US History ~ Week One Lecture

During the war• Southern railroads destroyed• Large estates broken up or destroyed in many places• Agricultural economy uprooted• Landscape scarred by battle in many places

After the WarSouthern Economy destroyed:• Slave-owners lost $4 billion worth of slave “property” • 4 million enslaved people emancipated • South had no capital• Would take nearly a generation to reach pre-war levels.

1860 levels of production would not be reached until:• 1879 for cotton• 1880 for tobacco• 1893 for sugar (mainly in Louisiana)• Never for Rice (in S.C. & GA) or Hemp (KY)

Reconstruction dealt with 2 political issues• What to do about 4 million freedpeople.• How to readmit Southern states to Union.

Contested Plans of Reconstruction• Lincoln’s 10% Plan• “Presidential” Reconstruction• “Congressional” (aka “Radical”) Reconstruction

Reconstruction Resisted in the South• Through discriminatory laws (“Black Codes”)• By Vigilante Violence• By Economic Coercion• Permitted by Northern Indifference in the mid-1870s

1865-66: North angered by Black Codes & by Southern racial violence. 1866: Voted for radical Republicans in the midterm election of 1866. 1866 - mid-1870s: Congress would be controlled by “radicals” Republicans.

Radical Republican Congress would be architect of Reconstruction, enacting the following legislation:

• 13th Amendment (1865)• Freedman’s Bureau Bills• Civil Rights Act (1866)

• 14th Amendment (1866/1868)• Military Reconstruction Act (1867) • 15th Amendment  (1869/1870)

• Laws to Harass President Johnson

Under Military Reconstruction Act, biracial constitutional conventions & popular elections were held for first time in history.

State Conventions256 black delegates sent to the various state constitutional conventions in 1867. Blacks served in every state convention. These constitutions were among the most progressive constitutions ever written: • Committed states to the establishment of social welfare agencies (like asylums & hospitals)• Reformed criminal law• Changed tax structures so that landholders paid their share of tax burden• Guaranteed biracial democracy

After drafting new constitutions, Southern states were allowed back into the Union. They held elections for Congress in 1868. Elections marred by violence. Union military in the South to protect white & black Republicans.

Republican Party was in the South between 1868 and 1876. Republican Party consisted of:• Northern Republicans—white & black—who came South (“carpetbaggers”)• Southerners who joined GOP (“scalawags”• Freedmen• Free Persons of Color

Between 1868 and 1877, Republicans participated in Southern governmentsThousands of black candidates were elected at the local level. 600 at the state & federal

level:

• 2 U.S. Senators elected. • 14 U.S. Congressmen. • A handful of state treasurers. • 6 Lieutenant Governors. • 1 Secretary of State. • Thousands of local offices: registrar of voters, aldermen, mayors, sheriffs & deputies,

postal clerks, school board, tax assessors, justices of the peace.• Never—aside from once—did blacks hold a majority in these governments.

“Redemption” is a word used by Southerners to describe the take-back of government by hostile Southern-whites.

• Happened on a state-by-state basis

• Completed after election of 1876 with the “Compromise of 1877”

•Republican Party & Republican-controlled governments destroyed or driven out of state

• One-party, white Democratic Party rule established

Redemption accomplished through:

• Economic Coercion

• Racist appeals to superiority of whites & inferiority of blacks

• Vigilante Violence

Klan’s Goals• Undermine Reconstruction Governments.

• Reestablish control over the black labor force.

• Restore racial subordination.

• Police social etiquette.

The Klan was so bold in its attempts to destroy Republican Party that President Grant declared martial law in several states in 1871.

The military rounded up Klan leaders & members.

Trials, Congressional hearings & convictions resulted.

The Klan was essentially destroyed.

Vigilante violence did not end. White supremacists intimidated black voters & their white political allies openly—in the form of “rifle clubs.”

Northern public opinion was sympathetic to freedmen for quite some time. But Southern white persistence gradually wore down Northern resolve.

President Grant refused requests to send troops to put down vigilantism in Mississippi in 1875, for example, noting that to do so might lose the close election for Governor of

Ohio in 1876. “What good is winning Mississippi,” he asked, “if we lose Ohio?”

Legislative Achievements

• Public Schools established. The first in Southern history. Segregated, though.

• Lien laws passed on behalf of farmers & farm laborers.

• Desegregation of streetcars, hotels & restaurants

• Repeal of Black Codes to allow land ownership.

Critics Contend• These were tax-and-spend governments.

• Republican governments were corrupt.

• Black legislators were intent upon social leveling, intermixing with whites through marriage & family ties.

• Black legislators were incompetent and easily influenced by carpetbaggers & scalawags.