Reconstruction
Ch 2.5
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
• Daily goal: Understand the failures of Reconstruction and what African American life was like after it ended. Differentiate between the 3 different plans for Reconstruction.
Reconstruction
• Rebuilding the nation after the Civil War.• 3 different plans:• Pres Lincoln’s• Pres Johnson’s• Radical Republican’s
So did Lincoln free the Slaves?
13th Amendment
• Permanently banned slavery in the US.
Lincoln’s Plan
• General amnesty to all Southerners who took an oath of loyalty to the US.
• States could form new govs when 10% took loyalty oath.
• Former Confederates could not join new gov’t.
freedmen
• Thousands of former slaves who needed food and shelter.
• Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau to help former slaves find jobs, food and shelter.
9
PRESIDENT LINCOLN ASSASSINATED APRIL 14, 1865
MURDERED BY JOHN WILKES BOOTH, A LOYAL CONFEDERATE SOUTHERNER WHO BELIEVED THAT HE WAS AVENGING THE SOUTH WHEN HE ASSASSINATED THE PRESIDENT
Johnson’s Plan
• Andrew Johnson became Pres when Lincoln died and he sympathized with the South.
• Similar to Lincoln’s plan, but allowed former Confederates back into gov’t and did not protect freed slaves’ rights.
Black Codes
• Laws passed in the South which limited the rights of African Americans and kept them nearly as slaves.
14
MAP OF 5 MILITARY DISTRICTS
Radical Republican’s plan
• The Military Reconstruction Act split the South into 5 military districts occupied by the Union Army.
• Army had orders to protect the rights of freed African Americans.
14th Amendment
• Guaranteed citizenship to all persons born in the US declared that no state could deprive any person of life, liberty or property without “due process of law.”
15th Amendment
• The right to vote shall not be denied on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.
What’s with the white sheets?
KKK
• Terrorized African Americans and any whites who helped them.
• Threatened African Americans with violence if they voted or tried to use their new freedoms.
Reconstruction ends
• Compromise of 1877 pulled the Union troops out of the South ending Reconstruction.
• What good are laws when no one enforces them?
Back to the plantations
• Most African Americans couldn’t afford to buy land.
• Some became tenant farmers paying rent for the land they farmed.
• Others became sharecroppers who paid rent on the land with a share of their crops.
• The rent was so high they were constantly in debt and tied to the land.