Reconstruction and Industrialization

Reconstruction and Industrialization U.S. History Unit #9

Closure Question #1: Why was Reconstruction of the South likely to be a difficult process? • Era in which the U.S. Government struggled to return the 11 southern states to the Union, rebuild the South’s ruined economy, & promote the rights of former slaves. • The Constitution provided no guidance on the secession or readmission of states. Some argued that states should be allowed to rejoin the Union with few conditions. However, most Americans believed that the defeated staes should first satisfy certain stipulations, such as swearing loyalty to the federal government and adopting state constitutions that guaranteed freedmen’s rights. • Between 1860 and 1870 the South’s share of the nation’s wealth dropped from more than 30% to 12%. 25% of white men between 20 and 40 years old died in the war. More than 3 million freed African Americans were without homes or jobs. • The 13th Amendment freed African Americans from slavery, but it did not grant them full citizenship. While former slaves and Republicans supported extending full citizenship to African Americans, most white southerners opposed the idea because they feared it would undermine their power and status in society. Reconstruction1865-1877

Closure Question #2: Why do you think President Lincoln proposed generous terms for Reconstruction in 1863? • Radical Republicans – Politicians who supported extending full-citizenship to African Americans and punishing southerners by taking their land and giving farms to freedmen. • Wade-Davis Bill (1864)- Required a majority of the south’s pre-war voters swear loyalty to the Union and demanded guarantees of African American equality; the Bill was vetoed by Abraham Lincoln. • Lincoln supported a more lenient plan for re-admitting the southern states into the Union. His “Ten Percent Plan” stated that as soon as 10% of a state’s voters took a loyalty oath to the Union, the state could set up a new government. If the state’s constitution abolished slavery and provided education to African Americans, the state would regain representation in Congress. • In his 2nd inaugural addressLincoln said “With malice towards none, and charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds…to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” Radical Republicans / Wade-Davis Bill

Closure Question #3: How did the Radical Republicans try to protect the rights of African Americans? • Government institution from 1865 to 1872 which focused on providing food, clothing, healthcare and education for black and white refugees in the South. • The Freedmen’s Bureau was officially called the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen , and Abandoned Lands; it was the brainchild of Radical Republicans and received the support of President Lincoln just a few weeks prior to his assassination. • The Freedmen’s Bureau helped reunite families that had been separated by slavery and war. It negotiated fair labor contracts between former slaves and white landowners. • By representing African Americans in the courts, the Bureau also established a precedent that black citizens had legal rights. Freedmen’s Bureau

Andrew Johnson (1808-1875) – Vice-President to Lincoln and President of the United States from 1865 to 1868; Johnson opposed giving rights to African Americans and pardoned Southern military and political figures. • Despite a lack of formal schooling, Andrew Johnson became a skilled public speaker and entered Tennessee politics as a Democrat. When Tennessee seceded in 1861, Johnson was the only southern senator who refused to join the Confederacy. He believed that the plantation-owning aristocrats of the south were to blame for the way, but he held the view of most Southerners that African-Americans should be subservient to Anglo-Americans. • Impeach – To charge a political official with criminal activity while in office in; President Johnson, a Democrat, was impeached by the Republican controlled House of Representatives for trying to fire Republican Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Previously, Congress had passed a law which required the President to receive approval from the Senate before removing certain officials from office. The trial, which took place in the Senate, ended with Johnson being acquitted by one vote. Andrew Johnson / Impeach

Closure Question #3: How did the Radical Republicans try to protect the rights of African Americans? • Black Codes – Laws enacted after the Civil War that sought to limit the rights of African-Americans and keep them as landless workers. • With the encouragement of President Johnson, following the Civil War southern state governments were re-established under the control of whites. These state government did everything in their power, short of reintroducing slavery, to recreate the economic system of the pre-war South. Some southern states even sent their Confederate officials to the United States Congress. • Civil Rights Act of 1866 – Measure passed by Congress which created federal guarantees of civil rights for African-Americans and superseded any state laws that limited them; the Act was vetoed by President Johnson. Black Codes / Civil Rights Act of 1866

Closure Question #3: How did the Radical Republicans try to protect the rights of African Americans? • Passed by Congress in 1867 over the objections of President Johnson; the 14th amendment guaranteed equality under the law for all citizens, including Freedmen. Under the law, any state that refused to allow black people to vote would lose the number of seats in the House of Representatives that were represented by its black population. The amendment followed on the momentum started by the official abolition of slavery throughout the U.S.A. by the 13th Amendment. • The 14th amendment also counteracted the President’s pardons by barring leading Confederate officials from holding federal or state offices. In 1867 Congress also passed the Military Reconstruction Act, which divided the 10 southern states that had not yet been readmitted to the Union into 5 military districts which were governed by former Union generals. Fourteenth Amendment

Closure Question #3: How did the Radical Republicans try to protect the rights of African Americans? • Passed in 1869, the 15th amendment prohibits any state from denying the right to vote to any male on the grounds of race, color, or previous conditions of servitude. • Unlike previous measures, the guarantee applied to northern states as well as southern states. Both the 14th and 15th amendments were ratified by 1870, but both contained loopholes that left room for evasion. • States could still impose voting restrictions based on literacy or property qualifications, which in effect would exclude most African-Americans. • The Amendment was passed by the Republican congress in response to the election of 1868 in which the Republican candidate, Ulysses S. Grant, was elected but his opponent, Democrat Horatio Seymour, received a majority of white votes. Fifteenth Amendment

Answer the following questions based on what you have learned from Chapter 12, Section 1: • Why was Reconstruction of the South likely to be a difficult process? • Why do you think President Lincoln proposed generous terms for Reconstruction in 1863? • How did the Radical Republicans try to protect the rights of African Americans? Closure Assignment #1

Closure Question #1: How did Republican governments provide new opportunities in the South? • Scalawags – Term used by wealthy southerners for post-war politicians who prior to the Civil War were not allowed to enter politics because of their wealthy neighbors. • Scalawags found allies in northern white or black men who relocated to the South. They came seeking to improve their economic or political situations, or to help make a better life for the freedmen. Many southern whites resented what they felt was an invasion of northerners who came to make their fortunes from the South’s misfortune. Almost 1,500 black men – some born free, some recently released from slavery – helped usher the Republican Party into the South. These new black citizens served as school superintendents, sheriffs, mayors, coroners, police chiefs, and representatives in state legislatures. Six served as lieutenant governors. • Carpetbaggers – Term used by southerners for northern Republicans who moved to the south to take advantage of the weak economy there in order to become rich themselves. Scalawags / Carpetbaggers

Closure Question #2: How did social and economic life change for freed people? • Segregation – Forced separation of individuals according to their race. • Integration – Forced association of individuals regardless of their race. • Mandated by Reconstruction state constitutions, public schools grew slowly, drawing in only about half of southern children by the end of the 1870s. • Establishing a new school was expensive, especially since southerners chose to establish segregated schools. Still, the establishment of a public school system in the south was a major achievement of the Reconstruction Era. Segregation / Integration

Southern post-Civil War economic system in which a landowner provided a sharecropper with a place to live as well as seeds and tools in return for a “share” of the harvested crop. • The landowner often bought these supplies on credit, at very high interest. The landlord passed on these costs to the sharecropper. As a result, the sharecroppers were perpetually in debt to the landowner, and the landowner was always in debt to the supplier. • One problem with this system was that most landlords, remembering the huge profits from prewar cotton, chose to invest in this crop again. Dishonest landowners could like about the cost of supplies devaluing the sharecropper’s harvest that now amounted to less than the season’s expenses. As a result the sharecropper could never move, because he always owed the owner the labor for next year’s crop. Closure Question #2: How did social and economic life change for freed people? Sharecropping

Closure Question #2: How did social and economic life change for freed people? • Share-tenancy – Similar to sharecropping, except that the farm worker chose what crop he would plant and bought his own supplies, then gave a share of the crop to the landowner. • Under share-tenancy the farm worker had a little more control over the cost of supplies and, as a result, he might be able to grow a variety of crops or use some of the land to grow food for his family. With these choices, it became more possible to save money. • Tenant Farming – Southern economic system in which the farmer paid cash rent to the landowner and then was free to choose and manage his own crop. • Tenant farming was only possible for farmers that had good money-management skills and some good luck. Share-Tenancy / Tenant Farming

Closure Question #3: Why did racial violence increase after 1870? How did the federal government respond. • Formed in Tennessee in 1866; the KKK was a terrorist organization which roamed the countryside, especially at night, burning homes, schools, and churches, and beating or killing African-Americans and their white allies. • Dressed in white robes and hoods, mounted on horses with hooves thundering through the woods, these gangs aimed to scare freed people away from voting. • The Klan took special aim at the symbols of black freedom: African American teachers and schools, churches and ministers, politicians, and anyone – white or black – who encouraged black people to vote. As a result of their efforts, African American voters in many rural counties were too intimidated to vote. Ku Klux Klan

Closure Question #3: Why did racial violence increase after 1870? How did the federal government respond. • Also known as the Ku Klux Klan Acts; passed in 1870 and 1871 by the US Congress, making it a federal offense to interfere with a citizen’s right to vote. Congress used the acts to indict hundred’s of KKK members throughout the South, leading to a decline in violence against Republicans and African-Americans in the South beginning in 1872. • Racial violence at the polls was not limited to the South. In the 1870 election in Philadelphia, a company of marines was sent in to protect African American voters. When no such protection was supplied for the 1871 elections, an African American teacher, Octavius Catto, was killed in anti-black political riots. • Though violence declined, it was far from extinguished. Always beneath the surface, racial violence in the South repeatedly resurfaced in the United States in the decades that followed. Enforcement Acts

Answer the following questions based on what you have learned from Chapter 12, Section 2: • How did Republican governments provide new opportunities in the South? • How did social and economic life change for freed people? • Why did racial violence increase after 1870? How did the federal government respond. Closure Assignment #2

Ulysses S. Grant was a popular war hero, but a disappointing President. Allied with Radical Republicans, he promised to take a strong stand against southern resistance to Reconstruction. But Grant’s ability to lead was marred by scandal. He gave high-level advisory posts to untrustworthy friends and acquaintances who used their positions to grow rich. His own Vice President, Schuyler Colfax, was investigated and implicated in a scheme to steal profits from the Union Pacific Railroad. Americans sensed the aura of greed surrounding American politics. When scandal swirled around the members of his administration, Grant seemed to look the other way. • The public’s discontent was worsened by economic turmoil and uncertainty. In the fall of 1873, one of the nation’s most influential banks failed, apparently as a result of overextended loans to the expanding railroad industry. Suddenly, the southern economy was not the only one in trouble. Across the nation, bank failures, job losses, and the uncertain economy added to the concerns of Americans, drawing attention away from “fixing” the South. Closure Question #1: What factors contributed to the refocusing of the nation away from the problems of the South?

Closure Question #1: What factors contributed to the refocusing of the nation away from the problems of the South? • New York Democrat and Senator who came to became a symbol for the political corruption of the 1870s; in 1873 Tweed and other New York politicians were charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison for stealing millions of dollars from the New York City treasury. • Accusations of political corruption were made in both state and federal governments in the post-Civil War Era. Even Ulysses S. Grant, former Union General and President from 1869 to 1877, was accused of using his position to enable untrustworthy friends and acquaintances to steal money from taxpayers. Grant’s Vice-President, Schuyler Colfax, and brother were implicated in corruption schemes. • Thomas Nast, a New York journalist and cartoonist, was one of the key figures in exposing political corruption. Through his drawings he attacked the major political and social issues of the post-Civil War period. He is considered by some to be the father of the American political cartoon. William Tweed

Politicians in the 1870s who aimed to repair or “redeem” the South in the eyes of Congress; through their efforts wealthy white southern men reclaimed positions in state governments and Democrats gained control of the House of Representatives in 1874. • By the end of the 1860s, voters and politicians outside the South turned their attention to other issues, such as reforming politics and the economy. Gradually, beginning in 1871, Northern troops were withdrawn from the South. In 1872 the Freedmen’s Bureau was eliminated. • In the 1870s the Supreme Court made a series of rulings which chipped away at the rights granted to African Americans in the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. For example, in the case of United States v. Cruikshank (1876) the Supreme Court ruled that a white mob in Louisiana which had killed a large group of African Americans at a political rally could not be charged for their crimes since the Constitution only set regulations for states, not for individual citizens. • With the Radical Republican movement gradually fading away, Northern whites increasingly joined with Southern whites in supporting policies that restricted African American rights and encouraged segregation. Redeemers

Closure Question #2: Why did the goals of the Republican Party change during the 1870s? • Ohio Republican and former Union general who was chosen as President following the election of 1876 in what came to be known as the Compromise of 1877. • Hayes was a respected Union general who had served in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1866. He resigned to become governor of Ohio, were he developed a reputation for honesty and reform-mindedness. Hayes’ opponent, New York Democrat Samuel Tilden, had been active in fighting corruption in New York City. Both candidates held appeal for voters who were tired of corrupt leadership. • In the election Tilden received 51% of the popular vote and won all of the southern states. However, Republicans claimed that the votes had been miscounted in 3 southern states, which happened to be states where Republicans controlled the reporting of ballots. Not surprisingly, in the recount, the Republicans found enough mistakes to swing the election to Hayes by one electoral vote. Rutherford B. Hayes

Closure Question #2: Why did the goals of the Republican Party change during the 1870s? • Agreement reached between Republicans and Democrats which made Republican Rutherford B. Hayes President and required all Federal troops to be withdrawn from the South and gave southern states federal subsidies to build railroads and improve their ports. The Compromise of 1877 is considered the official end of the Reconstruction Era. • When southern Democrats protested the results of the Presidential Election of 1876, Congress created a commission of 5 senators (chosen by the Republican-dominated Senate), 5 representatives (chosen by the Democratic-dominated House of Representatives), and 5 Supreme Court Justices. • The Commission reached the Compromise of 1877 as noted above. As part of the Compromise also a southerner was appointed to a powerful Presidential cabinet position. Following the Compromise the South and the millions of recently freed African Americans were left to resolve conflicts without Federal intervention. Compromise of 1877

Before the Civil War, no African American in the South, and only a small number in the North, had the right to vote. Few black southerners owned land. Most worked others’ land, without pay, and without hope of improving their lot. • Reconstruction changed these things. By 1877, a few southern black Americans owned their own farms. That number would grow slowly through the next decades. Before the Civil War, most southern African Americans worked – involuntarily – in agriculture. Reconstruction began to give them choices. Perhaps most importantly, the Freedmen’s Bureau helped reunite freed slaves with their families and promoted literacy within African American communities. • Though it fell short of its ambitious goals, Reconstruction opened new vistas for black Americans, North and South. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments provided hope for full inclusion in American society, though it would take later generations to use them to gain racial equality. Closure Question #3: From the perspective of an African American in the South, how was Reconstruction a success and how was it a failure?

Answer the following questions based on what you have learned from Chapter 12, Section 3: • What factors contributed to the refocusing of the nation away from the problems of the South? • Why did the goals of the Republican Party change during the 1870s? • From the perspective of an African American in the South, how was Reconstruction a success and how was it a failure? Closure Assignment #3

Reconstruction and Industrialization