Reconstruction

American History Before 1877

Aftermath of the Civil War

   Union celebration

The Grand Review of Union Troops in Victory

Aftermath of the Civil War

   Union celebration

   Scars from a long, bloody, destructive war

     The North mourns its last casualty

Lincoln’s funeral procession, Pennsylvania Ave.

Lines at City Hall, New York

Aftermath of the Civil War

   Union celebration

   Scars from a long, bloody, destructive war

     The North mourns its last casualty

     The South in ruins

      Economic chaos

      Capital destroyed

      Occupied by Union troops

   Everywhere, scarred and maimed veterans

Remembering the War

   Monuments to the fallen in every village and town

     First Memorial Day, 1866

Religious Impact of the Civil War

   Protestantism loses much self-confidence

     Religion could not prevent the tragedy

     Both sides suffered terribly

     What did God mean by the Civil War?

   Cynicism: certainty caused the war?

   Materialistic society; idealism suspect

     Mark Twain: The Gilded Age (1873)

   Rise of agnosticism

     Effect of war, and Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859)

     Robert G. Ingersoll, Union veteran, popular speaker & writer

Unfulfilled promises

   After slavery

     “Forty acres and a mule”

     Testing freedom

      Traveling

      Creating own institutions

      Getting married

     Search for a new racial-labor system

      Wage labor

      Sharecropping and tenancy

      Debt peonage

Reconstructing the South

   Wartime Reconstruction

     Abraham Lincoln’s 10% Plan, 1863

     Deadlock with Congress

      Lincoln’s plan rejected as too lenient

      Wade-Davis Bill: Harsher 50% plan blocked by Lincoln, 1864

   President Andrew Johnson’s plan, 1865

     “Get tough” approach

     The problem of pardons…

     The Black Codes

      Restricted owning or leasing property, conduct business, move in public, work (vagrancy laws)

      Rise of convict leasing system

Congressional Reconstruction

   Congress takes over, 1866

     Freedman’s Bureau extended

      Black schools, health care, labor agency

     Founding black colleges: Howard, Fisk, Morehouse, etc.

     Civil Rights Acts of 1866

      Overrides Black Codes

     Fourteenth Amendment

      Made blacks citizens

      Protected rights

Congressional Reconstruction

   Overwhelming radical Republican victory, 1866

   Military Reconstruction Act of 1867

     South divided into military districts

     15th Amendment passed

     Southern states must accept 14th and 15th Amendments

     Reconstruction proceeds fairly quickly

   Johnson obstructs and Congress impeaches

     Tried and acquitted by one vote, 1868

“Redemption” of the South

   The Republican Reconstruction coalition

     Blacks, Northerners, sympathetic Southerners

      Unstable coalition: racial and sectional tensions

   Terrorism: the Ku Klux Klan

     Northern troops the only protection

     Grant elected President, 1868

      Suppresses KKK, 1871

      Battles with armed White Leagues, 1874-76

      Assassinations of Republicans, massacres of blacks
      Worst: Colfax Massacre, 1873: 280 blacks killed

End of Reconstruction

   Depression of 1873 hurts Republicans

   Election of 1876

     Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, anti-corruption N.Y. governor

     Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, Union veteran, OH governor

   Tilden wins popular vote

   Four states have disputed electoral votes

   Congressional commission deadlocks on party lines

   Republicans agree to end Reconstruction

     Two days before inauguration day, March 2, 1877