Reconstruction

Ch 2.5

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

• Daily goal: Understand the failures of Reconstruction and what African American life was like after it ended. Differentiate between the 3 different plans for Reconstruction.

Reconstruction

• Rebuilding the nation after the Civil War.• 3 different plans:• Pres Lincoln’s• Pres Johnson’s• Radical Republican’s

So did Lincoln free the Slaves?

13th Amendment

• Permanently banned slavery in the US.

Lincoln’s Plan

• General amnesty to all Southerners who took an oath of loyalty to the US.

• States could form new govs when 10% took loyalty oath.

• Former Confederates could not join new gov’t.

freedmen

• Thousands of former slaves who needed food and shelter.

• Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau to help former slaves find jobs, food and shelter.

9

PRESIDENT LINCOLN ASSASSINATED APRIL 14, 1865

MURDERED BY JOHN WILKES BOOTH, A LOYAL CONFEDERATE SOUTHERNER WHO BELIEVED THAT HE WAS AVENGING THE SOUTH WHEN HE ASSASSINATED THE PRESIDENT

Johnson’s Plan

• Andrew Johnson became Pres when Lincoln died and he sympathized with the South.

• Similar to Lincoln’s plan, but allowed former Confederates back into gov’t and did not protect freed slaves’ rights.

Black Codes

• Laws passed in the South which limited the rights of African Americans and kept them nearly as slaves.

14

MAP OF 5 MILITARY DISTRICTS

Radical Republican’s plan

• The Military Reconstruction Act split the South into 5 military districts occupied by the Union Army.

• Army had orders to protect the rights of freed African Americans.

14th Amendment

• Guaranteed citizenship to all persons born in the US declared that no state could deprive any person of life, liberty or property without “due process of law.”

15th Amendment

• The right to vote shall not be denied on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a5/Kkk-carpetbagger-cartoon.jpg

What’s with the white sheets?

KKK

• Terrorized African Americans and any whites who helped them.

• Threatened African Americans with violence if they voted or tried to use their new freedoms.

Reconstruction ends

• Compromise of 1877 pulled the Union troops out of the South ending Reconstruction.

• What good are laws when no one enforces them?

Back to the plantations

• Most African Americans couldn’t afford to buy land.

• Some became tenant farmers paying rent for the land they farmed.

• Others became sharecroppers who paid rent on the land with a share of their crops.

• The rent was so high they were constantly in debt and tied to the land.