US History

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US History
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• Problems of Peace
• List in your own words the four main questions
  that the authors say faced the country after the
  war

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Questions to consider..

• 1. Once the war is over, should Confederate
  states be automatically admitted back to the
  Union or should they have to fulfill special
  requirements before being readmitted?
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• 2. Should states have to recognize the freedom of
  slaves before being readmitted?
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• 3. Should states have to give the blacks the
  right to vote before being readmitted?
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• 4. Should citizens of Confederate states have to
  take a loyalty oath to the US before regaining
  their citizenship?
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• 5. Should former Confederate officials and
  military leaders be barred from voting in
  elections and/or serving in government?
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• 6. Should former slave owners be barred from
  voting in elections and/or serving in government?
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• 7. Should former slaves be given a plot of land
  and if so, where should the government get the
  land to give them?
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• 9. Should the federal military maintain a
  presence in the South running the governments of
  each state to guarantee the rights of the former
  slaves? If yes, how long should they

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Reconstruction

• Refers to the period from 1865-1877
• Country rebuilt from war
• Federal government determined how the Southern
  states were to reenter the Union.

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Freedmens Bureau

• General Oliver O. Howard
• to provide basic services, education, and
  confiscated land to the newly freed but
  unprepared ex-slaves.
• Note This was the first attempt by the federal
  government to provide direct social services to
  the population.
• What do you think was the most immediate priority
  of black families in the South, education or land
  to farm?
• Why do you think the North would not or could not
  deliver on its promise of 40 acres and a mule?

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Lincolns 10 Plan

• Wanted the southern states to rejoin quickly.
• Plan readmitted a state once 10 of voters took
  an oath of allegiance.
• Promised to pardon most former Confederates.
• 4 states applied for readmission under this plan.
• Radical Republicans in Congress blocked them.

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Radical Republicans

• Wanted to deny power to former slaves owners.
• Give blacks the right to vote.
• Passed a more severe bill in 1864
• Lincoln vetoed it.

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• Abraham Lincoln - Second Inaugural Address (March
  4, 1865)
• With malice toward none, with charity for all . .
  . let us strive on to finish the work we are in,
  to bind up the nations wounds, to care for him
  who shall have borne the battle and for his widow
  and orphan, to do all which may achieve and
  cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves
  and with all nations.
• Thaddeus Stevens
• The whole fabric of Southern society must be
  changed. . . . The Southern states have been
  despotisms, not governments of the people. . . .
  If the South is ever to be made a safe republic,
  let her lands be cultivated by the toil of the
  owners or the free labor of intelligent citizens.
  This must be done even though it drives her
  nobility into exile. If they go, all the better.

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• What objectives have the highest priority for
  Lincoln and for Stevens and which objectives are
  of lesser or no priority? What is the underlying
  assumption of both men about why the war was
  fought and why so many sacrifices were made?
• Lincoln Stevens
• (1) High priority
• (2) Low priority
• (3) Underlying assumption

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If you had been a northerner after the war,
do you think you would have been

• (1) a Radical ready to use government power and
  money to force change in the South,
• (2) would you have been in the Moderate camp,
  passing legal protections for the freedmen but
  leaving it largely up to the states to rebuild
  their economies and societies? Why?

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What would Lincoln have done?
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Andrew Johnson

• Tennessee
• Lenient Reconstruction policy
• State had to declare secession illegal
• Ratify 13th amendment- abolishing slavery.
• Many southern states met these terms.

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December 1865

• New Southern Members of Congress arrived in
  Washington.
• Radicals- OUTRAGED!
• Refused to seat new members.
• Passed a law extending the Freedmens Bureau
• Created to help former slaves.
• Passed a civil rights bill
• Made African Americans citizens
• Banned Black Codes

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Johnson

• Vetoes both bills
• Congress overrode the veto.
• Passed the 14th amendment-
• Confirmed African Americans citizen ship
• Barred most former Confederate leaders from
  political office.

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Congressional elections f 1866

• Johnson campaigned against the Radicals
• Angered many Northern voters.
• Race Riots in the South
• Radicals won an overwheliming victory
• Got enough seats to override any presidential
  veto.

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1867- Reconstruction Acts

• Declared the reorganized state governments
  invalid.
• Put the Southern states under military control
• Called for new state constitutions.
• New states laws had to give African Americans the
  right to vote.

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• . Do you think that military occupation would
  have been more acceptable in the South if it had
  been instituted immediately after the war? Why or
  why not?
• What do you think of the requirement that
  freed slaves, kept largely illiterate by their
  former masters, be given immediate voting
  privileges?

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President V. Congress- 1868

• House of Reps voted to impeach President Johnson
• 11 week trial- Senate did not find him guilty
• . The Radicals failed to convict by only one
  vote. Why do the authors conclude on p. 495 that
  the nation narrowly avoided a bad precedent?
  How does this assessment apply to Clintons
  impeachment?

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Ulysses S. Grant

• Becomes next president
• Congress passed the 15th amendment- outlawed the
  denial of voting rights due to race.

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The South after the War

• All states wrote new constitutions.
• By 1870- they were all back in the Union under
  Radicals terms.
• Population and Economy Destroyed.
• Rebuild the south.
• Schools- Taxes

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Republican Party

• Scalawags- White southerners, former Unionists
• Carpetbaggers- Northernerrs who went south to
  make their fortunes.
• African Americans
• Eager to vote.

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African Americans

• Reunite families
• Education
• Church
• Politics

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Debate

• What about property?

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New System

• Sharecropping
• Tenant Farming

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Collapse of Reconstruction

• Violence- KKK
• Scandal in the Grant Administration
• Financial Panic of 1873
• Hayes Election Deal
• Redeemers now controlled every Southern State
  government.