Reconstruction

RECONSTRUCTION

Reuniting a Broken Nation

The Problems of Peace Reconstruction: The process of

rebuilding the South and reunifying the Union.

Presidential Reconstruction

Lincoln’s 10% Plan: Ten percent of Southern voters would be required to take an oath of loyalty before the state would be readmitted to the Union.

The intention was to bring the South back into the Union as quickly and painlessly as possible – to heal the wounds of the war.

Congress’s Plan for Reconstruction

Wade-Davis Bill: Required that more than 50 percent of white males take an “ironclad” oath of allegiance before the state could call a constitutional convention. The bill also required that the states abolish slavery.

The Martyrdom of Lincoln On April 14, 1865,

President Lincoln was shot and killed at Ford's Theater by John Wilkes Booth.  Andrew Johnson took over as President.

A President Watching A President

Future President Teddy

Roosevelt, 6 years old

Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan Johnson essentially

followed Lincoln’s 10% plan, adding the following stipulations:Leading

Confederates were to be disenfranchised

The states must protect the rights of freedmen

Scalawag Southerners who joined the Republican party after

the war and supported Reconstruction. Southern whites accused the scalawags of

betraying the South. Carpetbagger

Northerners who moved to the South during Reconstruction, seen with a "carpet bag" (suitcase) in their hand.

Some came to honestly help the South, but were seen to be outsiders exploiting the broken South.

Carpetbaggers and Scalawags

Military Reconstruction The Reconstruction Act: Divided the South

into 5 military districts. U.S. soldiers would be stationed in each to make sure things stayed under control.

To be readmitted, States must pass the Reconstruction Amendments: 13th Amendment: Officially ended slavery

in the United States 14th Amendment: Gave citizenship to all

freedmen 15th Amendment: Gave suffrage to all

freedmen When the soldiers finally did leave

(Compromise of 1877), power slid back to the white Southerners who found new tricks to achieve their old ways.

All Men Are Created Equal?

Freedmen Define Freedom

Freed blacks, or "freedmen" were in a perplexing situation.

They'd heard that they were free, but most still stayed on the plantation where they'd always lived because they had nowhere else to go.

Some blacks fled northward, away from the memory of slavery.

Some blacks let their frustrations erupt by destroying white homes, land, etc. Sometimes, the white master even had the table turned on him and was whipped by his former slaves.

The Freedman’s Bureau

The freed slaves were largely unskilled, uneducated, and untrained. Congress created the Freedmen's Bureau sought to remedy those shortfalls. The bureau was essentially an early form of welfare,

providing food, clothing, health care, and education. The Freedmen's Bureau's success was minimal

at best. Unsurprisingly, Southerners disliked the bureau.

• With many white Southerners unable to vote (until taking the oath of allegiance to the U.S.) black Congressmen were elected.

White Southerners now had a problem: without slavery, how could they ensure a stable labor force?

Sharecropping: A system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crop produced on the land (e.g., 50% of the crop). Most sharecroppers were in continuous debt.

The Introduction of Jim Crow

Black Codes: Local laws passed to keep freedmen in a subservient position, banning them from juries, holding local office, and arresting them for “idleness.”

Jim Crow Laws: Laws that created segregation of the races in public places (schools, RR, restaurants, doctors offices, etc.).

Plessy v. Ferguson: Upheld the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal.”

The Introduction of Jim Crow

Homer Plessy

The Ku Klux Klan Upset whites were driven

underground. They started the "Invisible Empire of the South", better known as the "Ku Klux Klan" in Tennessee (1866). The KKK thrived on fear—

horses were masked, men were masked, no one knew exactly who was in it.

They burnt crosses, threatened blacks who didn't "know their place", and lynched then murdered blacks.

Nathan Bedford Forrest - First Grand Wizard of the KKK

Ku Klux Klan

Southern whites used a variety of methods to disenfranchise blacks: Poll taxes: Taxes required at

the polls that would limit blacks’ ability to vote.

Literacy Tests: Tests that were meant to test someone’s ability to read, and therefore vote. Purposefully made more difficult for black voters. “Grandfather clause“:

Anyone whose grandfather had been able to vote could also vote. This meant whites were grandfathered in (regardless of their ability to read), blacks not.

‘Cause a mah dear ol’ granpappy I

gits tuh vote!

Saving the Dumb White Folk

A little fun A “White Literacy Test”

C M SNAKS?M R SNAKS?S, M R SNAKS.M R Not.S A R ... C M B D Is? – M

R SNAKS.L I B!

LITERACYTEST!

The Heritage of Reconstruction To many in the South, the shame of

Reconstruction was worse than the war. The war and Reconstruction also bred

generations of animosity. The lot of many

Southern blacks, despite good intentions, was likely as bad, or even worse, than before the war.