Reconstruction and the Changing South

U.S. HistoryChapter 18

POSTWAR PROBLEMS

War changed southern society forever. Suddenly, there was a new class of 4 million people known as freedman, men and women who had been slaves.

POSTWAR PROBLEMS

• Major cities were ruined

• Transportation system was destroyed

• Returning soldiers faced economic uncertainty.

STEPS TO RECONSTRUCTION

• Lincoln wanted to make rejoining the Union easy for the Southern states.

• Amnesty: government pardon

STEPS TO RECONSTRUCTION

• Freedmen’s Bureau: government agency to help former slaves

• Bureau gave food and clothing and helped freedmen find jobs.

• Bureau set up schools for freedmen.

JOHNSON BECOMES PRESIDENT

• Conflicts erupted in Congress because Republicans disapproved of Johnson’s Reconstruction plan.

• Republicans believed Johnson’s plan was too lenient.

JOHNSON BECOMES PRESIDENT

• Southern states agreed to ratify the 13th amendment and win Presidential approval to rejoin the Union.

• 13th amendment banned slavery throughout the nation.

SOUTH RESISTS RECONSTRUCTION

Southern legislatures passed black codes, laws that severely limited the rights of freedmen.

SOUTH RESISTS RECONSTRUCTION

• Outraged Republicans vowed to develop a stricter Reconstruction plan.

• They thought that black codes deprived African Americans of equal opportunities.

SOUTH RESISTS RECONSTRUCTION

• Violence toward African Americans increased in the South.

• Literacy tests were required for freedmen to know sections of the Constitution in order to vote.

RISE OF RADICALS

• Radical Republicans wanted to ensure freedmen the right to vote.

• Gained power by joining forces with moderate Republicans to reduce power of southern Democrats.

RISE OF RADICALS

• Radical Republicans were led by Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner

• Sumner’s “Monstrous Power” was slavery; he thought Johnson’s actions were allowing slavery to continue in the South.

IMPEACHMENT

• Radical Republicans wanted to remove President Johnson from office by impeachment, or bringing formal charges, against him.

• Johnson was not impeached; Congress cannot remove a President just because they disagreed with him.

NEW FORCES IN POLITICS

• Southern leaders lost influence

• Scalawag: term for Southern white Republican who supported Reconstruction

• Carpetbaggers: Northerners who moved South for profit

NEW FORCES IN POLITICS

• Joining transplanted Northerners in the new Southern politics were African Americans.

• Some states unfairly used laws allowing poll taxes, or fees to vote, to deny African Americans the right to vote.

CONSERVATIVES RESIST• Southerners were

determined real power would remain with whites.

• A secret organization, Ku Klux Klan, spread terror to keep African Americans out of office.

CONSERVATIVES RESIST

• An outbreak of violence in New Orleans against African Americans helped persuade voters to elect a Republican Congress in 1866.

• Segregation: legal separation of the races

CHALLENGE OF REBUILDING

Reconstruction governments raised taxes to cover the costs of rebuilding the South.

CHALLENGE OF REBUILDING• South developed its

own natural resources for making clothing to develop industry after the Civil War.

• Furniture makers used lumber from southern forests to manufacture tables and chairs.

CYCLE OF POVERTY

• Many freedmen and poor whites went to work on plantation. Sharecroppers rented and farmed a plot.

• Most freedmen met their basic needs by returning to the land where they had worked as slaves.

CYCLE OF POVERTY

Sharecroppers would become trapped in poverty because they could not earn enough money to pay their debts to the landowner.

END OF RECONSTRUCTION

• Radical Republicans lost power with stories of corruption in President Grant’s administration.

• Rutherford Hayes promised to remove all federal troops stationed in the South to gain southern votes.

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