APUSH Chapter 15 Notes/Study Guide

Reconstruction, 1865-1877

Union is united but there was no racial peace in ex-Confederate states

In Memphis, TN in 1866 dozens of African Americans were murdered by ex-

Confederates and all 12 black schools in the city were destroyed. Republicans

were appalled

Republicans in Congress propose measure to protect African Americans

Bill to give African Americans U.S. citizenship rights. It would later

become the 14th Amendment

Andrew Johnson, Unionist Democrat who became president after Lincolns

assassination refuses to sign bill

Johnson allowed Confederate states to rejoin Union under following terms

Amnesty to southerners who took loyalty oath (except high ranking

Confederates), revoke secession, abolish slavery, and relieved new state

governments of financial burdens by repudiating Confederate debts

Northerns assist African Americans economically by reviving plantations with

wage labor

The Struggle for National Reconstruction

Congress and Johnson had disputes on secession and statehood

Framers of constitution never expected a civil war

Presidential Approaches: From Lincoln to Johnson

Lincolns plan was similar to Johnsons

 Granted amnesty to most ex-confederates and allowed each rebellious state to

return to the Union as soon as 10% of its voters had taken a loyalty oath and the

state had approved the 13th amendment, abolishing slavery

Confederate states rejected this plan- the Ten Percent Plan

In July 1864 Congress proposed a tougher substitute- Wade-Davis Bill

Required an oath of allegiance by a majority of each states adult white

men

New government that had never taken up arms against Union

Permanent disenfranchisement of Confederate leaders

Lincoln defeated this bill with a pocket veto

Left it unsigned

Opened talks with key congressmen looking for another compromise

Assassination of Lincoln in April 1865 left nation in political uncertainty

Unionists blame all Confederates for the acts of southern sympathizer

John Wilkes Booth and his accomplices

Left presidency to Andrew Johnson who lacked Lincolns moral sense and

political judgement

Andrew Johnson

Common man from TN

Built political career on support of farmers and laborers

Loyal to the Union when TN seceded

Appointed TN military governor after Nashville was captured

Placed as VP in election 1864 as a War Democrat to bring unity

 Had many disagreements with Republicans and was often contradictory

Republicans thought most southerners wanted to rejoin union and only a few

wanted secession

New southern state legislatures created under Johnsons limited Reconstruction

plan restored slavery in all but its name

Enacted Black Codes in 1865

Designed to force former slaves back to plantation labor

Reflected plantation owners economic interests

Severe penalties on blacks who did not hold full-year labor contracts and

also set up procedures for taking black children from their parents and

apprenticing them to former slave masters

Johnson talked against southern planters but also allied ex-Confederate leaders

Outraged north

When former VP of Confederate States, Alexander Stephens, is elected to

Congress in Georgia election Republicans saw that as the last straw

Congress vs President

Republican majorities in both houses use Article 1 Section 5 to refuse admission

to southern delegations when Congress convened in December 1865

Stopped Johnsons plans

Congressional Republicans agree federal government had to intervene in violence

against blacks in the south

March 1865- Congress established Freedmens Bureau to aid displaced blacks and

other war refugees

 In early 1866 Congress voted to extend the bureau, gave it direct funding and

authorized agents to investigate southern abuses

Civil Rights Act of 1866

Declared formerly enslaved people to be citizens and granted them equal

protection and rights of contract with full access to courts

Johnson vetoed both bills

Bitterly racist

Republicans still manage to get 2/3s majorities to override vetoes

Black leaders and their allies are murdered or have their homes burned down

Fourteenth Amendment (1868)

Declared all persons born or naturalized in the United states are citizens

No state could deprive citizens of privileges or immunities of citizens of

the US or deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due

process of law or deny anyone equal protection

Johnson opposed ratification but public opinion was against him

Republicans have 3-1 majority in Congress after 1866 congressional election

Power shifted to radical Republicans

Senate led by the radical Charles Sumner

House led by the radical Thaddeus Stevens

Congress proceeded to make reconstruction

Radical Reconstruction

Reconstruction Act of 1867 divided conquered South into five military districts,

each under the command of a US military general

 To reenter Union former Confederate states had to grant the vote to freedmen and

deny it to leading ex-Confederates

Each military commander was required to register all eligible adult males, black

and white

Supervise state constitutional conventions

Ensure that new constitutions guaranteed black suffrage

Congress would readmit a state to Union once these conditions were met and the

Fourteenth amendment was ratified

Johnson vetoed the Reconstruction Act but Congress overrode his veto

The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

In 1867 Johnson retaliated by suspending Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, a

radical, and replacing him with Union general Ulysses S. Grant

Believed Grant would be a good soldier and follow orders

Johnson had misjudged Grant who publicly objected the presidents

actions

When Senate overruled Stantons suspension, Grant resigned so Stanton could

resume his place as secretary of war

On February 21st, 1868, Johnson formally dismisses Stanton

Three days later legislators in the HOR introduce articles of impeachment against

the president

Based on charges of treason, bribery, and more

House serves as prosecutor and senate serves as court

House brought 11 infringements against Johnson

 After 11 week trial in senate 35 senators vote for conviction, 1 vote short of two-

thirds majority

19 voted for acquittal

Election of 1868 and Fifteenth Amendment

Grant won Republican nomination for president in 1868

Urged Radical Reconstruction as well as sectional reconciliation

His opponent Horatio Seymour also declined the nomination because he

understood that democrats could not overcome image of being disloyal

Grant overwhelming won and Republicans retain majority in both houses

Feb 1869- Republicans produce Fifteenth Amendment

Protected male citizens right to vote irrespective of race, color, or

previous condition of servitude

Amendment left room for a poll tax (paying for the privilege of voting) despite

Republican protests and literacy requirements

Used to keep poor or immigrants from voting

Woman Suffrage Denied

Some formerly enslaved women believed they would win voting rights along with

their men until northern allies corrected that impression

National women's rights leaders hoped to secure the vote for women

Womens party loyalties were no clear

Substantial majority of northern voters, all men, opposed women's

enfranchisement
 At Equal Rights Association convention in May 1869 abolitionist and feminist

Frederick Douglass pleaded for white women to consider situation in the South

and allowed black male suffrage to take priority

Some women agree with Douglass but many rejected

Elizabeth Cady Stanton pointed out how uneducated freedmen and immigrants

could vote while educated white women could not

Lucy Stone leads majority in the womens movement

American Women Suffrage Association formed

Remained loyal to Republican Party in hopes that once Reconstruction

was done it would be women's turn

Another group was led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony

Declared women must not trust men

Founded National Woman Suffrage Association that focused exclusively

on womens rights and took up the battle for federal suffrage movement

In 1873 women test new amendments by registering to vote, both white and black

Most turned away

Virginia Minor of Missouri argued that registrar who denied her ballot violated

her rights under 14th amendment in Minor v. Happersett (1875)

Supreme Court ruled that suffrage rights were not inherent in citizenship

Women were citizens but state legislatures could deny them the right to

vote

Radical Reconstruction can created conditions for a nationwide womens rights

movement
 Wyoming Territory gave women full voting rights in 1869

Female voters in Wyoming did not neglect their homes, abandon their

children, or unsex themselves, dismissing absurd excuses to avoid

womens enfranchisement

Note: By 1865 cotton prices in south return to prewar standard

Meaning of Freedom

Former slaves sought rights such as voting rights and economic autonomy but

northern policymakers and southern blacks did not see to eye on economic issues

Ex-Confederates oppose black rights

Quest for Land

Thousands of displaced blacks in south hoped for land redistribution

However, Johnsons plan allowed pardoned Confederates to recover seized

property during the war

Plantations given back to former slave owners

Blacks protest

Blacks and plantation owners fought but plantation owners generally win

Freed Slaves and Northerners: Conflicting Goals

Washington and slaves different in land and labor ideas

Antebellum period brought economic prosperity to Mid-Atlantic and New

England states

Southerners sought to restore cotton as the leading export, envisioning former

slaves as cotton-picking wageworkers

 Only few men like Thaddeus Stevens argued freed slaves have a right to land

grants

Stevens proposed plantations be broken up into small farms for former

slaves

Policymakers did not do enough to ensure freed people's security

No land- left poor and vulnerable

Most Republicans, even radicals, could not imagine giving land to former slaves

Some exceptions

In 1869 SC republican state government used tax policy to break up land

holdings and buy property

Sold it to poor whites and blacks on easy terms

Wage Labor and Sharecropping

Most former slaves had few options but to work for former slave owners

Landowners replaced gang-labor system with wages replacing the food, clothing,

and shelter slaves had received

The south began to embrace wage labor

Former slaves had lowest wages

African Americans had tactics to fight back

Held plans in mass meetings to agree on terms for labor

Some workers left the fields and traveled to seek better paying jobs on

railroads or in turpentine and lumber camps

Had strikes

Issue of protecting freed women from sexual abuse arose

 When planters demanded black women go back into the fields, African

Americans resisted resolutely

Another issue of womens labor being designated as their husbands property

Opportunity of family was one of the greatest achievements of emancipation

Ideas of domesticity- men work diligently, women work in motherhood

and at home

Former slaves refused to work under conditions that recalled slavery

No gang work, no overseers, no whippings, no regulation of their private

lives

Wage work becomes norm in some places like sugar plantations of Louisiana

Cotton planters lacked money to pay wages

Offered share of crop in lieu of wage

Freedmen paid rent in form of harvest share

Distinctive system of cotton agriculture known as sharecropping

Freedmen worked as renters exchanging their labor for use of land, house

implements and sometimes seed and fertilizers

Typically turned over half of their crops to landlords

Effective strategy- laborers and landowners shared risk and return

Unequal relationship- sharecroppers had to borrow tools and supplies for

the first growing season

Country storekeepers furnished sharecroppers with provisions and took crop as

collateral
 Assuming ownership of croppers shares and leaving them only what

remained after debts had been paid

Sharecroppers become easy targets for unfair interest rates and crooked

bookkeeping

Fall of cotton prices in 1870s leaves sharecroppers in permanent debt

Debt effectively forced labor, making cotton growing efficient

black farmers by 1890 were tenants or sharecroppers

for white farmers

Not the worst choice but economic costs were great

Farms leased on a year-to-year basis neither tenants nor owner had

incentive to improve the property

Expensive interest payments

Caused stagnant farm economy in South

Southern rural economy was impoverished as a result of wage working

Republican Governments in the South

By 1871 all former Confederate States met requirements to join Union

Republicans retained power in these states from a few months in Virginia to 9

years in SC, LA, and FL

Protected by federal troops

Southerners did not accept their legitimacy, focusing on the role of African

Americans who began serving in public office

 Reconstruction governments were ambitious but also hated because of massive

reforms in public education, family law, social services, commerce, and

transportation

The southern Republican Party included former Whigs, former Democrats, black

and white newcomers from the North, and southern African Americans

Unionists were eager to join but reluctant to work with blacks

Republicans needed African Americans for votes, having a majority in

Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, and Mississippi

In late 1860s blacks and whites join forces through Union League, a secret

fraternal order

Formed in border and northern states during Civil War

Became a powerful political association that spread through the former

Confederacy

Pressured Congress to uphold justice for freedmen

Had meetings at churches and schoolhouses to instruct freedmen on

political issues and voting procedures

Parades and military drills

The Freedmens Bureau supported Reconstruction efforts

Kept eye out for unfair labor contracts and forced landowners to bargain

with workers and tenants

Advised freedmen on economic matters

Provided direct payments to poor families

Helped establish schools

 Formed the first black colleges

Ex-Confederates view Union League, Freedmens Bureau, and Republican party

as illegitimate in southern affairs

Resented education of freed people

Referred to southern whites who supported Reconstruction as scalawags, ancient

Scots-Irish term for worthless animals, and denounced northern whites as

carpetbaggers, self-seeking interlopers who carried all their property in cheap

suitcases called carpetbags

Republicans in south were very diverse and wanted to rid South of slaveholding

aristocracy, believing slavery had victimized whites as well as blacks

Southern democrats had misguided stereotypes against white Republicans and and

black politicians

Robert Smalls of SC, who as as slave worked for wages that he gave to his

master, became a war hero and saved other slaves with his ship sailing to the

Union

Bought property in Beaufort and became a Congressman

Blanche K. Bruce was tutored on a Virginia plantation by his father and escaped

during the war and established a school for freedmen in Missouri

Moved to Mississippi and became its second black senator

Former slaves were recruited to participate in politics

During Reconstruction 20 African Americans were state governors,

lieutenant governor, secretary of state, or lesser offices

600 became state legislators

 16 were congressmen

Southern reconstruction governments eliminated qualifications for the vote and

abolished Black Codes

Expanded rights of married women allowing them to own property and make

wages

Diversified economy by investing in railroads and other projects

Outlawed whipping

Set up hospitals and asylums

SC offered free public health services and Alabama provided free legal

representation for defendants who could not pay

Most significant achievement was in education

African Americans were beginning to receive education rushing to newly

established schools

Republicans believed education was foundation of democracy

White children also benefit from new public education systems

Women began graduating high schools

Flaw in construction governments

Convict Leasing- state officials allowed private companies to hire out prisoners to

labor in mines and other industries

In 1866 Alabama leased 200 convicts to a railroad company for only $5

Physical abuse was prevalent

Building Black Communities

After emancipation southern blacks engaged openly in community buildings

 Cooperated with northern missionaries and teachers, both black and white, who

came to help them

Blacks leave white-dominated churches to form their own

Most prominent were National Baptist Convention and African Methodist

Episcopal Church

Churches could serve as schools, social centers, and meeting halls

Charities began from teachers and entrepreneurs built businesses that served black

communities

Some black leaders press for desegregation but unaware of backlash

Some prefer segregation to avoid hostility

Charles Sumner introduced a bill in 1870 to enforce access to schools, public

transportation, hotels, and churches

Bill remained on Capitol Hill for 5 years

Opponents challenged that sharing of public spaces would lead to race

mixing and intermarriage

On his deathbed Sumner wished for his bill to be passed

The Senate removed Sumners provision for integrated churches and the house

moved the provision for integrated schools but passed Civil Rights Act of 1875

Full and equal access to jury service and transportation and public

accommodations, irrespective of race

The Undoing of Reconstruction

Marked by death of Sumner

Priority of north was to restore southern economy, not freedmen

 Racist propaganda- The Prostrate State by James M. Pike

Depicted SC in black barbarism

Scandals in Grant administration and economic depression

Ex-Confederates increasingly resistant and violent

Republicans Unravel

1873- severe worldwide depression

In US economic depression triggered by bankruptcy of the Northern Pacific

Railroad funded by Jay Cooke

Supervised funds of Union during war made him a hero and his downfall

was a shock

Republicans suspect a manipulation had caused the depression since

Cooke was well connected to the Republicans

Officials in Grant administration had public resentment toward their own party

Rejected please to increase money supply and provide relief from debt and

unemployment

Depression varied across US

Farmers suffer from low crop prices

Industrial workers fired and sharp wage reductions

By 1877 half of railroad companies filed for bankruptcy and half of

manufacturing had stopped in US

Fired people wandered, known as tramps

Wandered and begged for work and food

Ex-Confederacys economy was still recovering

 Policies of Republicans that were expensive such as healthcare, school and

railroad building costed a lot

Freedmens Bureau was weakening before even 1873

Economic growth in south stops

Republicans failed to anticipate depression or money being wasted or ending up

in the pockets of corrupt officials

Two swindlers in NC, one a former Union general, bribed legislators with

over $200,000 in total to gain millions in state funds for rail construction

Used the money not for rail building but for vacations or stocks

One of depressions biggest events was failure of Freedmans Savings and Trust

Company

Founded in 1865, it worked closely with the Freedmens Bureau and

Union army

Former slaves brought small deposits to nearest branches of the company

African American farmers, entrepreneurs, churches, and charitable groups

opened accounts at the bank

In 1870s the banks directors put money into risky loans and speculative

investments, failing in June of 1874

Congress felt it had a duty to save the bank but did not pay back all depositors

Only half recovered small accounts averaging $18.51

Republicans lose moral gloss and become more criticized

Disillusioned Liberals

Revolt emerges in Republican Party

 Intellectuals, journalists, and businessmen lead it who believed in classical

liberalism: free trade, small government, low property taxes, and

limitation of voting rights to men of education and property

Liberals respond to massive increase in federal power by urging policy of laissez

faire, in which government let alone business and the economy

Laissez faire never succeeded in ending policies but helped roll back

Reconstruction

Liberals unable to block Grants renomination in 1872

Break away and form new party called Liberal Republican

Horace Greeley was nominated candidate, publisher of the New York

Tribune

Democrats also nominate Greeley

Bad at campaigning and assailed a lot

Grant wins reelection with 56% of popular vote and every electoral vote but

Liberal Republicans agenda shifted debate to resonate with Democrats- smaller

gov, restricted voting rights and reconciliation with ex-Confederates

United disillusioned conservative Republicans and Democrats

Papers like The Nation played key roles in turning northern public opinion

against Reconstruction

Claimed freedmen were unfit to vote

Denounced universal suffrage

Second Grant administration further justifies Liberals

Notorious Credit Mobilier scandal

 Sham corporation set up by shareholders in the Union Pacific Railroad to

secure government grants at an enormous profit

Protected from investigation by providing gifts of Credit Mobilier stock to

members of Congress

Another scandal involved Whiskey Ring

Network of liquor distillers and treasury agents who defrauded

government of millions of dollars of excise taxes on Whiskey

Ringleader was Grants private secretary, Orville Babcock

Grant stood by Babcock to save his secretary from jail

Counterrevolution in the South

Northerners become preoccupied with scandals and shock of economic depression

Ex-Confederates seize power in the South

Believed Reconstruction governments were illegitimate regimes

Insurgency led by planters

Paramilitary takeover of Reconstruction governments

Democrats get ex-Confederate voting rights restored and campaigned against

negro rule

Southern Democrats used force when necessary

Ex-Confederates terrorize Republicans, especially black voters

Black political leaders were shot, hanged, beaten to death and in one case

beheaded

Southern Republicans, black and white, flee the south

Southern Democrats called this process redemption

 Heroic sounding but seizure of power was murderous and undemocratic

Nathan Bedford Forrest

Decorated Confederate general

Born into poverty in 1821 and became big-time slave trade and

Mississippi Planter

Formed a Tennessee Confederate cavalry regiment, fought at Shiloh and

won fame as a daring rider. On April 12th, 1864, he and his troops

perpetrated Fort Pillow and massacred black Union soldiers

Determined to uphold white supremacy after the war, altering course of

Reconstruction

First Klan group in Tennessee turns to Forrest to lead them as Grand

Wizard to drive out republican government there

William G. Brownlow was Republican governor of Tennessee in 1865 who was a

former Confederate prisoner and not afraid of calling out his enemies

Ex-Confederates trike back at Brownlow with campaign of terror targeting

Brownlows black supporters

In the mayhem they formed the first Ku Klux Klan group in 1865 or 1866

Klan became identical to Democratic Party

Dominated TN delegation to DNC of 1868

Republicans fail to respond to violence

Similar Klan groups arise such as White League and Knights of the White

Camelia in other states

 Burned freedmens schools, beat teachers, attacked Republican gatherings

and murdered political opponents

Once they took power Democrats slashed property taxes and passed other laws

favorable to landowners

Terminated Reconstruction programs and cut funding for schools,

especially those teaching black students

Congress responds to Klan violence

In 1870 held hearings and passed laws designed to protect freedmens

rights under the 14th and 15th Amendments

Enforcement Laws authorized federal prosecutions, military intervention

and martial law to suppress terrorist activity

In SC US troops occupy nine counties, arrested hundreds and drove 2,000

Klansmen from the state

Reconstruction Rolled Back

Divided Republicans lose almost half of their delegation in Congress in off year

election of 1874

Democrats had overwhelming majority of 182 seats

Grant submits to election results and refuses to aid southern Republicans

Republican Governor Ames of Mississippi

Democratic Redeemers in 1875 swept elections and took control of Mississippi

Republican governments only remain in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida

The Supreme Court Rejects Equal Rights

 Although state govs were taken over federal laws and constitutional amendments

reamined but Supreme Court decided to target them

Beginning in 1873 group of decisions known as Slaughter-House Cases undercut

power of 14th Amendment

In this case and a related ruling, US v. Cruikshank (1876) justices argued

the 14th Amendment offered only a few, trivial federal protections to

citizens

In Cruikshank, emerging from a case of gruesome killing of African

American farmers by ex-Confederates in Colfax, Louisiana, followed by a

Democratic political coup, the Court ruled that voting rights remained a

state matter unless the state itself violated those rights. So if individuals or

private groups violated former slaves voting rights that lay beyond federal

jurisdiction

In Civil Rights Cases (1883), justices struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875

paving the way for segregation

Political Crisis of 1877

Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes, a former Union general who was

untainted by corruption and was from swing state of Ohio

Democratic opponent was NY governor Samuel J. Tilden, a wall street lawyer

with a reform reputation

On election night Tilden led in popular vote but Republicans realized the electoral

vote was 185-164. If Florida, SC, and LA voted republican Hayes would win by 1

vote.
 Republicans cite evidence of Democratic fraud and decide votes from those three

states were all Republican. Democrats who had taken over the states government

submitted their own electoral votes for Tilden. When Congress met in early 1877,

there were two sets of electoral votes from those states

Talk of inside deals or a new election, even a violent coup

Congress appoints electoral commission to settle the question

7 Republicans, 7 Democrats, and Supreme Court member David Davis

who was known not to have fixed party loyalties

Davis disqualified himself by accepting Illinois Senate seat. Was replaced

by Republican Justice Joseph P. Bradley. Republicans on vote of 8-7

awarded election to Hayes

Democrats outraged in HOR

Stalled final count of electoral votes to prevent Hayes inauguration on

March 4th but went along because Tilden urged them to

Hayes offered patronage to the South, including federal funds for education and

internal improvements

Promised change of men and policy

Hoped to protect southern black voting rights

Only left 3,000 Union soldiers in the south

Reconstructed had ended when all Union troops were pulled out

Lasting Legacies

Political events of 1877 had little impact on most Southerners

 Long slow decline of Radical Republican power and corresponding rise of

Democrats in the South mattered

Many Americans including classical liberals believed the Democrats had

overthrown corrupt, illegitimate governments

South never went back to antebellum status quo

Reconstruction had failed

Some freedmen success but most remained in poverty and in late 1870s

political rights were eroding

Chapter 15 APUSH Study Guide

 People

Andrew Johnson

Unionist Democrat who became president after Lincolns assassination refuses to

sign bill

Lacked Lincolns moral sense and political judgement

Common man from TN

Built political career on support of farmers and laborers

Loyal to the Union when TN seceded

Appointed TN military governor after Nashville was captured

Placed as VP in election 1864 as a War Democrat to bring unity

Had many disagreements with Republicans and was often contradictory

Johnson talked against southern planters but also allied ex-Confederate leaders

Outraged north

Repeatedly tried to veto Republican Reconstruction policies and new amendments

but was overrode by veto several times

Accused of 11 acts infringement and almost impeached by 1 vote

Disliked by much of the public

Charles Sumner

Radical Republican who led the Republican dominated Senate

Almost beaten to death by a SC congressman named Preston Brooks

Introduced a bill in 1870 to enforce access to schools, public transportation,

hotels, and churches which would become the Civil Rights Act of 1875

Thaddeus Stevens
 Radical Republican who led the Republican dominated House

Thaddeus Stevens was one of the few who argued freed slaves have a right to land

grants

Ulysses S. Grant

Union General who fought in Civil War

When Johnson suspended Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, a radical

republican, Ulysses S. Grant was appointed as a replacement

After Senate overrules Stantons suspension Grant steps down to allow

Stanton to resume his position

Grant won Republican nomination for president in 1868 and won

Urged Radical Reconstruction as well as sectional reconciliation

Grant wins reelection with 56% of popular vote and every electoral vote in 1872

Refused to aid southern Republicans to satisfy public

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a womens suffrage leader, pointed out how uneducated

freedmen and immigrants could vote while educated white women could not

Objected to putting freedmens voting before womens right to vote

Cofounded National Woman's Suffrage Association with Susan B. Anthony

Hiram Revels

African-American elected to US Senate from Mississippi to fill Jefferson Daviss

former seat. He was the first black man to serve in U.S. Congress
 Free black from North Carolina who had moved to the North and attended Knox

College

Recruited African Americans during Civil War for Union army

Was a methodist minister

Blanche K. Bruce

African-American Blanche K. Bruce was tutored on a Virginia plantation by his

father and escaped during the war and established a school for freedmen in

Missouri

Moved to Mississippi and became its second black senator

Nathan Bedford Forrest

Decorated Confederate general

Born into poverty in 1821 and became big-time slave trade and Mississippi

Planter

Formed a Tennessee Confederate cavalry regiment, fought at Shiloh and won

fame as a daring rider. On April 12th, 1864, he and his troops perpetrated Fort

Pillow and massacred black Union soldiers

Determined to uphold white supremacy after the war, altering course of

Reconstruction

First Klan group in Tennessee turns to Forrest to lead them as Grand Wizard of

Klan to drive out republican government there

Rutherford B. Hayes

Former Union general who was untainted by corruption and was from swing state

of Ohio
 Nominated for presidency by Republicans and won election of 1876 and won by 1

electoral vote

Hayes offered patronage to the South, including federal funds for education and

internal improvements

Promised change of men and policy

Hoped to protect southern black voting rights

Only left 3,000 Union soldiers in the south. Eventually, all were pulled out.

Samuel Tilden

A wall street lawyer with a reform reputation

Democratic nominee for 1876 presidential election

Had popular vote by lost by 1 vote

Urged Democrats to accept Hayes presidential inauguration

Terms

Black codes

Started in 1865

Designed to force former slaves back to plantation labor

Reflected plantation owners economic interests

Severe penalties on blacks who did not hold full-year labor contracts and also set

up procedures for taking black children from their parents and apprenticing them

to former slave masters

Freedmens Bureau

Congress established Freedmens Bureau to aid displaced blacks and other war

refugees in March of 1865

 In early 1866 Congress voted to extend the bureau, gave it direct funding and

authorized agents to investigate southern abuses

The Freedmens Bureau supported Reconstruction efforts

Kept eye out for unfair labor contracts and forced landowners to bargain

with workers and tenants

Advised freedmen on economic matters

Provided direct payments to poor families

Helped establish schools

Formed the first black colleges

American Womens Suffrage Association

Remained loyal to Republican Party in hopes that once Reconstruction was done

it would be women's turn to recieve voting rights

Led by Lucy Stone

National Woman's Suffrage Association

Led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony

Declared to women they must not trust men

Founded National Woman Suffrage Association that focused exclusively

on womens rights and took up the battle for federal suffrage movement

Sharecropping

Freedmen worked as renters exhanging their labor for use of land, house

implements and sometimes seed and fertilizers

Typically turned over half of their crops to landlords

Effective strategy- laborers and landowners shared risk and return

 Unequal relationship- sharecroppers had to borrow tools and supplies for the first

growing season

Union League

Secret fraternal order

Formed in border and northern states during Civil War

Became a powerful political association that spread through the former

Confederacy

Pressured Congress to uphold justice for freedmen

Had meetings at churches and schoolhouses to instruct freedmen on

political issues and voting procedures

Parades and military drills

Scalawags

Ex-Confederate reference to southern whites who supported Reconstruction

Ancient Scots-Irish term for worthless animals

Carpetbaggers

Southern expression that denounced northern whites as self-seeking interlopers

who carried all their property in cheap suitcases called carpetbags

Convict leasing

State officials allowed private companies to hire out prisoners to labor in mines

and other industries

In 1866 Alabama leased 200 convicts to a railroad company for only $5

Physical abuse was prevalent

 Freedmens Savings and Trust Co.

Founded in 1865, it worked closely with the Freedmens Bureau and Union army

Former slaves brought small deposits to nearest branches of the company

African American farmers, entrepreneurs, churches, and charitable groups opened

accounts at the bank

Classical Liberalism

Intellectuals, journalists, and businessmen lead it who believed in free trade, small

government, low property taxes, and limitation of voting rights to men of

education and property

Laissez-faire

Policy of government letting alone business and the economy

Credit Mobilier

Notorious scandal during Grant administration

Sham corporation set up by shareholders in the Union Pacific Railroad to secure

government grants at an enormous profit

Protected from investigation by providing gifts of Credit Mobilier stock to

members of Congress

Redemption (governments)

Ex-Confederates seize power in the South

Believed Reconstruction governments were illegitimate regimes

Insurgency led by planters

Paramilitary takeover of Reconstruction governments

 Democrats get ex-Confederate voting rights restored and campaigned against

negro rule

Southern Democrats used force when necessary

Ex-Confederates terrorize Republicans, especially black voters

Black political leaders were shot, hanged, beaten to death and in one case

beheaded

Southern Republicans, black and white, flee the south

Southern Democrats called this process redemption

Heroic sounding but seizure of power was murderous and undemocratic

Democrats now dominate southern governments

Ku Klux Klan

Ex-Confederates strike back at Tennessee Governor Brownlow with campaign of

terror targeting Brownlows black supporters

In the mayhem they formed the first Ku Klux Klan group in 1865 or 1866

Klan became identical to Democratic Party

Dominated TN delegation to DNC of 1868

Burned freedmens schools, beat teachers, attacked Republican gatherings

and murdered political opponents

Events

10% Plan

Proposed by Lincoln
 Granted amnesty to most ex-confederates and allowed each rebellious state to

return to the Union as soon as 10% of its voters had taken a loyalty oath and the

state had approved the 13th amendment, abolishing slavery

Confederate states rejected this plan

Wade-Davis Bill

In July 1864 Congress proposed a tougher substitute to 10% Plan- Wade-Davis

Bill

Required an oath of allegiance by a majority of each states adult white

men

New government that had never taken up arms against Union

Permanent disenfranchisement of Confederate leaders

Lincoln opposed and defeated this bill with a pocket veto

Left it unsigned

Opened talks with key congressmen looking for another compromise

Civil Rights Act of 1866

Declared formerly enslaved people to be citizens and granted them equal

protection and rights of contract with full access to courts

Fourteenth Amendment

Republicans in Congress propose measure to protect African Americans

Bill to give African Americans U.S. citizenship rights

Declared all persons born or naturalized in the United states are citizens
 No state could deprive citizens of privileges or immunities of citizens of

the US or deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due

process of law or deny anyone equal protection

Reconstruction Act of 1867

Divided conquered South into five military districts, each under the command of a

US military general

To reenter Union former Confederate states had to grant the vote to freedmen and

deny it to leading ex-Confederates

Each military commander was required to register all eligible adult males, black

and white

Supervise state constitutional conventions

Ensure that new constitutions guaranteed black suffrage

Congress would readmit a state to Union once these conditions were met and the

Fourteenth amendment was ratified

Fifteenth Amendment

Protected male citizens right to vote irrespective of race, color, or previous

condition of servitude

Minor v. Happersett

1875

Virginia Minor of Missouri argued that registrar who denied her ballot violated

her rights under 14th amendment

Supreme Court ruled that suffrage rights were not inherent in citizenship
 Women were citizens but state legislatures could deny them the right to vote

Civil Rights Act of 1875

Charle Sumners proposed bill in 1870

Wished for it to be passed on his deathbed

Full and equal access to jury service and transportation and public

accommodations, irrespective of race

Integration of schools and churches removed from original bill

Enforcement Laws

Authorized federal prosecutions, military intervention and martial law to suppress

terrorist activity

Republican response to Ku Klux Klan violence

Slaughterhouse Cases

Beginning in 1873

Justices argued the 14th Amendment offered only a few, trivial federal protections

to citizens

Such as access to waterways

U.S. v. Cruikshank

1876

In Cruikshank, emerging from a case of gruesome killing of African American

farmers by ex-Confederates in Colfax, Louisiana, followed by a Democratic

political coup, the Court ruled that voting rights remained a state matter unless the

state itself violated those rights. So if individuals or private groups violated

former slaves voting rights that lay beyond federal jurisdiction.

 Civil Rights Cases

1883

Justices struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875 paving the way for segregation

Questions

1. How did Lincoln/Johnson and Radical Republicans differ on the issue of

Reconstruction and the re-admittance of states that were formerly in rebellion?

Lincolns Reconstruction Plan

Proposed 10% plan- Granted amnesty to most ex-confederates and allowed each

rebellious state to return to the Union as soon as 10% of its voters had taken a

loyalty oath and the state had approved the 13th amendment, abolishing slavery

Johnsons Reconstruction Plan

Amnesty to southerners who took loyalty oath (except high ranking

Confederates), revoke secession, abolish slavery, and relieved new state

governments of financial burdens by repudiating Confederate debts

New southern state legislatures created under Johnsons limited Reconstruction

plan restored slavery in all but its name

Sympathetic to the South and racist

Radical Republicans Plan

Wade-Davis bill

Required an oath of allegiance by a majority of each states adult white

men
 New government that had never taken up arms against Union

Permanent disenfranchisement of Confederate leaders

Protections for black Americans

14th and 15th Amendments

Reconstruction Act of 1867 planned of occupying south with Union

soldiers

Enforcement laws to protect black Americans from violence

Restricted voting rights for ex-Confederates

Provided economic opportunities to the south with railroad building

Hoped to improve southern economy and spread wagworking labor

system

2. Why did the Congress pass the 14th and 15th Amendments?

Fourteenth Amendment Passage

Republicans were alert to protect freedpeople and reassert Republican power in

the south

Took measures to sustain civil rights

Established that national citizenship was more important than state citizenship

when essential rights were at stake, allowing for Republicans to make political

progress in Reconstruction

Fifteenth Amendment Passage

Had faith in the power of vote of African Americans

Gain lots of support from African Americans through their votes

Would assist Republicans in keeping control of Congress

3. Why didnt African-Americans fare well during the reconstruction period even though

many influential politicians were looking out for their interests?

Racism

Many northerners and Republicans still had stereotypical depictions of blacks as

being inferior

Prioritized other things like economics over black rights

Southern states resisted allowing African Americans to vote

Ballot polls

Threats and violence

Many murders, beatings and general violence towards African Americans by ex-

Confederates that went unpunished

Southern legislators opposed national Reconstruction policies, whether they were

on legal grounds or not

South had poor economic system of sharecropping

Majority of African Americans remained in poverty

Sharecropping was comparable to serfdom