Study Guide

Carson, chapter 11 – Reconstructing the Union

  1. Wartime Reconstruction – Port Royal experiment
  • Former slaves and production
  • Ring shout ritual
  • Military officers and evangelicals
  • Land sales
  • Cotton and contracts
  1. General Sherman and Special Field Order #15
  • “Give us land”
  • Forty acres and a mule
  • Grapevine telegraph and rising expectations
  1. Tunis Campbell and St Catherine’s Island
  • Government
  • Militia
  • Production
  1. Davis Bend, Mississippi
  • Market orientation
  • Self-governance
  1. First Freedom
  • Leave
  • Anger and fear
  • Find loved ones
  • Change name
  • Change manners
  1. Key institutions of former slaves
  • Family
  • School
  • Church
  1. Lincoln and Reconstruction
  • Lincoln’s vice president
  • Lincoln’s plan
  • Lincoln on the vote for former slaves
  • Lincoln assassinated
  1. Johnson and Reconstruction (Presidential Reconstruction)
  • Thirteenth amendment
  • Johnson on the vote for former slaves
  • Johnson’s policy toward former confederates
  • Presidential pardons
  • Field Order #15
  1. Radical Republicans
  • Promote the interests of former slaves
  • Punish white southerners
  • Thaddeus Stevens
  • Land confiscation and redistribution
  • Secure civil rights of former slaves
  1. Southern white response to Johnson’s Presidential Reconstruction
  • Attain pardons
  • Regain property rights
  • Regain political rights
  • Form state governments
  • Pass “black codes”
  • They restricted black occupations and labor with employment contracts, corporal punishment, and high occupation fees.
  • Worked with Freedman’s Bureau to enforce contracts
  • Use Ku Klux Klan to enforce new regime
  1. Freedman’s Bureau
  • Purpose
  • Help assist the newly freed slaves in their transition to freedom
  • Promote education – including, in partnership with religious organizations, the establishment of black colleges such as Fisk, Hampton, Tougaloo and Avery
  • Encourage former slaves to sign labor contracts
  • Mediate labor contracts
  • Obtain land
  • Settle criminal disputes
  • Limitations
  • Understaffed
  • Racism of some Bureau agents
  • Congress failed to appropriate adequate funds
  1. Former slaves response to Johnson’s Presidential Reconstruction
  • Conventions formed to protest black codes
  • Ask government to live up to nation’s ideals
  • Show patriotism
  • Promote equal justice
  • Place deposits in Freedmen's Savings Bank and Trust Company
  • Resist contract labor which placed the former slaves under conditions similar to slavery
  1. Mid-term Congressional elections of 1866
  • Radicals move the moderates to the left
  • Campaign among northern public
  • Context of black codes and former confederates now holding federal office
  • Republicans gained two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate. They could, therefore, override any presidential veto.
  1. Civil Rights Act of 1866
  • Nullifies black codes
  1. 14th Amendment
  • National citizenship
  • Due process rights
  • Equal protection of law
  • Johnson opposed
  1. The Joint Committee on Reconstruction
  • Condition in the South brutal toward former slaves
  • State governments dissolved
  • Five military districts
  • Ratify 14th and 15th Amendments
  1. Black men and right to vote
  • Conventions
  • Candidates
  • Class divisions
  1. Southern white resistance and the 15th Amendment
  • Prohibited federal and state governments fromlimiting the franchise because of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
  • Response of women’s movement
  1. Southern state governments under Republican rule
  • Internal improvements
  • Education
  • Land reform?
  • Black local officials and judges
  1. Albert and Lucy Parsons
  1. Redemption and white terror
  • Ku Klux Klan
  • Lynching
  • Class make-up of the Klan
  • Federal government’s response
  • Second Grant administration
  • Depression of 1873
  • Withdrawal of troop, return of Klan terror
  1. Sharecropping system
  • Terms and conditions
  • Debt lien laws and chain gangs
  • Tenancy
  • Whites and blacks
  1. Election of 1876
  • Three “unredeemed states”
  • Electoral commission
  • Compromise of 1877
  1. Final collapse of Reconstruction
  • Few lasting benefits for blacks.
  • Whites learned that intimidation and violence could reduce black voting.
  • Democrats regained control of Southern legislatures.
  1. South as colony of the Northeast