1. Life After the Civil War: Reconstruction 1865-1876

2. The Politics of Reconstruction
What was Reconstruction ?
The period during which the U.S. began to rebuild after the Civil War. It is the process of bringing the Southern states back into the nation. It lasted from 1865 to

3. During the war, Lincoln made a plan for Reconstruction that was easy on the the South. He planned to grant amnesty to southern political leaders
After Lincoln died, his vice- president, Andrew Johnson, became president. Johnson’s plan was similar to Lincoln’s. but it would have made it possible for former high-ranking Confederates to assume positions of power in the reconstructed southern governments.
Radical Republicans thought Johnson’s plan was too easy on the South. They wanted to destroy the political power of former slave owners. They also wanted African Americans to be citizens with the right to vote.

4. President Johnson, refused to cooperate with Congress…
President Johnson, refused to cooperate with Congress….. But Radical and moderate Republicans in Congress united and were able to override Johnson’s veto power and passed a law creating the Freedman's Bureau, which gave food and clothing to former slaves and set up hospitals and schools. Congress also passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which said that states could not enact laws that discriminated against African Americans.

5. 14th Amendment
Congress then passed the Fourteenth Amendment which gave African Americans citizenship.
Johnson urged Southern states NOT to ratify it because they had no say in creating it.
Congress angrily responded with the Reconstruction Act of 1867 which stated that NO state could re-enter the Union until it approved the 14th Amendment and gave the vote to black men.

6. President Johnson Impeached!
The fight between Congress and Johnson led Congress to look for a way to impeach the president. The Radicals in Congress wanted him to be humiliated and shamed, and ultimately, kicked out of office.
Johnson had removed a cabinet member, and Congress said he did it illegally, thus using this excuse to try to kick him out of the presidency.
Johnson was impeached by the House of Representatives, and went on trial in the Senate. IF found guilty, he would be removed from the presidency…
…when the final votes came in, President Johnson was NOT convicted in the Senate but by a single vote!

7. 15th Amendment
In 1868, Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant was elected and became president.
African American votes in the South helped him win.
Then in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified which banned states from denying the vote to black men.

8. Grant’s 1st Term
Half way through Grant’s first term all former Confederate states were back in the union.
Their governments were run by Republicans.
The South faced terrible economic conditions.
Many men had died in the war, people had lost their investments, farms were ruined...
The new Republican state governments in the South began public works programs to repair the physical damage to the cities and landscape.
They also provided social services to provide food, clothing, shelter, and education.
They raised taxes to pay for these programs.

9. Three groups of Southern Republicans had different goals: Scalawags were white southerners. They were small farmers who did not want wealthy planters to regain power, so they cooperated with the Northern controlled Republican Southern stated governments. Other southerners saw them as traitors of the Old South. Carpetbaggers were Northerners who had moved South to take advantage of rebuilding the South for profit. Black men had voting rights for the first time and voted Republican, but many white Southerners resisted equality for African Americans.

10. Promises Unkept...
Freed African Americans wanted to farm their own land and had been promised “40 acres and a mule” by General Sherman, though Congress did NOT honor this promise.
Meanwhile, the old Southern planters wanted to return to the plantation system.
They tried to make sure that the former slaves could NOT own land, and that they would remain at the very least, 2nd class citizens, so…..
To survive, many former slaves became sharecroppers, which is a system in which landowners give a few acres of land to their farm workers.
The “croppers” keep a small portion of their crops and give the rest to their landowners.
Another system that allowed whites to control the labor of former slaves was tenant farming. Tenant farmers rented land from the landowners for cash.

11. The Collapse of Reconstruction
Racist southern whites did not like the freed slaves voting, so some formed secret groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) that used violence to keep blacks from voting.
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Laws in the Post Reconstruction Era:
(Jim Crow Laws) Segregation
“ Separate But Equal”
Grandfather Clause
Literacy Tests
Poll Taxes

12. Why did Reconstruction fail to solve the racism issue in the United States?
The “Compromise of 1876”
In 1876, there was a disputed presidential election that led to the end of Reconstruction.
The Democrats agreed to accept the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, as President in return for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South.
An economic depression occurred during the Panic of 1873, which severely cut funds away from Reconstruction programs.
As a result, the Northern states grew tired of attempting to pay for the rebuilding of the South – and, ultimately, the assimilation of the freed slaves into normal society.
Also, President Grant became increasingly unpopular as his administration was corrupt with several scandals…..

13. The new state Southern Democratic legislatures quickly began passing so- called “Jim Crow” Laws – discriminatory laws that would ensure that whites and blacks would be kept separate.
Blacks once again began to be treated like 2nd-class citizens, and it would take almost another 100 years – until the 1950s - with the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement – before justice would once again come to African American citizens.
...without federal troops, there was no one to stop hate groups, such as the Klan, from returning to intimidate blacks from voting.
Thus, the Southern Democrats regained control of the state legislatures, and most things went back to largely the same way it was before the Civil War began.