W. W. Norton & Company | Inventing America, 2 ed.

Chapter 17: Reconstruction (1865-1877)

Chapter Outline

The Nation after the Civil War
1. Critical Issues Settled by the North's Victory
  1. Southern states would not secede
  2. Slavery would be abolished
2. Lingering Questions
  1. Readmission of the Confederate states to the Union
  2. Treatment of ex-Confederate leaders
  3. Fate of former slaves
3. The Rest of the Nation
  1. Rise of industry and manufacturing to political and economic prominence
  2. Opening of the trans-Mississippi West
The Fate of the Union
1. Reconstruction in Wartime
  1. The slavery question
    1. Emancipation Proclamation
    2. Thirteenth Amendment
  2. Reconstituting the Union
    1. Lincoln's Ten-Percent Plan
    2. Wade-Davis Bill
  3. Aid for freed slaves
    1. efforts at land confiscation
    2. federal experiments in land and labor policy
    3. creation of the Freedmen's Bureau
2. Andrew Johnson and Presidential Reconstruction
  1. Johnson's background and political beliefs
  2. Johnson's plan for Reconstruction
    1. amnesty for former Confederates
    2. restitution of property, except slaves
    3. state governments
  3. The white South's defiance
    1. ex-Confederates elected
    2. Black Codes
  4. Congressional Republicans' response
    1. expanding and extending the Freedmen's Bureau
    2. Civil Rights Bill
    3. Congress vs. Johnson
3. The Fourteenth Amendment
  1. Provisions
    1. defines citizenship and its rights
    2. enshrines principle of "equality before law"
  2. Impact on 1866 midterm elections
4. Radical Reconstruction and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
  1. Congressional Radicals' Reconstruction plan
    1. reinstituted military authority, except in Tennessee
    2. required states to ratify Fourteenth Amendment
    3. embraced black suffrage
  2. Tenure of Office Act
  3. Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
    1. reasons
    2. trial and acquittal
5. Defeat of Land Reform
  1. Reasoning of supporters
  2. Conflict with basic Republican values
  3. Rejection of Stevens's plan
  4. Southern states readmitted to union
6. Election of 1868
  1. Nomination and election of Ulysses Grant
  2. Fifteenth Amendment
The Recovering South
1. A Land Shattered by War
  1. Physical devastation
  2. Economic collapse
2. The Experience of Freedom
  1. Ex-slaves' reactions to emancipation
    1. moving
    2. family reunification
    3. churches
    4. schools
    5. challenging deference and segregation
  2. Southern whites' reactions to emancipation
    1. fear of social equality
    2. race riots and the Ku Klux Klan
3. Land and Labor
  1. Conflicting needs and desires of freedmen and southern whites
  2. The emergence of sharecropping
  3. The crop-lien system
  4. Stagnation of the southern economy
The Road to Redemption
1. Economic Boom in the North and West
2. The Republican Party in the South
  1. Black voters and officeholders
  2. Reconstruction state governments
3. The Grant Administration
  1. Civil service reform
  2. Governmental corruption
  3. The Enforcement Acts
4. The Election of 1872
  1. Liberal Republican Party
  2. Grant's victory
5. Reconstruction in Retreat
  1. Redeemers score political victories
  2. Panic of 1873
  3. Supreme Court restricts interpretation of Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments
6. The Election of 1876 and the Compromise of 1877
  1. Disputed returns
  2. Federal troops withdrawn from South
Legacies
1. The Fate of Freed Slaves
2. Economic Legacies
3. Political Legacies

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