What was Reconstruction?

• When the American Civil War ended in 1865, the South was in ruins.

• The Southern Economy was ruined

• Social Systems were destroyed

• Over 250,000 Confederate Soldiers had been killed.

Northern View on Reconstruction

• Most Northerners believed that Reconstruction was necessary because of conditions in the Southern States, but few agreed on what should be done.

• Many also disagreed about how to ensure freedom and civil rights of former slaves.

What was the impact of the Civil War on the politics and

government of Virginia?

Politics: the methods involved in managing a government

Abraham Lincoln, United States President during the Civil War

Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America

What was the political impact of the Civil War on Virginia?

Political: having to do with governmentAndrew Johnson, President of

the United States during Reconstruction

When the Civil War was over, Virginia had no functioning government.

•Virginia had belonged to the Confederacy (Confederate States of America), which no longer existed.

President Lincoln reviews Union Artillery troops, Washington,D.C.,

May, 1865.

•The state government had to be redesigned

to make African

Americans equal

citizens.

•Virginia had to adopt a new constitution which banned slavery and gave African American men

the right to vote.

impact: the effect of one thing on another

economy: how a country manages its resources

Sheet music by James Bland, an African American composer

Economic: producing, developing, managing wealth and resources

Sharecropper child working in a cotton field

Life for Virginians was difficult during

Reconstruction.

Sharecropper’s cabin

Sharecroppers picking cotton

The economy of Virginia had

collapsed.

•Plantations could no longer raise cotton, tobacco, and other products, because

owners could not afford to pay former slaves.

•Plantation owners had invested all their money in the Southern Armies. There was no way to get their money back. Their country was no more.

•Many Southern men had been killed or injured in the Civil War.

Even if they were well and young,they could not work on

hundreds of acres of land to raise a cash crop without many workers.

Civil War hospital

•Slaves did not own any

land and could not raise their own crops

or feed their families.

•Newly freed slaves had little food, clothing, shelter, and no way to make a

living.

•Confederate money had no value.

Railroads, bridges, and

crops had been destroyed during

the war.

Most people in Virginia and the South were poor. Times were hard

for everybody.

How did Virginians start to rebuild the state after the

Civil War?

The problems of newly freed slaves were addressed (given attention) by

the Freedman’s Bureau.

The United States Congress created the Freedman’s Bureau

to help newly freed slaves.

The Freedman’s Bureau provided The Freedman’s Bureau provided (gave) the newly freed slaves help in (gave) the newly freed slaves help in several ways.several ways.

Beaufort, SC

Slaves were given food and medical

care.

A new economic system developed,

called sharecropping.

Why did sharecropping develop?

Sharecropping developed because plantation owners lacked money to pay workers, and former slaves needed land and work.