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Reconstruction Reading Questions

APPARTS on Reconstruction

Reconstruction Report Cards

Identify key components of both Presidential Reconstruction and Congressional Reconstruction.

Identify a key weakness of both approaches to Reconstruction.

Spend 15 minutes with your Report Card group to complete the ‘group grade’ aspectSlide2

Reconstruction fails…miserably

Mr. Winchell

APUSH

College Board Period 5Slide3

The Election of 1866

Unable to work with Congress, Johnson took to the road in the fall of 1866 with his infamous ‘swing around the circle’ to attack his opponents.

His speeches appealed to the racial prejudices of whites by arguing that equal rights for blacks would result in an ‘Africanized’ society.

Republicans counterattacked by accusing Johnson of being a drunkard and a traitor.

They appealed to anti-Southern prejudices by employing a campaign tactic called ‘waving the bloody shirt,’ reminding Northern voters of the hardships of war.

Republican propaganda emphasized that Southerners were Democrats and tried to brand the entire Democratic party as a party of rebellion and treason.Slide4

Election results

Republicans scored an overwhelming victory.

After 1866, Johnson’s political adversaries, both moderate and Radical Republicans, had more than a 2/3 majority in both the House and the Senate.

This enabled Congress to override any legislation or veto from Johnson.Slide5

Congressional Reconstruction begins

The Republican Party had to come together to establish power because of fear that a unified Democrat party would again become dominant.

This was especially troublesome because now freed slaves counted as 1 person for representation, now 3/5.

Leading Radical Republicans:

Charles Sumner (same dude who got beat with a cane in the Senate) of Massachusetts.

Thaddeus Stevens (Pennsylvania): hoped to revolutionize Southern Society through an extended period of military rule in which African Americans would be free to exercise their civil rights, be educated in schools operated by the fed

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, and would receive lands confiscated from the planter class.

Other Radical Republicans endorsed more liberal causes like women’s suffrage, rights for labor unions, and civil rights for Northern African Americans.Slide6

Civil rights act of 1866

Johnson had previously vetoed the Freedmen’s Bureau Act and first Civil Rights Act. First act of the new Congress was to override these vetoes.

This Civil Rights Act pronounced all African Americans to be US citizens, thereby repudiating the decision in the Dred Scott case, and attempted to provide a legal shield against the operation of the Southern states’ Black Codes.

Fourteenth Amendment reinforced this act.Slide7

Reconstruction acts of 1867

Despite Johnson’s vetoes, Congressed passed 3 Reconstruction acts in early 1867, putting the South under military occupation.

The Acts also increased the requirements for gaining readmission to the Union.

Now, states had to ratify the 14

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Amendment and place guarantees in its constitution for granting franchise (the right to vote) to all adult males, regardless of race.Slide8

Impeachment of Johnson

Congress…didn’t like Johnson.

In 1867, over Johnson’s veto, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act.

This law prohibited the president from removing a federal official or military commander without the approval of the Senate.

The purpose of the law was strictly political. Congress wanted to protect the Radical Republicans in Johnson’s cabinet, like Secretary of War Edwin Stanton who was in charge of new military rule in the South.Slide9

Impeachment of Johnson

Believing this new rule to be unconstitutional, Johnson challenged it by dismissing Stanton anyway.

The House responded by impeaching Johnson, charging him with 11 ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,’ making Johnson the first president to get impeached.

In 1868, after a 3 month trial in the Senate, Johnson’s political enemies fell 1 vote short of the necessary 2/3 vote required to remove a president from office, because 7 moderate Republicans joined the Democrats in voting against conviction, because they thought it was a bad precedent to remove a president for political reasons.Slide10

Election of 1868

Democrats nominated Horatio Seymour instead of Johnson, so his presidency would’ve ended either way.

Republicans nominated war hero General Ulysses S Grant, even though Grant had zero political experience.

Despite Grant’s popularity in the North, he managed to win only 300,000 more popular votes than Seymour.

The votes of 500,000 blacks gave the Republican Party the victory.

Even the most moderate of Republicans began to realize that the voting rights of the freedmen needed federal protection if their party hoped to keep control of the White House in future elections.Slide11

Civil Rights Act of 1875

Last civil rights reform enacted by Congress during Reconstruction (and last until the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s).

This law guaranteed equal accommodations in public places and prohibited courts from excluding African Americans from juries.

Law was poorly enforced because moderate and conservative Republicans felt frustrated trying to reform an unwilling South and feared losing white votes in the North.

By 1877, Congress would abandon Reconstruction completely.Slide12

Reconstruction in the South

During Congressional Reconstruction, the Republican party in the South dominated the governments of the ex-Confederate states, due to military protection.

They stayed in power until each state had met its requirements. Then, the troops were withdrawn.

The period of Republican rule in a Southern state lasted from as little as one year (Tennessee) to as much as nine years (Florida), depending on how long it took conservative Democrats to regain control.Slide13

Scalawags and Carpetbaggers

Democratic opponents gave nicknames to their hated Republican rivals.

Scalawags: Southern Republicans. The South couldn’t believe that their own people would join a party that was as committed to reforming their society.

Carpetbaggers: Northern newcomers, coming South to invest in business, teach, or take economic advantage of a struggling society.Slide14

Election of 1872

Scandals almost destroyed Grant’s presidency (we’ll cover that later), but he was re-elected in a landslide anyway, thanks again to the ‘waving the bloody shirt’ campaign strategy.

Grant’s second term began with an economic disaster that rendered thousands of Northern laborers both jobless and homeless. Overspeculation by financiers and overbuilding by industry and railroads led to widespread business failures and depression.Slide15

The end of Reconstruction

During Grant’s second term, it was clear that Reconstruction had entered it’s third and final phase.

Radical Republicanism was in decline and Southern conservatives, called redeemers, took control of one state government after another.

This process was completed by 1877.

The redeemers had different social and economic backgrounds, but agreed on their political program: states’ rights, reduced taxes, reduced spending on social programs, and white supremacy.Slide16

White Supremacy and the KKK

During the period that Republicans controlled state governments in the South, groups of Southern whites organized secret societies to intimidate blacks and white reformers.

The most prominent of these was the KKK, founded in 1867 by an ex-Confederate general Nathaniel Bedford Forrest.

This ‘invisible empire’ burned black owned building s and flogged and murdered freedmen to keep them from exercising their voting rights.

In 1877, the last of the federal troops protecting African Americans and other Republicans was withdrawn from the South, ending Reconstruction.

Further, in the 1880’s and 1890’s, the Supreme Court struck down one Reconstruction law after another that protected blacks from discrimination.