Here we see several of the themes most important to Black Americans during Reconstruction: The print celebrates the military achievements of Black veterans, the voting rights protected by the amendment, the right to marry and establish families, the creation and protection of Black churches, and the right to own and improve land. State governments were mired in debt. South Carolina and Mississippi passed laws known as Black Codes to regulate Black behavior and impose social and economic control. The Klans reputation became so potent, and its violence so widespread, that many groups not formally associated with it were called Ku Kluxers, and to Ku Klux meant to commit vigilante violence. Many fellow activists were dismayed by Stantons and Anthonys willingness to appeal to racism to advance their cause.25. While public schools were virtually nonexistent in the antebellum period, by the end of Reconstruction, every southern state had established a public school system.10 Republican officials opened state institutions like mental asylums, hospitals, orphanages, and prisons to white and Black residents, though often on a segregated basis. In certain locations with large populations of African Americans, such as South Carolina, freedpeople continued to hold some local offices for several years. This was the question that Formerly wealthy women hoped to maintain their social status by rebuilding the prewar social hierarchy. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln propelled Vice President Andrew Johnson into the executive office in April 1865. Similar ambiguous vagrancy laws throughout the South reasserted control over Black labor in what one scholar has called slavery by another name.7 Black Codes effectively criminalized Black peoples leisure, limited their mobility, and locked many into exploitative farming contracts. What happened after the end of Reconstruction? Long portrayed by many historians as a time when vindictive Radical Republicans fastened Black supremacy upon the defeated Confederacy, Reconstruction has since the late 20th century been viewed more sympathetically as a laudable experiment in interracial democracy. In the end, after a series of votes along strict party lines, the commission awarded Hayes all three of the contested states in early March 1877, making him the enslavers wanted to put there. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was organized in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee, and had spread to nearly every state of the former Confederacy by 1868. What comes into your mind? Should reconstruction have followed the law of conquest? 4 What happened after the reconstruction of the south? attempted to negotiate a new social and political . Some Republicans, like U.S. congressman Thaddeus Stevens, believed in racial equality, but the majority were motivated primarily by the interest of their political party. A grandfather clause extends the legality of something if a law is later passed making the original thing substandard. With the Compromise of The factories and farms of the North successfully supplied Union troops, while the federal government, with some adjustments, found the means to pay for war. The protections of black civil rights crumbled under the pressure of restored white rule and unfavorable Supreme Court decisions. During Reconstruction, more Churches were often the largest building in town and served as community centers. Joseph E. Baker, The Rail Splitter at Work Repairing the Union, 1865.Library of Congress. The foundation of southern society had been shaken, but southern whites used Black Codes and racial terrorism to reassert control over formerly enslaved people. The end of Reconstruction was a staggered process, and the period of Republican control ended at different times in different states. Alfred R. Waud, The First Vote, November 1867.Library of Congress. Freedom is a core aspect What was one result of the end of Reconstruction in the South? The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 freed African Americans in rebel states, and after the Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment emancipated all U.S. slaves wherever they were. The Black commissions response was that we were promised Homesteads by the government. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. The top left showsa riot in Memphis and at the top ariot in New Orleans. Southern cities grew rapidly after the war as migrants from the countrysideparticularly freed peopleflocked to urban centers. WebReconstruction lasted from 1865 to 1877. In this report, General J.J. Reynolds describes the lawlessness of Texas during Reconstruction., 6. The KKK brought violence into the voting polls, the workplace, and as seen in this Harpers Weekly print the homes of Black Americans. In 1871 the administration launched a legal and military offensive that destroyed the Klan. How did the lives of African Americans and whites in the South differ when segregation was law? African Americans gained citizenship rights like the ability to serve on juries as a result of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment. But enslavement by governments through the prison system in America is still legal in the 21st century. Racial violence, whether city riots or rural vigilantes, continued to threaten these vulnerable households. Currier & Ives, First Colored Senator and Representatives in the 41st and 42nd Congress of the United States, 1872.Library of Congress. The acts also deemed violent Klan behavior as acts of rebellion against the United States and allowed for the use of U.S. troops to protect freedpeople. Reconstruction ended in 1877 because of a variety of reasons. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Conflicts over emancipation and civil rights quickly gave way to long political conflict over the direction of American economic development. . Charlotte Forten teaches freed children in South Carolina, 1864, Charlotte Forten was born into a wealthy Black family in Philadelphia. The pass system kept How did Plessy v. Ferguson make the fight against segregation more difficult? Black peoples desires to marry fit the governments goal to make free Black men responsible for their own households and to prevent Black women and children from becoming dependent on the government. Southern Black women also sought to redefine their public and private lives. How did many freedmen and whites become locked in a cycle of poverty? Was the Reconstruction era a success or a failure? The most notable were the riots in Memphis and New Orleans in 1866, but other large-scale urban conflicts erupted in places including Laurens, South Carolina, in 1870; Colfax, Louisiana, in 1873; another in New Orleans in 1874; Yazoo City, Mississippi, in 1875; and Hamburg, South Carolina, in 1876. Reconstruction was a success in that it restored the United States as a unified nation: by 1877, all of the former Confederate states had drafted new constitutions, acknowledged the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and pledged their loyalty to the U.S. government. a legal term means official pardon or immunity from prosecution. The Civil War showed white women, especially upper-class women, life without their husbands protection. labeled Contents: Freedom, what would you expect to find inside? racially segregated but ostensibly ensuring equal opportunities to all races. Abraham Lincoln announced the first comprehensive program for Reconstruction, the Ten Percent Plan. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the great womens rights and abolition activist, was one of the strongest forces in the universal suffrage movement. political power, and economic self-sufficiency? Composed of those who had been free before the Civil War plus slave ministers, artisans, and Civil War veterans, the Black political leadership pressed for the elimination of the racial caste system and the economic uplifting of the former slaves. While it is difficult to differentiate Klan actions from those of similar groups, such as the White Line, the Knights of the White Camellia, and the White Brotherhood, the distinctions hardly matter. How did the South use its resources to develop manufacturing? Fourteen men served in the House of Representatives. General Benjamin Butler is at the bottom left, accepting the Confederate surrender of New Orleans in 1862. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. that man I cannot well forgive. After Reconstruction, African Americans did not enter the political arena again in large numbers until well into the twentieth century. d. The protections of black civil rights crumbled under the pressure of restored white rule and But the economic program spawned corruption and rising taxes, alienating increasing numbers of white voters. Under the peculiar circumstances what could the people of South Carolina do but resort to Ku Kluxing?33, Victims and witnesses to the violence told a different story. Here's the wikipedia information on it. You are ready to say they did and we will not argue the point with you. In September 1873, Jay Cooke and Company declared bankruptcy, resulting in a bank run that spiraled into a six-year depression. Unlike other contemporary images that depicted African Americans as ignorant, unkempt, and lazy, this print shows these Black men as active citizens. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. Petition of E. Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, and Others Asking for an Amendment of the Constitution that Shall Prohibit the Several States from Disfranchising Any of Their Citizens on the Ground of Sex, 1865.National Archives and Records Administration. The acts made it criminal to deprive African Americans of their civil rights. Sharecroppers were farmers who rented land and paid a share of each year's crop as rent; they did not own the But I feel that I have claims upon my country. The first extended the life of an agency Congress had created in 1865 to oversee the transition from slavery to freedom. The result of this meeting was Shermans famous Field Order 15, which set aside confiscated plantation lands along the coast from Charleston, S.C. to Jacksonville, FL. Amendment outlawed slavery? With the Compromise of 1877, military intervention in Southern politics ceased and Republican control collapsed in the last three state governments in the South. Yes, opportunities for skilled workers dwindled and many African Americans had to take any job they could Cotton fed the textile mills of America and Europe and brought great wealth to the region. Violence shattered the dream of biracial democracy. They developed anti-racist politics and organizational skills through antislavery organizations turned church associations. Pictured here are Hiram Revels (the first African American Senator) alongside six Black representatives, all from the former Confederate states. P. B. S. Pinchback served as Louisianas governor for thirty-four days after the previous governor was suspended during impeachment proceedings and was the only African American state governor until Virginia elected L. Douglas Wilder in 1989. Sixteen African Americans served in Congress during Reconstructionincluding Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce in the U.S. Senatemore than 600 in state legislatures, and hundreds more in local offices from sheriff to justice of the peace scattered across the South. Reconstruction came to an end as a direct result of too many Southerners opposing the reconstruction. When all efforts for reconstruction were met with a battle, the spirits of the Northerners to reconstruct the South began to wane because they did not want to constantly be met with confrontation while trying to reconstruct the area. After the Civil War had been fought and black people were granted the right to vote as true citizens of the United States, there were many people in the South At the bottom, Johnson is trying to charm aConfederate Copperhead. citizenship from whiteness. Tensions between northerners and southerners over styles of worship and educational requirements strained these associations. As with all things on wikipedia, check the footnotes. The following is Jourdon Andersons reply. Freedmen discuss post-emancipation life with General Sherman, 1865, Reconstruction began before the War ended. Although it established national citizenship for all persons born or naturalized in the United States, the amendment also introduced the word male into the Constitution for the first time. President Abraham Lincoln began planning for the reunification of the United States in the fall of 1863.2 With a sense that Union victory was imminent and that he could turn the tide of the war by stoking Unionist support in the Confederate states, Lincoln issued a proclamation allowing southerners to take an oath of allegiance. White people were understood as fit for freedom and citizenship, Black people for chattel slave labor. It was put into operation in parts of the Union-occupied Confederacy, but none of the new governments achieved broad local support. Nightriders harassed and killed Black candidates and officeholders and frightened voters away from the polls. Johnson, a states-rights, strict-constructionist, and unapologetic racist from Tennessee, offered southern states a quick restoration into the Union. Many political leaders and officeholders were ministers. The policy would later be overruled and freedpeople would lose their right to the land., 2. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her partner in the movement, Susan B. Anthony, made the journey to advocate universal suffrage. Reconstruction changed when John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln on April 14, 1865, during a performance of Our American Cousin at Fords Theater. For a time, the federal government, its courts, and its troops, sought to put an end to the KKK and related groups. Once cotton production resumed, Americans found that their cotton now competed with new cotton plantations around the world. Numerous Republican politicians, perhaps dozens, were killed, either while in office or while campaigning. What ended as a result of reconstruction? ProfoundQa Not until the 1960s, in the civil rights movement, sometimes called the second Reconstruction, would the country again attempt to fulfill the political and social agenda of Reconstruction. The stage was set for an election that would end Reconstruction as a national issue. While U.S. Pres. Only in the 20th century Many had been born free or had gained their freedom before the Civil War. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. While they granted some rights to African Americans like the right to own property, to marry or to make contracts they also denied other fundamental rights. 15. Reconstruction | THE AMERICAN YAWP contract as a vagrant who could be arrested and Instead, most black farmers Increasingly, the new Southern governments looked to Washington, D.C., for assistance. Many southern governments enacted legislation that reestablished antebellum power relationships. to pass the 14th Amendment, which defined a US citizen as anyone born or naturalized Jim Crow laws: State and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. The future of the South was uncertain. Rival governments arose claiming to recognize Tilden as the rightfully elected president. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. Farther west, mining and agriculture were the mainstays of life. Southern state governments, and African Americans They won particular influence during Ulysses S. Grants first term as president (18681872). They also created the myth that the Civil War was fought over states rights instead of slavery, which was the actual cause. A "grandfather clause" legalizes instances of whatever is being permitted by a new law that happened before the law was passed. When just 10 percent of a states voting population had taken such an oath, loyal Unionists could then establish governments.3 These so-called Lincoln governments sprang up in pockets where Union support existed like Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas. These divisions came to a head early in 1867, as the AERA organized a campaign in Kansas to determine the fate of Black and woman suffrage. Because he did not believe African Americans deserved equal rights, President Johnson opposed the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment and vetoed the Civil Rights Act. In his last speech, on April 11, 1865, Lincoln, referring to Reconstruction in Louisiana, expressed the view that some Blacksthe very intelligent and those who had served in the Union armyought to enjoy the right to vote. the United States faced during Reconstruction, the But the aftermath of the war left portions of the Confederacy in ruins.