Reconstruction Overview

History M25: Krister Swanson

Lincoln’s Philosophy

• "malice toward none, charity for all" - amnesty
• states who accept emancipation & take loyalty oath (10%) should be let back in
• No long term plan for financial assistance to freedmen
• Infuriates abolitionists & other "radical republicans"
• thinks President should run reconstruction, thinking still evolving at time of assassination

Congress’ Philosophy

• outlined in Wade Davis Bill (50% loyalty oaths, no confederates in government, guaranteed rights to slaves)
• total reconstruction for Southern society & economy
• laws to protect rights of freedmen
• former Confederate leaders banned from participating

Lincoln is Assassinated

• Johnson adopts Lincoln’s basic plan but has no sympathy for freedmen
• 13th Amendment ends slavery
• Congress sets up Freedmen’s Bureau
• by late 1865 all states but TX had met Johnson’s conditions, but many are using Black Codes and harassment to keep freedmen down (not one state allowed vote)
• Required black employment feeds sharecropping

Congress Takes Over

• Push freedmen’s bureau and Civil Rights Act over Johnson’s vetoes
• 14th Amendment to extend and protect citizenship rights of freedmen
• Mob violence grows to suppress rights
• 1866 Election: Johnson (National Union Party) vs. Congress controlled by Radical Republicans (Reps unify vs. Southern Resistance)

Radical Reconstruction

• Southern resistance feeds power of radical republicans
• Overturn state governments, divide South into 5 districts, states must write new constitutions and ratify 14th to reenter Union
• Military moves in to register voters & supervise elections - still no land reform
• Johnson tries everything to interfere with Congress

Impeachment!

• Johnson fires Sec of War Stanton (a RR)
• House passes articles of impeachment (Johnson is failing to execute his duties)
• Senate finds Johnson not guilty by 1 vote (uphold presidency)
• after this radicals free to address suffrage issue - 15th Amendment (wording allows for abuse)

The Aftermath

• Carpetbaggers (northerners coming South to benefit) & scalawags (southerners sympathetic to North) help set up bi-racial republican state gov’ts
• Southern Dems freak out over "radical reforms", Redeemers eventually retake state gov’ts by mid 1870’s
• Grant elected Pres. In 1868 – marked by scandal & cronyism
• radicals out & north loses interest after Panic 1873

• troops gone after Comp. of 1877
• many freedmen forced to sharecrop (transition to free labor is difficult)
• Sharecropping leads to debt, eviction, survival on the margin
• Jim Crow Laws & organizations like the KKK keep freedmen at bottom of ladder