil, and the nation wanted a stronger and more stable leader for the country, so they voted in Ulysses Simpson Grant

The Soldier President • Grant had no political experience, but he was planning on running the country like a general, since that was his experience with leadership.

The “Liberal” Republicans • At the end of his first term, some members of the Republican Party referred to themselves as the Liberal Republicans

The Grant Scandals • Credit Mobilier

The Grant Scandals Cont’d • Ben Bristow • “Indian Ring.”

The Greenback Question • debtors requested that the govt. redeem federal war bonds with greenbacks, paper currency printed during the Civil War, which would increase the money supply and cause inflation. (this helps those in debt, and hurts lenders.)

The Greenback Question Cont’d • approx. $356 million greenbacks in circulation, and in 1873, treasury issued more in response to panic.

Republican Diplomacy • Johnson and Grant administrations greatest successes were in foreign affairs.

The Abandonment of Reconstruction • The Southern States “Redeemed”

The Southern States “Redeemed” Cont’d • In states where blacks had the majority, whites used intimidation and violence to undermine the Reconstruction regimes

The Klu Klux Klan Acts (Enforcement Acts) • prohibited states from discriminating against voters on the basis of race

Waning Northern Commitment • Social Darwinism

The Compromise of 1877 • Republicans decide not to run Grant again in 1876, but Republicans decided to run Rutherford B. Hayes v. Democrat Tilden

The Legacy of Reconstruction • Brinkley “Reconstruction was in the end largely a failure” P.533

The New South • The “Redeemers”

The Industrialization of the “New South” • Many Southerners believed they had lost the war because they had a weak industrial economy... now the goal of the “New South was to Out Yankee the Yankees”

Tenants and Sharecroppers • “sharecropping”

African Americans and the New South • Some African Americans managed to elevate themselves financially, although not socially

The Birth of Jim Crow • Common theme = govt. (via Sup. Court) supports segregation, racism and discrimination! • Plessey v. Ferguson (1896) • Cumming v. County Board of Education (1899)

The Birth of Jim Crow Cont’d • Evading the 15th Amendment • Williams v. Mississippi (1890) validated southern literacy tests • Jim Crow

The Birth of Jim Crow Cont’d • 1890s dramatic increase in white violence towards blacks: 187 lynchings each year, more than 80% of them in the South, the vast majority of victims black

Reconstruction and the New South