19.3 The South During Reconstruction pp. 615-620

Objectives: Describe how the Freedmen’s Bureau helped African Americans. Compare and contrast scalawags and carpetbaggers.

A. New Ways of Life (pp. 615-616) After the Civil War, few African Americans had money to buy land. Some became tenant farmers, farming land that they rented. Many Southerners, black and white, became sharecroppers, persons who worked the owner’s land and received a share of the crop in return as payment.

B. The Freedmen’s Bureau (pp. 616-617) In March 1865, Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau, which was run by the army. Its primary mission was helping African Americans adjust to their new freedom. The Bureau’s greatest achievement was starting free public schools for African Americans, and establishing Howard University, Fisk University, and the Hampton Institute.

C. White Southern Resistance (pp. 617-618) Terrorist groups formed to defend white Southerners’ old way of life. Groups like the Regulators, the Knights of the White Camelia, and the Ku Klux Klan launched a reign of terror, whipping and murdering those who refused to be scared. During Reconstruction, the Klan killed thousands of African Americans and their white friends.

D. African Americans in Politics (pp. 618-619) The Fifteenth Amendment would extend the right to vote to all American males over 21, regardless of race. Grant was the first President to give an African American a post in his administration. Mississippi elected two African Americans—Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce—to the U.S. Senate.

E. Reconstruction Governments (p. 620) Southerners who joined the Republicans after the war were called scalawags by other Southerners who considered them disloyal. Northerners who moved South after the war looking for business opportunities were called carpetbaggers. Southerners resented both groups and viewed them as greedy opportunists eager to gain power and wealth.

F. Civil Rights Showdown (p. 620) Many attempts were made to limit racial discrimination in public places such as streetcars, hotels, etc. However, most attempts to “remove the last lingering taint of slavery” failed to pass. African Americans’ struggles for equality would continue into the twentieth century.

Review: List some farming options open to poor Southerners after the Civil War. What was the primary mission of the Freedmen’s Bureau? What did the Fifteenth Amendment allow? Compare and contrast scalawags and carpetbaggers.