Radical Reconstruction

Tenure of Office Act

• Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act• It forbade the president from dismissing

cabinet members without the consent of the Senate

• The radicals were trying to protect Secretary of War Edwin Stanton

• Johnson dismisses him anyway!

Edwin Stanton

• The House of Representatives impeach Johnson and it went to the Senate for trial

• Needed a 2/3 vote to remove Johnson• They were 1 vote short

Reconstruction Amendments

• 13th Amendment: Abolition of Slavery

• 14th Amendment: guarantee of citizen rights

• 15th Amendment: Guarantee of voting rights

Military Reconstruction Act

• Imposed military occupation on the South• Tennessee was exempt

Each state had to:

1. Write a new constitution (where everyone got to vote)

2. Pass the 14th amendment

• When they did that, the army would be removed.

Freedman’s Bureau

• Developed to aid the blacks with food, clothing and schools

• Also worked to counteract the Black Codes passed in the South

Freedman’s Union Industrial School

Radical Republicans in the South

• Carpetbaggers: northern radicals who moved to the South

• Scalawags: Southern radicals

• How did the radical republicans stay in office in the South?

• Confederates were denied the right to vote (called disfranchisement)

Sharecropping

Sharecroppers farmed small plots of land owned by planters and paid their annual rent for the use of the land with part of the crop they grew.

Ku Klux Klan

• Designed to keep blacks from exercising their newly gained political rights

• Ku Klux Klan act of 1871 – aim by Congress to curb the power of the Klan