Reconstruction

Wade-Davis Bill This Civil War measure, introduced by two Radical Republicans, Ohio senator Benjamin F. Wade and Maryland representative Henry Winter Davis, asserted congressional power over Reconstruction. It required that a majority of a seceded state's white men take an oath of loyalty to the Constitution and guarantee black equality. Then the state could hold elections for a constitutional convention, starting the readmission process. The Radicals were seeking an alternative to Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. Lincoln's plan called for creating new southern state governments when 10 percent of voters in the 1860 election pledged loyalty to the Union and agreed to abolish slavery but without enfranchising blacks. Congress passed the Wade-Davis bill in 1864, but Lincoln pocket- vetoed it. He then invited southerners to rejoin the Union under either plan, knowing they would prefer his easier terms. Wade and Davis replied with a blistering manifesto, charging Lincoln with defying Congress and acting like a dictator. The widespread support for the Wade-Davis bill by congressional Republicans reflected their desire for a larger role in shaping Reconstruction.

Black Codes Southern laws called Black Codes were passed in the aftermath of emancipation in order to control the newly freed black labor force. Mississippi and South Carolina passed the first and toughest measures late in 1865, and other southern states soon followed. Their provisions varied from state to state, but typically they stipulated that freedpeople could rent land only in rural areas—a means of keeping them on the plantations. All blacks were required to sign contracts for employment each January for the coming year. Those who quit in the middle of a contract lost any wages they had earned to that point and were subject to arrest for vagrancy— defined simply as not working. Punishments for vagrancy included fines, forced labor, whipping, or sale for a year's labor. The freedpeople were banned from "insulting" whites and preaching without a license. The Black Codes also tried to regulate sexual behavior and to force women who wished to be homemakers to return to the field. These codes had effects beyond their impact on the everyday lives of their black victims. The northern public reacted angrily. Andrew Johnson's Presidential Reconstruction, which had allowed these measures to be enacted, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 over Johnson's veto, defining the freedpeople's civil rights. Later, Congress approved the Fourteenth Amendment and imposed military rule to counter these southern efforts to subvert Reconstruction.

Freedman’s Bureau The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was a U.S. federal government agency established in 1865 to aid freedmen (freed slaves) in the South during the Reconstruction era of the United States, which attempted to change society in the former Confederacy .

Civil Rights Act of 1866 The Civil Rights Act of 1866 granted citizenship and the same rights enjoyed by white citizens to all male persons in the United States "without distinction of race or color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude."

Amendment XIII Adopted 1865 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. ENDS SLAVERY!!!!!

Amendment XIV PROVIDES CITIZENSHIP!!! Adopted 1868 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. Section 2 Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of Electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. Section 3 No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or Elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each house, remove such disability. Section 4 The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss of emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations, and claims shall be held illegal and void. Section 5 The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. PROVIDES CITIZENSHIP!!!

Amendment XV PROVIDES SUFFERAGE…FOR WHOM???? Adopted 1870 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. PROVIDES SUFFERAGE…FOR WHOM????

Reconstruction Act of 1867 Congress passed several Reconstruction Acts. Congress overrode a presidential veto of an act that divided the South into military districts and placed the former Confederate states under martial law pending their adoption of constitutions guaranteeing civil liberties to former slaves. Congress also passed an act giving African American men in the South the right to vote three years before ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. Finally, it passed the Tenure of Office Act, which barred the president from removing officeholders without Senate approval. In August 1867, Johnson tested the Tenure of Office Act by removing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, which prompted Republicans in Congress to impeach the President.

Andrew Johnson 1808-1875 (Democrat)

Tenure of Office Act The Tenure of Office Act was a United States federal law (in force from 1867 to 1887) that was intended to restrict the power of the President of the United States to remove certain office- holders without the approval of the Senate. The law was enacted on March 3, 1867, over the veto of President Andrew Johnson.

Impeached?? Impeached Johnson but he was not found guilty…therefor not removed from office.

Election of 1968 Grant Elected

Women’s suffrage Minor v. Happersett: In its decision the Supreme Court declared that the privileges and immunities of citizenship are not defined by the U.S. Constitution; thus, individual states’ enfranchisement of male citizens only was not necessarily a violation of the citizenship rights of women. This finding effectively put an end to attempts to win voting rights for women through court decree. Subsequent efforts in the woman suffrage movement in the United States focused on the revision of voting laws of individual states and on the ratification of a separate amendment to the Constitution.

Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner Two of the most outspoken Radical Republicans Worked against Johnson to make sure that the Freedman’s Bureau supported land grants, pass the amendments Some historians say they still did not do enough (they needed land) Some state governments did try and use tax policies to break up large land holdings and get them into the hands of poorer whites and blacks. South Carolina bought property and resold on easier terms to the landless (1869) about 14,000 black families acquired land through this programs

Sharecropping Without land, wages replaced food, clothing and shelter that the slaves received. Sharecropping: a tenant farmer especially in the southern United States who is provided with credit for seed, tools, living quarters, and food, who works the land, and who receives an agreed share of the value of the crop minus charges.