THE UNION IN PERILRECONSTRUCTION AND ITS EFFECTS

POLITICS: BUILDING A NEW SOUTH

• Freedman’s Bureau provides social services, medical care, education

• Reconstruction–U.S. rebuilds, readmits South into the Union (1865-1877)

POLITICS: LINCOLN’S PLAN

• State readmitted if 10% of 1860 voters swear allegiance to Union

• Radical Republicans consider plan too lenient: -want to destroy political power of former slave holders -want full citizenship and suffrage for African-Americans

POLITICS: JOHNSON’S PLAN

• Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor, forms his own plan

• Excludes Confederate leaders, wealthy landowners

• Congress rejects new Southern governments, congressmen

POLITICS: CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION

• Congress passes Civil Rights Act, Freedmen’s Bureau Act (1866)

• Fourteenth Amendment grants full citizenship to African Americans

• Reconstruction Act of 1867b divides Confederacy into districts

POLITICS: JOHNSON IMPEACHED

• House impeaches for blocking Reconstruction; Senate does not convict

• Ulysses S. Grant elected president in 1868; wins 9 of 10 African-American voters

• Fifteenth Amendment protects voting rights of African Americans

SOCIAL: RECONSTRUCTING SOCIETY

• Former slaves improve their lives: -freedmen found churches, ministers become community leaders -thousands reunited with family and find jobs

• Hiram Revels, first black senator

SOCIAL: SHARECROPPING & TENANT FARMING

• Sharecropping–to farm land owned by another, keep only part of crops

• Tenant farmers rent land from owner

THE COLLAPSE OF RECONSTRUCTION

• KKK (Ku Klux Klan): seeks to destroy Republicans, repress African Americans; kill thousands of men, women, & children

• Support for Reconstruction fades