The Reconstruction Era

The Reconstruction Era

by Mr. Pinard

​Presidential Reconstruction

• President Andrew Johnson, a Southerner from Tennessee, had two major aims. First, Southern states had to create new governments that were loyal to the Union and that respected federal authority. Second, slavery had to be abolished once and for all.

​President Johnson's Reconstruction Plan

1 .A former Confederate state could rejoin the Union once it had written a new state constitution, elected a new state government, repealed its act of secession, and canceled its war debts.

2. Every Southern state had to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery throughout the United States.

​Freedmen's Bureau

• Congress established the Freedmen's Bureau. Over the next four years, the bureau provided food and medical care to both blacks and whites in the South, helped freedmen arrange for wages and good working conditions, and distributed some land in 40-acre plots to “loyal refugees and freedmen.”​

​Freedmen's Bureau

• ​Ultimately, “40 acres and a mule” died when Congress refused to take land away from Southern whites.

  The most lasting benefit of the Freedmen's Bureau was in education. Thousands of former slaves, both young and old, flocked to free schools built by the bureau.

​Black Codes

​The Black Codes were laws passed in 1865 and 1866 in the former Confederate states to limit the rights and freedoms of African Americans.

• ​The black codes served three purposes. The first was to limit the rights of freedmen.

• ​The second purpose of the black codes was to help planters find workers to replace their slaves.

• ​The third purpose of the black codes was to keep freedmen at the bottom of the social order in the South.

​Congressional Reconstruction

​Congressional Reconstruction Congressional Reconstruction began in 1866, when Republican leaders in Congress worked to give freedmen the full rights of citizenship.Congress passed, and the states ratified, the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave citizenship to all people born in the United States and equal protection of the law to all.

Southern Reconstruction

Under the Military Reconstruction Act, federal troops returned to the South in 1867 and began registering voters. New Southern voters helped former Union general Ulysses S. Grant become president. In 1869, Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment, which protected the right of African American men to vote. Many blacks were elected to state government offices during this third phase of Reconstruction.

​​The End of Reconstruction

Southern whites used legal means as well as violence to keep blacks from voting or taking office. Reconstruction officially ended in 1877, when President Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew all remaining federal troops from the South once he took office after the disputed election of 1876.

​​Reconstruction Reversed

After Reconstruction, African Americans lost educational and political gains. Many Southern states closed schools that had been opened to freedmen. They also passed laws designed to keep blacks from voting. Jim Crow laws and the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson legalized many forms of discrimination against blacks.

​Responding to Segregation

Many African Americans responded to segregation by leaving the South. Many migrated to other parts of the United States. Those who remained in the South worked hard to improve their lives.