Reconstruction

Three important Amendments were added to the Constitution during Reconstruction - the 13th, 14th, and 15th.

You must know what these amendments say and how they attempted to protect the rights of African-Americans in the South.

Responsibilities of the Freedmen's Bureau, including the ways they were successful and unsuccessful.

- Bureau had power to issue provisions, clothing, fuel, temporary shelter & other assistance to freedmen and refugees - Overseen by General Oliver Howard, strong advocate for freedpeople and their economic independence - One duty is to redistribute confiscated land to freedpeople - formed to aid African Americans in their freedom transition. - Located family members - Started schools - Acted as an employment agency and negotiated labor contracts - Filed legal charges against employers

14th Amendment

- If you were born here or follow the path to citizenship you are a citizen - No state can make a law that threatens or restricts or limits any one particular group/citizen - cant deny anyone equal protection of the law

There were three plans for Reconstruction:

- Lincoln's Plan (also known as the 10% Plan) - Presidential Reconstruction (under President Johnson) - Radical Republican Reconstruction.

Black Codes

- Restricted and regulated the civil and legal lives of AA. They left AAs with very few rights Restrictions include: - Marriage - The right to buy and sell property - Limited the type of work (Some states required a judge's order for blacks to work outside of agriculture or domestic work.) - Not allowed to enter some towns without permission - Vagrancy laws

Presidential Reconstruction (under President Johnson)

- Southern states must invalidate their orders of secession - States must ratify 13th Amendment - Pardoned all Southerners except for rich planters with more than $20,000 in property - they had to ask individually - Returned confiscated property - No special rights or protections in place for freedmen - By the end of 1865, all Southern states had re-joined the Union - Southern states immediately enacted harsh segregation laws, known as Black Codes - Freedom and rights of African Americans becomes limited once again in many areas that gave the white South a free hand in regulating the transition from slavery to freedom and offered no role to blacks in the politics of the South. The conduct of the governments he established turned many Northerners against the president's policies.

Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson was the 17th President of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. Johnson became president as he was vice president at the time of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

But the Southern states did not want to follow these Amendments (they wanted to deny African Americans their rights) so they passed

Black Codes and Jim Crow laws to prevent blacks from voting - for example, literacy tests, the "grandfather clause" and the poll tax.

Civil Rights Act of 1875

Called for ban on discrimination in public transportation and accommodations. guaranteed equal access to all Americans to schools, churches, shops and railroads. Additionally, the legislation prohibited exclusion of African American citizens from jury duty. Remember it this way: the Fourteenth Amendment provided equal protection for every naturalized American; the Civil Rights Act of 1875 extended those protections to include public services.

What factors made Ku Klux Klan violence possible and acceptable to so many Americans as a reaction to Reconstruction and interracial democracy?

Dehumanization: Dehumanization occurs whenever some human beings consider other human beings to be excluded from the moral order of being a human person. . . . Under such conditions, it becomes possible for normal, morally upright, and even usually idealistic people to perform acts of destructive cruelty. Anonymity: "Anything, or any situation, that makes people feel anonymous, as though no one knows who they are or cares to know, reduces their sense of personal accountability, thereby creating the potential for evil action. Feelings of shame and humiliation: Individuals, groups, or nations that pride themselves on their power and superiority react strongly when events disconfirm their beliefs about themselves or their image in others' eyes. Shame and humiliation give rise to the motivation to reassert identity and dignity, often by violent means. Role of bystanders: Bystanders can exert powerful influences. They can define the meaning of events and move others toward empathy or indifference. They can promote values and norms of caring, or by their passivity of participation in the system, they can affirm the perpetrators."

Compromise of 1877

If the Democrats agreed to allow Hayes to become president, he promised to remove all federal troops from the South and to allow the South to control themselves

Jim Crow laws

Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States.

Lincoln's Plan (also known as the 10% Plan)

Once 10% of Southern state voting population took an oath of allegiance to Union, they could form state governments This worked best in Southern states with pockets of Union support like LA, TN, AR postwar reconstruction of the South, this proclamation decreed that a state in rebellion against the U.S. federal government could be reintegrated into the Union when 10% of the 1860 vote count from that state had taken an oath of allegiance to the U.S. and pledged to abide by Emancipation.

But many Northerners in Congress opposed this idea they were called...

Radical Republicans.

In addition to the three Reconstruction amendments, the Radical Republican government also pushed a number of laws through Congress.

Review your completed Reconstruction timeline to understand what these laws were.

Rutherford B. Hayes

Rutherford Birchard Hayes was an American politician who served as the 19th President of the United States from 1877 to 1881. He assumed the presidency at the end of the Reconstruction Era through the Compromise of 1877.

Radical Republican Reconstruction

Southern States had to approve the 13Amendment 2) Southern states had to nullify seceding from the union. 3) The South could not repay loans from countries that helped them. States had to ratify the 13th & 14th amendment, and enacted Military Control of Reconstruction with the Military Reconstruction Act.

Civil Rights Act of 1870

The Enforcement Act of 1870, also known as the Civil Rights Act of 1870 or First Ku Klux Klan Act, or Force Act was a United States federal law written to empower the President with the legal authority to enforce the first section of the Fifteenth Amendment throughout the United States

Panic of 1873

The Panic of 1873 was a financial crisis that triggered a depression in Europe and North America that lasted from 1873 until 1879, and even longer in some countries.

Union League

The Union Leagues were a group of men's clubs established during the American Civil War (1861-1865), to promote loyalty to the Union of the United States of America, the Republican Party, and the policies of newly elected 16th President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865, served 1861-1865). They were also known as Loyal Leagues. The clubs supported the Republican Party with funding, organizational support, and activism.

What were some ways African Americans took advantage of their newfound freedom?

The blacks now had many new rights, being able to vote, and the right to citizenship. After all of these years and finally being free some ex-slaves may be scared and not sure what to do. There was still discrimination, this made the blacks and ex-slaves lives hard. Some ex-slaves may have been 'tricked' back into 'slavery' States limited this by restricting them by enforcing the Grandfather Clause, Literacy tests and Jim Crow laws. Even if they were allowed to vote, practice their own religion and have a education they didn't have many resources to do it. They also lived in a constant fear of the Klu Klux Klan finding them after they voted and killing them or destroying their churches and public schools.

Radical Republicans

They wanted to punish the South for the Civil War and they wanted freedmen to have equal rights.

sharecropping

an exploitative, financially ruinous economic system that keeps African Americans in the South in poverty for generations. rental of the land is being payed by/with crops - Additional debt is accrued for food, tools, and housing which is paid out of earnings

The Compromise of 1877

ended Reconstruction for good, and Rutherford B. Hayes becomes President.

15th Amendment

granted Black men the right to vote About 2,000 African Americans serve as officeholders at all levels during Reconstruction.

13th Amendment

hirteenth (13th) Amendment is passed, ends slavery EXCEPT as a punishment for crime Ends slavery for four million African Americans 13th Amendment ended slavery, did not define rights or status of freedmen

The Freedmen's Bureau was an...

important postwar government agency.

Reconstruction Acts of 1867

laid out the process for readmitting Southern states into the Union. The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) provided former slaves with national citizenship, and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) granted black men the right to vote.

rescinds

revoke, cancel, or repeal (a law, order, or agreement).

Southern racists also turned to extra-legal measures, founding organizations such as

the Ku Klux Klan and terrorizing African Americans.

After the Civil War ended, Lincoln (and Andrew Johnson, who became President after Lincoln's assassination)

wanted to allow the Southern states to rejoin the nation without punishment.