1. Reconstruction

2. Freedom What does it mean? Access to equal rights
Access to land, education, political participation

3. “placing us where we could reap the fruit of our own labor, and take care of ourselves…to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor.”
- Black Leader &
Baptist Minister

4. Education Fisk University, TN Hampton Institute, VA
Howard University, D.C.
Howard University

5. Politics Role of Black ministers
250 African Americans hold office during Reconstruction
“Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot.”
- Frederick Douglass

6. Politics of Reconstruction
Freedman’s Bureau, 1865
Andrew Johnson
Pardoning of southerners
“Black Codes”

7. Congressional Reconstruction
14th Amendment, 1866
Tenure of Office Act, 1867
Impeachment of Johnson
15th Amendment, 1870

8. Election of 1868 Ulysses S. Grant, Republican
“waving the bloody shirt”
Horatio Seymour, Democrat
appealed openly to racism
denounced reconstruction & black suffrage

9. Reconstruction, The South
1/5th of the South’s adult male population died
Slow economic revival
Decline in value of property
Confederate bonds worthless
Physical Labor

10. Reconstruction, The South
Meaning of freedom
Task system
Sharecropping

11. Reconstruction, Politics
Hiram Revels, 1870
Scalawags
Carpetbaggers

12. Reconstruction, Violence
Escalated after passing of 14th & 15th amendments
Blacks attacked for behavior
Ku Klux Klan, 1866
Reconstructive governments overthrown

13. Civil Rights Act, 1875 Final act of reconstruction
Outlawed racial discrimination in places of public accommodation
Declared unconstitutional in 1883

14. Reconstruction Why did reconstruction end?
Decline of Radical Republicans
Nothing left to accomplish
Resurgent racism
1873 Depression
Compromise of 1877

15. Election of 1876 Rutherford B. Hayes, Republican
Samuel Tilden, Democrat
Election hinged on 4 States
Oregon, South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida
Electoral Commission
7 Republicans, 7 Democrats, 1 Independent
Independent replace by a Republican
Election goes to Hayes, potential Civil War

16. Compromise of 1877 Hayes elected President
Withdraw of federal troops in the South
Award aid to southern landholders

17. Compromise of 1877, Consequences
Republican governments of the south are toppled
South becomes Democrat and remains so until 1968
Alliance between Conservative Republicans and Conservative Democrats
Jim Crow

18. Reconstruction Key terms: Howard University, Freedman’s Bureau,
Andrew Johnson, “black codes”, 14th amendment, 15th amendment,
Task System, sharecropping, Hiram Revels, Scalawags, Carpetbaggers,
Compromise of 1877