Chapter 18
Chapter 18: Reconstruction: North And South
Chapter Outline
America after the Civil War
- Effects of the war on the nation as a whole
- Republican legislation
- Morrill Tariff
- National Banking Act
- Subsidies for north-central transcontinental railroad
- Homestead Act of 1862
- Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862
- Wartime devastation of the South
- Much private and public property destroyed
- Confederate currency and bonds worthless
- $4 billion invested in labor-the slaves-wiped out
- Problems of postwar agriculture
- A transformed South
- Special problems of the freedmen
- Though free, the former slaves had little with which to make a living
- The Freedmen's Bureau
Lincoln and Reconstruction
- Lincoln's lenient 10 percent plan
- Loyal governments appeared in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana, but were not recognized by Congress
- Arguments by Lincoln and Congress for authority over Reconstruction
- The stricter Wade-Davis bill
- Lincoln's philosophy of Reconstruction
- Lincoln's assassination
Johnson's plan for Reconstruction
- Johnson's philosophy of Reconstruction
- Johnson's plan
- Exclusion from pardon of those owning property worth over $20,000
- States must invalidate secession ordinances, abolish slavery, and repudiate Confederate debt
- Most southern states met all of Johnson's requirements
Congress, in December 1865, refused to seat senators and congressmen from the southern states
- Southern states had elected to Congress many ex-Confederate leaders
- Southern states had passed repressive Black Codes
The critical year of 1866: Radical Republicans gain power
- Faced with southern intransigence, moderate Republicans drifted toward the Radicals
- The Radicals: who they were and how they planned to reconstruct the South
- Conquered provinces
- Forfeited rights
- Johnson began to lose battle with Congress
- Johnson's veto of bill to extend life of Freedmen's Bureau upheld by Senate
- Johnson's veto of Civil Rights Acts of 1866 overridden
- Johnson's veto of revised Freedmen's Bureau bill overridden
- Congress passed Fourteenth Amendment
- Contents
- Responses
- Johnson lost support of the American public
- Unsuccessful speaking tour of Midwest
- In election of 1866, Republicans won over two-thirds majority in each house
Congressional Reconstruction
- Congress moved to protect its program from President Johnson
- Command of the Army Act
- Tenure of Office Act
- Military Reconstruction Act
- Second and Third Reconstruction Acts
- Congress protected its program from Supreme Court
Impeachment and trial of Johnson
- Johnson removed Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in violation of Tenure of Office Act
- House of Representatives passed eleven articles of impeachment
- In Senate trial, vote to convict was one short
- Effects on Radicals and Johnson
Republican rule in the South
- New governments established in southern states
- The work of the Union League
- Blacks in the Reconstructed South
- Effects of military service
- Separate churches
- Black families
- Black schools
- Blacks in politics
- Introduced suddenly to politics, many rose to high positions
- Black influence in Reconstruction governments has been greatly exaggerated
- White Republicans in the South
- Carpetbaggers-northern Republicans who allegedly came south for political and economic gain
- Scalawags-southern white Republicans
- The Republican record
- Achievements of Republican governments
- Corruption of Republican governments
Religion and Reconstruction
- Christians for racial justice
- "Apostles of forgiveness"
- Differing religious perspectives of black and white southerners
Grant administration
- Positions of Democratic and Republican parties and the election of 1868
- Grant, an inept political leader, made many unwise appointments
- The problem of the government's debt
- Support for monetary expansion
- Support for monetary restriction
- Treasury began withdrawing greenbacks from circulation
- Scandals in Grant's administration
- Jay Gould and Jim Fisk tried to corner the gold market
- The Crédit Mobilier scandal
- Other scandals disclosed
Further challenges to the Grant administration
- Formation of Ku Klux Klan
- Activities of Klan and similar anti-black, anti-Republican groups
- Prosecution under new federal laws ended most of these activities
- Republican reformers and the election of 1872
- Conservative resurgence
- Ku Klux Klan weakened black and Republican morale
- North was also concerned with westward expansion, Indian wars, and the economic and political questions of the tariff and currency in 1869
- By 1876, Radical regimes survived only in Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina
- Economic distress and the beginning of the Panic of 1873
- The Specie Resumption Act of 1875
The election of 1876
- Campaigns marked by few real issues and much mudslinging
- Disputed vote count in three southern states
- Congress formed special Electoral Commission to resolve problem
- The Compromise of 1877
- Some promises kept and many broken after Hayes took office
- The legacy of Reconstruction