Civil War and Reconstruction Final Exam

scalawags

A derogatory word meaning, "a low, worthless, fellow" referred to white southerners who voted with the Republican Party during Reconstruction. The "scalawags" varied in terms of their social standings, economic background, an political loyalty, but they share common beliefs. They wanted the south the enjoy a progressive and prosperous economy based upon the benefits of free labor and industrialization. They sought opportunities to build or expand businesses and factories and to raise the standard of living for all, not just the class of plantation owners who dominated the prewar society. The scalawags support of the represented a vital part of the republican party in the region. Hardworking farmers of the region, representing the greatest number of the scalawags, expected the republicans to make good on their pledge for debt relief and cheap land.

Panic of 1873

Panic of 1873. A major economic reversal began in Europe and reached the United States in the fall of 1873. The signal event on this side of the Atlantic was the failure of Jay Cooke and Company, the country's preeminent investment banking concern. ... Credit dried up, foreclosures were common and banks failed. The American Civil War was followed by a boom in railroad construction. 33,000 miles (53,000 km) of new track were laid across the country between 1868 and 1873.[3] Much of the craze in railroad investment was driven by government land grants and subsidies to the railroads.[4] At that time, the railroad industry was the nation's largest employer outside of agriculture, and it involved large amounts of money and risk. A large infusion of cash from speculators caused abnormal growth in the industry as well as overbuilding of docks, factories and ancillary facilities. At the same time, too much capital was involved in projects offering no immediate or early returns. The failure of the Jay Cooke bank, followed quickly by that of Henry Clews, set off a chain reaction of bank failures and temporarily closed the New York stock market. Factories began to lay off workers as the United States slipped into depression. The effects of the panic were quickly felt in New York, and more slowly in Chicago, Virginia City, Nevada (where silver mining was active), and San Francisco.[10][11] The New York Stock Exchange closed for ten days starting 20 September.[12] By November 1873 some 55 of the nation's railroads had failed, and another 60 went bankrupt by the first anniversary of the crisis.[13] Construction of new rail lines, formerly one of the backbones of the economy, plummeted from 7,500 miles (12,070 km) of track in 1872 to just 1,600 miles (2,575 km) in 1875.[13] 18,000 businesses failed between 1873 and 1875. Unemployment peaked in 1878 at 8.25%.[14] Building construction was halted, wages were cut, real estate values fell and corporate profits vanished. In 1877, steep wage cuts led American railroad workers to launch the Great Railroad Strike. This stopped trains all across the country. President Rutherford B. Hayes sent in federal troops to try to stop this. In July 1877, the market for lumber crashed, leading to several Michigan lumber companies going bankrupt.[16] Within a year, the effects of this second business slump reached all the way to California.[17] The depression lifted in the spring of 1879, but tension between workers and the leaders of banking and manufacturing interests lingered on. Poor economic conditions caused voters to turn against the Republican Party. In the 1874 congressional elections, the Democrats assumed control of the House. Public opinion made it difficult for the Grant administration to develop a coherent policy regarding the Southern states. The North began to steer away from Reconstruction. With the depression, ambitious railroad building programs crashed across the South, leaving most states deep in debt and burdened with heavy taxes. Retrenchment was a common response of southern states to state debts during the depression. One by one, each Southern state fell to the Democrats, and the Republicans lost power. The end of the crisis coincided with the beginning of the great wave of immigration into the United States, which lasted until the early 1920s

Salmon P. Chase

Salmon Portland Chase (January 13, 1808 - May 7, 1873) was an American politician and jurist who served as the sixth Chief Justice of the United States. He also served as the 23rd Governor of Ohio, represented Ohio in the United States Senate, and served as the 25th United States Secretary of the Treasury. Born in Cornish, New Hampshire, Chase studied law under Attorney General William Wirt before establishing a legal practice in Cincinnati. He became an anti-slavery activist and frequently defended fugitive slaves in court. Chase left the Whig Party in 1841 to become the leader of Ohio's Liberty Party. In 1848, he helped establish the Free Soil Party and recruited former President Martin Van Buren to serve as the party's presidential nominee. Chase won election to the Senate the following year, and he opposed the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In the aftermath of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Chase helped establish the Republican Party, which opposed the extension of slavery into the territories. After leaving the Senate, Chase served as the Governor of Ohio from 1856 to 1860. Chase sought the Republican nomination for president in the 1860 presidential election, but the 1860 Republican National Convention nominated Abraham Lincoln. After Lincoln won the election, he asked Chase to serve as Secretary of the Treasury. Chase served in that position from 1861 to 1864, ensuring that the Union was well-financed during the Civil War. Chase resigned from the Cabinet in June 1864, but retained support among the Radical Republicans. Partly to appease the Radical Republicans, Lincoln nominated Chase to fill the Supreme Court vacancy that arose following Chief Justice Roger Taney's death. Chase served as Chief Justice from 1864 to his death in 1873. He presided over the Senate trial of President Andrew Johnson during the impeachment proceedings of 1868. Despite his service on the court, Chase continued to pursue the presidency. He unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1868 and the Liberal Republican nomination in 1872.

Black Codes

The Black Codes were laws passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866 in the United States after the American Civil War with the intent and the effect of restricting African Americans' freedom, and of compelling them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or debt. The laws enforced labor contracts, some which allowed whippings as a punishment and made black unemployment a crime. Black Codes relied on the power of the state to enforce the laws, and punishment for resisters was administered by an all-white police and court system. These noxious laws showed an unrepentant southern white citizenry intent on rolling back emancipation and rejecting free labor.

Ben Butler and N.P. Banks

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Port Royal Experiment

The Port Royal Experiment was a program begun during the American Civil War in which former slaves worked in a "free-labor" society. At Port Royal, South Carolina, freed people experienced conditions uncomfortably close to slavery. There, earnest teachers, military official, and business men learned that blacks did not want to pick cotton, even for wages, and resisted harsh discipline to make them bring in the crop. They desired to live the life of an independent yeomen farmer, like the majority of their fellow white southerners. Possessing a small piece of property, the second pillar of norther society, become the dream of many former slaves.

Charles Sumner

The Reconstruction Era of the United States after the American Civil War was in the nineteenth and early twentieth century usually viewed as an era of Southern exploitation and corruption by Northern politicians and harsh federal policies, led by the Radical Republicans.[67] The plight of the freedmen during Reconstruction was largely ignored by conservative historians who followed the Dunning School. According to historian Eric Foner, during the 1960s, revisionist historians have reinterpreted Reconstruction "in the light of changed attitudes toward the place of blacks within American society."[67] Charles Sumner, a Radical Republican, has emerged as an idealist and a champion for African American civil rights through this turbulent and controversial period of United States History.[67] Sumner joined his fellow Republicans in overriding President Johnson's vetoes and imposed some of their views, though Sumner's most radical ideas were not implemented. Senator Sumner, however, in late 1866 favored impartial suffrage for African Americans, desiring to put in a literacy requirement on all southerners in order to vote.[68] Had Sumner's literacy clause been enacted, only a small portion of blacks would have been able to vote, which would have been far more than Congress or the white southern governments were prepared to enact at that time. When Congress did open the vote to all loyal adult males in the South the following year, Sumner was strongly supportive.[68] Sumner's radical theory of Reconstruction proposed that nothing beyond the confines of the Constitution restricted the Congress in determining how to treat the eleven defeated states, but that even that document had to be read in light of the Declaration of Independence, which he saw as an essential part of fundamental law. Not going as far as Thaddeus Stevens in seeing the seceded states as "conquered provinces," he nonetheless argued that by declaring secession, they had committed felo de se (state suicide) and could now be turned into territories that should be prepared for statehood, under conditions set by the national government. He objected to Lincoln's and later Andrew Johnson's more lenient Reconstruction policies as ungenerous to the former slaves, inadequate in their guarantees of equal rights, and an encroachment upon the powers of Congress.[citation needed] When Andrew Johnson was impeached, Sumner voted for conviction. He was only sorry that he had to vote on each article of impeachment, for as he said, he would have rather voted, "Guilty of all, and infinitely more."[69] Sumner was a friend of Samuel Gridley Howe and a guiding force for the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, started in 1863. He was one of the most prominent advocates for suffrage for blacks, along with free homesteads and free public schools. His uncompromising attitude did not endear him to moderates and his arrogance and inflexibility often inhibited his effectiveness as a legislator. He was largely excluded from work on the Thirteenth Amendment, in part because he did not get along with Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull, who chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee and did much of the work on it. Sumner introduced an alternative amendment that combined the Thirteenth Amendment with elements of the Fourteenth Amendment. It would have abolished slavery and declared that "all people are equal before the law." During Reconstruction, he often attacked civil rights legislation as inadequate and fought for legislation to give land to freed slaves and to mandate education for all, regardless of race, in the South. He viewed segregation and slavery as two sides of the same coin.[70] He introduced a civil rights bill in 1872 to mandate equal accommodation in all public places and required suits brought under the bill to be argued in the federal courts.[71] The bill failed, but Sumner revived it in the next Congress, and on his deathbed begged visitors to see that it did not fail.[72] Sumner repeatedly tried to remove the word "white" from naturalization laws. He introduced bills to that effect in 1868 and 1869, but neither came to a vote. On July 2, 1870, Sumner moved to amend a pending bill in a way that would strike the word "white" wherever in all Congressional acts pertaining to naturalization of immigrants. On July 4, 1870, he said: "Senators undertake to disturb us ... by reminding us of the possibility of large numbers swarming from China; but the answer to all this is very obvious and very simple. If the Chinese come here, they will come for citizenship or merely for labor. If they come for citizenship, then in this desire do they give a pledge of loyalty to our institutions; and where is the peril in such vows? They are peaceful and industrious; how can their citizenship be the occasion of solicitude?" He accused legislators promoting anti-Chinese legislation of betraying the principles of the Declaration of Independence: "Worse than any heathen or pagan abroad are those in our midst who are false to our institutions." Sumner's bill failed, and from 1870 to 1943, and in some cases as late as 1952, Chinese and other Asians were ineligible for naturalized U.S. citizenship.[73] Sumner remained a champion of civil rights for blacks. He co-authored the Civil Rights Act of 1875 with John Mercer Langston[74] and introduced the bill in the Senate on May 13, 1870. The bill was passed a year after his death by Congress in February 1875 and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1875. It was the last civil rights legislation for 82 years until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1883 when it decided a group of cases known as the Civil Rights Cases

Lincoln's 10% Plan

The ten percent plan, formally the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction (13 Stat. 737), was a United States presidential proclamation issued on December 8, 1863, by President Abraham Lincoln, during the American Civil War. By this point in the war (nearly three years in), the Union Army had pushed the Confederate Army out of several regions of the South, and some rebellious states were ready to have their governments rebuilt. Lincoln's plan established a process through which this postwar reconstruction could come abou

Harvey Twitchell

In the fall of 1865, the 25-year-old Twitchell was named provost marshal and agent of the Freedmen's Bureau, a Reconstruction agency aimed at assisting the freedmen in the transition from slavery to freedom. In 1866, he married the former Adele Coleman, daughter of a large cotton planter. From this union, he had one son, the physician Marshall Coleman Twitchell (1871-1949), who is interred at Lakeview Cemetery in Burlington, Vermont, along with his half-brother, Emmus George Twitchell (1880-1961), also a doctor.[3] Twitchell's initial headquarters were at the former community of Sparta in Bienville Parish south of Arcadia. In this isolated area, "political boss" Twitchell acted in the capacity of legislator, judge, jury, and sheriff though he had no previous experience in civil government. However, he was quickly elected to the 1868 Louisiana Constitutional Convention. In 1866, he was elected to the first of two four-year terms in the state senate, having won critical African American support because of his having championed their causes and befriended individual freedmen.[4] In 1868, Twitchell purchased a cotton plantation on Lake Bistineau at the junction of Bienville, Bossier, and Webster parishes. In 1869, his father-in-law transferred to Twitchell the operation of two plantations. In 1870, Twitchell purchased the "Starlight" plantation on the Red River. He steadily added to his properties and owned two stores, two mills, a hotel, and a newspaper. He was the principal force behind the creation of Red River Parish and the establishment of the parish seat of Coushatta, located on the Red River. He was also influential in the organization of then segregated public schools in Bienville, Red River, and De Soto parishes, all within his senatorial district. He further stressed the education of blacks.[2] Twitchell's life was constantly in danger, but he felt protected by a contingent of colored troops.[5] On May 2, 1876, an assassin armed with a rifle attempted to kill Twitchell. He was wounded six times, which required the amputation of both arms above the elbow.[2] He would have died had he not pretended to be dead already. His brother-in-law, George A. King, was killed during this same attack. Twitchell's only brother, Homer J. Twitchell (1849-1874), and two other brothers-in-law, Clark Holland and Monroe Willis, had been murdered two years earlier in what is known as the Coushatta massacre.[2] Had Twitchell's assassin succeeded, the partisan balance in the Louisiana State Senate would have placed Redeemer Democrats in the majority by a single vote. A Democratic senate would have recognized a different state House of Representatives, rejected Governor Stephen B. Packard, who was deposed in 1877 anyway, and also elected a different U.S. senator.[2] Twitchell's property was abandoned after the attempted assassination. The remaining Twitchells stayed for a time in Indianapolis, Indiana, where Helen T. Willis, the third Twitchell sister, died before the family returned to Vermont. Reportedly, his neighbors had been jealous of his economic success. Adele died of tuberculosis in 1873, leaving behind her husband and toddler son. She is interred at Starlight, as are Homer Twitchell, George King, Clark Holland, and Monroe Willis, and two Twitchell sisters who died from yellow fever. Adele had refused to move to Vermont; so Twitchell had brought some of his northern relatives to Red River Parish.

Coushatta Massacre

Coushatta massacre Part of Reconstruction Era Date June 1874 Location Louisiana Goals Restore white supremacy Methods Intimidation Assassination Resulted in 250 arrested, none are charged Parties to the civil conflict White League Massacre victims Republican Party members Freedmen Casualties None 6 Republicans and 20 Freedmen killed [hide] v t e Reconstruction Era Memphis riots of 1866 New Orleans riot Pulaski riot Opelousas massacre Barber-Mizell feud Kirk-Holden war Eutaw riot Meridian race riot of 1871 Colfax massacre Brooks-Baxter War Coushatta massacre Battle of Liberty Place Election Riot of 1874 South Carolina civil disturbances of 1876 Hamburg massacre The Coushatta Massacre (1874) was the result of an attack by the White League, a paramilitary organization composed of white Southern Democrats, on Republican officeholders and freedmen in Coushatta, the parish seat of Red River Parish, Louisiana. They assassinated six white Republicans and five to 20 freedmen who were witnesses.[1][2] The White League had organized to drive out Republicans from Louisiana, disrupt their political organizing, and intimidate or murder freedmen to restore white supremacy.[3] Like the Red Shirts and other "White Line" organizations, they were described as "the military arm of the Democratic Party."

Mississippi Bend Experiment

Davis Bend, Mississippi (now known as Davis Island),[1] was a peninsula named after planter Joseph Emory Davis, who owned most of the property. There he established the 5,000-acre Hurricane Plantation as a model slave community.[2] Davis Bend was about 15 miles south of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and was surrounded by the Mississippi River on three sides. He gave his much younger brother Jefferson Davis the adjoining Brierfield Plantation. History Joseph Davis was influenced by the utopian socialist ideas of Robert Owen, whom he met in the 1820s during Owen's tour in the United States.[3] When Davis established his Hurricane Plantation at Davis Bend, he worked to create a model cooperative slave community. He hoped to show that a higher functioning and profitable community could be achieved within slavery. He allowed a high degree of self-government for his 350 slaves, provided better nutrition and health and dental care, and created a communal environment. He worked closely with Benjamin T. Montgomery, a brilliant and literate African slave, whom he allowed to establish a store on the property and who managed much of the marketing of plantation produce. It took some effort for Davis to recover his property after the war, as it had been confiscated by the Freedman's Bureau. In 1867 the peninsula became an island after the flooding Mississippi River cut a new channel across its neck. Davis sold the property to his former slave, freedman Ben Montgomery.[3] The community continued as a cooperative until the 1880s. At that time continually falling cotton prices, costs of transportation by water to the mainland, an economic depression, and hostility from the white community, finally caused it to fail. Isaiah Montgomery, Benjamin's son, led many of the residents to a new black community, founding Mound Bayou in northwest Mississippi

Ku Klux Klan

Founded in 1866, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) extended into almost every southern state by 1870 and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party's Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for blacks. Its members waged an underground campaign of intimidation and violence directed at white and black Republican leaders. Though Congress passed legislation designed to curb Klan terrorism, the organization saw its primary goal-the reestablishment of white supremacy-fulfilled through Democratic victories in state legislatures across the South in the 1870s. After a period of decline, white Protestant nativist groups revived the Klan in the early 20th century, burning crosses and staging rallies, parades and marches denouncing immigrants, Catholics, Jews, blacks and organized labor. The civil rights movement of the 1960s also saw a surge of Ku Klux Klan activity, including bombings of black schools and churches and violence against black and white activists in the South.

Henry Clay Warmouth

Henry Clay Warmoth was an American attorney, Civil War officer in the Union Army, who was elected governor and state representative of Louisiana. A Republican, he was the state's 23rd Governor during the Reconstruction Era from 1868 to 1872

Horace Greeley

Horace Greeley, (born Feb. 3, 1811, Amherst, N.H., U.S.—died Nov. 29, 1872, New York, N.Y.), American newspaper editor who is known especially for his vigorous articulation of the North's antislavery sentiments during the 1850s.

Powell Clayton

In 1869 Arkansas Governer, Clayton Powell, offered an example of strong state leadership by forming an organized black and white militia to capture and arrest klan members who committed election outrages, and proclaimed martial law in affected counties. Military courts tried Klansmen, many of whom received death sentences carried out by firing squad. Powell effectively broke the Klansmen's power in Arkansas, but they Klan grew even bolder in some states.

Force Acts, 1870, 1871

In 1869 Arkansas Governer, Clayton Powell, offered an example of strong state leadership by forming an organized black and white militia to capture and arrest klan members who committed election outrages, and proclaimed martial law in affected counties. Military courts tried Klansmen, many of whom received death sentences carried out by firing squad. Powell effectively broke the Klansmen's power in Arkansas, but they Klan grew even bolder in some states. State and local officials wanted support from the federal government in order to maintain order. President Grand signed three measures into law known as the Force Acts of 1870-71. They enabled him to use the power of the federal government to restore order by sending troops, imposing martial law, and suspending the writ of habeas corpus. Only 65 Klansmen went to federal prisons, but the force acts still allowed for the election of 1872 to be the "fairest and freest" in the south until the late 20th century. The Force Acts helped smash the KKK, but their negative impact on the face of Reconstruction among northerners was profound. Even though the actions taken under the law were justified it violated the cherished belief in the separation of powers.

Whiskey Ring

In the United States, the Whiskey Ring was a scandal, exposed in 1875, involving diversion of tax revenues in a conspiracy among government agents, politicians, whiskey distillers, and distributors. The Whiskey Ring began in St. Louis but was also organized in Chicago, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Peoria. One of the important events during his presidency was the Whiskey Ring Scandal. The Whiskey Ring Scandal was one of a series of scandals that rocked the Grant administration. ... The Whiskey Ring scandal defrauded the government of large sums of money with the help of the government officials.

Jay Gould

Jay Gould, original name Jason Gould, (born May 27, 1836, Roxbury, New York, U.S.—died December 2, 1892, New York, New York), American railroad executive, financier, and speculator, an important railroad developer who was one of the most unscrupulous "robber barons" of 19th-century American capitalism.

Jim Crow Laws

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

repudiation of CSA debt

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Gen. O. O. Howard

Oliver Otis Howard (November 8, 1830 - October 26, 1909) was a career United States Army officer and a Union general in the American Civil War. As a brigade commander in the Army of the Potomac, Howard lost his right arm while leading his men against Confederate forces at the Battle of Fair Oaks/Seven Pines in June 1862, an action which later earned him the Medal of Honor. As a corps commander, he suffered two humiliating defeats at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg in May and July 1863, but recovered from the setbacks as a successful corps and later army commander in the Western Theater. Known as the "Christian general" because he tried to base his policy decisions on his deep religious piety,[1] he was given charge of the Freedmen's Bureau in mid-1865, with the mission of integrating the freed slaves into Southern society and politics during the second phase of the Reconstruction Era. Howard took charge of labor policy, setting up a system that required free slaves to work on former plantation land under pay scales fixed by the Bureau, on terms negotiated by the Bureau with white land owners. Howard's Bureau was primarily responsible for the legal affairs of the freedmen. He attempted to protect freed blacks from hostile conditions, but lacked adequate power, and was repeatedly frustrated by President Andrew Johnson. Howard's allies, the Radical Republicans, won control of Congress in the 1866 elections and imposed Radical Reconstruction, with the result that freedmen were given the vote. With the help and advice of the Bureau, freedmen joined Republican coalitions and won at the ballot boxes of most of the southern states. Howard was also a leader in promoting higher education for freedmen, most notably in founding Howard University in Washington and serving as its president 1867-73. After 1874, Howard commanded troops in the West, conducting a famous campaign against the Nez Perce tribe. Utley (1987) concludes that his leadership against the Apaches in 1872, against the Nez Perce in 1877, the Bannocks and Paiutes in 1878, and against the Sheepeaters in 1879 all add up to a lengthy record, although he did not fight as much as George Custer and Nelson Miles.From May 1865 to July 1874, General Howard was commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau (the Army's Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands), where he played a major role in the Reconstruction era, and had charge of integrating freedmen (freed slaves) into American society. Howard devised far-reaching programs and guidelines including social welfare in the form of rations, schooling, courts, and medical care. Howard often clashed with President Andrew Johnson, who strongly disliked the welfare aspects of the Freedman's Bureau, and especially tried to return political power to Southern whites. However, Howard had the support of the Radical Republicans in Congress. When the Radical Republicans gained power in 1867, they gave blacks the right to vote in the South and set up new elections, which the Republican coalition of freedmen, northern Republicans who came south and were referred to derogatorily as carpetbaggers, and southerners who supported Reconstruction, nicknamed scalawags by the White Supremacist standard bearers, won (except in Virginia). The Bureau was very active in helping blacks organize themselves politically, and therefore it became a target of partisan hostility.

8 Hour Day movement

On 25 June 1868, Congress passed an eight-hour law for federal employees[13][14] which was also of limited effectiveness. It established an eight-hour workday for labourers and mechanics employed by the Federal Government. President Andrew Johnson had vetoed the act but it was passed over his veto. Johnson told a Workingmen's party delegation that he couldn't directly commit himself to an eight-hour day, he nevertheless told the same delegation that he greatly favoured the "shortest number of hours consistent with the interests of all." According to Richard F. Selcer, however, the intentions behind the law were "immediately frustrated" as wages were cut by 20%.[15] On 19 May 1869, President Ulysses Grant issued a National Eight Hour Law Proclamation.[16] In August 1866, the National Labor Union at Baltimore passed a resolution that said, "The first and great necessity of the present to free labour of this country from capitalist slavery, is the passing of a law by which eight hours shall be the normal working day in all States of the American Union. We are resolved to put forth all our strength until this glorious result is achieved." During the 1870s, eight hours became a central demand, especially among labour organisers, with a network of Eight-Hour Leagues which held rallies and parades. A hundred thousand workers in New York City struck and won the eight-hour day in 1872, mostly for building trades workers. In Chicago, Albert Parsons became recording secretary of the Chicago Eight-Hour League in 1878, and was appointed a member of a national eight-hour committee in 1880. At its convention in Chicago in 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions resolved that "eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labour from and after May 1, 1886, and that we recommend to labour organisations throughout this jurisdiction that they so direct their laws as to conform to this resolution by the time named." The leadership of the Knights of Labor, under Terence V. Powderly, rejected appeals to join the movement as a whole, but many local Knights assemblies joined the strike call including Chicago, Cincinnati and Milwaukee. On 1 May 1886, Albert Parsons, head of the Chicago Knights of Labor, with his wife Lucy Parsons and two children, led 80,000 people down Michigan Avenue, Chicago, in what is regarded as the first modern May Day Parade, with the cry, "Eight-hour day with no cut in pay." In support of the eight-hour day. In the next few days they were joined nationwide by 350,000 workers who went on strike at 1,200 factories, including 70,000 in Chicago, 45,000 in New York, 32,000 in Cincinnati, and additional thousands in other cities. Some workers gained shorter hours (eight or nine) with no reduction in pay; others accepted pay cuts with the reduction in hours.

Women's suffrage issue

Reconstruction involved more than the meaning of emancipation. Women also sought to redefine their roles within the nation and in their local communities. The abolitionist and women's rights movements simultaneously converged and began to clash. In the South, both black and white women struggled to make sense of a world of death and change.In Reconstruction, leading women's rights advocate Elizabeth Cady Stanton saw an unprecedented opportunity for disenfranchised groups—women as well as African Americans, northern and southern—to seize political rights. Stanton formed the Women's Loyal National League in 1863, which petitioned Congress for a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment marked a victory not only for the antislavery cause, but also for the Loyal League, proving women's political efficacy and the possibility for radical change. Now, as Congress debated the meanings of freedom, equality, and citizenship for former slaves, women's rights leaders saw an opening to advance transformations in women's status, too.On the tenth of May 1866, just one year after the war, the Eleventh National Women's Rights Convention met in New York City to discuss what many agreed was an extraordinary moment, full of promise for fundamental social change. Elizabeth Cady Stanton presided over the meeting. Also in attendance were prominent abolitionists, with whom Stanton and other women's rights leaders had joined forces in the years leading up to the war. Addressing this crowd of social reformers, Stanton captured the radical spirit of the hour: "now in the reconstruction," she declared, "is the opportunity, perhaps for the century, to base our government on the broad principle of equal rights for all."Stanton chose her universal language—"equal rights for all"—with intention, setting an agenda of universal suffrage for the activists. Thus, in 1866, the National Women's Rights Convention officially merged with the American Antislavery Society to form the American Equal Rights Association (AERA). This union marked the culmination of the longstanding partnership between abolitionist and women's rights advocates

sharecropping

Sharecropping is a form of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on their portion of land. Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range of different situations and types of agreements that have used a form of the system. By the early 1870s, the system known as sharecropping had come to dominate agriculture across the cotton-planting South. Under this system, black families would rent small plots of land, or shares, to work themselves; in return, they would give a portion of their crop to the landowner at the end of the year. Sharecropping. After the Civil War, former slaves sought jobs, and planters sought laborers. The absence of cash or an independent credit system led to the creation of sharecropping. Following the Civil War, plantation owners were unable to farm their land. They did not have slaves or money to pay a free labor force, so sharecropping developed as a system that could benefit plantation owners and former slaves

Thaddeus Stevens

Thaddeus Stevens (1792-1868) was the most famous Radical Republican in the House of Representatives (1849-1853, 1859-1868). Together with Charles Sumner in the Senate, the Pennsylvania native opposed President Lincoln's Reconstruction plan as too lenient. He served as Chairman of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction and determined to treat the defeated southern states as "conquered provinces." After their congressional election victory in 1866, Stevens and the Republicans nullified Andrew Johnson's Presidential Reconstruction plan and passed groundbreaking civil rights legislation and the 14th Amendment over his veto. Stevens was also instrumental in the congressional Reconstruction plan to place the South under military occupation, and to grant Black men the vote. He was genuinely committed to Black social equality, but also admitted that enfranchising them would ensure the continued dominance of the Republican Party. Near the end of his life, Stevens led the congressional movement to impeach Johnson, but the political battles of Reconstruction had taken their toll on him. He asked to be interred in a Lancaster, Pennsylvania cemetery with African Americans, rather than in a burial ground from which Blacks were forbidden, a testament to his firm belief in racial equality.

14th Amendment

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on July 9, 1868, and granted citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States," which included former slaves recently freed. It declared that a state could not deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of laws. Section 3 of the amendment barred some prominent former Confederates from holding high political positions. Congress could and eventually does reverse that section. Vigorously upholding section 3 in 1866 meant that Republicans who had no strength in the south before the Civil War could keep many southern Democrats out of positions of power until the region stabilized enough to support a genuine two - party system .

Freedmen's Bureau

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, established on March 3, 1865, took an active role in the question of landownership. Typically called the Freedmen's Bureau and initially focused on relieving hunger among both black and white refugees (distributed 21 million rations), it also tried to see the introduction of a free labor system in the postwar south while adjudicating the expected clash between ex-confederate plantation owners and their former slaves. A symbol of the federal government's determination to provide for the general welfare of the freed people, the understaffed and underfunded bureau did admirable work until it was shut down in 1872. The Freedmen;s Bureau achieved its greatest success in overseeing and extending ongoing efforts for black education, the third pillar of northern society. Even before the Emancipation Proclamation became a law, Northerners wanted to plant schools in the occupied lands of the Confederacy. After the war thousands from New York, New England, and Pennsylvania went to teach in the newly established Freedmen's Schools. The Freedmen's Bureau founded and funded 3,000 black schools for 150,000 students. They also helped establish colleges to train African American teachers for the new schools. These schools paved the way for the southern public school systems which were established during Reconstruction from 1865 to 1877. Freedmen Bureau tried to work with people on both sides, wanting the newly freed slaves to sign contracts, and the former slaveholders to agree to paying wages. The freed slaves did not want to enter into contracts. This lead to the process of sharecropping.

Colfax Massacre

The Colfax massacre, or Colfax riot as the events are termed on the 1950 state historic marker, occurred on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, in Colfax, Louisiana, the seat of Grant Parish, when approximately 150 black men were murdered by white Southerners. The bloodiest single instance of racial carnage in the Reconstruction era, the Colfax massacre was an example of the lengths to which some opponents of Reconstruction would go to regain their accustomed authority. Among blacks, the incident was long remembered as proof that in any large confrontation, they stood at a fatal disadvantage.[1] In the wake of the contested 1872 election for governor of Louisiana and local offices, a group of white Democrats armed with rifles and a small cannon, overpowered Republican freedmen and state militia (also black) occupying the Grant Parish courthouse in Colfax.[1][2] Most of the freedmen were killed after they surrendered; nearly 50 were killed later that night after being held as prisoners for several hours. Estimates of the number of dead have varied, ranging from 62 to 153; three whites died but the number of black victims was difficult to determine because bodies had been thrown into the river or removed for burial. There were rumors of mass graves at the site. Historian Eric Foner described the massacre as the worst instance of racial violence during Reconstruction.[1] In Louisiana, it had the highest fatalities of any of the numerous violent events following the disputed gubernatorial contest in 1872 between Republicans and Democrats. Foner wrote, "...every election [in Louisiana] between 1868 and 1876 was marked by rampant violence and pervasive fraud."[3] Although the Fusionist-dominated state "returning board," which ruled on vote validity, initially declared John McEnery and his Democratic slate the winners, the board eventually split, with a faction declaring Republican William P. Kellogg the victor. A Republican federal judge in New Orleans ruled that the Republican-majority legislature be seated.[4] Federal prosecution and conviction of a few perpetrators at Colfax under the Enforcement Acts was appealed to the Supreme Court. In a key case, the court ruled in United States v. Cruikshank (1876) that protections of the Fourteenth Amendment did not apply to the actions of individuals, but only to the actions of state governments. After this ruling, the federal government could no longer use the Enforcement Act of 1870 to prosecute actions by paramilitary groups such as the White League, which had chapters forming across Louisiana beginning in 1874. Intimidation and black voter suppression by such paramilitary groups were instrumental to the Democratic Party regaining political control in the state legislature by the late 1870s. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, historians have paid renewed attention to the events at Colfax and the resulting Supreme Court case, and their meaning in American history.

Compromise of 1877

The Compromise of 1877 was an informal, unwritten deal that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election. It resulted in the United States federal government pulling the last troops out of the South, and formally ended the Reconstruction Era. The United States presidential election of 1876 was one of the most disputed presidential elections in American history. Samuel J. Tilden of New York outpolled Ohio's Rutherford B. Hayes in the popular vote, and had 184 electoral votes to Hayes' 165, with 20 votes uncounted.

Granger Laws

The Granger Laws were a series of laws passed in several midwestern states of the United States, namely Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois, in the late 1860s and early 1870s. The Granger Laws were promoted primarily by a group of farmers known as The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry. Granger movement, coalition of U.S. farmers, particularly in the Middle West, that fought monopolistic grain transport practices during the decade following the American Civil War. The Granger movement began with a single individual, Oliver Hudson Kelley. Certain aspects of the Granger Laws varied from state to state, but all of the involved states shared the same intent: to make pricing of railroad rates more favorable to farmers, small rural farmers in particular, in the states. This common aspiration was a result of the laws being promoted heavily in state politics by the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry (Grange).[2] The Grange was an organization of farmers that stretched throughout the Midwestern United States and filtered into the Southern United States. Despite the highest proportion of its members being in Kansas and Nebraska, the Grange were most effective in Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, where the Granger laws were eventually passed.[1] The two Granger laws that became the best-known were those passed in Illinois and Wisconsin.

Great Railroad Strike

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, sometimes referred to as the Great Upheaval, began on July 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, United States after the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) cut wages for the third time in a year. This strike finally ended some 45 days later, after it was put down by local and state militias, and federal troops. Because of economic problems and pressure on wages by the railroads, workers in numerous other cities, in New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland, into Illinois and Missouri, also went out on strike. An estimated 100 people were killed in the unrest across the country. In Martinsburg, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and other cities, workers burned down and destroyed both physical facilities and the rolling stock of the railroads—engines and railroad cars. Local populations feared that workers were rising in revolution such as the Paris Commune of 1871. At the time, the workers were not represented by trade unions. The city and state governments organized armed militias, aided by national guard, federal troops and private militias organized by the railroads, who fought against the workers. Disruption was widespread and at its height, the strikes were supported by about 100,000 workers. With the intervention of federal troops in several locations, most of the strikes were suppressed by early August. Labor continued to work to organize into unions to work for better wages and conditions. Fearing the social disruption, many cities built armories to support their militias; these defensive buildings still stand as symbols of the effort to suppress the labor unrest of this period. With public attention on workers' wages and conditions, the B&O in 1880 founded an Employee Relief Association to provide death benefits and some health care. In 1884 it established a worker pension plan. Other improvements generally had to await further economic growth and associated wage increases.

Trial of Andrew Johnson

The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson. On February 24, 1868, something extraordinary happened in the U.S. Congress. For the first time in history, the United States House of Representatives impeached a sitting president, Democrat Andrew Johnson. Now, Johnson faced trial before the U. S. Senate.

Knights of the White Camelia

The Knights of the White Camelia was founded by Confederate army veteran Confederate Colonel Alcibiades DeBlanc on May 22, 1867 in Franklin, Louisiana. Author Christopher Long stated, "Its members were pledged to support the supremacy of the white race,[1] to oppose the amalgamation of the races, to resist the social and political encroachment of the so-called carpetbaggers, and to restore white control of the government". [2][3] Historian Nicholas Lemann calls the Knights the leading terrorist organization in Louisiana.[4] Their tactics, (which included "harassment, floggings, and sometimes murder") "produced a reign of terror among the state's black population during the summer and fall of 1868."[5] Chapters existed primarily in the southern part of the Deep South. Historian George C. Rable noted that, "Although the Republicans saw evidence of a massive conspiracy in these outrages, in Louisiana as elsewhere, white terrorists were not organized beyond the local level."[6] Unlike the Ku Klux Klan, which drew much of its membership from lower-class southerners (primarily Confederate veterans), the White Camelia consisted mainly of upper class southerners, including physicians, landowners, newspaper editors, doctors, and officers. They were also usually Confederate veterans, the upper part of antebellum society. It began to decline, despite a convention in 1869. The more aggressive people joined the White League or similar paramilitary organizations that organized in the mid-1870s. By 1870, the original Knights of the White Camelia had mostly ceased to exist.[7] Among its members was Louisiana Judge Taylor Beattie, who led the Thibodaux massacre of 1887. Earlier, David Theophilus Stafford of Alexandria, prior to his election as sheriff of Rapides Parish, was a member of the Knights. He joined the Citizens League and was at Canal Street during the Battle of Liberty Place

Liberal Republicans

The Liberal Republican Party of the United States was an American political party that was organized in May 1872 to oppose the reelection of President Ulysses S. Grant and his Radical Republican supporters in the presidential election of 1872.

Memphis and New Orleans Riots

The Memphis massacre of 1866 was a series of violent events that occurred from May 1 to 3, 1866 in Memphis, Tennessee. The New Orleans Massacre of 1866 occurred on July 30, during a violent conflict as white Democrats including police and firemen attacked Republicans, most of them African American, parading outside the Mechanics Institute in New Orleans. The racial violence was ignited by political, social and racial tensions following the American Civil War, in the early stages of Reconstruction. Violence against freedpeople and white republicans in the south received widespread publicity when it spread to urban areas in the form of race riots. Scores of blacks were murdered by white mobs in 1865 and 1866. Two of the largest riots occurred in Memphis and New Orleans. The racial incidents demonstrated that the restored civil authorities in the south would not even minimally protect black freedom as no white rioter was brought to justice. These disturbances led many to wonder if the rebellion had really been suppressed or if a temporary return to U.S. Military authority was necessary to restore order. The bad publicity following the riots united moderate and radical republicans against Johnson's Reconstruction program.

Mississippi Plan

The Mississippi Plan of 1875 was developed as part of the white insurgency during the Reconstruction Era in the Southern United States. It was devised by the Democratic Party in that state to overthrow the Republican Party in Mississippi by means of organized threats of violence and suppression or purchase of the black vote. Democrats wanted to regain political control of the legislature and governor's office. Their success led to similar plans being adopted by white Democrats in South Carolina and other majority-black states. To end election violence and formalize the exclusion of freedmen from politics, the Democrat-dominated state legislature passed a new constitution in 1890, which effectively disenfranchised and disarmed most blacks by erecting barriers to voter registration and firearms ownership.[1][2][3] Disenfranchisement was enforced through terrorist violence and fraud and eventually, most black people stopped trying to register or vote. They did not regain the power to vote until the late 1960s after federal legislation was passed to prevent voter suppression.

Thibodaux Massacre

The Thibodaux massacre was a racial attack mounted by white paramilitary groups in Louisiana in November 1887. It followed a three-week strike by an estimated 10,000 workers against sugar cane plantations in four parishes in the critical harvest season. The strike was the largest in the industry and the first conducted by a formal labor organization, the Knights of Labor. At planters' requests, the state sent in militia to protect strikebreakers, and work resumed on some plantations. Black workers and their families were evicted from plantations in Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes and retreated to Thibodaux. Tensions broke out in violence on November 23, 1887, and white paramilitary forces attacked black workers and their families in Thibodaux. Although the total number of casualties is unknown, at least 35 black people were killed in the next three days and as many as 300 overall killed, wounded or missing,[2][3] making it one of the most violent labor disputes in U.S. history. Victims reportedly included elders, women and children. All those killed were African American.[4] The massacre, and passage by white Democrats of discriminatory state legislation, including disenfranchisement of most blacks, ended the organizing of sugar workers for decades, until the 1940s. "The defeated sugar workers returned to the plantations on their employers' terms.

White League

The White League, also known as the White Man's League,[1] was an American white paramilitary organization started in 1874 to kick Republicans out of office and intimidate freedmen from voting and politically organizing. Affiliated with the Democratic Party, its first chapter was formed in Grant Parish, Louisiana and neighboring parishes, made up of many of the Confederate veterans who had participated in the Colfax massacre in April 1873. Chapters were soon founded in New Orleans and other areas of the state. The Red Shirts was a similar group that formed chapters in Mississippi and the Carolinas. Active during the later years of Reconstruction, these paramilitary groups were described as "the military arm of the Democratic Party."[2] Through violence and intimidation of blacks and allied whites, their members suppressed Republican voting and contributed to the Democrats' taking control of the Louisiana Legislature in 1876 (and to Democratic control in other southern states).[2] After white Democrats regained control of the state legislature in 1876, members of the White Leagues were absorbed into the state militias and the National Guard.

Free labor ideology

The free labor ideology of the nineteenth century was grounded in the beliefs that Northern free labor was superior to Southern slave labor. The key factor that made this system unique was "the opportunity it offers wage earners to rise to property-owning independence."

Civil Rights Act of 1875

The legislation met its demise in 1883 when the United States Supreme Court ruled that the law was unconstitutional during the Civil Rights Cases. ... The Supreme Court ruling that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional paved the way for the future of segregation and discrimination.

U. S. V. Cruikshank

United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876)[1] was an important United States Supreme Court decision in United States constitutional law, one of the earliest to deal with the application of the Bill of Rights to state governments following the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case arose during the Reconstruction Era from the 1872 Louisiana gubernatorial election which was hotly disputed, and led to both major political parties certifying their slates of local officers. At Colfax, Louisiana, tensions climaxed in the Colfax massacre, in which an estimated 105 black people and 3 white people were killed. A federal judge ruled that the Republican-majority legislature be seated, but the Democrats did not accept this. Growing social tensions erupted on April 13, 1873, when an armed militia of white Democrats attacked black Republican freedmen, who had gathered at the Grant Parish Courthouse in Colfax, Louisiana, to resist an attempt of Democratic takeover of the offices.[2]

William P. Kellogg

William Pitt Kellogg was an American lawyer and Republican Party politician who served as a United States Senator from 1868 to 1872 and from 1877 to 1883 and as the Governor of Louisiana from 1873 to 1877 during the Reconstruction Era.