The New South and the Old West

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The New South and the Old West

• Failure to implement truly radical measures
  during reconstruction failed to truly help
  southern Blacks while thoroughly angering and
  alienating southern whites.

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I. After Appomattox The Ultimate Questions

• How do you reconstruct the Union?
• How far should the federal government go to
  insure Black freedom and civil rights?

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II. Philosophies of Reconstruction

• Presidential
• --quick restoration with minimal protection for
  southern Blacks
• Congressional
• -- loyal southern governments to replace
  ex-confederates
• --Southern Blacks need basic rights of American
  citizenship

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III. Presidential Reconstruction

• Lincolns 10 plan
• Battle over who had the power to reconstruct the
  Union
• Andrew Johnsons background
• --hated southern planters
• --no friend of Blacks
• Johnsons Reconstruction Plan (May, 1865)

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IV. Radical Republicans Gain the Upper Hand

• Johnsons controversial vetoes
• Johnsons opposition to the 14th amendment
• The Swing Around the Circle (1866)
• Republicans won veto-proof majorities in the 1866
  election

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V. Congressional Reconstruction (Begins in 1867)

• Reconstruction Act of 1867
• Military rule of the south
• Readmission of states with guarantees of Black
  suffrage
• Exclusion of ex-Confederates from government
  office
• Radicals wanted redistribution of land to
  Blackstoo radical

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VI. The Impeachment Crisis

• Johnson tries to obstruct congressional
  reconstruction with executive privilege
• Tenure of Office Act
• Johnson tries to remove Secretary of War Stanton
• Impeachment and Trial in the Senate
• Process neutralized Johnson

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VII. Reconstruction in the South

• A Condition of Ruin
• Forty Acres and a Mule
• Blacks resist gang labor after the War
• Development of Sharecropper system
• Black Codes
• The Segregated South
• Freedmen faced violence if they tried to vote

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VIII. The Southern Republican Party

• Hastily organized for 1868 elections
• Three constituencies
• --southern Blacks
• --northern businessmen
• --poor, white farmers
• Some success, some corruption
• Blacks held only limited political offices in the
  south

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IX. The Fifteenth Amendment

• Highpoint of Reconstruction era
• Ratified in 1870
• Ambiguous wording allowed the future use of
  literacy tests, poll taxes, and property
  requirements
• Worked to divide the feminist movement

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X. Grant and the Retreat from Reconstruction

• Rise of the Ku Klux Klan between 1868-1872
• Inconsistent use of federal troops to protect
  Black voters
• Northern disenchantment with propping up
  corrupt southern state governments
• Open southern appeal to white supremacy after 1872

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X. Retreat from Reconstruction (cont.)

• Grant administration facing charges of corruption
• -- Credit Mobilier scandal
• Radical Republicans dying or out of office
• Civil service reform replaces Black civil rights
  as the major political issue of the time

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XI. The Compromise of 1877

• The election of 1876
• Tilden vs. Hayes
• Disputed votes in the electoral college
• Electoral commission fell under Republican
  control
• Hayes victory in exchange for southern home
  rule
• Eliminates Republican party in the south
• Presidency of Hayes

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XII. The New South

• Redemption governments
• Laissez-faire policies and white supremacy
• Northern industry attracted to no taxes and low
  wages for workers
• Corrupt governments

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XII. The New South (cont.)

• Lynchings common
• Poor whites neglected just as much as Blacks
• Some Blacks continue to vote until the 1890s
• Supreme Court decisions between 1875-1896 gutted
  Reconstruction
• --Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

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XII. The New South (cont.)

• Signs of sectional healing Battlefield reunions
• Sectional reconciliation made possible by
  northern abandonment of Black rights
• Lost Cause myth also helps reconcile the two
  regions
• Blacks bore the burden of sectional reconciliation

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XIII. New South Economic Growth

• Increase in southern cotton mills
• Growth of southern tobacco industry
• --Duke family
• Thriving Lumber industry
• Other southern industries

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XIV. Voices in Opposition to Southern Racism

• Booker T. Washington
• W.E.B. DuBois
• --The Niagara Movement (1905)
• Ida Wells
• Henry McNeal Turner
• Frances E. W. Harper

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XV. The Old West

• Competing perceptions of the Old West
• Best to view the Old West as a series of
  frontiers
• Geography and climate played a huge role in this
  area

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XVI. Mining the West

• Scattering of settlements in non-agricultural
  areas
• History of western strikes
• Deadwood, South Dakota
• Admission of new western states

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XVII. Western Indian Wars

• Life and disunity of the western tribes
• The Chivington massacre (1864)
• The Battle of the Little Big Horn (1876)
• The retreat of the Nez Perces and Chief Joseph

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XVII. Western Indian Wars (cont.)

• Capture of Apache Chief Geronimo in 1886
• The Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee (1890)
• The extinction of buffalo herds
• Eastern concerns for Indian welfare
• --Helen Hunt Jacksons A Century of Dishonor
• The Dawes Act of 1867

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XVIII. The Cattle Frontier and Cowboys

• The history of cattle raising
• The average cowboy
• Mexican origins of the cowboy life
• Abilene and Dodge City, Kansas
• The disintegration of the cattle drive
• --Invention of barbed wire (1873)

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XIX. The Farming Frontier

• Sodbustersthe least romantic of the western
  frontiersmen
• The importance of the railroad
• Plains farmer faced a grim struggle with danger,
  adversity and monotony
• Last Indian territory opened to settlement in 1889

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XIX. The Farming Frontier (cont.)

• Egalitarian gender roles on the frontier
• The competition of bonanza farms
• The western farmers conspiracy theory
• 1890 U.S. census frontier closed
• The historical theory of Frederick Jackson Turner