Section 1-5 Click the mouse button or press the Space Bar to display the information. Reconstruction Debate Americans faced many difficult issues over

Click the mouse button or press the Space Bar to display the information.

Reconstruction Debate• Americans faced many difficult issues over

how Reconstruction, or rebuilding the South, should be carried out.

(pages 500–502)(pages 500–502)

• Before the war was over, Lincoln proposed in 1863 the Ten Percent Plan for accepting Southern states back into the Union.

• When ten percent of the voters of a state took an oath of loyalty to the Union, the state could form a new government and adopt a new constitution banning slavery.


Reconstruction Debate (cont.)

(pages 500–502)(pages 500–502)

- Lincoln wanted Southerners who supported the Union to take charge of the state governments.

- Lincoln offered amnesty to all white Southerners who were willing to swear loyaltyto the Union, except Confederate leaders.

- He supported giving educated African Americans or those who served in the Union army the right to vote.

- Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee established governments under Lincoln’s plan in 1864.

- A struggle occurred when Congress refused to seat their representatives.


Reconstruction Debate (cont.) • A more radical plan proposed by Radical

Republicans called for a tougher approach to Reconstruction.

• The plan called for breaking up Southern institutions.

• Since the Radical Republicans controlled Congress, they voted to deny seats to any state reconstructed under Lincoln’s plan.

(pages 500–502)(pages 500–502)


Reconstruction Debate (cont.) • Congress developed its own harsh plan in

July 1864 by passing the Wade-Davis Bill.

(pages 500–502)(pages 500–502)

- A majority of white males had to swear loyalty.

- Only white males who swore they had never fought against the Union could vote for delegates to a state convention.

- Former Confederates were denied the right to hold public office.

- If a new state constitution abolishing slavery was adopted at a convention, then the state could be readmitted to the Union.


Reconstruction Debate (cont.)

(pages 500–502)(pages 500–502)

- Lincoln refused to sign the bill.

- He knew, though, that he would have to compromise with the Radical Republicans.


Reconstruction Debate (cont.) • Another difficult issue of Reconstruction

was how to help freed African Americans.

• A new government agency, the Freedmen’s Bureau, was established to help former enslaved persons.

• It distributed food and clothing, provided medical services, and established schools staffed mostly by teachers from the North.

(pages 500–502)(pages 500–502)


Reconstruction Debate (cont.) • It helped African Americans buy land and

get jobs and receive fair wages.

• It also gave aid to new African American higher institutions of learning, such as Atlanta University, Howard University, and Fisk University.

(pages 500–502)(pages 500–502)


Lincoln Assassinated!• The country mourned the death of a man

who saved the Union and helped African Americans win freedom.

(pages 502–503)(pages 502–503)

• On the evening of April 14, 1865, President Lincoln was shot while attending a play at the Ford’s Theaterin Washington, D.C.

• His assassin, John Wilkes Booth, entered the box Lincoln was sitting in, shot him in the back of the head, and escaped.

• Lincoln died a few hours later at the home of a nearby tailor.


• Vice President Andrew Johnson became the president.

• As a former senator, he was the only Southern senator to support the Union.

• He called his plan for the South “Restoration.”

Lincoln Assassinated! (cont.)

(pages 502–503)(pages 502–503)

- Most Southerners would be granted amnesty once they swore an oath of loyalty to the Union.



(pages 502–503)(pages 502–503)

- High-ranking Confederate officials and wealthy landowners could only be pardoned by applying personally to the president.

- This was his way of attacking the wealthy leaders who he thought tricked Southerners into seceding.

- The president would appoint governors and require them to hold elections for state constitutional conventions.

- Only whites that swore their loyalty and had been pardoned would be allowed to vote.



(pages 502–503)(pages 502–503)

- Before a state could reenter the Union, its constitutional convention had to denounce secession and abolish slavery.

- States had to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment passed in January 1865 that abolished slavery.

• By the end of 1865, Johnson declared Restoration was almost complete because all the former Confederate states, except Texas, had established new governments and were ready to rejoin the Union.


African Americans’ Rights• The new Southern states passed a series

of laws in 1865 and early 1866 called black codes.

(pages 504–506)(pages 504–506)

• These laws reestablished slavery in disguise.

• They deprived freed people of their rights and enabled plantation owners to exploit African American workers.

- Some laws allowed local officials to arrest and fine unemployed African Americans and make them work for white employers to pay off their fines.


• Congress challenged the black codes.

• It extended the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1866 and granted it the power to set up special courts to prosecute people charged with violating the rights of African Americans.

African Americans’ Rights (cont.)

(pages 504–506)(pages 504–506)

- Other laws banned African Americans from owning or renting farms.

- One law allowed whites to take orphaned African American children as unpaid apprentices.


• It also passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, giving full citizenship to African Americans, and gave the federal government the right to intervene in state affairs to protect them.

• It overturned black codes and contradicted the 1857 Supreme Court Dred Scott decision saying that African Americans were not citizens.


(pages 504–506)(pages 504–506)


• Johnson vetoed both bills.

• However, Republicans were able to override both vetoes and the bills became law.

• This split between the president and the Radical Republicans led Congress to draft a new Reconstruction Plan.


(pages 504–506)(pages 504–506)


• In June 1866 Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution granting full citizenship to all individuals born in the United States.

• The amendment also says that no state can take away a citizen’s life, liberty, and property “without due process of law.” Every citizen was also entitled to “equal protection of the laws.”


(pages 504–506)(pages 504–506)

- It did not include voting rights for African Americans.

- It also barred certain former Confederates from holding national or state office unless pardoned by a two-thirds vote of Congress.


• Congress declared that Southern states must ratify the amendment in order to be readmitted to the Union.

• Because Tennessee was the only stateto ratify early, adoption of the amendment was delayed until 1868 when the other ten states finally ratified it.


(pages 504–506)(pages 504–506)


• Republicans won victories in the congressional elections of 1866.

• They increased their majorities in both houses and gained control of every Northern state government.


(pages 504–506)(pages 504–506)


Radical Reconstruction• Radical Reconstruction was the period

that began when Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts.

(pages 506–508)(pages 506–508)

• The First Reconstruction Act, passed on March 2, 1867, called for the creation of new governments in the ten Southern states that had not ratified the Fourteenth Amendment.

• Tennessee was quickly readmitted to the Union because it had ratified the amendment.


Radical Reconstruction (cont.)

(pages 506–508)(pages 506–508)

- The ten states were divided into five military districts under the command of military officers.

- African American males were guaranteed the right to vote in state elections.

- Former Confederate leaders could not hold political office.

- To be readmitted, each state had to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and submit its new state constitution to Congress.


• The Second Reconstruction Act was passed a few weeks later.

• It required military commanders to begin registering voters and to prepare for new state constitutional conventions.


(pages 506–508)(pages 506–508)


• By 1868 seven Southern states had established new governments and met the conditions for readmission.

• They were Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

• By 1870 the final three states restored to the Union were Mississippi, Virginia, and Texas.


(pages 506–508)(pages 506–508)


• The rift between Congress and President Johnson grew wider.

• Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act in March 1867 to limit the president’s power.

• It prohibited him from removing government officials without the Senate’s approval.


(pages 506–508)(pages 506–508)


• When Congress was not in session in August 1867, Johnson suspended his secretary of war, Edwin Stanton.

• When the Senate met again and refused to approve this act, Johnson fired Stanton.

• Johnson also appointed as commanders of Southern military districts some generals whom the Radicals opposed.


(pages 506–508)(pages 506–508)


• Because of Johnson’s actions, the House voted to impeach him.

• The case went to the Senate for a trial that lasted almost three months.


(pages 506–508)(pages 506–508)

- His defenders said he was exercising his right to challenge laws he thought unconstitutional.

- They said the impeachment was politically motivated and that Congress was trying to remove him from office without accusinghim of a crime.



(pages 506–508)(pages 506–508)

- His accusers argued that Congress should retain the power to make laws.

- A senator from Massachusetts said that Johnson had turned “the veto power into a remedy for ill-considered legislation . . . into a weapon of offense against Congress.”

- The Senate vote was one vote short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict, so Johnson remained in office until March 1869.


• The 1868 presidential election was a vote on Reconstruction.

• Most states had rejoined the Union by the election.

• Americans chose Republican and former Northern general Ulysses S. Grant as their new president.


(pages 506–508)(pages 506–508)


• Another major piece of Reconstruction legislation was the Fifteenth Amendment.

• It prohibited the state and federal governments from denying the right to vote to any male citizen because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

• It became law in February 1870.

• The Republicans thought that the power of the vote would allow African Americans to protect themselves.


(pages 506–508)(pages 506–508)


New Groups Take Charge • The Republican Party consisted of three

main groups that dominated Southern politics: African Americans, white Southerners who supported Republican policies, and white settlers from the North who moved to the South.

(pages 509–511)(pages 509–511)

- African Americans held important positions but did not control the government of any state.

- Between 1869 and 1880, sixteen African Americans served in the House and two in the Senate.


New Groups Take Charge (cont.)

(pages 509–511)(pages 509–511)

- Hiram Revels was elected to the Senate from Mississippi in 1870 and served one year.

- Blanche K. Bruce was the other senator, also from Mississippi, who was elected in 1874 and served six years.

- The Confederates called some Southern whites who had opposed secession and were nonslaveholding farmers or business leaders scalawags or scoundrels.

- They hated them for siding with the Republicans.



(pages 509–511)(pages 509–511)

- Many Northern whites who moved to the South and supported the Republicans were called carpetbaggers by their critics.

- They got the name because they carried suitcases made of carpet fabric with all their belongings.

- Others were reformers who wanted to help reshape Southern society.


• Most white Southerners opposed efforts to expand the rights of African Americans.

• Plantation owners still tried to keep control of the freed people.

• They kept them on the plantations and refused to rent land to them.

• Store owners refused them credit, and employers refused them work.


(pages 509–511)(pages 509–511)


• During Reconstruction secret societies committed violence against African Americans and white supporters of African Americans.

• The Ku Klux Klan, formed in 1866, killed them and burned their homes, churches, and schools.

• The Klan’s supporters were Southerners, especially planters and Democrats who wanted to reestablish white supremacy and saw violence as a way to attack Republicans.


(pages 509–511)(pages 509–511)


• Southerners opposed to violence and terrorism appealed to the federal government.

• In 1870 and 1871, Congress passed several laws without too much success.

• Some arrests were made, but most white Southerners would not testify against these people.


(pages 509–511)(pages 509–511)


Some Improvements• Reconstruction brought important

changes, especially in education.

(pages 511–512)(pages 511–512)

• African Americans created their own schools in some regions.

• The Freedmen’s Bureau and private charities spread the value of education.

• Free African Americans from the North and Northern women taught in the schools.

• By 1870 about 4,000 schools existed and more than half the teachers were African Americans.


• Public school systems for both races were created in the 1870s.

• Generally whites and African Americans attended different schools.

• More than 50 percent of white children and about 40 percent of African Americans went to public schools within a few years.

Some Improvements (cont.)

(pages 511–512)(pages 511–512)


• The other major change occurred in farming.

• Most African Americans were not able to buy their own land.

• Instead, they rented a plot of land from a landowner along with a shack, some seed, and tools.

• They became sharecroppers.


(pages 511–512)(pages 511–512)


• Sharecropping was not much better than slavery for many because in return for the use of the land, the sharecroppers had to pay the landowner by giving him a share of the crops they grew.

• Barely anything was left for their families, and they rarely had enough to sell and to make any money.


(pages 511–512)(pages 511–512)


Reconstruction Declines• As Southern Democrats began to regain

political and economic control in the South, support for Radical Reconstruction policies decreased.

(pages 513–515)(pages 513–515)

• Many Northerners also began believing in the end of Reconstruction.

• They thought it was holding back Southern economic expansion.


• Grant was reelected in the 1872 presidential election despite division in the Republican Party.

• Reports of corruption in Grant’s administration and in Reconstruction programs caused a group of Republicans to form the Liberal Republicans.

• They nominated Horace Greeley.

• Although Greeley also had the support of many Democrats, Grant won.

Reconstruction Declines (cont.)

(pages 513–515)(pages 513–515)


• Congress passed the Amnesty Act in May 1872 that pardoned most former Confederates.

• This caused the political balance in the South to change and allowed Democrats to regain power.

• During the 1872 election, Liberal Republicans called for expanded amnesty for white Southerners.


(pages 513–515)(pages 513–515)


• Democrats regained control of state governments in Virginia and North Carolina.

• The Ku Klux Klan and other violent groups terrorized Republican voters, thus helping Democrats take power.

• The Democrats used threats to pressure white Republicans to become Democrats.

• They also used violence to persuade African Americans not to vote.

• By 1876 Florida, South Carolina, Oregon, and Louisiana were the only Southern states to remain Republican.


(pages 513–515)(pages 513–515)


• Scandals and corruption charges weakened the Republican Party.

• The nation was also in an economic depression. Blame fell on theRepublicans.

• In the 1874 congressional elections, the Democrats won control of a part of the federal government.

• They gained Senate seats and won control of the House.

• This weakened Congress’s commitment to Reconstruction and to protecting the rights of newly freed African Americans.


(pages 513–515)(pages 513–515)


The End of Reconstruction• The disputed election of 1876 confirmed

the Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes the winner four months after the election.

(pages 515–517)(pages 515–517)

• Samuel Tilden, the Democrat, appeared the winner, but disputed returns from Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina changed the result.

• A special commission was appointed to resolve the election.


• It awarded all 20 disputed electoral votes to Hayes, giving him the required majority for victory.

• Congress confirmed the commission’s findings, so Hayes became president although he had fewer popular votes than Tilden did.

The End of Reconstruction (cont.)

(pages 515–517)(pages 515–517)


• Congressional leaders made a deal to settle the election.

• This was the Compromise of 1877.

• It said that the new government would give more aid to the South and withdraw all remaining troops while the Democrats promised to maintain the rights of African Americans.


(pages 515–517)(pages 515–517)


• Hayes sent a clear message in his Inaugural Address that Reconstruction was over.

• The federal government would no longer attempt to reshape Southern society or help African Americans.


(pages 515–517)(pages 515–517)


Change in the South• By the 1880s the country saw the rise of

the “New South.”

(pages 517–518)(pages 517–518)

• Industry developed based on the region’s resources of cotton, tobacco, lumber, coal, iron, and steel.

- The textile industry advanced.

- Instead of shipping cotton to the North and Europe, the South built their own textile mills.

- The tobacco industry grew. James Duke’s company, Duke’s American Tobacco Company, eventually controlled almost all tobacco manufacturing in the nation.


Change in the South (cont.)

(pages 517–518)(pages 517–518)

- The iron and steel industry also grew.

- Alabama had deposits of iron ore.

- By 1890 Southern mills produced nearly 20 percent of the nation’s iron and steel.


• The following factors helped this growth:


(pages 517–518)(pages 517–518)

- a cheap and reliable workforce of people who worked long hours for low pay

- the railroad rebuilding of destroyed track caused a railroad boom; between 1880 and 1890, the miles of track doubled


• A new ruling party, the Democrats, took over.

• Many of these people were merchants, bankers, industrialists, and other business leaders who supported economic development and opposed Northern interference.

• They were conservatives.

• They called themselves “Redeemers” because they saved themselves from Republican rule.


(pages 517–518)(pages 517–518)


• Policies included lower taxes, less public spending, and reduced government services.

• Many social services that had started during Reconstruction were cut or eliminated, including public education.


(pages 517–518)(pages 517–518)


• The South still remained primarily a rural economy even as it developed some industry.

• It sank deeper into poverty and debt as time went on.


(pages 517–518)(pages 517–518)

- Some plantations, although not many, were broken up.

- When divided, the land was used for sharecropping and tenant farming, which were not profitable.



(pages 517–518)(pages 517–518)

- Reliance on sharecropping and cash crops, or crops that could be sold for money, hampered the development of a more modern agriculture.

- An oversupply of the biggest cash crop, cotton, forced prices down.

- With less money, farmers had to buy on credit and pay high prices for their foodand supplies.

- Thus, their debt increased.


A Divided Society• Reconstruction was a success and a

failure.

(pages 519–520)(pages 519–520)

• It helped the South recover and begin rebuilding.

• However, the South remained a rural economy that was very poor.

• African Americans did not have true freedom because the South created a segregated society, separating them from whites.


• Southern states imposed voting restrictions even though the Fifteenth Amendment prohibited any state from denying the right to vote because of race.

A Divided Society (cont.)

(pages 519–520)(pages 519–520)

- Many states required people to pay a poll tax before voting.

- Because many African Americans and poor whites could not afford to pay the tax, they could not vote.

- Many states required prospective voters to also take a literacy test.

- Because African Americans had little education, they could not pass the test and therefore could not vote.



(pages 519–520)(pages 519–520)

- Some states passed a grandfather clause to enable some whites who may not have been able to pass the test be able to vote.

- The law said that if their fathers or grandfathers had voted before Reconstruction, they were also allowed to vote.

- African Americans were excluded because they did not gain the right to vote until 1867.


• The South became a segregated society.

• Many states passed Jim Crow laws, which were laws that required African Americans and whites to be separated in almost every public place and facility.

• The facilities were separate but not equal.

• Southern states spent more money on schools and facilities for whites than for African Americans.

• This segregation lasted for more than 50 years.


(pages 519–520)(pages 519–520)


• Violence against African Americans increased.

• Threats of violence and the voting laws caused African American voting to drop.

• Mob lynching, or killing African Americans by hanging, increased.

• If African Americans were suspected of committing crimes or did not behave as white expected them to, they were lynched.


(pages 519–520)(pages 519–520)

Documents

Section 1-5 Click the mouse button or press the Space Bar to display the information. Reconstruction Debate Americans faced many difficult issues over