Transcript Reconstruction (1865

Reconstruction
Presidential:
• Lincoln and Andrew Johnson
Individuals, not states left Union
• 1863-66
Proclamation of Amnesty and
Ten-Percent Plan:
Congressional:
• Wade-Davis Bill
South are conquered territories
• 1866-1877
“Radical” Reconstruction
• Ratify 13th, 14th, and 15th
• Pardoned all Confederates but higher • South must recognize black rights
officers and officials could apply for • Troops to protect black voters
pardon
• Confederates officials, officers
• 10 % oath – to rejoin the Union
could not vote
• Ratify the 13th Amendment
• Freedmen's Bureau
• No aid to freedmen- left to states
• No permanent land distribution
- Gave rise to sharecropping
13th Amendment
« Ratified in December, 1865.
« Neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude, except as punishment for
crime whereof the party shall have
been duly convicted, shall exist within
the United States or any place subject
to their jurisdiction.
Freedmen’s Bureau (1865)
« Bureau of Refugees,
Freedmen, and Abandoned
Lands.
« Medical care, education,
JOBS
« “40 Acres and a mule”?
« Called “carpetbaggers” by
white southern Democrats.
Congress Breaks with the President
« Congress bars Southern
Congressmen.
« Johnson vetoes Freedman’s
Bureau and Civil Rights Act
« Congress passed both bills over
Johnson’s vetoes
« Johnson impeached in ‘68 over
violation of Tenure of Office Act.
« Found not guilty by one vote.
th
14
Amendment
« Ratified in July, 1868.
•
All persons born or naturalized in the United States,
and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of
the United States and of the State wherein they
reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which
shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens
of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any
person of life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law; nor deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
•
Bans Confederate leaders from office.
•
Johnson campaigned against it.
15th Amendment
«
Ratified in 1870.
«
The right of citizens of the United States to
vote shall not be denied or abridged by the
United States or by any state on account
of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude.
«
South argues that the 15th does not
guarantee the right of Negroes to vote.
«
Women’s rights groups were furious that
they were still denied the vote.
Failure
13th Amendment
14th Amendment
15th Amendment
Black Codes,
sharecropping, tenant
farming, crop liens, chain
gangs
U.S. v. Cruikshank,
Slaughterhouse Cases
Plessey v. Ferguson, Jim
Crow
KKK, Poll tax, grandfather
clause, literacy test, US v.
Reese
Sharecropping
Lynching and Racially-Motivated Murders by Decade
Perceptions of
Reconstruction:
Supposedly ignorant and
corrupt leaders
Carpetbaggers-Scalawags
Legacy: The Lost Cause
W.E.B. Du Bois – Black Reconstruction, 1935
What are American children taught today about Reconstruction?
1. All Negroes were ignorant.
o “All were ignorant of public business.”
o “Although the Negroes were now free, they were also ignorant and unfit to govern themselves.”
o “The Negroes got control of these states. They had been slaves all their lives, and were so ignorant they did not even
know the letters of the alphabet. Yet they now sat in the state legislatures and made the laws.”
o “In the South, the Negroes who had so suddenly gained their freedom did not know what to do with it.”
o “In the legislatures, the Negroes were so ignorant that they could only watch their white leaders—carpetbaggers, and
vote aye or no as they were told.”
2. All Negroes were lazy, dishonest and extravagant.
o “Legislatures were often at the mercy of Negroes, childishly ignorant, who sold their votes openly, and whose ‘loyalty’ was
gained by allowing them to eat, drink and clothe themselves at the state’s expense.”
o “Some Negroes spent their money foolishly, and were worse off than they had been before.”
o “This assistance led many freed men to believe that they need no longer work. They also ignorantly believed that the
lands were to be turned over by Congress to them, and that every Negro was to have as his allotment “forty acres and a
mule.”
o “Thinking that slavery meant toil and that freedom meant only idleness, the slave after he was set free was disposed to
try out his freedom by refusing to work.”
o “They began to wander about, stealing and plundering. In one week, in a Georgia town, 150 Negroes were arrested for
thieving,”
3. Negroes were responsible for bad government during Reconstruction:
o “Foolish laws were passed by the black law-makers, the public money was wasted terribly and thousands of dollars were
stolen straight. Self-respecting Southerners chafed under the horrible régime.”
o “In the exhausted states already amply ‘punished’ by the desolation of war, the rule of the Negro and his unscrupulous
carpetbagger and scalawag patrons, was an orgy of extravagance, fraud and disgusting incompetency.”
o “The picture of Reconstruction which the average pupil in these sixteen States receives is limited to the South. The
South found it necessary to pass Black Codes for the control of the shiftless and sometimes vicious freedmen. The
Freedmen’s Bureau caused the Negroes to look to the North rather than to the South for support and by giving them a
false sense of equality did more harm than good.
o With the scalawags, the ignorant and non-propertyholding Negroes under the leadership of the carpetbaggers, engaged
in a wild orgy of spending in the legislatures. The humiliation and distress of the Southern whites was in part relieved by
the Ku Klux Klan, a secret organization which frightened the superstitious blacks.”
“Regional Balance?”
Compromise of 1877- the Corrupt Bargain
Election 1876: Rep. Rutherford B. Hayes v. Dem. Samuel Tilden
Background:
• Tilden wins popular vote
• Hayes wins electoral college
• 20 electoral votes disputed
Compromise:
• Removal of troops from south
• Appointment of a Southern Dem.
to Hayes’s Cabinet
• Railroad from Texas to Pacific/
Southern Industry
Hayes Pres.!
Blacks Sold Down the RiverCongressional Reconstruction, Done!
Iron & Steel Production
By this time the Supreme
Court had accepted the
argument that corporations
were “persons” and their
money was property
protected by the due process
clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment. Supposedly,
the Amendment had been
passed to protect Negro
rights, but of the Fourteenth
Amendment cases brought
before the Supreme Court
between 1890 and 1910,
nineteen dealt with the
Negro, 288 dealt with
corporations.
- Zinn, People’s History
Plessey V. Ferguson, 1896
In respect of civil rights, common to all citizens, the Constitution of the United States does not, I
think, permit any public authority to know the race of those entitled to be protected in the
enjoyment of such rights… I deny that any legislative body or judicial tribunal may have regard to
the race of citizens when the civil rights of those citizens are involved. Indeed, such legislation, as
that here in question, is inconsistent not only with that equality of rights which pertains to
citizenship, National and State, but with the personal liberty enjoyed by every one within the
United States.…
…in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant,
ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows
nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.
The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account
of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the
land are involved…
The arbitrary separation of citizens, on the basis of race, while they are on a public highway, is a
badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law
established by the Constitution. It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds.
If evils will result from the commingling of the two races upon public highways established for the
benefit of all, they will be infinitely less than those that will surely come from state legislation
regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race. We boast of the freedom enjoyed by
our people above all other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a state of the law
which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellowcitizens, our equals before the law. The thin disguise of “equal” accommodations for passengers in
railroad coaches will not mislead any one, nor atone for the wrong this day done
- Dissenting opinion of Justice John Harlan