Date: March 20, 2015 Topic: The End of Reconstruction Date: March 20, 2015 Topic: The End of Reconstruction. Aim: How did Reconstruction end in 1877? Do Now: Multiple Choice Questions.

White men who own property Colonial Era- voting rights to white men who owned property and belonged to a particular religious group. After the Revolution- states began to eliminate property and religious restrictions. However restrictions were still placed on women and African Americans NOT ME NOT ME NOT ME Why do you think these restrictions were placed on the right to vote? White men who own property

RECONSTRUCTION AMENDMENTS 13th “FREE” 14th “CITIZENS” 15th “VOTE” Made slavery in the U.S. illegal Grants citizenship to all persons born in the United States and “equal protection under the law” Gives citizens the right to vote regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude

How did Southern States limit the right to vote? LAWS DEFINITION RESULT POLL TAX LITERACY TEST GRANDFATHER CLAUSE Required voters to pay a tax Affects all poor people Required all voters to take a literacy test Affects all uneducated people States that if your grandfather was unable to vote, you can’t vote Affects ALL former slaves

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SOLID SOUTH - WEAKENED REPUBLICAN PARTY Corruption in the Grant administration weakened the political strength of the Republican Party. In addition, by the early 1870’s, all but a handful of former Confederates could vote again. Most of these white southern males now voted Democratic in reaction to Radical Republican Reconstruction. For most of the next century, the Democratic Party would dominate voting in the South, giving rise to the term Solid South. While nearly dying out in the South, the Republican Party remained strong in the North and Midwest. It focused on issues of interest to businessmen and farmers, such as keeping the money supply tight and tariffs on imports high.   SOLID SOUTH -

The Election of 1876 The emergence of the Solid South gave Democrats greater power in politics on a national level. 1876: Democrats nominated Samuel Tilden, the governor of New York, to run for President against Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, the governor of Ohio. Tilden clearly won the popular vote but the electoral vote was contested. A special electoral commission was named to count the votes. The Republican majority on the commission gave all of the votes to Hayes.

Why is the Compromise of 1877 considered the end of Reconstruction? In the Compromise of 1877, Democrats agreed to go along with the commission’s decision in return to promises by Hayes to: 1.) Withdraw remaining federal troops from the South, thus ending Reconstruction. 2.) Name a southerner to his cabinet. 3.) Support federal spending on internal improvements in the South. The Compromise of 1877 effectively weakened the North’s political victory in the Civil War, restoring to power many of the southern families who, 16 years before, had formed the Confederacy and led it into war. Why is the Compromise of 1877 considered the end of Reconstruction?

Ku Klux Klan Secret societies White southerners originally formed groups like the Ku Klux Klan to try to frighten African Americans and their supporters out of taking part in Reconstruction governments. The lawlessness and brutality demonstrated by these groups led the federal government to use the army against the societies. With the end of Reconstruction and the growth of white political power, the Klan and other similar groups played a less active role in the South. Such organizations, however remain in existence today. A warning leaflet from Alabama in 1868. Ohio is a Republican state in the North. Ku Klux Klan

SHARECROPPING The South’s agricultural economy was in turmoil after the war, in part because a compulsory labor force was gone. At first white landowners attempted to force free blacks into signing contracts to work the fields. These contracts set terms that nearly bound the signer to permanent and unrestricted labor – in effect, slavery by a different name. Black insistence on autonomy however, combined with changes in the postwar economy, led white landowners to adopt a system based on tenancy and sharecropping. Under sharecropping, the landlord provided the seed and other needed farm supplies in return for a share (usually half) of the harvest. While this system gave poor people of the rural South (whites as well as blacks) the opportunity to work a piece of land for themselves, sharecroppers usually remained either dependent on the landowners or in debt to local merchants. By 1880, no more than 5 percent of southern blacks had managed to realize their dreams of becoming independent landowners. In a sense, sharecropping had evolved into a new form of servitude. How did the system of sharecropping continue a cycle of servitude for African Americans?