Problems during reconstruction Kevin Moffatt Problems during reconstruction

Political re-entry of formerly rebellious states Solutions: Lincoln's plan Amnesty to Confederates taking loyalty oath If 10% of voters took the oath, statehood would be re-established Major goal: to strengthen Republican Party in the South Wade-Davis Bill Military governors to rule Southern states Majority of citizens required to take loyalty oath Attitude: South should be treated as conquered territory Andrew Johnson's plan Similar to Lincoln's plan This plan called for 10% to swear an oath of loyalty to the Union New state constitutions High ranking Confederate officers/leaders and S landowners required a presidential pardon to participate in politics Confederate leaders and wealthy Southerners would have to ask presidential permission to take the loyalty oath 13th Amendment (abolishing slavery) would have to be approved by state Viewed as too soft on the South by Radical Republicans The Congressional Plan The Radicals passed three Reconstruction bills early in 1867 and overrode Johnson’s veto on all of them Two years after the end of the war, these two bills finally established a coherent plan for Reconstruction Tennessee was promptly readmitted Congress rejected the Lincoln-Johnson governments of the other ten Confederate states and, instead, combined those states into five military districts A military commander governed each district and had orders to register qualified voters (all adult black males and those white males who had not participated in the rebellion) Once registered, voters would elect conventions to prepare new state constitutions, which had to include provisions for black suffrage Once voters ratified new constitutions, they could elect state governments Congress had to approve a state’s constitution, and the state legislature had to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. Once that happened, and once enough states ratified the amendment to make it part of the Constitution, then former Confederate states could be restored to the Union Later on, Congress added an additional requirement for readmission – the ratification of the Fifteenth amendment (we will talk about later)

Economic devastation of the South Sharecropping: sharecropping was one attempt to solve the economic woes of the south Most blacks did not own land, about 25% just worked the land for wages, but most became tenants for white land owners They worked their own plots of land and paid their landlords either a fixed rent of a share of their crops (therefore known as ‘sharecropping’) Redistribution of Land and Money The federal government attempted to redistribute the land and the wealth of many of the high ranking Confederate Officers This helped to give some money back to the poor, but the system was ultimately undermined by the Crop-Lien system The Crop-Lien System This system included both sharecropping and a new system of credit This new system was centered in large part on local country stores, which gave food and resources to poorer whites and blacks for either payment in crops or money later Since most local stores had almost no competition, they could charge almost anything they wanted – interest rates as high as 50 or 60 percent This system was even more detrimental to the South One could say that the South never truly recovered from the Civil War, although it was able to almost catch up in industry, it never reached the industrial height of the North

Education and support of freedmen The Freedmen’s Bureau An agency of the army directed by General Oliver O. Howard Distributed food to millions of former slaves Established schools staffed by missionaries and teachers who had been sent to the South by Freedmen’s Aid Societies and other private support and church groups in the North Made modest efforts to settle blacks on lands of their owns Also offered considerable assistance to poor whites, many of whom were similarly destitute and homeless after the war. Not a permanent solution Had authority to operate for only one year, and was too small to deal effectively with the enormous problems The Fourteenth Amendment In April of 1866, the Joint Committee on Reconstruction proposed a new amendment to the Constitution, which Congress approved in early summer and sent to the states The Fourteenth Amendment offered the first constitutional definition of American citizenship Everyone born in the US, and everyone naturalized, was automatically a citizen and entitled to all the “privileges and immunities” guaranteed by the Constitution, including equal protection of the laws by both the state and the national government The amendment also imposed penalties on states that denied suffrage to any adult male inhabitants Also prohibited former members of Congress or other former federal officials who had aided the Confederacy from holding any state or federal unless two-thirds of Congress voted to pardon them The Fifteenth Amendment Forbade the states and the federal government to deny suffrage to any citizen on account of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” However, through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other means, Southern states were able to effectively disenfranchise African Americans It would take the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 before the majority of African Americans in the South were registered to vote.