Reconstruction

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Reconstruction

• The Unfinished Revolution
• 1865 - 1877

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Lincoln vs. Congress

• Lincolns 10 Plan (Dec. 1863)
• Once 10 of 1860 voters renounced secession
  slavery, could form new state governments apply
  for readmission
• All but high-ranking Confederate officers
  eligible for pardon
• 4 states qualified, but Congress refused to seat
  representatives senators
• Wade-Davis Bill (1864) pocket-vetoed by Lincoln
• Majority of 1860 voters had to renounce secession
  slavery
• Banned all Confederates from participation
• Guaranteed equality of African Americans before
  the law

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Presidential Reconstruction

• Andrew Johnson was a Tennessee Democrat
• Johnsons Plan
• States had to repudiate secession debts, and
  ratify the 13th Amendment
• High-ranking officers those worth over 20,000
  had to apply personally to him for pardon
• Ordered return of confiscated land to those he
  pardoned

Pres. Andrew Johnson
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Anti-Johnson Cartoons
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Southern Intransigence

• 1865 state conventions defied Johnsons lenient
  terms
• Ga. S.C. repealed (not repudiated) secession
• Miss. Ala. refused to ratify 13th Amendment
• Miss. S.C. failed to repudiate war debts
• States passed black codes severely restricting
  freedmens legal rights
• Out of 80 senators congressmen, elected
• 15 Confederate army officers
• 16 Confederate government officials
• 9 Confederate Congressmen
• Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens

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Congressional Reconstruction

• Freedmans Bureau (1865)
• Distributed food clothing
• Set up schools
• Distributed land settled 10,000 families on
  500,000 acres
• 13th Amendment (1865) abolished slavery
• 14th Amendment (passed 1866 ratified 1868)
• African Americans made citizens guaranteed
  equal protection of the laws.
• Failure to permit black men to vote penalized by
  withholding representation proportionally.
• Former Confederates ineligible for state or
  national office
• Confederate debts repudiated.

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Military Reconstruction Acts (1867)

• 10 states divided into 5 military districts
• Military supervised voter registration
  elections for new state constitutional
  conventions
• Had to guarantee black male suffrage
• Had to ratify 14th Amendment

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Showdown with Johnson

• Tenure of Office Act (1867) removal of
  presidential appointees required Senate
  confirmation
• Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in
  Aug. 1867
• Impeached by House of Representatives
• Acquitted by one vote in Senate, May 1868

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Grant Administration

• 15th Amendment (passed 1869 ratified 1870) gave
  black men the right to vote
• Ku Klux Klan Act (1871) authorized federal agents
  to prosecute Klansmen
• Civil Rights Act (1875) outlawed racial
  discrimination in transportation, public
  accommodations jury selection

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Reconstruction in the South

• Failure of Republican strategy
• Southern economy too damaged to quickly recover
• Unsettled conditions discouraged investors
• Democrats used fraud violence to redeem state
  governments
• Ku Klux Klan targeted white black Republicans
• Failure of land reform kept planter aristocracy
  in control pushed many blacks and poor whites
  into sharecropping
• Blacks chose sharecropping over wage labor
• 20 of blacks owned land by 1880

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The Sharecropping System
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Sharecroppers
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The Compromise of 1877

• Disputed states (S.C., La. Fla.) probably would
  have gone Republican in a fair election
• Commission voted 8-7 to award all 20 votes to
  Hayes
• Secret deal worked out
• Democrats accepted Hayes as president
• Hayes withdrew federal troops ended enforcement
  of reconstruction laws