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