Transcript Chapter 10

Chapter 17
Reconstruction, 1863-1877
© 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved.
Wartime Reconstruction
• Problem of Black equality, even most northern
states denied it
• Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction
(1863)
– 10% of 1860 voters swear loyalty oath to U.S. and
agree to end slavery, state could begin
reconstruction process
– Some Republicans opposed because not enough
protection for freed slaves
© 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved.
Radical Republicans and
Reconstruction
• Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner: Radical
Reconstruction leaders
– Give freed slaves land of Confederates
– Give freed slaves right to vote
• Louisiana’s reconstructed government rejected by
even non-Radical Republicans
• Wade-Davis Reconstruction Bill (1864)
– Lincoln’s veto
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Andrew Johnson and
Reconstruction
• Tennessee Democrat who was the only
southern senator to stay in office after
secession
• Radical Republicans wanted punitive
Reconstruction and Black enfranchisement
Johnson’s Policy
• Presidential proclamations
– Amnesty Proclamation
– Formation of new state governments in South
• Radical opposed, many supported Johnson
• Moderate Republicans
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Southern Defiance
• Thirteenth Amendment – many Southern states
balked at ratifying
• Neo-confederate violence against Blacks
• Presidential pardons made to ex-Confederates by
Johnson
• Many ex-Confederate leaders elected to Congress
– Alexander Hamilton Stephens
• Praise and support of Johnson from leading
Northern Democrats
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The Black Codes
• State governments that reduced newly freed
slaves to a condition close to slavery
– Blacks were excluded from juries, ballot boxes,
interracial marriages, were punished more
severely, could not lease land
– Unemployed blacks declared vagrants and hired
out to planters
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Land and Labor in the Postwar
South
• Post-war South was in economic shambles
• Post-war Slaves:
– Returned to farming for wages or crop shares
– Moved into towns
– Searched out relatives
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The Freedmen’s Bureau
• Union army occupies South
• Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and
Abandoned Lands
• Sharecropping
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Land for the Landless
• Most slaves could not purchase land
• “40 acres and a mule”
• President Johnson restores almost all land to
prewar owners by 1866
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Education
• Abolitionists helped freed people obtain
education
• 2,000 Northern teachers (3/4 were women)
– Trained black teachers: missionary societies
– Black colleges founded
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The Advent of Congressional
Reconstruction
• Congress refused to admit former
Confederate states
• Some Republicans wanted to enfranchise
Blacks, but were constrained by fears of
racist northern electorate
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved.
Schism Between President and
Congress
• Freedmen’s Bureau extension
• Civil Rights Act (1866)
• Congress passed both over presidential veto
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The Fourteenth Amendment
• Passed in Congress, 1866
– Most important provisions for defining and
enforcing civil rights and liberties
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved.
The 1866 Elections
• Republican campaign theme: 14th
Amendment
• Johnson and the National Union Party
• Deadly race riots in Memphis and New
Orleans
• Republicans win three-to-one majority in
Congress
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The Reconstruction Acts of 1867
• Compromise between Radical and Moderate
Republicans
• Created five military districts
• Permitted Black suffrage
• States must ratify 14th Amendment to be
readmitted
• Many southerners boycott elections
• Scalawags and Carpetbaggers
• Johnson tries to slow Congressional
Reconstruction
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The Impeachment of Andrew
Johnson
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Threats of impeachment
Edwin M. Stanton
Tenure of Office Act
House votes to impeach Johnson
Long and complicated impeachment trial in Senate
Moderates fear successful impeachment will
endanger balance of powers
• Senate fails to impeach by 1 vote
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved.
The Completion of Formal
Reconstruction
• New state constitutions in the South
– Universal male suffrage
– Statewide public schools, but they could be
segregated
– More state responsibility for social welfare
• Violence and Ku Klux Klan
• 8 southern states ratify 14th Amendment
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The Fifteenth Amendment
• Prohibited states from denying the right to
vote on grounds of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude
• Woman’s suffragists embittered
– Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
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The Election of 1868
• Election was referendum on Congressional
Reconstruction
• Ulysses S. Grant
– Republican nominee
– Opposed Johnson’s Reconstruction policies
• Horatio Seymour
– Frank Blair
– Nathan Bedford Forrest and the KKK
– Grant wins electoral college, but got minority of white
vote nationally
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The Grant Administration
• Scandals
– 3 Cabinet members resigned
• Grant’s administration not alone
– “Boss” William Marcy Tweed and Tammany Hall
– Credit Mobilier
– An “Era of Good Stealings”
• Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
– The Gilded Age (1873)
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Civil Service Reform
• “spoils system”
• Politicized bureaucracy with unqualified
people
• Reformers wanted competitive exams for
civil service positions
• George William Curtis and the Civil Service
Commission
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Foreign Policy Issues
• Santo Domingo affair
• Treaty of Washington (1871)
– Hamilton Fish
– "Alabama Claims"
• Canada
– Fenians
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Reconstruction in the South
• Northerners tire of sectional strife and
Reconstruction
• Democratic violence protesting
Reconstruction
• Instability of the Republican coalition
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Blacks in Office
• Republican Party
– Southern white perceive it as symbol of conquest and
humiliation
– 80% of Republican voters in South were Black
• 1868-1876:
– 14 Black Representatives
– 2 Black Senators
• "Negro rule“ myth
– Blacks held 15-20% of elected offices in
Reconstruction
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“Carpetbaggers”
• Adventurers who came South with nothing
but a “carpetbag” in which to stow loot
plundered from helpless people
• Those who settled in post-war South hoped
to rebuild its society in the image of the
free-labor North
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“Scalawags”
• Native-born whites who joined the southern
Republican Party
– Came from upcountry Unionist areas of
western North Carolina and Virginia, eastern
Tennessee
– Often former Whigs
• Republican Party in the South a fragile and
vulnerable coalition
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The Ku Klux Klan
• Klan purpose
– Social control of freed slaves
– Destroy Republican Party in the South
• “Colfax Massacre” (1873)
• Ku Klux Klan Act (1871)
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The Election of 1872
• Liberal Republicans and Horace Greeley
– Democrats also endorse Greeley
• Thomas Nast cartoons
• Grant reelected
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The Panic of 1873
• Wall Street panic
– Five-year depression
– Jay Cooke’s banking firm and the Northern
Pacific Railroad
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The Retreat from Reconstruction
• After the panic, Democrats made large gains in
1874 Congressional elections
– 1st House majority in 18 years
• Public opinion turned against Republicans in the
South
• 1875: only 4 states remained under Republican
control
– South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana
– White paramilitary groups
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The Mississippi Election of 1875
• Mississippi Plan (1875)
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All whites should become Democrats
Intimidate Black voters
Adelbert Ames
Grant trades Ohio for Mississippi
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The Supreme Court and
Reconstruction
• U.S. v. Cruikshank (1870)
• U.S. v. Reese (1871)
• Civil Rights Cases (1883)
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The Election of 1876
• Corruption and government reform were
key campaign issues
• Samuel J. Tilden
• Rutherford B. Hayes
• “bulldozing”
• “Hamburg Massacre”
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Disputed Results
• Discrepancies in results
– Hayes had votes, but Democrats refused the
results
– Democratic House, Republican Senate
– Constitutional crisis
• Electoral commission
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The Compromise of 1877
• Electoral Commission partisan vote awarded
victory to Hayes
• Compromise
– Federal aid and patronage to Democrats in South
– Withdrawal of federal troops
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The End of Reconstruction
• Postmaster David M. Key (D-TN)
• Internal Improvements for South 1878
• Removal of federal troops in Louisiana and
South Carolina
• North tired of crisis and Reconstruction
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Conclusion
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Federal government power increases
Amendments Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen
North wearied of Reconstruction
Withdrawal of federal troops from the South
in 1877
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved.