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U.S. History Chapter 8
Reconstruction:
- Disagreement over severity
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Lincoln
- Radical Republicans in Congress
- Andrew Johnson became president
- 1865 - after Lincoln was shot
- Continued Lincoln's policy of mild reconstruction
- States could be readmitted to Union if:
- Declare secession illegal
- Swear allegiance to the Union
- Promise not to pay Confederate debts
- Ratify Thirteenth Amendment - Abolished slavery
- All southern states except Texas accepted Johnson's terms
- Thirteenth Amendment ratified
- Many former southern Congressmen took their old seats
- Johnson gave them all pardons
- Radical Republicans were outraged
- Johnson vetoed two bills passed by Congress in 1866
- Enlargement of the Freedmen's Bureau
- Gave food and clothing to former slaves and needy whites
- Civil Rights Bill of 1866
- Gave blacks citizenship and forbade states from passing discriminatory laws
- Southern states passed Black Codes
- Laws aimed at regulating the economic and social lives of freed slaves
- Varied from state to state
- Generally blacks could legally marry, own property, sue in court, and go to school
- They could not serve on juries, carry weapons, testify against whites, marry whites, be out past a curfew, travel without a permit, or start their own business
- Congress refused to recognize state governments set up under Johnson's agreement
- Moderates sided with Radicals to override Johnson's veto of Freedmen's Bureau
- Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment
- Johnson urged southern states to reject it
- All but Tennessee did
- Most Northerners would have been satisfied with this
- 1866 Congressional elections
- Referendum on mild or radical reconstruction
- Radical Republicans gained a 2/3 majority
- First Reconstruction Act passed in 1867
- Divided all southern states except Tenn. into five military districts
- Civilian courts replaced by military tribunals
- Each district placed under the control of a military officer who oversaw the drafting of new state constitutions
- Each state had to give blacks the right to vote
- Each state had to ratify the 14th Amendment
- Vetoed by Johnson
- Overridden by Congress
- Johnson was impeached - 1868
- Tenure of Office Act
- Removal of cabinet officers
- 2/3 vote in Senate
- Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton
- "Intemperate language" and having brought "disgrace, ridicule, contempt, and reproach" on Congress
- Survived by one vote in the Senate
- Fourteenth Amendment ratified - 1868
- Definition of a citizen
- Rights of citizens
- Privileges and immunities
- Life, liberty, and property
- Due process
- Equal protection
- Ban on Confederates holding office
- Cancellation of Confederate debts
- Presidential Election of 1868:
- Fifteenth Amendment ratified in 1870
- Prohibited discrimination in voting
- Effects of Reconstruction
- Sharecropping
- Plantation owners needed workers but had no money
- Former slaves and poor whites needed work and a place to live
- Landowners divided their land and gave each worker a few acres, seed, tools, and food
- When crops were harvested the grower usually had to give 2/3 of the yield to the landowner and kept the rest
- Blacks served in government
- 16 elected to Congress
- Many elected to state legislatures
- Black voters outnumbered whites
- Many whites were barred from voting or did not out of protest
- Scalawags and Carpetbaggers
- People who moved to the South and helped blacks vote and supported Radical Reconstruction
- Scalawags - white southerners who became Republicans
- Carpetbaggers - northerners who came south
- Mixed motives
- Genuinely opposed slavery and seccesion
- Wanted the South to industrialize and thought Republicans would be more likely to do that
- Dishonest people who thought they could profit from the situation
- Formation of secret societies
- Presidential Election of 1872:
- Reconstruction ended
- Congress passed the Amnesty Act - 1872
- Returned right to vote to about 160,000 former Confederates
- Freedmen's Bureau allowed to expire - 1872
- Federal troops withdrawn from the south - 1877
- Reasons for Reconstruction's demise
- No efforts to help blacks achieve economic independence
- White resistance
- Northern indifference
- Blacks achieved freedom now they should take care of themselves
- Weary of seemingly endless problems in the South
- Thaddeus Stevens was dead and Radicals were losing influence in the Republican Party
- Pressing for full civil rights in the South would raise embarrassing questions about segregation in the North
- Northern business interests wanted stability in the South
- Republicans didn't need the black vote anymore
- Republican Party torn by scandal and corruption
- Grant's administration plagued by corruption
- Depression - 1873-1877
- Presidential Election of 1876:
- Rutherford B. Hayes - Republican
- Samuel Tilden - Democrat
- Tilden won popular (51%) and electoral vote but did not get a majority (184 to 165)
- Electoral votes in 4 states were in dispute
- One from Oregon and the rest from Fla., La., and SC
- 20 votes
- Radicals were still in control of the 3 southern states and had thrown out a number of Democratic ballots
- Electoral commission of 8 Republicans and 7 Democrats set up to decide election
- All disputed votes were given to Hayes giving him the presidency
- Democrats accepted this because a deal was made
- Federal troops withdrawn from southern states
- Federal money given to build a railroad from Texas to the west coast
- Conservative southerner put in cabinet
White supremacy returned to the south
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