Following the End of the Civil War, the South S Economy Was in Shambles

RECONSTRUCTION NOTES

Following the end of the Civil War, the South’s economy was in shambles.

• railroads destroyed
• plantations destroyed
• plantation owners could not afford capital for agricultural equipment to replace slave labor
• Speculative enterprises preyed on people left destitute by war.

The social structure of the South changed, creating confusion.

Aristocratic plantation owners having lost their wealth were forced to yield to the growing influence of bankers, merchants and small farmers. African Americans made the transition from slaves to wage earners, creating racial tensions with the whites.

Political Uncertainty.

• Collapse of the Confederacy stalled most political processes.
• State and local governments had to be organized.
• New state governments had to establish normal relations with the Union.
• Northern states and governments differed on what and how it should be done.
• Division on National level between Congress and Lincoln / Johnson on how the former Confederate states should be admitted back into the union.
• The rift became one of the worst in the nation’s history.

THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT

Prohibits slavery within the United States. Passed by Congress in February 1865 and was ratified by December, thus becoming a part of the Constitution.

THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT

The Joint Committee on Reconstruction proposed the Fourteenth Amendment. Congress passed it in June of 1866 and it was sent to the states for ratification.

Provisions:

1.Citizenship is given to all persons born or naturalized in the U.S.

No state laws shall deny any of these individuals of “ life, liberty

or property without due process of law.

2.Any state that deprived any of its male inhabitants of the right to

vote will have representation in Congress reduced by the number

denied in the state. (This was very difficult to enforce.)

3.Former Confederates were barred from holding federal and state

offices if they had held similar posts before the war.

4.The Confederate debt was repudiated and the U.S. debt affirmed.

The 14th Amendment had to be ratified before any Confederate state could be readmitted to the Union. Tennessee did this and came back in. The other states rejected the 14th Amendment upon President Johnson’s advice and defeated it. In spite of this, the amendment was ratified.

THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT

The Fifteenth Amendment mandated that all states were prohibited from denying suffrage (the vote) to males in the grounds of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” (Women were not included as they did not get the vote until the early part of the 20th century.) The amendment passed Congress in February of 1869 and was ratified by the states by March of 1870.

THE BLACK CODES

A series of discriminatory laws passed by southern state legislatures established by the Johnson plan. These laws regulated the status of the FREEDMEN. While these laws confirmed some rights of citizenship, they helped to ensure white supremacy.

The severity of the laws varied from state to state.

Examples:

• denied the right to hold public office
• denied the right to serve on juries
• denied the right to carry weapons
• must had to have a license to hold any job except for farming.

Impact in the North was increased support for the Radical Republicans.

THE FREEDMEN'S BUREAU

Purpose: to provide the freed slaves with the basic necessities of life and protect their civil rights as well as care for the abandoned lands in the South.

Originally passed to last for a limited time. Congress renewed bill to extend the bureau indefinitely. It also contained a provision for the military trial of civilians violating the Constitution. Johnson vetoed this bill. A later bill, which enlarged the bureau’s powers, was passed and also vetoed. Congress overrode this veto.

THE JOINT COMMITTEE ON RECONSTRUCTION

Congress refused to seat the senators and representatives sent by the states who followed Johnson’s plan.

Thaddeus Stevens and Members of both houses formed the Joint Committee to look at the issue of political reconstruction of the South.

THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT

April 1866 - Civil Rights Act is passed by Congress over veto by Johnson. It gave citizenship to all African Americans, making them equal to whites under the law.

The Radical Republicans and their quarrel with Johnson also became more violent. They insisted upon the political punishment of former Confederates.

CONGRESSIONAL ELECTION OF 1866

The Radical Republicans gain control of both houses of Congress.

THE RADICAL REPUBLICAN RECONSTRUCTION ACTS

1.The ten former Confederate states that were still unreconstructed were divided into five military districts with a major general in charge of each district.

2.In order to be admitted back into the union, the following must be done:

• a constitution convention, elected by African Americans and Whites, was to write a new state constitution that allowed the the right to vote for males, both African American and White.

3.Qualified voters were to elect to elect a state legislature that would ratify the Fourteenth Amendment.

4.With the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment the state could applyfor representation in Congress.

THE IMPEACHMENT OF JOHNSON

The leaders of the Radical Republicans were frustrated because they could not control the executive branch of government.

They passed the Tenure of Office Act which forbid a president to fire anyone whose appointment had been approved by the Senate. This act violated the system of checks and balances written into the Constitution.

Johnson continued to basically follow Lincoln’s plan for Reconstruction while the Radicals wanted a plan that would punish the South.

Johnson’s Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton was a radical republican. He had also been appointed by Abraham Lincoln, who was a Republican, not Johnson, who was a Democrat.

Johnson vetoed the Tenure of Office Act and Congress overrode the veto. Stanton caused so many problems for Johnson, that Johnson fired him.

The House of Representatives immediately impeached Johnson ( which means to indict or formally charge) on the charges of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Johnson was put on trial in the Senate. The radicals failed by one vote (35 to 19)to secure the two-thirds majority needed to remove Johnson from office. Seven moderates voted with the Democrats to keep him in office.

The Tenure of Office Act was repealed by Congress in 1887.

THE SOUTH IN TRANSITION

Because of Radical Reconstruction, it brought rapid changes to the economic and social life of the South and the upper classes, which had been dominant before the Civil War, began to lose their political power.

The Radicals Reconstruction required in their plan of 1867 the registration of male voters. When this had been accomplished, approximately 700,000 African Americans were on the lists and about 625,000 Whites.

CARPETBAG GOVERNMENTS

African Americans were members of the conventions that drafted the new state constitutions. They made up about one-third of the membership.

Many, both African American and White, were inexperienced but on the whole were able and honest.

The White legislators were the “carpetbaggers” and scalawags”.

Carpetbaggers were northerners who had gone south after the Civil War. Since a number of them carried cheap bags made of carpeting material, they got the nickname of “carpetbaggers” Many wanted to help African Americans adjust to freedom; others anticipated power and fortune through business and political enterprises.

Scalawags were southern whites who cooperated with the carpetbaggers and the freedmen to aid the Radical program. It is a slang term for “rascal”. Like carpetbaggers, their motives were mixed. Many were eager to help both African Americans and lower-class Whites achieve security in a rebuilt South. Others were interested in political preferment and lucrative contracts during a period of widespread confusion.

THE KU KLUX KLAN

Terrorist group in the South that was founded in Pulaski, TN, in 1866. Its purpose was to frighten African Americans into renouncing their new political power and economical and social gains.

The members would take refuge under white robes and hoods and go on gruesome “night-riding” missions. They used whips, branding irons, ropes, torches, guns, and knives on African Americans. They also resorted to lynching innocent African Americans.

Southern Whites who disliked the Klan and other secret societies used subtle forms of coercion. African Americans were denied employment and kept from voting by psychological intimidation.

The Klan and the other secret societies became such a problem that it led to the passage of three laws called “The Force Acts”

The Enforcement Act of 1870 imposed heavy penalties for violations of the 14th and 15 Amendments.

The Enforcement Act of Feb. 1871 placed congressional electionsunder the control of the federal authorities.

The Enforcement Act of April, 1871 (also called the Ku Klux Klan Act) gave the president military authority to suppress violence in the southern states. In 1871 President Grant used these powers to subdue the Klan in South Carolina.

Even with the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments and the enforcement acts, the Radical Republicans lost ground in the South after 1870.

THE GENERAL AMNESTY ACT

By 1872, legislation was passed by Congress that restored political privileges thousands of former Confederates and hastened the collapse of governments based on African American votes.

This was pushed through by a combination of Democrats and moderate Republicans. By 1876, only three southern states were still under the control of the Radicals.

THE END OF RECONSTRUCTION

As a result of a compromise to work out the disputed 1876 election of Rutherford B. Hayes as President, Hayes agreed to withdraw all federal troops from the South in 1877. The state governments still in Republican hands quickly fell to the southern Democrats.

POLITICAL READJUSTMENTS

Many Southerners came to believe that the Republican Party was, as a whole, made up of African Americans and corrupt Whites who despised the Old South. Whoever captured the Democratic nomination on the state or local level was certain of winning the election. Between 1876 and 1920, the Republican Party did not carry a single state from the old Confederacy.

While avoiding violence, the Democratic leaders still managed to steadily reduce the number of African Americans who could meet the qualifications to vote.

Several different means were used:

• The Literacy Test, constructed so that African Americans could not pass.
• The Poll Tax (a tax levied on adults, the payment of which was required for voting.)
• Property Requirements
• The “grandfather clause” of newly revised state constitutions, granting the right to vote to those whose fathers or grandfathers had voted before 1867. (This last step barred African Americans but made it possible for uneducated whites to vote.

DISRUPTION OF THE PLANTATION SYSTEM

Changes brought about the War compelled southern landowners to reduce the the size of their plantations. Since the plantation owners couldn’t afford to hire labor, some sold off large portions of their acreage.

The majority of the Plantation owners preferred to use a plan of cultivation using tenant farmers, White or African American, who themselves did not possess enough money to pay a cash rental.

This system was known as “sharecropping”. The way it worked was that the tenant farmer (the sharecropper) giving to the landowner as rent a portion (usually half) of the crop he raised by his labor.

RISE OF THE MERCHANT / CROP LIEN SYSTEM

If the landowner did not supply what was needed to the sharecropper, the sharecropper was frequently forced to pledge another share of his crop to the local merchant in order to secure credit for his working requirements. This would be the only way he could afford to purchase the tools, see and draft animals he needed.

This was called the crop-lien system. Small farmers who owned their land were also forced to use the crop-lien system. Sometimes they would have to pledge their entire crop. This forced the small farmers to limit their crops that have widespread and constant appeal, such as cotton and tobacco. They became, in a sense, economically enslaved to the merchant-creditors.

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

Industrial development replaced the plantation system. The exploitation of coal, iron, phosphates and lumber gained momentum. This led to work in factories, which were located where cheap water power was available. The increase in railroad mileage began to keep pace with the output of coal and iron and with the multiplication of cotton mills.

STATUS OF AFRICAN AMERICANS

In many communities, the bitterness engendered by imposed government and military occupation by the Radicals brought about conflicts between the Whites and the newly liberated African Americans. The impact was that it curbed the African Americans development.

With the breakup of the large plantations, meant the loss of jobs for theAfrican Americans.

Many ended up in mill towns or got employment in mines and factories where their labor was exploited.

THE NEW SOUTH

In 1886, the editor of the “Atlanta Constitution”, Henry Grady coined the phrase“The New South”.

This denotes the primary economic develops in the region after the Reconstruction period.

Grady asserted that the South, instead of looking backwards, should look to the future with hope and confidence.

The phrase was widely accepted but much still needed to be accomplished.

REMAINING PROBLEMS

Critical Problems remained:

1.The southern economy had not escaped the control of northern

financiers.

2.southern political leaders remained far more interested in sectional

than national problems.

3.many farmers, both White and African American, still lived in poverty.

4.mindful of the heavy personal losses during the Civil War and the

Reconstruction period, most voters refused to accept tax programs

that would have provided funds for the social services needed to

rebuild after the war’s destruction.