Reconstruction Era - Postwar Society

Reconstruction Era - Postwar Society

Do you know who I am?

Poll

William T. Sherman was a Confederate soldier with no rank.

• No he was a Confederate General

• No he was not a soldier at all

• No he was a Union General

• No he was a Union soldier

Postwar Violence

Riots broke out in New Orleans in 1866

New Orleans Massacre

• 130 African Americans marched in favor of the Louisiana Constitutional Convention

• Mayor organized a mob to block them from getting to the convention

• Unarmed African American citizens were shot and killed trying to run for safety

• At least 200 African American veterans of the Union Army were killed

Radical Reconstruction Brings Change

• Civil Rights Act of 1866 and Fourteenth Amendment protected African American Voting Rights

• In the 1860s and 1870s African Americans in both the North and South voted in large numbers for Republican candidates

• In 1870 most of the Southern states were controlled by the Republican Party

• Across the South hundreds of African Americans were elected to state and local offices