Chapter 26

Tenure of Office Act

1866 - Enacted by radical Congress, it forbade the president from removing civil officers without consent of the Senate. It was meant to prevent Johnson from removing radicals from office. Johnson broke this law when he fired a radical Republican from his cabinet, and he was impeached for this "crime".

Force Acts

1870 and 1871 - Acts passed to promote African American voting and mainly aimed at limiting the activities of the Ku Klux Klan. Through the acts, actions committed with the intent to influence voters, prevent them from voting, or conspiring to deprive them of civil rights, including life, were made federal offenses. Thus the federal government had the power to prosecute the offenses, including calling federal juries to hear the cases.

Ku Klux Klan

A secret society created by white southerners in 1866 that used terror and violence to keep African Americans from obtaining their civil rights. It was founded in the 1860s in the south; meant to control newly freed slaves through threats and violence; other targets: Catholics, Jews, immigrants and others thought to be un-American. They hunted many people and created a very negative in the United States.

Carpetbaggers

After 1865, a number of northerners moved to the South to purchase land, lease plantations or partner with down-and-out planters in the hopes of making money from cotton. At first they were welcomed, as southerners saw the need for northern capital and investment to get the devastated region back on its feet. They later became an object of much scorn, as many southerners saw them as low-class and opportunistic newcomers seeking to get rich on their misfortune. Though some carpetbaggers undoubtedly lived up to their reputation as corrupt opportunists, many were motivated by a genuine desire for reform and concern for the civil and political rights of freed blacks.

Scalawags

Scalawag, after the American Civil War, a pejorative term for a white Southerner who supported the federal plan of Reconstruction or who joined with black freedmen and the so-called carpetbaggers in support of Republican Party policies. The origin of the term is unclear, but it was known in the United States from at least the 1840s, at first denoting a worthless farm animal and then denoting a worthless person. Its association with Southern-born or Southern-bred white Reconstruction-era Republicans was popularized in Southern newspapers that supported the Democratic Party and opposed Radical Reconstruction. As a result of the crucial role played by scalawags in Reconstruction, many Southern Democrats had even greater contempt for scalawags than they had for carpetbaggers, viewing the scalawags as traitors to their race.

How is the Ku Klux Klan an example of the failure of Reconstruction?

The Ku Klux Klan is an example of the failure of Reconstruction because the purpose of this period was to unite people, welcome the former slaves into the community and make them equal. However, when white supremacists saw that black people could be equal and were receiving the same right as them, they filled their hearts with hate and decided to found the Ku Klux Klan to terrorize and hurt anyone that was not white or that were "unnatural" like the LGBTQ+ community. Therefore, this means that the Reconstruction helped white supremacists find each other and form their terrorist group to put down black people.

To what extent did the federal government end the violence of the Klan through the Force Acts?

The major provisions of the acts authorized federal authorities to enforce penalties upon anyone interfering with the registration, voting, officeholding, or jury service of blacks; provided for federal election supervisors; and empowered the president to use military forces to make summary arrests. However, the end of formal Reconstruction in 1877 allowed for a return of large scale disenfranchisement of African Americans. This means that the Force Acts were not extremely successful because there was still hate coming from the KKK towards black people.