February 7 - Chapter 21 and 22 - pgs 472 -487•the Election of 1864•Lincoln's Assassination•the Freedman's Bureau•Presidential Reconstruction•the Black Codes•Congressional Reconstruction

Topic: Chapter 22—ReconstructionAim: To what extent were early Reconstruction efforts successfully politically and socially?

Extreme were the Copperheads—openly obstructed the war through:

•attacked the draft•against Lincoln•especially, after 1863, against emancipation•denounced the president as the “Illinois Ape”•resented fighting a war to free blacks•commanded considerable political strength in the southern parts of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois

Election of 1864Without a leader, the Democrats divided:

The “War Democrats” vs. “Peace Democrats”

This is a Thomas Nast drawing illustrating election day, 1864. It is a leaf from an original November, 1864 edition of Harper's Weekly.

Columbia, with a shield bearing the Union Flag, votes in the election. She is shown with the symbols of war—shield and sword. If you look closely at the ballot, Columbia is voting for Abraham Lincoln, and his Union platform.

Waiting to vote is an angel with a banner that says "peace". She, presumably will be voting for McClellan and his Compromise with the South platform. She appears to be bound in chains by demonic forces behind her holding daggers saying "Northern Traitors", and "Southern Rebellion".

Lincoln’s running mate was Andrew Johnson, a loyal War Democrat from Tennessee:•A small slaveowner when the conflict began•Placed on the Union Party ticket to “sew up” the election

•Only 25 states participated since 11 Southern states had declared secession from the Union and formed the Confederacy•Three new states participated for the first time: Kansas, West Virginia, and Nevada. •The reconstructed portions of Tennessee and Louisiana chose presidential Electors, although Congress did not count their votes.•McClellan won just three states: Kentucky, Delaware, and his home state of New Jersey.•Lincoln was highly popular with soldiers and they in turn recommended him to their folks back home—Out of the 40,247 army votes cast, Lincoln received 30,503 (75.8%)

Conflict over Reconstruction:

Abraham Lincoln: believed the Southern states never legally withdrew from the Union

Lincoln’s “10 percent” Reconstruction plan: •A state could be reintegrated into the Union when

1. 10 percent of its voters in the presidential election of 1860 swore allegiance and pledged to abide by emancipation.

2. State government to be ratified by CongressRepublicans feared planter aristocracy and slavery’s return:

Wade-Davis Bill (1864)• required that 50% of a state’s voters take the oath of allegiance• demanded stronger safeguards for emancipation and civil rights

→Lincoln “pocket-vetoed” the bill.→Congress wanted to reassert its power →divisions grew—moderates vs Radical Republicans

Andrew Johnson’s Presidential Reconstruction

1. Disfranchised certain leading Confederates

•including those with taxable property worth more than $20,000

•though they might petition him for personal pardons

2. Called for special state conventions:

•required to repeal the ordinances of secession, repudiate all Confederate debts

•and ratify the slave-freeing Thirteenth Amendment

Peachtree Street—Atlanta, Georgia, 1864After Sherman’s March

•crippled economy in the South

•Nearly 1million dead nationwide

•$15 billon cost

•The slave labor system had collapsed→depression loomed in the North

•Not until 1870 would the cotton production be at pre-war levels

•Planter investment capital of more than $2 billion in slaves had evaporated with emancipation

The Cost of War

Letter dictated by a freedman—printed in the Cincinnati Commercial

Black Codes

1. Were designed to regulate the affairs of the emancipated blacks:•Mississippi, first to pass such law in November, 1865•Varied in severity from state to state: Mississippi’s the harshest; Georgia’s the most lenient

2. Their aims:•To ensure a stable and subservient labor force•Whites wanted to retain the tight control they exercised in the days of slavery.

3. Wages could be forfeit, freedmen dragged to work by a “Negro-catcher.”•In Mississippi the captured freedmen could be fined→then hired out to pay their fines = institutionalized slavery

Analytic Question!

After Reconstruction, to what extent were freed slaves successful in gaining social, economic,

and political independence?

Send your response as an email to erik.sudduth@gmail.com. The subject of your

email should be:

Period #, Name, AQ #2

problem: basic education for freed slaves•demands outstripped the supply of qualified black teachers•accepted the aid of Northern white women sent by the American Missionary Association volunteered their services as teachers

solution: Freedmen’s Bureau created March 3, 1865:

•The bureau was an early kind of welfare agency

•Key Aims: provide food, clothing, medical care, and education both to freedmen and to white refugees

•Heading the bureau was Union General Oliver O. Howard, who later founded Howard University in Washington, D.C.

•The bureau achieved its greatest successes in education

Key Aim: settle former slaves on forty-acre tracts confiscated from the Confederates

Problem: Little land made it into the blacks’ hands—administrators sometimes worked with planters in expelling blacks from towns and cajoling them into signing labor contracts to work for their former masters

The white South resented the bureau as a federal agency that upset white racial dominance.

The Freedman’s Bureau and “Forty Acres and a Mule”

An 1866 racist poster attacks Radical Republicans on the issue of black suffrage. A black man lounges idly in the foreground as one white man plows his field and another chops wood. Accompanying labels are: "The white man must work to keep his children and pay his taxes." The black man wonders, "Whar is de use for me to work as long as dey make dese appropriations." The Freedman’s Bureau is pictured as a large domed building resembling the U.S. Capitol and is inscribed "Freedom and No Work." Its columns and walls are labeled, "Candy," "Rum, Gin, Whiskey," "Sugar Plums," "Indolence," "White Women," "Apathy," "White Sugar," "Idleness," "Fish Balls," "Clams," "Stews," and "Pies."