Chapter 18 Reconstruction 1865 1877 Chapter 18 Reconstruction

Chapter 18 Reconstruction (1865 -1877)

Chapter 18 “Reconstruction, 1865 -1877” Section 1 “Rebuilding the Union” Main Idea: During Reconstruction, the president and Congress fought over how to rebuild the South. Terms and Names: 1. Radical Republicans 2. Reconstruction 3. Freedmen’s Bureau 4. Andrew Johnson 5. black codes 6. civil rights 7. Fourteenth Amendment

I. What was reconstruction? A. Reconstruction was the process of bringing the Confederate states back into the Union after the Civil War. It lasted from 1865 to 1877. 1. President Lincoln’s Reconstruction plan included pardoning Confederate officials. 2. He wanted Southern states to quickly form new governments and send representatives to Congress.

B. To help former slaves, Lincoln set up the Freedmen’s Bureau. 1. The Bureau set up schools and hospitals for African Americans. 2. It also gave out clothes, food, and fuel.

C. After Lincoln was killed in 1865, Vice-President Andrew Johnson became president and based his Reconstruction plan on Lincoln’s goals. 1. Southern state governments had to forbid slavery. 2. They had to accept the supreme power of the federal government. 3. Johnson pardoned white Southerners who pledged loyalty.

II. Who were the Radical Republicans? A. Some Southern states refused to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment that ended slavery, and they also passed black codes that limited the freedom of former slaves. 1. When Congress met late in 1865, its members refused to seat representatives from the South. 2. Radical Republicans in Congress wanted the federal government to be active in changing Southern politics and society. a. They demanded full and equal citizenship for freed African Americans. b. They also wanted to turn the South into a place of free schools, respect for labor, and political equality.

III. What did the Fourteenth Amendment state? A. Led by the Radical Republicans, Congress passed a bill in 1865 promoting civil rights, or rights granted to all citizens. 1. President Johnson rejected, or vetoed, the bill, because it made African Americans full citizens. 2. Congress voted to override the president’s veto, and the bill became law.

B. Black codes were laws passed by Southern states which limited the freedom of former slaves. 1. One law said, for example, that African Americans had to have written proof of employment or they could be forced to work on a plantation. 2. Other laws said that African Americans were forbidden to meet in unsupervised groups or to carry guns 3. Later laws in the South enforced separation of white and black people in all public places. These were known as Jim Crow laws.

C. Congress wanted the Constitution to protect equality, so they proposed the Fourteenth Amendment. 1. It stated that all people born in the United States were citizens and had the same rights. 2. President Johnson and most of the Southern states refused to support the amendment, which made both moderate and radical Republican Congressmen angry. 3. They passed a law requiring Southern states to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before allowing them to reenter the Union.

IV. Who wrote the new state constitutions? A. In 1867, people in the South who were allowed to vote chose delegates to draft their new state constitutions. About 3/4 of these delegates were Republicans. 1. Almost half of the Republicans were poor white farmers. Many Southerners called these delegates scalawags (scoundrels) for going along with Radical Reconstruction. 2. One-fourth of the Republican delegates were carpetbaggers—white Northerners who had rushed to the South after the war.

3. African Americans made up the rest of the Republican delegates. B. The new state constitutions set up public schools. They gave the vote to all adult males, including African Americans. By 1869, voters in each former Confederate state had approved their new constitutions, and the states had been allowed by Congress to come back into the Union and send representatives to Congress. C. During Reconstruction, more than 600 African Americans served in Southern state legislatures, and more than a dozen also served in Congress.

V. Why was Johnson impeached? A. President Johnson fought many of Congress’s efforts during Radical Reconstruction. The conflict between Johnson and Congress soon brought a showdown. B. In 1867, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act. 1. This act said that the president could not fire Cabinet members without the Senate’s approval. Johnson did not support the law. 2. In February 1868, he fired his secretary of war.

C. Because of this, the House of Representatives voted to impeach the president. 1. This means the House formally accused him of improper behavior, specifically disobeying the Tenure of Office Act. 2. Most realized, however, that the real problem Congress had with Johnson was his continued effort to block their Reconstruction plans. D. The case went to the Senate for trial. 1. President Johnson was acquitted, or cleared, by one vote. 2. This means he was NOT removed from office.

Chapter 18 “Reconstruction, 1865 -1877” Section 2 “Reconstruction and Daily Life” Main Idea: As the South rebuilt, millions of newly freed African Americans worked to improve their lives. Terms and Names: 1. freedmen’s school 2. sharecropping 3. Ku Klux Klan 4. lynch

I. Why did freed slaves travel? A. African Americans’ first reaction to freedom was to leave plantations, some returning to where they had been born, others searching for family members separated from them during slavery. The Freedmen’s Bureau helped many families to reunite. B. The next priority people had was to get an education. 1. Throughout the South, former slaves, both adults and children, crowded into schools set up by various organizations to learn how to read and write.

2. More than 150, 000 African American students were attending 3, 000 schools by 1869, but many white Southerners worked against these schools. 3. White racists even killed teachers and burned schools in some parts of the South.

II. Why did freedmen want land? A. More than anything else, freed people hoped to own land, which they saw as the key to economic freedom. 1. As the Civil War ended, a rumor spread that all freedmen would get 40 acres and a mule. In the end, most freedmen never got land. 2. Radical Republican leaders pushed to make land reform part of the Reconstruction Acts of 1867. Their plan called for taking land from plantation owners and giving it to freed people. a. However, many in Congress were against the plan. b. They thought new civil rights and voting freedoms should be enough to give African Americans a better life.

c. Supporters of the plan disagreed, arguing that civil rights meant little without economic independence. B. In the end, Congress did not pass the land-reform plan.

III. What was the contract system? A. Without their own land, many freedmen had to return to work on the plantations, not as slaves, but as wage earners. This meant that the plantation owners had to pay them for their work. 1. Under the contract system, African Americans could decide which planter offered the best contract. 2. In addition, planters could not abuse freedmen or split families.

B. The contract system had its drawbacks. 1. Even the best contracts had very low wages. 2. Workers often could not leave the plantation without permission. 3. Many owners cheated workers out of wages and other benefits, and laws punished workers for breaking their contracts, even if owners were abusing or cheating workers.

IV. What was sharecropping? A. The drawbacks of the contract system made many African Americans turn to sharecropping. 1. Under the sharecropping system, a worker rented a plot of land to farm. The landowner provided the tools, seed, and housing. 2. At harvest time, the sharecropper gave the landowner a share of the crop. This system gave families without land a place to farm. In return, landowners got cheap labor.

B. Problems soon arose with the sharecropping system. 1. One reason was that farmers and landowners had opposite goals—farmers wanted to grow food to feed their families, but landowners wanted them to grow cash crops, such as cotton. 2. This meant that farmers had to buy their food and other things they needed, but they were too poor to pay for goods. As a result, they had to borrow money, so they were always in debt.

C. African Americans were not the only ones who became sharecroppers. 1. Many white farmers also began sharecropping. 2. Some had lost their land or farms in the war or lost their land when they couldn’t pay their taxes. D. After the war, the value of cotton dropped. Southern planters responded by trying to grow even more cotton, which dropped the price even further.

V. What was the Ku Klux Klan? A. During Reconstruction, African Americans in the South faced violent racism. 1. Many planters and former Confederate soldiers did not want African Americans to have more rights. 2. Such feelings spurred the rise in 1866 of the Ku Klux Klan. The members of this secret society wanted to restore Democratic control of the South and wanted to keep former slaves powerless.

B. Klansmen dressed in white robes and hoods. 1. They attacked African Americans and other Republicans. They beat people and burned homes. 2. They even hanged some victims without a trial. This was known as lynching. a. Klan victims had little protection. b. Military authorities were sympathetic to white Southerners and often ignored the Klan violence. C. The Klan’s terror tactics kept Republicans away from the polls, so Democrats increased their power in the South.

Chapter 18 “Reconstruction, 1865 -1877” Section 3 “End of Reconstruction” Main Idea: As white Southerners regained power, Reconstruction ended, as did black advances toward equality. Terms and Names: 1. Fifteenth Amendment 2. Panic of 1873 3. Compromise of 1877

I. What was African Americans’ role in Grant’s election? A. Republican candidate Ulysses S. Grant won the presidency in 1868. 1. About 500, 000 African Americans voted in the South despite attacks by the Ku Klux Klan. Most voted for Grant. 2. Since African Americans played an important role in the election, Republicans worried that Southern states might try to keep them from voting in future elections.

B. To prevent this, Radical Republican leaders proposed the Fifteenth Amendment. 1. This Amendment stated that citizens could not be stopped from voting “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. ” 2. The Amendment became law in 1870.

II. What was the Panic of 1873? A. Scandals hurt the Grant administration, and they also weakened support for Reconstruction. 1. Many of Grant’s advisors were unqualified, and others took bribes. 2. In 1872, some outraged Republican officials formed a new group, the Liberal Republican Party. a. The Republicans suddenly were split. b. As a result, they were less willing to impose tough Reconstruction plans on the South.

B. In 1873, an economic depression struck the nation when several powerful Eastern banks failed. 1. A financial panic, known as the Panic of 1873, followed, and banks across the land closed. 2. The stock market temporarily closed. C. The depression lasted about five years. 1. Many Americans blamed the Republicans for the crisis. 2. During the depression, the nation lost interest in Reconstruction.

III. What was the Compromise of 1877? A. The final blow to Reconstruction came with the 1876 presidential election. 1. The race between Democrat Samuel J. Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes ended in dispute, so Congress appointed a special committee to decide the election. 2. The group made a deal known as the Compromise of 1877. a. Under this agreement, Hayes became president. b. In return, Republicans agreed to remove federal troops from the South.

c. After the removal of troops, Reconstruction governments in the South collapsed. B. African Americans made lasting gains during Reconstruction. 1. Protection of civil rights became part of the U. S. Constitution. 2. Black schools and churches begun during Reconstruction endured. 3. But many African Americans still lived in poverty. Legally, they could vote and hold public office. But few took part in politics. Furthermore, African Americans continued to face widespread violence and prejudice.