US history survey

May 22, 2012final class

Reconstruction (continued)

announcements

• paper # 2 due today, Tuesday, May 22.

• late papers will be accepted until Tuesday, May 29, but points will be deducted. No emails!

• final exam: Tuesday, May 29, noon. Eat first, or bring a snack with you.

Ulysses S. Grant

• former Union general.• President 1869 – 1877.

enfranchisement – 15th Amendment

• women’s rights advocates, former abolitionists (both men and women), disagreed about who should be enfranchised.

• 14th Amendment introduced the word “male” into Constitution for 1st time.

• split between those favoring Black men’s vote first & those who wanted women’s suffrage at same time.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony opposed 15th Amendment w/o women’s suffrage. “Lower order of Chinese, Africans, Germans, & Irish” would make laws for women.

Frederick Douglass & Lucy Stone.

“This is the Negro’s hour.”

women’s rights advocates

• split into 2 organizations, both working for women’s suffrage.

• not reunited until 1890. • women’s suffrage as a constitutional amendment

didn’t happen until 1920 (19th Amendment). • women’s organizations also worked on marriage &

divorce laws, unequal pay, property rights. • defeat of radical reconstruction & expanded

citizenship meant there was little support for women’s suffrage.

freedom for former slaves

• ability to move. Some freedpeople moved into cities & to Black Belt, in search of community.

• family strengthened – searched for family members; made decisions about whether/ when women & children worked.

• churches & family – central institutions of Black communities.

• schools – thirst for education & knowledge.

Florida, 1870s or 1880s.

work

• white planters tried to retain African Americans as permanent agricultural workers.

• Black people resisted working in gangs.• desired to establish independent homesteads.• compromise: sharecropping. By 1880, ¾

Black southerners were sharecroppers.• white owners exploited system & illiteracy of

some Blacks to ensure indebtedness.

work in freedom

African American politics

• freedom celebrations, mass meetings, parades, petitions, conventions – dominated by previously free, preachers, artisans, veterans of Union Army.

• whites: “insolent,” “outrageous spectacles,” “putting on airs.”

• Union League – Republican organization.• Black majority existed only in South Carolina,

Mississippi, Louisiana – needed white Republican voters as well.

Carpetbaggers

• white Northerners, Union veterans, businessmen, teachers, Freedmen’s Bureau agents.

• won many Reconstruc. offices, especially in areas w/ large Black populations.

Scalawags

• white Southerners from up-country, non-slave areas. Loyalists in CW.

• wanted Republican Party to help settle old scores, get debt relief, & help with wartime devastation.

• mostly committed to whites remaining in power.

S desire for economic development

• “Yankees & Yankee notions are just what we want. We want their capital to build factories & workshops. We want their intelligence, their energy, and enterprise.” (Thomas Settle, North Carolina)

• Scalawag ideas.

what S states accomplished

• Republicans dominated 10 S constitutional conventions, 1867 – 1869.

• 258/1027 constitutional delegates were AfAm.• expanded democracy – improved situation of poor

whites as well as Blacks. – guaranteed political & civil rights for Blacks.– abolished property qualifcatns. for voting & juries. – abolished imprisonment for debt.

• created 1st state-funded systems of education. • more than 600 Black state legislators post-CW.

S white resistance

• KKK violence.• Colfax, Louisiana, 1873 – almost 100 Blacks

murdered.

Black members of Congress

• largest number in 1870s = 16. 2 senators.• declined to 0 in 1901.• all Republicans.

“redemption”

• S Democrats “redeemed” S states. • results: created obstacles to Black voting, put

more stringent controls on plantation labor, cut social services.

• Supreme Court decisions curtailed protection of Black civil rights.

• end of federal attempts to protect Black civil rights until mid-20th century.

Reconstruction results for South

• unable to attract much investment from N or Europe, so little industrialization.

• S declined into poorest agricultural region in country.

• increased cotton dependency – King Cotton.• changed from diversified local farming to

market-oriented production of cotton. • cotton prices declined – competition from Egypt

& India.

Reconstruction results for North

• industrial boom of war years continued.• 3 million immigrants, 1860 – 1880; all settled

in N & W.• railroads continued to expand to more than all

the rest of the world’s RRs combined. • RR companies were first big businesses. • Republican Party increasingly identified with

interests of business.

election of 1876

• Democrats expected to win presidency.• fraud, intimidation, disputed votes. • an electoral commission created to resolve it

voted strictly on party lines. • compromise: Rutherford Hayes (R) became

president.– more money for S internal improvements.– a Southerner in Hayes’ cabinet.– non-interference in South – “home rule.”

Rutherford B. HayesCompromise of 1877

• Hayes ordered removal of remaining federal troops.• Republicans abandoned freedpeople, carpetbaggers, scalawags, & Radicals.• “home rule” nullifed 14th & 15th Amendments &

Civil Rights Act of 1866. • compromise repudiated idea of federal

government protecting rights of all citizens.

and at the same time….

• mining & oil refining, as well as RR, become big businesses.

• Depression of 1873.• Great RR strike of 1877.• struggle between capital & labor replaced the

“southern question” as main political issue.

Great RR Strike of 1877

coming soon: workers vs. robber barons

aftermath of Civil War

• Is political freedom meaningful without economic freedom?– propertied independence.– self-ownership & right to compete in labor market.

• Reconstruction solidified separation of political & economic spheres.

• old idea of economy autonomy as essence of freedom became idea of radicals only.

announcements

• paper # 2 due today, Tuesday, May 22.

• late papers will be accepted until Tuesday, May 29, but points will be deducted. No emails!

• final exam: Tuesday, May 29, noon. Eat first, or bring a snack with you.

It’s been great! See you in the USA.