1. The Reconstruction Era
Turning Points
The Reconstruction Era

2. “The First Vote”
Harper’s Weekly, 1870

3. Warm Up: 3 Plans of Reconstruction
Abraham Lincoln’s
Andrew Johnson’s
Radical
Republicans

4. Achievements of Radical Reconstruction
Freedman’s Bureau Act (by veto override)
Increased literacy
Reconnected families
Freedman’s Bank
14th Amendment (1868)
15th Amendment (1870)
Civil Rights Act, 1866 (by veto override)
African Americans are citizens
Reconstruction Acts, 1867
Civil Rights Act, 1875
tried to promote integration, but allowed segregation in churches, cemeteries and schools

5. Reconstruction: African Americans in the South
Limiting Freedom
Intimidation at elections by Ku Klux Klan
B/w , white violence towards freedmen at every election in Louisiana & Mississippi
Sharecropping –tenant farming
Crop-lien System –borrowing w/high interest based on potential harvest
Debtor Peonage –unpaid labor to pay off debt (usually based on false arrest)
Black Codes: Southern states immediately pass laws limiting black freedom
Ensure white land owners labor
Limit black power in politics
Enforced segregation
Banned
gun ownership for blacks
interracial marriage
blacks from testifying against whites in court

7. Factors that ended Reconstruction
Long term Causes
White Southerners readiness to engage in violence & intimidation
Mississippi ‘Rifle Clubs’ of 1870s
Redeemers (Democrats) take over
Unwillingness of Federal government to repel these actions
President Grant refuses to send more federal troops to regulate any elections b/c the state government was ‘not under direct threat of insurrection’
Fed involvement in the South will lose moderate Republican support in the North (especially Ohio & NY)
Thomas Nast cartoons indicate losing support for Reconstruction

10. Continued… Economic depression –Panic of 1873
Set up by 1869 ‘Gold Crisis’ -prices collapse
1873 largest private bank in U.S. goes under –credit dries up
Fragmentation of Republican Party
Stalwarts (pro-patronage) vs. half-breeds (pro-civil service)
Many Radical Republicans retire/die
Moderates have to compete with Democrat strongholds in urban centers
Actions of the Supreme Court
Slaughterhouse Cases (1873)
“citizenship in the Union (the U.S.) not the same as citizenship within a state” –first case to examine 14th Amendment
Born or naturalized vs. residency

12. Immediate causes
Hayes vs. Tilden Election of 1876 leading to the Compromise of 1877
House of Representatives decided the election
Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican) wins at the price of:
Three states are ‘redeemed’
End support of Republican govts in these states
Federal troops removed from the South
Reconstruction & all of its policies end

14. Migrating to find Freedom
Exodusters ( )
1st major migration of African American after the Civil War
Nearly 40,000 freedmen
Migrated along the Mississippi River to Kansas, Oklahoma & Colorado in 1879
Motivated to leave the South due to Black Codes & KKK & White League terror
Led by Henry Adams & Benjamin Singleton