1. PLANS FOR RECONSTRUCTION

2. Partner Discussion
Imagine that you live in the North/South as the Civil War is ending.
1. How do you feel about the other side?
2. What are your concerns about the South rejoining the U.S.?
3. What would you want to make sure the other side does or does not do?

3. Reconstruction Key Goals: Bring the South back into the union
Integrate and protect freedmen

4. The Status of the South African-Americans: Plantation owners
4 million new freed people
Many homeless, jobless and hungry
Some migrated North, others looked for jobs
Plantation owners
Lost slave labor worth $3 billion
Many had to sell their property
Poor white Southerners
Many couldn’t find work
Often started migrating west

5. 1890
African-American population in 1890

6. Clip 1
Explains the impact of Emancipation & the idea of “40 Acres”

7. Lincoln’s 10% Plan Lincoln’s idea during war – Dec 1863
Pardon to Confederates who swore allegiance to the Union
States could create new state Constitutions after 10% of the people in the state had sworn allegiance
States could then hold elections

8. Lincoln’s 10% Plan This idea offered a tone of forgiveness
But Congress wanted to punish the South
The 10% plan never went into effect

9. 2. Wade-Davis Act
1864-Congress’s Radical Republicans thought the 10% plan was too lenient
Proposed Wade-Davis Act
Required Confederates to take an oath and swear they had never willingly borne arms against the U.S.
Lincoln let this Act die in a pocket veto
Significance: Goal was more to punish the South

10. 13th Amendment Passed in 1865 Amendment to the Constitution
Ends slavery in the United States

11. What are the biggest/most important differences between Lincoln’s 10% Plan and the Wade-Davis Act?

12. PHASES OF RECONSTRUCTION

13. Groups
Southern Democrats – Want a system as close to slavery as possible
Lincoln – More moderate Republican
Radical Republicans –
Hate slavery, want the South to give A-As rights
Johnson – Southerner who sympathized with the South

14. Questions in the South throughout
Who will do the work?
How will blacks be “controlled?”
Will the South survive the upheaval?

15. Attitude Inventory Which statement do you agree with more…
A. It is more important for a country to have equality for its people than a strong, unified government OR
B. It is more important for a country to have a strong, unified government than equality for its people

16. Chronology of Reconstruction
– Lincoln
– Johnson’s Presidential Reconstruction
– Radical Reconstruction
1877 – End of Reconstruction
“Redemption” Phase

17. President Johnson Southerner who was allied with poor whites
Was chosen as Lincoln’s running mate to try to get Lincoln Southern support

18. PHASE 1: Presidential Reconstruction
States had to void secession and abolish slavery
Allowed states to hold Constitutional Conventions

19. How the South Responds They begin passing laws called “Black Codes”
What did these codes do?
Sec. 3 …No Negro shall be permitted to rent or keep a house within said parish. Any Negro violating this provision shall be immediately ejected and compelled to find an employer; and any person who shall rent, or give the use of any house to any Negro, in violation of this section, shall pay a fine of five dollars for each offence.
Sec. 6…No negro shall be permitted to preach, exhort, or otherwise declaim to congregations of colored people, without a special permission in writing form the president of the police jury….

20. Black Codes – The Big Picture
Rights:
Marriage
Owning property
Restrictions:
Labor
Housing
Leisure time
Weapons ownership
Violation of the Black Codes lead to fines or forced work

21. Violence Violence against African-Americans
“Value” of the African-American
KKK emerges
Lynching of blacks and whites
Secretly and targeted (rather than mob violence)
Systematic murder of about 1,300 voters

22. Analyze Presidential Reconstruction
Was Reconstruction a success under Presidential Reconstruction? Why or why not?
Discuss

23. Phase 2 : Radical Reconstruction
Radical Republicans see the problems of Reconstruction under Johnson
They push through a completely different approach:
Civil Rights Act
14th Amendment
States had to ratify to re-join
Control of the South
Military districts
Confederates temporarily can’t
vote, African-American men can

24. 14th Amendment
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Citizenship & due process for everyone born in the U.S.

26. Legal Impact African-Americans elected to office
More than a dozen in Congress
Hundreds elected to state legislatures
2,000 held office
Push through 15th Amendment
Gives all African-American men the right to vote

27. Social Impact Freedmen’s Bureau Wipe out Black Codes…
Food, shelter, medical care for poor
Education
Wipe out Black Codes…
But Sharecropping is established to take its place

28. Sharecropping Freedmen rent land/materials/tools Whites own the land
Freedmen only get “shares”
Forever in debt

30. Analyze Radical Reconstruction
Was Reconstruction a success? Compare its successes (or lack thereof) under Presidential & RR Reconstruction. Why or why not?

31. “Redemption”

32. Strange Fruit, by Billie Holiday
Southern trees bear a strange fruit Blood on the leaves and blood at the root Black bodies swingin' in the Southern breeze Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees Pastoral scene of the gallant South The bulgin' eyes and the twisted mouth Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh Then the sudden smell of burnin' flesh Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop Here is a strange and bitter crop
What does this song suggest about the Reconstruction-era South?

33. During Radical Reconstruction…
Grant elected (1868)

34. Compromise of 1877
Republican Rutherford Hayes lost popular vote to Samuel Tilden
Electoral vote disputed
Southern Democrats agreed to give Hayes the win if:
He took federal troops out of South
Give $ to South for railroads and levees

35. Reconstruction Dies In South…
Former Confederates pardoned, return to power
Democrats from South blocked national reforms
Supreme Court limits 14th and 15th Amendments, lets states “protect” rights

36. “Redemption” After Reconstruction ends
The South claims this is a period of “Redemption”
From the perspective of Southern whites
They are the ones who feel they are being redeemed – regaining what they’d lost
Time of anxiety and fear in the South

37. During Redemption KKK reemerges Jim Crow laws
Enforce complete segregation
African-Americans’ homes, barns were burned
Suppression of voting
Directly – threats and whips
Gerrymandering
Literacy tests

38. Literacy Test
Take the literacy test

39. African-American Vote Wiped Out
Louisiana
Over 130,000 African-Americans registered to vote
Four years later:
Down to 5,300

40. Lynchings 1882-1901 – More than 100 lynchings a year recorded
Over 5,000 up until 1960s
Festival lynchings – advertised in the paper. Trains sold tickets. Bodies destroyed. Often when black men are accused of rape. It was seen as a “manly” act – to protect white women.

41. Analyze Redemption
What does this time period suggest about the successes or failures of Reconstruction?