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US History- Reconstruction

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Title: US History- Reconstruction


1
Chapter 3 CRISIS, CIVIL WAR, RECONSTRUCTION
2
Chapter 3.4 The Reconstruction era
  • why was a plan needed for Reconstruction of the
    South.
  • how did freedmen adjusted to freedom and the
    Souths new economic system?
  • 3. why did Reconstruction end?
  • 4. What were the successes and failures of
    Reconstruction?

3
Chapter 3.4 The Reconstruction era
1. Explain why a plan was needed for
Reconstruction of the South.
4
THE RECONSTRUCTION ERA
  • During the era of Reconstruction (1865-1877), the
    federal government struggled with how to return
    the eleven southern states to the Union, rebuild
    the Souths ruined economy, and promote the
    rights of former slaves.

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THE RECONSTRUCTION ERA
  • The Constitution provided no guidance on
    secession or readmission of states.
  • It was not clear whether Congress or the
    President should take the lead in forming
    Reconstruction policy.

7
Charleston, South Carolina
8
How will the Southern Economy Be Rebuilt?
  • The Civil War devastated the Souths economy.
  • Between 1860 and 1870, the Souths share of the
    nations total wealth declined from more than 30
    to 12.
  • During Reconstruction, some people proposed using
    the land to benefit former slaves.

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How will the Southern Economy Be Rebuilt?
  • General William Tecumseh Sherman proposed that
    millions of acres abandoned by planters, or
    confiscated by the federal government, should be
    given to former slaves Forty acres and a mule
    many northerners thought this might also
    restore the Souths productivity, reconstruct its
    economy and provide employment as well as income
    for many African American.
  • Not everyone agreed.

13
What Rights Will African Americans Have?
  • The 13TH Amendment freed African Americans from
    slavery, but it did not grant them the privileges
    of full citizenship.
  • The former slaves hoped that they would gain
    voting rights and access to education, benefits
    that most northern blacks also did not have.

14
Chapter 3.4 The Reconstruction era
2. Compare the Reconstruction plans of Lincoln,
Johnson, and Congress.
15
LINCOLN
JOHNSON
16
PRESIDENT LINCOLN
  • One of his first major goals was to reunify the
    nation.
  • Throughout the war, he had felt some sympathy for
    the South and hoped that southern stats might
    easily rejoin the Union after the war.
  • To this end, in 1863 he issued a Proclamation of
    Amnesty and Reconstruction, known as the
    Ten Percent Plan.

17
PRESIDENT LINCOLN
  • According to its terms, as soon as 10 of a
    states voters took a loyalty oath to the Union,
    the state could set up a new government.
  • If the states constitution abolished slavery and
    provided education for African Americans, the
    state would regain representation in Congress.

18
PRESIDENT LINCOLN
  • Lincoln took the position that the Union was
    unbreakable and therefore the southern states had
    never really left the Union.

19
JOHNSON
  • Like Lincoln, Johnson wanted to restore the
    political status of the southern states as
    quickly as possible.
  • He offered pardons and the restoration of land to
    almost any Confederate who swore allegiance to
    the Union and the Constitution.

20
JOHNSON
  • His main requirement was that each state ratifies
    the 13TH Amendment and draft a constitution that
    abolished slavery.
  • He supported states rights, which would allow
    the laws and customs of the state to outweigh
    federal regulations, therefore, states would be
    able to limit the freedoms of former slaves.

21
CONGRESS
  • With the required two-thirds majority, for the
    first time ever, Congress passed major
    legislation over a Presidents veto and the Civil
    Rights Act of 1866 became law, which granted
    citizenship to African Americans and outlawed
    black codes.
  • To protect freedmens rights from presidential
    vetoes, southern state legislatures, and federal
    court decisions, Congress passed the 14TH
    Amendment to the Constitution.

22
CONGRESS
  • It guaranteed equality under the law for all
    citizens any state that refused to allow black
    people to vote would risk losing the number of
    seats in the House of Representatives that were
    represented by its black population.
  • The measure also counteracted the Presidents
    pardons by barring leading Confederate officials
    from holding federal or state offices.

23
CONGRESS
  • The Military Reconstruction Act of 1867 divided
    the 10 southern states that had yet to be
    readmitted into the Union into five military
    districts governed by former Union generals, how
    states could create their new state governments
    and receive congressional recognition.
  • In each state, voters were to elect delegates to
    write a new constitution that guaranteed suffrage
    for African American men.
  • Once the state ratified the 14TH Amendment, it
    could reenter the Union.

24
Chapter 3.4 The Reconstruction era
3. Discuss how freedmen adjusted to freedom and
the Souths new economic system.
25
Freedman Bureau Harpers Weekly
26
FREEDMEN ECONOMICS
  • For the first time, many African American men and
    women could legalize and celebrate their
    marriages, create homes for their families, and
    make choices about where they would reside
    thought these choices were restricted by black
    codes limiting what work they might do Life
    presented new problems and opportunities.
  • Many African Americans headed for southern
    cities, where they could develop churches,
    schools, and other social institutions.

27
FREEDMEN ECONOMICS
  • Skilled men might find work as carpenters,
    blacksmiths, cooks, or house servants women took
    in laundry, or did child care or domestic work.
  • Most often, black workers settled for what they
    had had under slavery substandard housing and
    poor food, in return for hard labor.

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FREEDMEN ECONOMICS
  • The majority of African American families
    remained in rural areas.
  • Freed people immediately realized the intrinsic
    value of learning to read and perform basic
    arithmetic.
  • By 1866, there were as many as 150,000 African
    American students adults and children
    acquiring basic literacy.
  • Three years later, that number had doubled.

30
FREEDMEN ECONOMICS
  • The Freedmens Bureau aided black colleges.
  • It also encouraged the many northern churches and
    charitable organizations that sent teachers,
    books, and supplies to support independent
    schools.
  • The black church was an important component of
    Reconstruction education.

31
FREEDMEN ECONOMICS
  • With freedom, black churches were established
    throughout the South and often served as school
    sites, community centers, employment agencies,
    and political rallying points.
  • A considerable number of African American
    politicians began their careers as ministers.

32
Chapter 3.4 The Reconstruction era
4. Summarize efforts to limit African Americans
rights and the federal governments response.
33
AFRICAN AMERICANS RIGHTS
  • Economic uncertainty in turn fueled the fire of
    white southerners outrage.
  • Already resentful of the Republican takeover of
    local politics and of occupation by federal
    troops, white southerners from all economic
    classes were united in their insistence that
    African Americans not have full citizenship.
  • During Reconstruction, dozens of loosely
    organized groups of white southerners emerged to
    terrorize African Americans.

34
AFRICAN AMERICANS RIGHTS
  • The best known of these was the Ku Klux Klan,
    formed in Tennessee in 1866.
  • Klan members roamed the countryside, especially
    at night, burning homes, schools, and churches,
    and beating, maiming, or killing African
    Americans and their white allies.
  • The Klan took special aim at the symbols of black
    freedom African American teachers and schools,
    churches and ministers, politicians, and anyone
    white or black who encouraged black people to
    vote.

35
Nathan Bedford Forrest
A cartoon threatening that the KKK would lynch
carpetbaggers. From the Independent Monitor,
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 1868.
Three Ku Klux Klan members arrested in
Mississippi, September 1871, for the attempted
murder of an entire family
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AFRICAN AMERICANS RIGHTS
  • Radical violence grew even more wide spread, in
    the North and as well as the South, after the
    15TH Amendment guaranteed all American men the
    right to vote.
  • In Arkansas, Republican legislators were murdered
    In New Orleans, riots broke out.
  • The United States Congress took action, passing
    Enforcement Acts also known as the Ku Klux Klan
    Acts, in 1870 and 1871.

38
AFRICAN AMERICANS RIGHTS
  • The acts made it a federal offense to interfere
    with a citizens right to vote.
  • Congress Used the Ku Klux Klan Acts to indict
    hundreds of Klansmen throughout the South.
  • After 1872, on account of the federal
    governments readiness to use legal action, there
    was a decline in violence against Republicans and
    African Americans.

39
Chapter 3.4 The Reconstruction era
5. Explain why Reconstruction ended
40
RECONSTRUCTION ENDS - I
  • The end of Reconstruction did not come suddenly.
  • As the 1860s ended, voters and politicians
    outside the South increasingly turned their
    attention to other pressing issues reforming
    politics and the economy, among other things.
  • Also, the continued cost of military operations
    in the South worried many so slowly and quietly,
    beginning in 1871, troops were withdrawn from the
    South.

41
RECONSTRUCTION ENDS - I
  • In 1872, the Freedmens Bureau was dissolved and
    the 13TH, 14TH, 15TH amendments guaranteed
    African Americans rights, yet it was left to the
    courts to interpret how these new amendments
    would be applied.
  • In a series of landmark cases, the Supreme Court
    chipped away at African American freedoms in the
    1870s.
  • Slaughterhouse Cases (1873) and United
    States v. Cruikshank

42
RECONSTRUCTION ENDS - II
  • While the Klan intimidated with violence and the
    courts with legal interpretation, some southern
    Democrats devised a more subtle strategy for
    suppressing black rights.
  • They put together a coalition to return the South
    to the rule of white men.
  • The main focus of their strategy was compromise
    finding common issues that would unite white
    southerners around the goal of regaining power in
    Congress.

43
RECONSTRUCTION ENDS - II
  • These compromisers have become known as
    Redeemers, politicians who aimed to repair or
    redeem the South in the eyes of Congress.
  • Sometimes their strategy is described as being
    designed to redeem or reclaim the South from
    northern domination.

44
RECONSTRUCTION ENDS - III
  • With the Radical Republicans loss of power, the
    stage was set to end northern domination of the
    South.
  • The 1876 election of Ohio Republican Rutherford
    B. Hayes.
  • Hayes was elected President by what became known
    as the Compromise of 1877.

45
RECONSTRUCTION ENDS - III
  • In return for his election the remaining federal
    troops were withdrawn from the South, a
    southerner was appointed to a powerful cabinet
    position, and southern states were guaranteed
    federal subsidies to build railroads and improve
    their ports.
  • Federal Reconstruction was over.
  • The South and the millions of recently freed
    African Americans were left to negotiate their
    own fate.

46
Chapter 3.4 The Reconstruction era
6. Evaluate the successes and failures of
Reconstruction
47
SUCCESSES vs. FAILURES
  • Among the enduring changes to the South were the
    introduction of a tax-supported school system and
    an infusion of federal money to modernize
    railroads and ports.
  • In addition, the economy expanded from one crop
    cotton to a range of agricultural and
    industrial products.

48
SUCCESSES vs. FAILURES
  • Reconstruction failed to heal the bitterness
    between North and South or to provide lasting
    protection for freed people.
  • However, it did raise African Americans
    expectations of their rights to citizenship, and
    it placed before Americans the meaning and value
    of the right to vote.

49
SUCCESSES vs. FAILURES
  • Before the Civil War, no African American in the
    South, and only a small number in the North, had
    the right to vote.
  • Few black southerners owned land with most
    working others land, without pay, and without
    hope of improving their lot.
  • Most southern African Americans worked
    involuntarily in agriculture.

50
SUCCESSES vs. FAILURES
  • Reconstruction changed these things and gave them
    choices.
  • Most importantly, the Freedmens Bureau helped
    reunite freed slaves with their families and
    promoted literacy within African American
    communities.
  • The 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments provided hope
    for full inclusion in American society, though it
    would take later generations to use them to gain
    racial equality.

51
SUCCESSES vs. FAILURES
  • One of the ironies of reconstruction is that it
    gave the vote to black American men, while
    fragmenting the womens movement that had often
    been supportive of black freedom.
  • Some felt the 15TH Amendment could not get
    ratified if it included womens suffrage, however
    in 1869 the National Woman Suffrage Association
    will win a huge victory in 1869, when the Wyoming
    Territory became the first political unit to
    extend the vote to women.

52
SUCCESSES vs. FAILURES
  • American politics were irrevocably sharpened by
    the Civil War and Reconstruction.
  • The Republican Party, born out of the controversy
    over slavery, shunned by the white southerner but
    embraced by the northern and southern African
    American.
  • The democratic Party came to dominate the white
    south. Following Reconstruction, the national
    Republicans became the party of big business a
    reputation that continues today.

53
SUCCESSES vs. FAILURES
  • During Reconstruction, Americans acquired a
    deeper meaning as the federal government asserted
    its authority not only over southern states, but
    over state laws in other regions as well.
  • In the end, American voters and their
    representatives in government opted for a balance
    of power, at the expense of protecting freed
    people in the South.
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