Bell Work 1

1
Bell Work 1

• Describe a recent conflict you had that .
• (Any conflict with a parent, friend, significant
  other, sibling, etc.)
• How was the conflict resolved?
• What were the steps to resolve the conflict and
  smooth things over?
• What kinds of things caused more problems?

2

• Reconstruction the process of rebuilding that
  followed the American Civil War.
• The United States had never had civil war.
• The end of the war left Americans with a number
  of important questions over what to do with the
  South after the defeat of the Confederacy and the
  end of slavery.

3
Questions for Americans after the Civil War

• Answer each of the following questions
• 1) What was the relationship between the former
  Confederate states and the Union? What should be
  demanded of those states before the Union was
  reconstructed?
• 2) Who was responsible for the Confederate
  rebellion? Who, if anyone, should be punished for
  it?
• 3) What should be the position of the newly-freed
  slaves? What responsibility did the government
  have to extend basic rights to them? Which
  rights?
• 4) How should the Southern economy be converted
  from one based on slave labor to one based on
  free labor?

4
Bell Work 2

• What is Reconstruction?
• What problems might southerners have once the war
  was over and soldiers returned home?
• Was land, government, and the economy going to be
  intact?
• Why do you think the most drastic changes would
  be in the lives of southerners?

5
The Reconstruction

• When Confederate soldiers returned from the war,
  they returned to a ravaged land. Large areas
  were now wastelands due to fighting and
  mistreatment of the land.
• The land was not all that was in ruin in the
  south after the war. Economically, politically,
  socially, the south was in total disarray.
• Money was worthless from the inflation
• Government had disappeared
• There was no police or authority except when
  people took matters into their own hands.
• The economy was also in trouble because of the
  loss of enslaved people, which was an investment
  worth more than 2 billion dollars.

6
Landowners

• Some landowners were fortunate enough to keep
  their land if it was paid off. In some cases,
  slaves would even stay and agree to keep working,
  but for something in return.
• Other landowners were not so lucky. Many who
  were in debt or had taxes they could not pay had
  their land taken away.
• Many attempted to sell their land for
  outrageously low prices, and even advertised it
  in northern newspapers.

7
The Workers

• Many African-Americans and other broke
  southerners became sharecroppers, which were
  people who worked an owners land, and received a
  share of the crops in return.
• Although seemingly a good solution, there were
  many defects.
• Landowners wanted the highest possible return, so
  they planted the most valuable crops, which in
  time depleted the soils nutrients.
• Tenants usually had to buy seed, fertilizer,
  animals, etc. on credit with interest rates of
  40. No matter how hard they worked, they
  remained in debt and trapped on that land.

8
Bell Work 3

• What do you think should have been done with the
  confederacy after the war?
• What was Lincolns plan to bring the nation back
  together after the Civil War?
• How would you characterize his plan?

9
WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE

• Abraham Lincoln was eager to above all else, to
  bring the Union together again, not by force and
  repression but by warmth and generosity.
• Lincoln's second inaugural address closed with
  these words
• With malice toward none with charity for all
  with firmness in the right, as God gives us to
  see the right, let us strive on to finish the
  work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds
  to care for him who shall have borne the battle,
  and for his widow and his orphan...to do all
  which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting
  peace among ourselves and with all nations.
• Three weeks later, two days after Lee's
  surrender, Lincoln delivered his last public
  address, in which he unfolded a generous
  reconstruction policy.
• He was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln
  died in a downstairs bedroom of a house across
  the street from Ford's on the morning of April
  15.

An Outline of American History
http//usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/history/ch6.
htmwith
10
Lincolns Plan

• After the war there were many clashes in ideas of
  reconstruction policies. Some believed that the
  South should be punished for their wrong doings.
  President Lincoln argued that the task at hand
  was to restore the Union.
• Because of his beliefs, Lincoln favored a
  generous policy for reconstruction.
• Except for a few high ranking southern officials,
  he offered amnesty, or pardon, to all southerners
  who pledged an oath of loyalty to the United
  States.
• Lincoln proposed that when 10 of the states
  voters in the 1860 election had taken the oath,
  congress would readmit that state to the Union

11
Presidential Reconstruction

• The first great task for Lincoln's vice
  president, Andrew Johnson, a Southerner who
  remained loyal to the Union was to determine the
  status of the states that had seceded.
• Lincoln had already set the stage. In his view,
  the people of the Southern states had never
  legally seceded they had been misled by some
  disloyal citizens into a defiance of federal
  authority.

An Outline of American History
http//usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/history/ch6.
htmwith
12

• Since the war was the act of individuals, the
  federal government would have to deal with these
  individuals and not with the states.
• In 1863 Lincoln proclaimed that if in any state
  10 percent of the voters of record in 1860 would
  form a government loyal to the U.S. Constitution
  and would acknowledge obedience to the laws of
  the Congress and the proclamations of the
  president, he would recognize the government so
  created as the state's legal government.
• Congress rejected this plan and challenged
  Lincoln's right to deal with the matter without
  consultation.
• Some members of Congress advocated severe
  punishment for all the seceded states. Yet even
  before the war was wholly over, new governments
  had been set up in Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas
  and Louisiana.

An Outline of American History
http//usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/history/ch6.
htmwith
13
Dealing with Slaves and the States

• One of the major concerns was the condition of
  former slaves.
• Freedmen's Bureau was established by Congress in
  March 1865 to act as guardian over African
  Americans and guide them toward self-support.
• And in December of that year, Congress ratified
  the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,
  which abolished slavery.
• Throughout the summer of 1865 Johnson proceeded
  to carry out Lincoln's reconstruction program,
  with a few changes. By presidential proclamation
  he appointed a governor for each of the former
  Confederate states and restored political rights
  to large numbers of Southern citizens through use
  of presidential pardons.

An Outline of American History
http//usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/history/ch6.
htmwith
14
The Freedmens Bureau

• Toward the end of the war, congress created
  within the war department a Bureau of Refugees,
  Freedmen, and abandoned lands. It became known
  as the Freedmens Bureau.
• The Bureaus first objective was to help African-
  Americans adjust to their new freedom. It also
  gave food and clothing to war ravaged people in
  the south, and provided medical help and founded
  45 hospitals in 14 different states.

15
Land

• The dream of most freed slaves was to own their
  own plot of land. During the war, the Union had
  seized large amounts of confederate land.
• At first, congress decided it would be a good
  idea to give some of this land to former enslaved
  people. So the Freedmens bureau was permitted
  to give away 40 acre plots in the sea islands of
  South Carolina.
• Later on, President Andrew Johnson decided to
  pardon the Confederates, which also restored
  their property rights. This gave them the right
  to take back any of their former land that had
  been given away to enslaved people.

16
Bell Work 4

• Do you think the South should have been punished?
• What was the ultimate goal of the war?
• Was punishing the South going to make things
  better?

17

• Conventions were held in each of the former
  Confederate states to repeal the ordinances of
  secession.
• Eventually a Unionist became governor in each
  state with authority to have a convention of
  loyal voters.
• Johnson asked each convention to invalidate the
  secession, abolish slavery, deny all debts that
  went to aid the Confederacy and ratify the 13th
  Amendment.
• By the end of 1865, this process, with a few
  exceptions, was completed.

An Outline of American History
http//usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/history/ch6.
htmwith
18
Radical Republicans Plan

• Radical Republicans resisted Lincolns ideas
  almost immediately.
• Their idea was proposed in the Wade-Davis Bill of
  1864. This legislation proposed putting the
  South under military rule until the MAJORITY of
  the states voters took the loyalty oath. Then
  the could be readmitted as a state.
• Lincoln didnt like this and vetoed the plan.
• However, when Arkansas, Tennessee, and Louisiana
  met the conditions of Lincolns plan, congress
  refused to readmit them to the Union. Lincoln
  then realized that neither side was going to
  budge and began to negotiate with the Radicals.
  Before anything was sorted out, Lincoln was
  assassinated.

19
RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION

• Both Lincoln and Johnson had foreseen that the
  Congress would have the right to deny Southern
  legislators seats in the U.S. Senate or House of
  Representatives.
• Constitution says "Each house shall be the judge
  of the...qualifications of its own members."
• Under the leadership of Thaddeus Stevens, the
  congressmen called "Radical Republicans" who
  wanted to punish the South refused to seat its
  elected senators and representatives.
• Then the Congress worked out a plan for the
  reconstruction of the South quite different from
  the one Lincoln had started and Johnson had
  continued.
• Wide public support gradually developed for those
  members of Congress who believed that blacks
  should be given full citizenship.
• By July 1866, Congress had passed a civil rights
  bill and set up a new Freedmen's Bureau both
  designed to prevent racial discrimination by
  Southern legislatures.

An Outline of American History
http//usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/history/ch6.
htmwith
20

• Congress passed a 14th Amendment to the
  Constitution, which stated that "All persons born
  or naturalized in the United States and subject
  to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
  United States and of the states in which they
  reside,"
• This overturned the Dred Scott ruling which
  denied slaves their right of citizenship.
• All the Southern state legislatures, with the
  exception of Tennessee, refused to ratify the
  amendment, some voting against it unanimously.
• In addition, in the aftermath of the war,
  Southern state legislatures passed black codes,
  which tried to re-impose bondage and
  discrimination on the freedmen.
• The codes differed from state to state, but some
  provisions were common. Blacks were required to
  enter into annual labor contracts, with penalties
  imposed in case of violation dependent children
  were subject to compulsory apprenticeship and
  corporal punishments by masters and vagrants
  could be sold into private service if they could
  not pay severe fines.

An Outline of American History
http//usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/history/ch6.
htmwith
21
Black Codes

• Radicals were also concerned about the status of
  African Americans in the south.
• Like Lincoln, Johnson believed that it was a
  state matter and that federal jurisdiction
  stopped with the abolition of slavery.
• Southern state governments, however, endorsed the
  principle that stated Ours is and ever shall be
  a government of white men.
• Black Codes were a serious of laws passed by
  southern state legislatures limited the rights of
  African Americans and made their status clearly
  lower.
• In no state were African Americans allowed to
  vote, testify against whites, carry arms, or
  serve jury duty.
• Some states required African Americans to be
  employed, or face being arrested as vagrants and
  their labor sold to the highest bidder. Other
  states only permitted the to work as farmers and
  servants, leaving them little room for
  opportunity.

22
The Fourteenth Amendment

• Congress passed a 14th Amendment to the
  Constitution in June, 1866. The amendment
  defined citizenship to include African Americans
  and required that no state deny any person equal
  protection of the laws.
• In the 1866 congressional elections, the Radicals
  had overwhelming victory. They gained control of
  both the House and the Senate. This gave them
  the power to override any presidential veto.
• The first goal was to sweep away new state
  governments in the South and replace them with
  military rule.
• They also wanted to ensure that former
  Confederate leaders would have no role in
  governing the South. Also, they hoped to protect
  the freed African Americans right to vote.

23

• In response to the Black Codes certain groups in
  the North wanted laws to protect the rights of
  blacks in the South.
• In the Reconstruction Act of March 1867.
  Congress, ignored the governments that had been
  established in the Southern states, divided the
  South into five districts and placed them under
  military rule.
• Escape from permanent military government was
  open to those states that established civil
  governments, took an oath of allegiance, ratified
  the 14th Amendment and adopted black suffrage.
• The amendment was ratified in 1868.

An Outline of American History
http//usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/history/ch6.
htmwith
24

• The 15th Amendment was passed by Congress the
  following year and ratified in 1870 by state
  legislatures.
• Stated that "The rights of citizens of the United
  States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by
  the United States or any state on account of
  race, color or previous condition of servitude."

An Outline of American History
http//usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/history/ch6.
htmwith
25
Johnsons Program

• Andrew Johnson, who succeeded President Lincoln
  attempted to follow through with Lincolns
  Reconstruction policies.
• Johnson had little luck though for many reasons.
  Because he was an unelected president, he was not
  that popular with the people.
• Johnson also was a former Democrat, which kept
  him from keeping support of the Republican
  majority in congress.
• To top it all off, he was a Tennessean and former
  slaveholder himself which offended many of the
  Radicals. If that wasnt bad enough, he was also
  viewed as self righteous, hot tempered, stubborn,
  and crude.
• Eventually, Johnsons Reconstruction plan went
  through. It included
• Each state must abolish slavery
• Each state must repeal its ordinance of secession
• Each state must repudiate its war debt

26
Impeachment of Johnson

• The Radical Republicans in Congress were upset by
  President Johnson's vetoes of (even though they
  were overridden) of legislation protecting newly
  freed blacks and punishing former Confederate
  leaders by depriving them of the right to hold
  office.
• For the first time in American history,
  impeachment proceedings were instituted to remove
  the president from office.
• Johnson's main offense was his opposition to
  punitive congressional policies and the violent
  language he used in criticizing them.
• The most serious legal charge his enemies could
  level against him was that despite the Tenure of
  Office Act (which required Senate approval for
  the removal of any officeholder the Senate had
  previously confirmed), he had removed from his
  Cabinet the secretary of war, a strong supporter
  of the Congress.

An Outline of American History
http//usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/history/ch6.
htmwith
27

• When the impeachment trial was held in the
  Senate, it was proved that Johnson was
  technically within his rights in removing the
  Cabinet member.
• Even more important, it was pointed out that a
  dangerous precedent would be set if the Congress
  were to remove a president because he disagreed
  with the majority of its members.
• The attempted impeachment failed by a narrow
  margin, and Johnson continued in office until his
  term expired.

An Outline of American History
http//usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/history/ch6.
htmwith
28
Military Reconstruction Act

• Under the Military Reconstruction Act, Congress,
  by June 1868, had readmitted Arkansas, North
  Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia,
  Alabama and Florida, to the Union.
• In many of these seven reconstructed states, the
  majority of the governors, representatives and
  senators were Northern men called
• Carpetbaggers northerners who had gone South
  after the war to make their political fortunes,
  often allied with newly freed African Americans.
• In the legislatures of Louisiana and South
  Carolina, African Americans actually gained a
  majority of the seats.
• The last three Southern states Mississippi, Texas
  and Virginia finally accepted congressional terms
  and were readmitted to the Union in 1870.
• Many Southerners whose political and social
  dominance was threatened turned to illegal means
  to prevent blacks from gaining equality.
• Violence against blacks became more and more
  frequent.
• In 1870 increasing disorder led to the passage of
  an Enforcement Act severely punishing those who
  attempted to deprive the black freedmen of their
  civil rights.

An Outline of American History
http//usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/history/ch6.
htmwith
29
THE END OF RECONSTRUCTION

• As time passed, it became more and more obvious
  that the problems of the South were not being
  solved by harsh laws.
• In May 1872, Congress passed a general Amnesty
  Act, restoring full political rights to all but
  about 500 Confederate sympathizers.
• Gradually Southern states began electing members
  of the Democratic Party into office, removing
  so-called carpetbagger governments and
  intimidating blacks so they wouldnt vote or
  attempted to hold public office.
• By 1876 the Republicans remained in power in only
  three Southern states.

An Outline of American History
http//usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/history/ch6.
htmwith
30
Compromise of 1877

• As part of the bargaining that resolved the
  disputed presidential elections that year in
  favor of Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republicans
  promised to end Radical Reconstruction, thereby
  leaving most of the South in the hands of the
  Democratic Party.
• In 1877 Hayes withdrew the remaining government
  troops abandoning federal responsibility for
  enforcing blacks' civil rights.
• The South was still a region devastated by war,
  burdened by debt.
• National racial policy swung from one extreme to
  the other.
• Whereas formerly it had supported harsh penalties
  against Southern white leaders, it now tolerated
  new and humiliating kinds of discrimination
  against blacks.
• Jim Crow laws in Southern states the 19th century
  segregated public schools, forbade or limited
  black access to many public facilities, such as
  parks, restaurants and hotels, and denied most
  blacks the right to vote by imposing poll taxes
  and arbitrary literacy tests.

An Outline of American History
http//usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/history/ch6.
htmwith
31
Negative Consequences of Reconstruction

• Slaves were granted their freedom, but not
  equality.
• The North completely failed to address the
  economic needs of the freedmen.
• Efforts such as the Freedmen's Bureau proved
  inadequate to meet needs of former slaves for
  institutions that could provide them with
  political and economic opportunity, or simply
  protect them from violence and intimidation.
• Federal Army officers and agents of the
  Freedmen's Bureau were often racists themselves.
• Blacks were dependent on these Northern whites to
  protect them from white Southerners.
• Southerners united into organizations such as the
  Ku Klux Klan, intimidated blacks and prevented
  them from exercising their rights.
• Without economic resources of their own, many
  Southern blacks were forced to become tenant
  farmers on land owned by their former masters,
  caught in a cycle of poverty that would continue
  well into the 20th century.
• This was like an economic form of slavery

An Outline of American History
http//usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/history/ch6.
htmwith
32
Positive Results

• Reconstruction era governments did make genuine
  gains in rebuilding Southern states devastated by
  the war.
• They expanded public services, notably in
  establishing tax-supported, free public schools
  for blacks and whites.
• Southern corruption exploited schools to bring
  down radical regimes.
• Summary
• The failure of Reconstruction meant that the
  struggle of African Americans for equality and
  freedom was postponed until the 20th century when
  it would become a national, and not a Southern
  issue.

33
FREEDOM!

• Freedom that was created by the Civil War changed
  everything for African-Americans.
• It actually strengthened African-American family
  ties. Families that had been separated due to
  the slave trade were now being reunited.
• Newspapers actually carried advertisements for
  African-Americans seeking information about
  missing family members.
• New family names were now being chosen. Some
  headed west to settle on the great plains, and
  others headed north to the cities in hope of
  jobs.