Reconstruction

• At the close of the Civil War and shortly after the creation of the 13th amendment, Lincoln called for a period of Reconstruction.

• It lasted from 1857-1877.• Efforts were made to rebuild the South and

solve its enormous political, economic, and social problems.

ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN

•Before Lincoln could put his plan into effect, he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater in Washington D.C.

•Booth was caught in a tobacco shed in VA where he refused to surrender.

•He was shot and dragged out.

•Lincoln remained unconscious throughout the night and died the next morning, April 15th, 1865.

                                                    

ANDREW JOHNSON’S PLAN

•The new President proposed to carry out Lincoln’s Plan.•Congress passed the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.•Congress organized the Freedmen’s Bureau which helped blacks find jobs, protected their rights, and established hospitals and schools for them.

Civil War Amendments

• 13th amendment: Abolish slavery

• 14th Amendment: Citizenship for all persons born in U.S. regardless of race

• 15th Amendment: Right for all men to vote regardless of race

Freedman’s Bureau

• Government agency whose chief focus was to provide food, medical care, help with resettlement, administer justice, manage abandoned and confiscated property, regulate labor, and establish schools. Over 1,000 schools were built, and several black colleges were founded and financed with the help of the bureau.

Sharecropping

• Sharecropping (cultivated land blacks did not own, keeping a small part and paying the rest as rent.)

“Solid South”(consistent Democratic voting in the South for many years)

• Voting (15th amendment)1.Grandfather Clause-Grandfather must

have be free for blacks to vote2. Literacy Tests3. Poll Tax- Had to pay to vote

KU KLUX KLAN

1. The KKK’s objective was to maintain white supremacy.2. The KKK used violence to prevent blacks from voting.3. Blacks who refused to be intimidated were beaten or lynched, or burned.

Pictures of the KKK

Pictures of the KKK

TACTICS USED BY SOUTHERNERS

• Passed “Black Codes”(state laws that limited the freedom of ex-slaves.

“BLACK CODES”• The south found ways to

suppress the newly freed blacks by creating the B.C.

• Allowed to whip workers• Limited speech,travel, and

denied right to vote• Put unemployed blacks in jail

and prevented them from testifying against whites in court.

• White Southerners used the “B.C.” in order to keep African Americans in the same position as before the War.

RADICAL REPUBLICANS

• Led by Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner. Northern congressmen who wanted to punish the South and were convinced Johnson’s Plan had failed for many reasons: 1. Black Codes and KKK continued to discriminate against blacks.2. Newly elected congressmen from the South were former Confederate officials.3. Distrusted Johnson because he was from the South.

Carpetbaggers

• In United States history, carpetbaggers was the term southerners gave to northerners who moved to the South during Reconstruction for financial gain. They formed a coalition with freedmen (freed slaves), and scalawags (southern whites who supported Reconstruction) in the RepublicanParty. Together they politically controlled former Confederate states for varying periods, 1867–1877.

• The term carpetbaggers was used to describe the white northern Republican politicians who came South, arriving with their travel carpetbags. Southerners considered them ready to loot and plunder the defeated South. Although the term is still an insult in common usage, in histories and reference works it is now used without derogatory intent.

Scalawags

• a white Southerner acting in support of the reconstruction governments after the American Civil War often for private gain.

• Sided with the north during the war

• Were Republicans

CONGRESS TAKES CONTROL

• Passed the Civil Rights Act (1875)-guaranteed legal rights to blacks

• Passed the Reconstruction Acts- restrictions on Southern states who didn’t pass the 14th amendment.

• Congress impeached Johnson!!!!!

ULYSSES S. GRANT

President from 1869-1877

•Reconstruction ended when the Republican

Party lost its power in the Southern States.