Civil War Reconstruction & “Redemption”

Keepin’ it real on the plantation? Real Estate on Castle Street

Moving Midway Trailer

Gettysburg

Buffalo Soldier

The Emancipation Proclamation, Jan. 1,1863 President Lincoln’s executive order Freed 3 million slaves and made areas of the South free Involved 10 states Not passed by Congress No compensation to slave owners Did not actually outlaw slavery Did not grant citizenship to Freedmen

Black Codes North Carolina’s Black Codes, 1865 Short-lived precursors to the Jim Crow laws Black Codes adopted after the Civil War borrowed elements from the antebellum slave laws and from the laws of the northern states used to regulate free blacks. Some Black Codes incorporated morality clauses based on antebellum slave laws into Back Code labor laws. For example, in Texas, a morality clause was used to make it crime for laborers to use offensive language in the presence of their employers, his agents, or his family members. Borrowing from the Ohio and Illinois codes, Arkansas enacted an ordinance banning free blacks from immigrating into the state.

What was Reconstruction? PRESIDENTIAL RECONSTRUCTION: 1865-67 After Lincoln’s assassination, President Johnson tried rather ineffectually to follow his policies on the South. Southern states were required to accept the 13th Amendment to have Confederate debt relieved. But Johnson ran afoul of the formerly abolitionist “Radical” Republicans when he vetoed extension of the Freedman’s Bureau funding and the first Civil Rights Bill and acquiesced to the South’s new Black Codes, which essentially reduced Freedmen to plantation slaves.

Reconstruction Act, 1867 3 subsequent acts “An act to provide for the more efficient government of the Rebel States” The establishment of military government in the Southern states as a feature of the system imposed under the Reconstruction Acts was due primarily to the fact that the introduction of Negro suffrage was thought to be possible only through a show of strength. Freedmen’s Bureaus, established in 1865, to facilitate voting, education, commerce, etc. “Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands

Freedmen’s School, Richmond, VA, 1866

Louisiana, 1870s

A Bureau agent stops a white mob, 1868, Harper’s Weekly

RADICAL or FEDERAL RECONSTRUCTION: 1867-77 “Radical” Republicans wrested control of Reconstruction programs from Johnson, adding the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and passed a Civil Rights Act in 1866. In 1870, Blacks received voting rights. Other Radical proposals were defeated, including seizing land for redistribution to Freedmen, which didn’t happen but got a lot of attention. Martial Law was declared in 1867 and federal troops oversaw race relations in the South until the Tilden/Hayes Compromise in 1877. For Ten years, Blacks were educated, voted, were elected to office, and many rose in status and income. In 1877 the troops were withdrawn and the South’s Freedmen were thrust into a condition called “Redemption” by white Supremacists. Carpet baggers were ejected and it was open season on Blacks.

Freedmen, carpet-baggers, & scalawags beware!

Carpetbagger: A Northerner who came South to help slaves, then Freedmen Scalawag: A white Southerner who collaborated with northern Republicans during Reconstruction Copperheads: Northern Democrats who opposed the Civil War

Redemption

Nathan Bedford Forest, KKK Founder and Delmar Dennis, KKK Informer

“Of course, he wants to vote the Democratic ticket “Of course, he wants to vote the Democratic ticket.” Harper’s Weekly, 1876

The Reconstruction Amendments The 13th Amendment, 1864: Ended Slavery Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The 14th Amendment, 1868: Citizenship Clause Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. There are 3 more sections that deal with due process, equal protection, and dealing with Confederacy officials.

15th Amendment, 1870: Voting Rights Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.