1. Reconstruction

2. Reconstruction
The Civil War and the period of Reconstruction that followed had a major political, social and economic effects on the US. These effects were mostly positive in the northern and western parts of the country. In the South, they were disastrous.

3. Reconstruction Economic Effects
The war had been fought mostly in the South. Many homes, cities, railroads and farms had been destroyed. These had to be rebuilt after the war. But southern states had little money to do so. They were financially bankrupt. They could not pay their debts.

4. Reconstruction Economic Effects
Before the war, the South’s major business was growing cotton. The size of the 1860 cotton crop in Alabama was almost one million bales. In 1870, five years after the end of the war, Alabama farmers raised less than half that much cotton. Other southern states that grew cotton did even worse.

5. Reconstruction Economic Effects
Before the war, the South had depended on millions of slaves to raise profitable crops of cotton. These slaves were freed after the war. Few people knew how to rebuild the cotton plantations without slave labor. Many freed slaves worked on southern farms as sharecroppers. They farmed lands owned by white plantation owners for a share of the crops. Over time these sharecroppers went into greater and greater debt to these plantation owners.

6. Reconstruction Economic Effects
In the North, the war had been very profitable. New factories had been built in many cities. Railroads had been laid. Northerners had made millions of dollars producing guns, ammunition, clothing and other materials needed for war. After the war, many businesses continued to prosper. More railroads were built, especially in the West. Oil wells were drilled. Northern cities continued to grow.

7. Reconstruction Social Effects
The greatest social effect of the Civil War was the creation of a new class of people – freed slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation had freed only those slaves in states that were rebelling against the US. In December 1865, ratification, or approval, of the 13th Amendment freed all slaves in the US. In 1868, the 14th Amendment made all former slaves citizens of the US. In 1870, the 15th Amendment declared that no citizen of the US could be denied the right to vote “on account of race, color or previous servitude,” which meant being a former slave.

8. Reconstruction Social Effects
The federal government set up the Freedman’s Bureau. This was an organization that helped feed, clothe and provide medical care and fuel to former slaves. The bureau also helped poor whites, many of whom had lost everything during the war. But the bureau did not give former slaves land for free. If it had, probably fewer slaves would have become sharecroppers.

9. Reconstruction Social Effects
In 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. It gave 160 acres of government land in the West for free to anyone who would cultivate it. Thousands of people moved West to set up new farms and ranches. At the same time, the government helped railroads companies build railroads throughout the country, especially in the West.

10. Reconstruction Social Effects
The Homestead Act and government help for railroads came while the Republican Party controlled the White House and Congress. New western farmers and railroad builders thus supported the Republican Party during this time.

11. Reconstruction Political Effects
The Civil War was fought under a Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, and a Republican Congress. President Lincoln wanted to return power to the southern states as soon as possible after the war. When he was assassinated in 1865, Vice President Andrew Johnson became president. He continued to support Lincoln’s plan for Reconstruction. But Johnson ran into strong opposition from Republicans in Congress who felt the South should be punished. They wanted to treat the South like an enemy country that had been conquered.

12. Reconstruction Political Effects
Johnson fought Congress and lost. He became the first president to ever be impeached, or put on trial by Congress. Only one vote saved him from being removed from the presidency. Johnson was a Democrat. He and Lincoln campaigned in 1864 as the “national union” candidates. But after the war, the Democratic Party was named the party of treason. All of the major Confederate leaders had been Democrats.

13. Reconstruction Political Effects
Democrats continued to have strong support in the defeated southern states. But they could not get enough votes elsewhere in the country to elect a president. In 1868, Republican Ulysses S. Grant, the northern hero of the Civil War, became president. He served until Between 1868 and 1913, eight Republicans served as president, but only two Democrats.

14. Reconstruction Political Effects
Reconstruction continued until about Union armies occupied some southern states during this period, until the states approved new constitutions.

15. What part of the United States suffered most from the Civil War?
Reconstruction
Political Effects
What part of the United States suffered most from the Civil War?
The South

16. Political Effects How long did Reconstruction last?
1865 – 1877: 12 years

17. Southern Reaction to Reconstruction
Southerners reacted to Reconstruction in many different ways. Their reactions ranged from silent acceptance of northern rule to outright violence.

18. Southern Reaction to Reconstruction
At first, northern adventurers called carpetbaggers joined with southern traitors called scalawags to take advantage of the war-torn South. They robbed southerners of their land and businesses. But southerners soon began to fight back. During Reconstruction, many African Americans were elected to local and state political offices as Republicans. But this would soon end. White southerners rallied around the Democratic Party. By 1870, white southern Democrats had taken control of the VA and GA state legislature by legal means.

19. Southern Reaction to Reconstruction
Throughout the South, whites also used violence to take control. They joined illegal secret societies and attacked and killed many former slaves. The best known of these societies was the Ku Klux Klan.

20. Southern Reaction to Reconstruction
A former Confederate general organized the Klan in Klansmen wore white sheets with pointed hoods. They gathered at night and rode out in search of African Americans whom they wanted to fight or kill. Klan members often warned African Americans not to vote. Anyone who was warned and still voted was punished. Supposedly the Klan was broken up in But it reappeared many years later.

21. Southern Reaction to Reconstruction
The Republicans who controlled state legislatures tried to fight the Klan. They passed laws against the violence. These laws failed. More and more African Americans in the South became afraid to vote. Carpetbaggers and scalawags were also scared off. Slowly, white southerners regained control of every state legislature in the South.

22. Southern Reaction to Reconstruction
Northern support for the use of troops in the South slowly slipped away. Northerners felt the great war against slavery had been won.
Reconstruction was very expensive. They did not like paying for it. By 1872, all the Confederate states had been readmitted to the Union.

23. Southern Reaction to Reconstruction
When southern Democrats took over sate legislatures, they used laws rather than fear to keep African Americans from voting. Some southern legislatures passed a poll tax. This meant that voters had to pay a certain amount of money to vote. Many African Americans were too poor to pay the tax. They could not vote.

24. Southern Reaction to Reconstruction
Literacy test laws required a voter to be able to read a written passage before they could vote. Since many African Americans could not read, they could not vote.

25. Southern Reaction to Reconstruction
Southern states also passed “Jim Crow laws,” which were designed to keep African American and white people apart. It would be almost a hundred years before such laws were abandoned.

26. Poll taxes and literacy tests
Reconstruction
Political Effects
What were the two laws passed that were designed to keep African Americans from voting?
Poll taxes and literacy tests

27. Political Effects What was the Ku Klux Klan?
Reconstruction
Political Effects
What was the Ku Klux Klan?
An illegal secret society that attacked and killed many former slaves