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Social Reconstruction Efforts to Rebuild the South Politically and Socially

Social Reconstruction

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Social Reconstruction. Efforts to Rebuild the South Politically and Socially. Politics. Three main groups made up the Republican Party in the South. Scalawags were white southerners who joined the party. Carpetbaggers were Northerners who moved south after the war. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Page 1: Social Reconstruction

Social Reconstruction

Efforts to Rebuild the South Politically and Socially

Page 3: Social Reconstruction

Lives of Former Slaves• Freed slaves were anxious to

take advantage of their new freedoms.

• For the first time, many former slaves learned to read and write.

• The 14th Amendment made all persons born in the U.S. citizens, and also outlawed discriminatory laws.

• The 15th Amendment allowed African-Americans the right to vote.

• African-Americans began to become involved in politics.

• Former slaves that helped General Sherman received land to start their own farms.

Page 4: Social Reconstruction

Problems for Reconstruction

• President Johnson later returned this land to the planters who formerly owned it.– The planters set up share

cropping, where former slaves rented land to farm. They had to pay a large amount of their crops to the planters.

– While African Americans were no longer slaves, they were trapped in a cycle of poverty with no way out due to the high rent they paid.

Page 5: Social Reconstruction

Opposition to Reconstruction• The Ku Klux Klan was

formed by Confederate veterans.– They used terror to

intimidate former slaves.– They tried to destroy the

Republican Party and the reconstruction governments they formed.

– Congress did make the Enforcement Acts.

• It allowed the federal government to supervise elections.

• It allowed federal troops to be sent to areas where the Klan was active.

Page 7: Social Reconstruction

The End of Reconstruction• The Supreme Court made rulings

that weakened the 14th and 15th Amendments and allowed more discrimination in the South.

• In the North, support for Reconstruction declined.

• In the election of 1876, republican Rutherford B. Hayes won the electoral vote and defeated democrat Samuel Tilden, but he did not win the popular vote.

• The House of Representatives, controlled by the Democrats, agreed to certify the election results if Republicans gave up some Reconstruction efforts.

• The Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction by pulling out federal troops, and allowing home rule, the ability for states to run their own governments without federal involvement.