Key Concept 5.3.II. Reconstruction and the Civil War ended slavery, altered relationships between the states and the federal government, and led to debates over new definitions of citizenship, particularly regarding the rights of African Americans, women, and other minorities.

PUTTING THE NATION BACK TOGETHER AGAIN: RECONSTRUCTION

What really ended slavery everywhere ?

• 13^th amendment – ratified 1865

Competing Plans & Ideas

Lincoln’s Plan

• “10% Plan” – When 10% of the voters from the 1860 election pledged loyalty, the state could rejoin the US

President Johnson’s Plan

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• Pardon all rebels, except Confederate office holders and wealthiest planters
• Had to ratify 13^th amend. & refuse to pay Confederate debts
• Let states form their own gov…so Confederate leaders dominated state legislatures again

Congressional Plan �(Radical Republicans)

• Didn’t think Johnson would protect the rights of the freedmen – briefly took charge of Reconstruction:
• Freedmen’s Bureau
• Civil Rights Act of 1866
• Reconstruction Acts of 1867
• Congress had to override Johnson’s veto on all 3

Freedmen’s Bureau

• Aid to former slaves – education, healthcare, job training & jobs

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Civil Rights Act of 1866 & 14^th Amendment

• Made ALL persons born in the US citizens – changed forever how citizenship is defined

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• 14^th amendment (1868) – equal protection & citizenship to all (overturns Dred Scott) – Johnson opposed

Reconstruction Acts of 1867

• Divided South into 5 military districts controlled by Union troops – response to ongoing discrimination

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15^th Amendment

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• Gave all men the right to vote, 1870

For a brief time – seemed like a new era for African Americans

• Increase in black voters
• 1^st African American elected to Congress (Hiram Revels – 1870), many elected to state legislatures

End of Reconstruction – Why?

• Northern interests shifted to economics
• Democrats used violence & election fraud to take back state governments in South (“Redeemers”)
• Contested Election of 1876: Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won, but lost the popular vote to Democrat Samuel Tilden

Compromise of 1877

• Democrats would recognize Hayes as President
• Republicans would not use the military to enforce Reconstruction laws & federal troops would leave the South

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END OF FEDERAL RECONSTRUCTION

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Reality in the South

Social & Economic Discrimination

Social discrimination – abuse of civil rights & terror

• Black codes or “Jim Crow” laws – restricted rights of freedmen & separated the races (lasted into the 1960s)
• Enforced with terror & violence – KKK (more killed than on 9/11)

• Intermarriage It shall be unlawful for a white person to marry anyone except a white person. Any marriage in violation of this section shall be void. Georgia

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• Barbers No colored barber shall serve as a barber [to] white women or girls. Georgia

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• Amateur Baseball It shall be unlawful for any amateur white baseball team to play baseball on any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of a playground devoted to the Negro race, and it shall be unlawful for any amateur colored baseball team to play baseball in any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of any playground devoted to the white race. Georgia

A series of laws passed after the Fifteenth Amendment entitled “the Enforcement Acts” were put into effect to try and lower the amount of violence committed by Klan members. One of the acts, enacted in 1871, otherwise known as the Ku Klux law, was not very successful at deterring acts of assault and murder. In the Report of the Joint Select Committee, Congress asked Dr. Pride Jones if the law had any effect on the level of violence in the South, and the answer from Dr. Jones was a resounding “no” (5). Because there were not enough men to enforce federal law in the South, there was not much that could be done unless Union military occupation returned. According to historian J. Martinez, the Ku Klux Act was not enforced properly and “the statute was not as far-reaching as it might have been” (69). The government also did not spend enough money to spend on sending investigators to the South. The ones that they could afford did sometimes arrest Klan members, but more arrests proved to be an unachievable goal because “bands of desperadoes intimidated deputy marshals and even assassinated witnesses. The Klan’s victims were generally poor and illiterate men unlikely to bring their plight to the attention of federal officials, and...feared the consequences of doing so” (Rable 107). The government appeared to want to do something about the level of violence in the South, but the most it seemed they could do was take testimony in the form of the Joint Select Committee reports. Even when arrests were made, it did not have the impact intended other than to document the crimes and give national attention to the goings on in the South at the time. - The Ku Klux Klan in Reconstruction North Carolina: Methods of Madness in the Struggle for Southern Dominance

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Economic discrimination – sharecropping

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• Tenant farmer gives a portion of the crops raised to the landlord in place of rent

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• Similar to slave-master relationship…kept freedmen in poverty and in debt to whites

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• Reconstruction failed to give freedmen land – couldn’t build an economic base and therefore, had no political power

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Sharecropping

Terrible Reality in the South

• more violence against African Americans
• “Jim Crow” laws
• KKK and systematic discrimination
• “Separate but equal” (Supreme court ruling in 1896)

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LAWS MEAN NOTHING IF THEY AREN’T ENFORCED

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Extension Opportunity:

http://gilderlehrman.org/wp/?p=73

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Podcast on Reconstruction (Eric Foner) – really only about 35 mins, then just Q & A

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Write a 1 page response to the lecture

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