CH. 16-Reconstruction

CH. 16-Reconstruction

In what ways did Reconstruction both succeed and fail?

Objective: Describe the political conflict over how to rebuild the South after the Civil War and evaluate the impact of Reconstruction on African Americans and other Southerners.

Multiple Choice

Who became president after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and was in charge of Reconstruction?

• James Buchanan

• Andrew Johnson

• Ulysses S. Grant

• William Seward

Thaddeus Stevens

After the Civil War, Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens became a leader of the Radical Republicans. This group of congressmen favored using federal power to create a new order in the South and to promote full citizenship for freed African Americans. Stevens stated that “the whole fabric of southern society must be changed.”

RECONSTRUCTION BEGINS

After the Civil War ended in 1865, the South faced the challenge of building a new society not based on slavery. The process the federal government used to readmit the Confederate states to the Union is known as Reconstruction. Reconstruction lasted from 1865 to 1877.

^{Reconstruction Begins}

• pardoning Confederate officials

• allowing Confederate states to quickly form new governments 

• send representatives to Congress

• Johnson felt Reconstruction was job of president, not Congress

• his policies were based on Lincoln’s goals

Treason on Trial

Not all Confederate leaders were pardoned. Former Confederate president Jefferson Davis, for example, was imprisoned for two years awaiting trial for treason. But he was never tried.

Multiple Choice

To assist former slaves, the president established the ________. This federal agency set up schools and hospitals for African Americans and distributed clothes, food, and fuel throughout the South.

• Civil Rights Act of 1866

• Reconstruction Plan

• Freedmen's Bureau

• Anti-Slavery Society

An early Freedmen's School in North Carolina, 1860s.

Conflict Arises

• black codes-limited the freedom of former slaves

• some states refused to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment

• white Southerners were trying to bring back the “old South"

• Congress refused to seat representatives from the South

• wanted a role in Reconstruction

Multiple Choice

Which is an example of a "black code"?

• African Americans had to have written proof of employment

• African Americans were forbidden to meet in unsupervised groups

• African Americans were forbidden to carry guns

• all answer choices are correct

The Radical Republicans-demanded full and equal citizenship for African Americans.

Multiple Choice

The _______ Amendment stated that all people born in the United States were citizens and had the same rights.

• Thirteenth

• Fourteenth

• Fifteenth

• Sixteenth

14th Amendment

The amendment did not establish black suffrage. Instead, it declared that any state that kept African Americans from voting would lose representatives in Congress. This meant that the Southern states would have less power if they did not grant black men the vote.

THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 declared that all persons born in the United States (except Native Americans) were citizens. It also stated that all citizens were entitled to equal rights regardless of their race. Republicans were shocked when President Johnson vetoed the bill. Congress voted to override Johnson’s veto. That is, two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate voted for the bill after the president’s veto, and the bill became law.

Reconstruction Acts of 1867

• Johnson refused to support the 14th Amendment

• so did every former Confederate state except Tennessee

• Reconstruction Acts 1867 passed

• began a period known as Radical Reconstruction

• Congress now controlled Reconstruction

Multiple Choice

One of the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the South into _____ military districts, each run by an army commander.

• three

• four

• five

• six

Military Districts and Readmission, 1866-1870

RECONSTRUCTION ACTS OF 1867

The law also stated that before the Southern states could reenter the Union, they would have to do two things:

​

1. They must approve new state constitutions that gave the vote to all adult men, including African Americans

​

2. They must ratify the Fourteenth Amendment

Multiple Choice

Those in the South who hated Radical Reconstruction called the southern white Republicans _______, or dishonorable people.

• carpetbaggers

• scalawags

• radicals

• sharecroppers

^{POLITICAL GAINS MADE BY AFRICAN AMERICANS}

During Reconstruction, more than 600 African Americans served in state legislatures throughout the South, and 14 of the new U.S. congressmen from the South were African Americans. Two African Americans served as U.S. senators during this time. One was Hiram Revels of Mississippi, a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He had recruited African Americans to fight for the Union during the Civil War.

The seven men in this print from 1872 are the first African Americans to serve in the U.S. Congress.

CARPETBAGGERS

Many southerners believed the northern white Republicans had come to the South to get rich and called them “carpetbaggers,” implying they had thrown everything they owned into a cheap suitcase, or carpetbag, and headed south. 

NOT PUNISHED ENOUGH?

Although he had repeatedly stated, “Treason is a crime, and crime must be punished,” Johnson quickly pardoned, or legally forgave, most Confederates who took an oath of loyalty to the Union. The pardons restored their civil rights and protected their property from being seized. Only wealthy planters and high-ranking Confederate leaders had to apply individually for presidential pardons. Many in Congress felt Johnson’s plans were too lenient, or forgiving. Congress wanted Confederates to pay for their actions.

^{Johnson Is Impeached}

• Tenure of Office Act

• prohibited president from firing government officials without Senate’s approval

• February 1868, Johnson fired secretary of war, Edwin Stanton

• 3 days later, House of Representatives voted to impeach

•  acquitted by a single vote

Multiple Choice

Impeachment means to formally charge an elected official of a crime or misdemeanor while in office.

• true

• false

FORTY ACRES AND A MULE

In January 1865, General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15, which set aside the Sea Islands for newly freed African Americans. The Sea Islands were located south of Charleston, South Carolina, and encompassed an area of approximately 400,000 acres. Each family would receive 40 acres to farm and a mule. News of the offer spread quickly, and about 40,000 African Americans rushed to settle on the land. But by the fall of 1865, President Andrew Johnson had overturned Sherman’s order. The land was returned to the southern planters who had owned it before the Civil War.

The production company of filmmaker Spike Lee

Spike Lee

Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee (born March 20, 1957) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and professor. His production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, has produced more than 35 films since 1983. HIs most recent film was "Da Five Bloods."

Multiple Choice

An agricultural system in which a farmer raises crops for a landowner in return for part of the money made from selling the crops.

• contract system

• panic of 1873

• indentured servitude

• sharecropping

SHARECROPPING

Sharecropping often left African-American families in debt to landowners. The sharecroppers needed supplies, such as tools and seeds, to work the land. Landowners would sell or rent the supplies to the sharecroppers on credit and at a high rate of interest. By the time the crops were harvested, sharecroppers had usually run up a large bill and, as a result, would receive very little of the profits from selling the crops. Sharecropping tied African Americans to a landowner’s land and resulted in black peonage, a sort of economic slavery.

Sharecropping

EDUCATION FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS

More than 150,000 African-American students were attending 3,000 schools by 1869. About 10 percent of the South’s African-American adults could read. A number of them became teachers. Northern teachers, black and white, also went South to teach freed people. Many white Southerners, however, worked against these teachers’ efforts. White racists even killed teachers and burned freedmen’s schools in some parts of the South. Despite these setbacks, African Americans kept working toward an education.

BLACK COLLEGES

Some of today’s AfricanAmerican colleges and universities date back to Reconstruction. The Freedmen’s Bureau and other societies raised funds to build many of the schools. Howard University opened in 1867. It was named for General Oliver Otis Howard, head of the Freedmen’s Bureau. During Reconstruction, these colleges offered courses ranging from basic reading and writing to medicine and law. They also trained much-needed teachers.

Howard University-a private, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C.

RESISTANCE IN THE SOUTH

Radical Reconstruction angered many white southerners and created a resistance movement based on racism and discrimination. Few white southerners accepted African Americans as their equals. Sometimes whites turned to violence in an attempt to keep African Americans from voting and exercising other rights. To conceal their identities and maximize the terror, Klan members rode out at night dressed in hooded costumes. They whipped, tar-and-feathered, and even lynched, or hanged, their victims. They also committed arson. 

The Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1866 by ex-Confederate soldiers. Its first leader, called the "Grand Wizard," was Nathaniel Bedford Forrest, who had been a Confederate general. Historians believe klux is derived from a Greek word—kyklos—that means "circle" or "band." The ku and klan apparently were added for the alliteration.

Multiple Choice

The Klan’s goals were to restore Democratic control of the South and keep former slaves powerless.

• true

• false

CRITICAL VIEWING

In 1874, this political cartoon by Thomas Nast appeared in Harper’s Weekly, an American political magazine based in New York City.

Why do you think the cartoonist included the words “worse than slavery” over the heads of the African-American family?

Multiple Choice

This former Union general became our nation's 18th president; he also signed the anti-Klan Bill into law in 1871.

• Ulysses S. Grant

• Robert E. Lee

• George Meede

• Rutherford B. Hayes

Election of Grant

• Republican Party was stronger than ever in 1868

• received 214 electoral votes

• had no experience in government

• 306,000 popular votes

• about 500,000 African Americans voted in the South, most for Grant

• promised to carry out the laws that Congress passed

Multiple Choice

A ______ tax is a fee charged when people register to vote.

• congressional

• civil rights

• suffrage

• poll

THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT

After the 1868 election, Republicans pushed for the adoption of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution. Under the amendment’s terms, the federal and state governments could not restrict the right to vote because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude—in other words, slavery. The amendment would complete the political reforms sought by Reconstruction. Congress approved the amendment in February 1869 despite Democratic opposition, and it became part of the Constitution in 1870.

Called The 15th Amendment, this 1870 print illustrates a parade celebrating the amendment’s passage.

Multiple Choice

The Fifteenth Amendment also applied to women and Native Americans on tribal lands.

• true

• false

Multiple Choice

With passage of the Third Force Act, popularly known as the Ku Klux Act, Congress authorizes President Ulysses S. Grant to declare martial law, impose heavy penalties against terrorist organizations and use military force to suppress the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

• true

• false

Reconstruction Ends

• final blow to Reconstruction came with the 1876 presidential election

• Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden; Republicans chose Rutherford B. Hayes

• Reconstruction governments in the South collapsed

• Democrats returned to power

• life for many Africans Americans turned for the worse

Election of 1876

Multiple Choice

The agreement that resolved the 1876 presidential election dispute; Rutherford B. Hayes became president and then removed the last federal troops from the South.

• Fifteenth Amendment

• Panic of 1873

• Compromise of 1877

• Appeasement Act of 1877

^{COMPROMISE OF 1877}

1. Gov't would remove federal troops from the South. 2. Gov't would provide land grants and loans for the construction of railroads linking the South to the West Coast. 3. Southern officials would receive federal funds for construction and improvement projects. 4. Hayes would appoint a Democrat to his cabinet. 5. The Democrats promised to respect African Americans’ civil and political rights.

Multiple Choice

States could use _______ tests, or tests of one’s ability to read and write, to exclude people—primarily African Americans—from voting.

• emancipation

• conscription

• civil

• literacy

THE LEGACY OF RECONSTRUCTION

Historians still argue about the success of Reconstruction. The nation did rebuild and reunite. However, Reconstruction did not achieve equality for African Americans. After Reconstruction, most African Americans still lived in poverty. Legally, they could vote and hold public office. But few took part in politics. They continued to face widespread violence and prejudice. During this period, however, African Americans did make lasting gains. Protection of civil rights became part of the U.S. Constitution.

Juneteenth

• "Freedom Day," "Jubilee Day," "Liberation Day"

• celebrated June 19th

• short for "June Nineteenth"

• celebrating the emancipation of slaves in America

• originated in Galveston, Texas

• considered the longest-running African American holiday

General Order No. 3

Transmitted the news of the Emancipation Proclamation to the residents of Texas and freed all remaining enslaved people in the state. Issued by Union General 

Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865 over a month after the formal end of the Civil War and two years after the original issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.