The Meaning of Freedom The Promise of Reconstruction, 1865-1868.

The Meaning of Freedom

The Promise of Reconstruction, 1865-1868

The Ending of the Civil War 1861-1865

April 9, 1865Lee surrenders

One week later:Lincoln is assassinated;

Johnson becomes President (Senator from

TN-a southerner that did not agree with succession)

Congress and the President Reconstruction Plan

South was divided into five military districts

Each was governed by a U.S. Army general w/troops

Before any southern state could be readmitted, they had to accept the 13th Amendment & write a new constitution

Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau– Provided food & clothing

to newly freed blacks– Helped in searches for

jobs & homes– Built schools & provided

teachers

Strong for advocates for the Civil War Amendments (Radical Republicans)

The Five Military Districts

Reconstruction Amendments

13th – forbids slavery (1865)

14th – defines U.S. citizenship (1868)

15th- cannot deny suffrage based on race, color or previous condition of

servitude (1870)

Reconstruction Government

Former Confederate states held conventions to draw up new constitutions:– a. Blacks attended all of the conventions– b. New constitutions abolished property

qualifications for voting & granted the right to vote to adult males

African American men flocked to the pollsa. State Offices represented 80% of

Republican voters

Elected Republican legislatures that included black members

Goals of Freedmen

Land

The Black Church

Education

Family

Land

Special Field Order #15: 30 acre of land along the Atlantic coast from Charleston, SC to Jacksonville, FL

The Port Royal Experiment: land given to freedmen in SC

Freedmen’s Bureau: General Oliver O. Howard promised 40 acres and a mule to newly freedmen

The Black Church

After emancipation, blacks built their own houses of worship

Churches housed schools, social gatherings & political meetings

Ministers were well-respected; many of the black men who elected to political office were ministers

Education

Freedom and Education were Inseparable To remain illiterate after emancipation was to remain enslaved. Ex-slave master: “Charles you is a free man they say, but

AH tells you now, you is still a slave and if you lives to a hundred, you’ll STILL be a slave, cause you got no education, and education is what makes a man free!!!

Free blacks raised money to buy land, build schools & pay teachers

By 1867, Freedmen’s Bureau had set up almost 4,500 schools Tuition represented 10% or more of their monthly income Schools were full; by 1870, 250,000 students were enrolled

Education

• Northern missionaries open schools in the South -- and freed slaves rejoice in the opportunity to be educated.

• The South's new, racially integrated legislatures create the region's first public schools -- for blacks and for whites.

Education: Historical Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)

Consisted of Elementary and Secondary education

– Fisk University, TN– Hampton University, VA– Tougaloo, Alabama– Avery, SC– Lincoln, Missouri– Virginia Union, VA– Shaw University, NC– Benedict, SC– Morehouse, GA– Clafin, SC– Rust, Mississippi– Bennett, NC– St. Augustine, NC– St. Paul, VA

Family

Years and decades advertisement appeared in black newspapers for lost family members

Some walked 600 miles looking for their spouses Ben and Betty Dodson found each other after 20

years of separation“Dis is my Betty, shuah. I foun’ you at las’. I’s hunted and hunted till I track you up here. I

boun’ to hunt till I fin’ you if you’s alive” Husbands and wives sometimes learned that their

spouses had remarried during the separation.

Family

Believing that his wife was died, the husband of Laura Spicer remarried—only to learn after the war that Laura was still alive.

He wrote to her but refused to see her.

“I would come and see you but I know I could not bear it. I want to see you and I did the last day I saw you, and it will not do for you and I to meet.”

“Tormented he wrote again: “Laura I do not thing that I have change any at all since I saw you last—I thinks of you and my children everyday of my life. Laura I do love you the same. My love to you never have failed. Laura, truly, I have got another wife, and I am very sorry that I am. You feels and seems to me as much like my dear loving wife, as you ever did Laura.

Black Politicians

African Americans did not dominate any state government but:

More than 600 served in Southern state legislatures

Pinchback was governor of LA for 43 days

Reconstruction governments expanded services for newly freed blacks & poor whites (i.e. public schools, hospitals,mental health institutions, etc.)

Federal Government- from 1869 to 1876, 20 blacks were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives & 2 served in the Senate (Hiram Revels & Blanche K. Bruce)

Mississippi's John Roy Lynch, pass ambitious civil rights and public education laws.

The First Colored Senator and Representatives

Black Codes/Sharecropping Ensure the availability of a subservient agricultural

labor supply controlled by white people. Earning a living in the South proved difficult

a. Few former slaves could afford to buy landb. Many states had laws that prohibited blacks from owning

landc. Sharecropping developed:

– Farmed a small plot of land belonging to another in return for a share of the crop

– Many families bought supplies & groceries on credit– At the time of the harvest, the growing debt was subtracted

from the sale of the crop– Families had to turn to credit again– Becomes a cycle of poverty & debt

Black Codes

Restrictions on freedmen

Sign annual labor contracts with white landowners

Charged African Americans for owning businesses

Could not vote or serve on juries

Children from the ages of 2 – 21 to be apprenticed to white people

Corporal punishments was legal

Employers were designated “masters” and employees “servants”

The Radical Republicans

Charles SumnerBenjamin WadeHenry WilsonThaddeus

StevensGeorge W. Julian James M. Ashley

Fought for the abolition of slavery

Reluctant to compromise

Honest, tough, and articulate, abrasive, difficult, self-righteous, and vain.

Black people appreciated them

Many white people excoriated them.

Charles Sumner

Black veteran “ Your name shall live in our hearts forever”

Attack on Charles Sumner

Charles Sumner was a Harvard man,

Saw slavery as a sin, an evil. In the midst of the Kansas

controversy, Sumner denounced Douglas and the SC Senator Andrew Butler—in very personal terms, calling him a john for the harlot slavery, an imbecile and a blunderer.

Butler’s nephew Preston Brooks, a congressman from SC went to avenge the insult.

He caught Sumner seated at his senate desk and beat him mercilessly with a cane.

The Reaction of White Southerners

ViolenceOutrageDenialAnger