1. Quotes
With malice toward none, with charity for all…let us bind up the nation’s wounds.. and achieve a just and lasting peace.
Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address
“We hold it to be the duty of the government to inflict punishment on the rebels… The whole fabric of southern society must be changed.
Thaddeus Stevens, “Radical Republican” leader of Congress

2. Reconstruction
The southern states were left embittered and devastated by the war.
What kind of things were destroyed in the war?
What problems did the nation have to solve?
Quick Clip

4. Thus we would address you, not as enemies, but as friends and fellow-countrymen, who desire to dwell among you in peace, and whose destinies are interwoven, and linked with those of the American people…We ask for no special privileges or peculiar favors. We simply desire that we shall be recognized as men; that we have no obstructions placed in our way; that the same laws which govern white men shall direct colored men; that we have the right of trial by a jury of our peers, that schools be opened or established for our children; that we be permitted to acquire homesteads for ourselves and children; that we be dealt with as others, in equity and justice. State Convention of the Colored People of South Carolina, Proceedings of the Colored People’s Convention of the State of South Carolina, Held in Zion Church, Charleston, November, 1865 (Charleston: South Carolina Leader Office, 1865), 23–26.
A group of escaped slaves that gathered on the former plantation of Confederate General Thomas Drayton. After Union troops occupied the area, these former slaves began to harvest and gin cotton for their own profit, circa , South Carolina. Photograph: Corbis

5. Charleston & Richmond - 1865
The interior of South Carolina, in the wake of Sherman's march, "looked for many miles like a broad black streak of ruin and desolation--the fences all gone; lonesome smoke stacks, surrounded by dark heaps of ashes and cinders, marking the spots where human habitations had stood; the fields along the road wildly overgrown by weeds, with here and there a sickly looking patch of cotton or corn cultivated by negro squatters. In the city of Columbia . . .a thin fringe of houses encircled a confused mass of charred ruins of dwellings and business buildings, which had been destroyed by a sweeping conflagration."  The Tennessee valley, according to the account of an English traveler, "consists for the most part of plantations in a state of semi-ruin, and plantations of which the ruin is for the present total and complete The trail of war is visible throughout the valley in burnt up gin-houses, ruined bridges, mills, and factories, of which latter the gable walls only are left standing, and in large tracts of once cultivated land stripped of every vestige of fencing Borne down by losses, debts, and accumulating taxes, many who were once the richest among their fellows have disappeared from the scene, and few have yet risen to take their places."         Many of the people had no homes. "From Winchester to Harrisonburg scarce a crop, fence, chicken, horse, cow, or pig was in sight Extreme destitution prevailed throughout the entire valley. All able-bodied negroes had left; only those unfit to work remained. The country between Washington and Richmond was like a desert."

6. Reconstruction
At the end of the war, there was no agreed-upon plan for Reconstruction
Lincoln -“charity for all” – States had never really left the Union, so quickly restore loyal state govts in the South and move on
Congress’s Radical Republicans – “punish the South” and guarantee rights to former slaves
After Lincoln’s assassination, Andrew Johnson becomes president. Johnson’s plan let the South in quickly, but did not protect rights of freed blacks

7. What did the Black Codes do?
“All freedmen, free negroes, and mulattoes in this State, with no lawful employment or business, or found unlawful assembling themselves together either in the day or night shall be fined fifty dollars”
How were African-Americans controlled in the South?

9. Battles over Reconstruction
Congress battles with President Johnson on
Freedman’s Bureau – social, legal help
Civil Rights Act – made racial discrim. illegal
Congress passes bills  Johnson vetoes them  Congress overrides the vetoes
14th Amendment – legal eq. and citizenship
Johnson tries to defeat the 14th Amendment– he fails! Republicans take over Congress!

10. Reconstruction Report Card
With your group, read the competing plans for each issue and give each one a grade. Why did you give the grade you did? What were the strengths and weaknesses of each ?
Can your group come up with an A+ plan?

14. Reconstruction Act of 1867: Congress divides the South into military districts
How do you think Southerners responded to having “yankee troops” watching over them?

15. Election of 1868 Ulysses S. Grant wins a close election
Confederates were not allowed to vote!
Support from carpetbaggers and scalawags
And for the 1st time…freed African-Americans

16. carpetbaggers – Northerners who came South after the war to help, or to make money
Scalawags – Southerners who supported Reconstruction

18. Hiram Revels is the first African-American Senator
Hiram Revels is the first African-American Senator. He served as the US Senator from Mississippi.

20. Which of these changes do you think was the most important?
African Americans were no longer slaves
African Americans gained the right to vote
African Americans attended schools
African Americans were elected to government office

21. Opposition to Reconstruction
Who were the Redeemers? What did they do to oppose Reconstruction?
Redeemers were Southern Democrats who wanted to retake control of their state governments –wanted Home Rule

22. The “Invisible Empire of the South”
“Of course he wants to vote for the Democratic ticket”

23. The Failure of Federal Enforcement

24. The End of Reconstruction
Why does support for Reconstruction end?
Northerners have moved on
Political scandals in Grant’s administration
Economic problems: Panic of 1873
After the 15th Amendment, many think the work is done
Supreme Court weakens the Amendments
The South regains control…

25. Compromise of 1877 The END of Reconstruction
No one clearly wins the Presidential election
Congress makes a deal:
Republicans get Rutherford B. Hayes as president if the South gets:
federal troops removed
money for rail, rebuilding, projects
to govern themselves without Northerners

27. Life in the South after 1877
Southern States enact Jim Crow laws that deny African Americans civil rights for nearly 100 years.
Allowed legal segregation and discrimination in public places
Plessy vs Ferguson (1896)
– “separate but equal” is OK

28. Jim Crow Laws

29. Sharecropping
What economic problems did freedmen (and poor whites) in the South have to solve?
What economic problem did the plantation owners have to solve?
Possible Solution?
Sharecropping – p.391

30. What do you see here?
What year do you think this was taken?
1898

31. Conclusion
The North and Midwest industrialized, but the South would remain a backward, agriculture-based economy and the poorest section of the nation for many decades.

32. Recap: Ulysses S. Grant
Urged radical Republicans not to be harsh with former Confederates
Was elected president and served during most of Reconstruction
Advocated rights for the freedman
Opposed retribution directed at the defeated South

33. Robert E. Lee
Urged Southerners to reconcile and rejoin the United States
Served as president of Washington College (Washington & Lee University today)
Emphasized the importance of education to the nation’s future

34. Frederick Douglass Supported full equality for African Americans
Advocated for the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments
Encouraged federal government actions to protect the rights of freedmen in the South
Served as ambassador to Haiti and in the civil service