From the Constitution to Reconstruction

1
From the Constitution to Reconstruction

• Southern Politics in the 19th Century

2
The Constitution

• Southern Leadership and Interests
• Virginia Plan, Madison,
• Pinckney Plan, Charles Pinckney of SC
• Support for ratification not universal

3
In the New Nation

• Federalist support strong in commercial centers
  of the South and North
• Virginia Dynasty
• Rise of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian Party

4
John C. Calhoun

• Nationalist who becomes a sectionalist
• One of the foremost American political theorists
• Begins to fear federal power more than sectional
  disunity
• Became a strategist for a unified Southern
  position on slavery

5
Era of Sectionalism

• Tariff divides the sections
• South Carolina attempts nullification
• Congress maintains sectional balance
• Whigs vs. Democrats

6
Sectional Crisis Intensifies

• Inability to compromise
• New Republican Party forms
• All of the national institutions split
• Closing of the Southern Mind
• Election of Lincoln, Lower South secedes

7
The War
8
What happens after the war

• At first, pre-war leaders in control
• Presidential Reconstruction, 10 Plan
• What to do with the freedmen
• Failure of Self-Reconstruction

9
Revolution in public life in the South

• History and Memory
• For whites, experience of defeat and occupation
• Experience of political activity of former slaves
• Whites resolve to overthrow Reconstruction
• Never again
• Memory for the freedmen
• Experience of exercising political power

10
Leadership

• Senators Hiram Revels, Blanche Bruce
• Congressman Joseph Rainey
• Governor P. B. S. Pinchback
• Many others

11
End of Reconstruction

• Whites spent 10 years resisting
• 20 years undoing
• 60 years maintaining

12
Wait out the North

• Fraud
• Violence, Economic Pressure
• Maintaining white rule
• Gain control of state government
• Gain control of the electorate
• Gradual campaign to purge opponents from the
  voter rolls
• Avoid federal intervention

13
Gaining control of the state

• Once in power, a minority must consolidate its
  power
• Expel dissidents from the legislature
• Use power to write new rules
• Re-apportionment
• Use power to gain control of local governments
  appoint local officers