Reconstruction and Its Effects

Fugitive Slave Act

A law passed as part of the Compromise of 1850, which provided southern slaveholders with legal weapons to capture slaves who had escaped to the free states. The law was highly unpopular in the North and helped to convert many previously indifferent northerners to antislavery.

carpetbagger

A pejoritive term used by Southerners against Northerners who moved to the South during the Reconstruction era, between 1865 and 1877. The term suggested oportunism and exploitation by outsiders. In conjunction with Republicans, they are said to have politically manipulated and controlled former Confederate states for varying periods for their own financial and power gains.

sharecropping

A system of agriculture where a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crop produced on land. After the Civil War, sharecropping was a widespread response to the economic upheaval caused by the emancipation of slaves and disenfranchisement of poor whites. Sharecroopping helped to maintain the status quo between Blacks and Whites.

Hiram Revels

After the Civil War began, Revels helped organize two volunteer regiments of Blacks in the Union Army. In 1863, he served as a chaplain to a Black regiment stationed in Mississippi. He settled there after the war and preached to a large congregation. In 1868, the military governor appointed Revels alderman and the next year, he was elected to the state senate. Revels was a Republican, but he wanted to avoid friction with Southern whites, so he supported legislation that would have allowed disenfranchised members of the former Confederacy to vote and hold office once again. In January 1870, he was elected to the United States Senate to fill the unexpired term of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis. During his year in office, Revels advocated desegregation in the schools and on the railroads.

Summarize the economic problems in the South.

Agriculture was all that many former slaves new, without land they were forced to become sharecroppers and tenant farmers for the same people who had owned them previously. They needed labor for their farms, without the freed slaves they could not develop their land and make money. Many freed slaves became tenant farmers and sharecroppers. Textile mills began to pop up in the South as well as a new Tobacco-product industry.

Black Codes

Black codes set civil rights back a good number of decades, and signified how America was still grossly prejudiced despite the whole Reconstruction facade and the addition of the 13th - 15th amendments. They also illustrate how the Southern states held a distinct pride separate from the rest of the States, even after the Civil War. They didn't want to give up their old lifestyle. Black codes were only one of the ways that they tried to maintain their old way of life. I suppose in a way, black codes actually sparked the need for the civil rights movement, because African Americans were treated as second-class citizens despite the Bill of Rights which clearly stated they were equals. They laid down laws that pertained only to black citizens, so that African Americans were still second class "citizens" despite the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments and the new values forced on the South during the Reconstruction. They made it possible for businesses to openly discriminate against African Americans, allowed poll taxes and tests to be placed on a person's voting rights - note that anyone who voted before 1864 was grandfathered in, but obviously no African American voted before that time - and made it illegal for a white woman to marry a black man. They also made it so that black citizens had to buy crops from their former masters, drawing them into a cycle of debt which was inherited by their children - this is where the term "sharecropper" came from; the plantation owners loaned them crops of land at interest rates they could never possibly pay off. So basically black codes were a way for Southerners during the Reconstruction era to keep African American citizens under the same bondage they were in as slaves.

Ulysses S. Grant

During Reconstruction, Grant pursued the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina and effectively disabled the organization until the 1920s, but racism still abounded in the South. With the conviction that business supported the national interest, he signed legislation that protected entrenched business interests. This set the stage for more monopoly, public unrest over the accumulation of wealth, and increased corruption. Grant was unanimously renominated in 1872 and won reelection, but more scandal plagued his close associates, like his Secretary of War, William W. Belknap, and his private secretary, Orville E. Babcock, who were both involved in graft schemes. He left office in disgrace and struggled to complete his memoirs while dying of cancer, so that his family would have some means of support after his death. Grant finished his two-volume work, one of the finest presidential memoirs ever, four days before he died.

Republican Party

During the 19th century the Republican Party stood against the extension of slavery to the country's new territories and, ultimately, for slavery's complete abolition.The Republican Party traces its roots to the 1850s, when antislavery leader joined forces to oppose the extension of slavery into the Kansas and Nebraska territories by the proposed Kansas-Nebraska Act. At meetings in Ripon, Wisconsin (May 1854), and Jackson, Michigan (July 1854), they recommended forming a new party, which was duly established at the political convention in Jackson.

Ku Klux Klan

From 1868 through the early 1870s the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) functioned as a loosely organized group of political and social terrorists. The Klan's goals included the political defeat of the Republican Party and the maintenance of absolute white supremacy in response to newly gained civil and political rights by southern blacks after the Civil War. They were more successful in achieving their political goals than they were with their social goals during the Reconstruction era.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American author. She was best known for Uncle Tom's Cabin, which helped galvanize the abolitionist cause and contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War. She wrote the book in response to the Fugitive Slave Act of that year. The book changed many people's minds about the institution of slavery.

15th Amendment

Immediately after the Civil War, America needed to rebuild itself both structurally and socially. As the President of the United States, Andrew Johnson led the campaign to obtain the congressional votes needed to ratify the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. To be readmitted to the Union, states had to support the amendment. During the Reconstruction, or the rebuilding of the South, some Southern states still found ways to discriminate against former slaves and limit voting to white men only. For example, Southern states used black codes, which were laws to limit the labor and social rights of former slaves. These limitations on voting were overturned by the 15th Amendment, which President Andrew Johnson unsuccessfully attempted to veto, due to his lenient attitudes towards the former Confederate states and staunch support of state's rights. The term 'veto' refers to the president's constitutional right to reject congressional legislation. The 15th Amendment, which was ratified in 1870, contained two sections. Section One stated that ''The right of citizens...to vote shall not be denied or abridged...on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.'' Section Two granted the U.S. Congress the power to enforcement through legislation.

Johnson's Reconstruction Plan

In 1865 President Andrew Johnson implemented a plan of Reconstruction 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. The end of the Civil War found the nation without a settled Reconstruction policy. In May 1865, President Andrew Johnson offered a pardon to all white Southerners except Confederate leaders and wealthy planters (although most of these later received individual pardons), and authorized them to create new governments. Blacks were denied any role in the process. Johnson also ordered nearly all the land in the hands of the government returned to its prewar owners -- dashing black hope for economic autonomy. At the outset, most Northerners believed Johnson's plan deserved a chance to succeed. The course followed by Southern state governments under Presidential Reconstruction, however, turned most of the North against Johnson's policy. Members of the old Southern elite, including many who had served in the Confederate government and army, returned to power. The new legislatures passed the Black Codes, severely limiting the former slaves' legal rights and economic options so as to force them to return to the plantations as dependent laborers. Some states limited the occupations open to blacks. None allowed any blacks to vote, or provided public funds for their education.

14th Amendment

In 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States granted citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to African Americans and slaves who had been emancipated after the American Civil War, including them under the umbrella phrase "all persons born or naturalized in the United States." In all, the amendment comprises five sections, four of which began in 1866 as separate proposals that stalled in legislative process and were amalgamated into a single amendment.

What weakened the power of the Republican Party?

In 1872, Congress weakened the power of the Republican Party in the South. Many white Southerners had complained about Republican abuses of power during Reconstruction. They claimed that Republicans kept many white Southerners from reaching public office. As a result, Congress passed the Amnesty Act in 1872. The act gave many former Confederates the right to vote. Southern Democrats began to gain power back in the South. Scandals and Money Crisis Hurt Republicans; Economic Turmoil. Some took on more debt than they could afford. Many could not pay their debts and went bankrupt.

Lincoln's Ten percent Plan of Reconstruction

Lincoln's blueprint for Reconstruction included the Ten-Percent Plan, which specified that a southern state could be readmitted into the Union once 10 percent of its voters (from the voter rolls for the election of 1860) swore an oath of allegiance to the Union. Voters could then elect delegates to draft revised state constitutions and establish new state governments. All southerners except for high-ranking Confederate army officers and government officials would be granted a full pardon. Lincoln guaranteed southerners that he would protect their private property, though not their slaves. Most moderate Republicans in Congress supported the president's proposal for Reconstruction because they wanted to bring a quick end to the war.

Andrew Johnson

Once in office, Johnson focused on quickly restoring the Southern states to the Union. He granted amnesty to most former Confederates and allowed the rebel states to elect new governments. These governments, which often included ex-Confederate officials, soon enacted black codes, measures designed to control and repress the recently freed slave population. When the U.S. Congress convened in December 1865, it refused to seat the newly elected Southern members, and Johnson found himself at odds with the legislature, particularly the Radical Republicans, who viewed the president's approach to Reconstruction as too lenient. In 1866, Johnson vetoed the Freedmen's Bureau bill and the Civil Rights bill, legislation aimed at protecting blacks. That same year, when Congress passed the 14th Amendment granting citizenship to blacks, the president urged Southern states not to ratify it (the amendment nevertheless was ratified in July 1868). During the 1866 congressional elections, Johnson launched a multiple-city speaking campaign, dubbed "a swing around the circle," in which he attempted to win support for his Reconstruction policies. The tour proved to be a failure, and the Republicans won majorities in both houses of Congress and set about enacting their own Reconstruction measures. Hostilities between the president and Congress continued to mount, and in February 1868, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Johnson. Among the 11 charges, he was accused of violating the Tenure of Office Act by suspending Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (1814-1869), who opposed Johnson's Reconstruction policies. That May, the Senate acquitted Johnson of the charges by one vote.

Home Rule

Policy of state governments running the state without federal intervention. This is what Southern Democrats managed to achieve after the 1876 election. It allowed them to restrict African-American rights, cut taxes, and wipe out social programs

Rutherford B. Hayes

President Hayes was a commitment from Republicans to abandon Reconstruction and defense of the welfare of the South's Black population. Hayes withdrew federal troops from Louisiana and South Carolina shortly after taking office, ending the Reconstruction era.

List and describe at least three changes facing the South after the Civil War and at least one attempted solution for each.

Problem 1: Rebuilding the battle torn regions. Attempted solution: The Republican government built roads and bridges and railroads. They established orphanages and government institutions and public schools. Problem 2: Property values had plummeted and farms were ruined. Economy was in the dumps. Attempted Solution: The government poured money into the reconstruction of the South but they used taxes to do it, which drained existing resources. Problem 3: African Americans faced challenges with their new freedom like finding land and work and family members Attempted solution: government programs like the Freedmen Bureau tried to provide jobs and land and track down families. Problem 4: Plantations were very hard to run without slavery because few Southerners had money to pay workers. Attempted Solution: Sharecropping and tenant farming made it easier for rich white employers to exploit the labors of freedmen for low wages. Problem 5: The Cotton industry was in the dumps. Attempted Solution: They tried to diversify the South's agriculture and industrial standing which got them a bit more money.

Wade-Davis Bill

Proposed in 1864, the Wade-Davis Bill was another plan for Reconstruction, and was proposed by two radical Reps. The Bill proposed that a state needed to have a majority of people take the Ironclad Oath, which was said the oath taker never supported the Confederacy in the past. The Bill passed both houses of Congress, but was pocket vetoed by Lincoln.

Reconstruction

Reconstruction encompassed three major initiatives: restoration of the Union, transformation of southern society, and enactment of progressive legislation favoring the rights of freed slaves. President Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction—issued in 1863, two years before the war even ended—mapped out the first of these initiatives, his Ten-Percent Plan. Under the plan, each southern state would be readmitted to the Union after 10 percent of its voting population had pledged future loyalty to the United States, and all Confederates except high-ranking government and military officials would be pardoned. After Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, President Andrew Johnson adopted the Ten-Percent Plan and pardoned thousands of Confederate officials. Radical Republicans in Congress, however, called for harsher measures, demanding a loyalty oath from 50 percent of each state's voting population rather than just 10 percent. Although such points of contention existed, both presidents and Congress agreed on one major point—that the southern states needed to abolish slavery in their new state constitutions before being readmitted to the Union.

How did Reconstruction come to an end?

Reconstruction ended in 1877 because of an event known as the Great Betrayal, wherein the government pulled federal troops out of state politics in the South, and ended the Reconstruction Era. "Through the Compromise, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the White House over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden on the understanding that Hayes would remove the federal troops whose support was essential for the survival of Republican state governments in South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. The compromise involved Democrats who controlled the House of Representatives allowing the decision of the Electoral Commission to take effect. The outgoing president, Republican Ulysses S. Grant, removed the soldiers from Florida. As president, Hayes removed the remaining troops in South Carolina and Louisiana. As soon as the troops left, many white Republicans also left and the "Redeemer" Democrats took control. What exactly happened is somewhat contested as the documentation is scanty. African American historians sometimes call it "The Great Betrayal." "

List the achievement and failures of Reconstruction.

Reconstruction was a success in that it restored the United States as a unified nation: by 1877, all of the former Confederate states had drafted new constitutions, acknowledged the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and pledged their loyalty to the U.S. government. Reconstruction also finally settled the states' rights vs. federalism debate that had been an issue since the 1790s. However, Reconstruction failed by most other measures: Radical Republican legislation ultimately failed to protect former slaves from white persecution and failed to engender fundamental changes to the social fabric of the South. When President Rutherford B. Hayes removed federal troops from the South in 1877, former Confederate officials and slave owners almost immediately returned to power. With the support of a conservative Supreme Court, these newly empowered white southern politicians passed black codes, voter qualifications, and other anti-progressive legislation to reverse the rights that blacks had gained during Radical Reconstruction. The U.S. Supreme Court bolstered this anti-progressive movement with decisions in the Slaughterhouse Cases, the Civil Rights Cases, and United States v. Cruikshank that effectively repealed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Meanwhile, the sharecropping system—essentially a legal form of slavery that kept blacks tied to land owned by rich white farmers—became widespread in the South. With little economic power, blacks ended up having to fight for civil rights on their own, as northern whites lost interest in Reconstruction by the mid-1870s. By 1877, northerners were tired of Reconstruction, scandals, radicals, and the fight for blacks' rights. Reconstruction thus came to a close with many of its goals left unaccomplished.

tenant farming

Tenant farmers were more independent than sharecroppers. Although they also did not own the land they farmed, they were completely in charge of their crops from start to finish. They were responsible for all the necessary supplies and got to select the crops they wanted to raise. The entire harvest was theirs to sell or use as needed. Plantation owners, in exchange for use of their land by tenant farmers, received either a cash payment or a share of the crop as rent. Though tenant farmers faced challenges in their quest for independence, some managed to remain debt-free long enough to save money to buy their own parcels of land.

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.

13th Amendment

The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution officially abolished slavery in America, and was ratified on December 6, 1865, after the conclusion of the American Civil War. The amendment states: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

abolition

The Abolitionist movement in the United States of America was an effort to end slavery in a nation that valued personal freedom and believed "all men are created equal." Over time, abolitionists grew more strident in their demands, and slave owners entrenched in response, fueling regional divisiveness that ultimately led to the American Civil War.

Fort Sumter

The Battle of Fort Sumter was the first battle of the American Civil War. The intense Confederate artillery bombardment of Major Robert Anderson's small Union garrison in the unfinished fort in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina, had been preceded by months of siege-like conditions. During the secession crisis that followed President Abraham Lincoln's election in November 1860, many threats were made to Federal troops occupying forts in the South. Anderson, in command at the difficult-to-defend Fort Moultrie on Sullivan Island across the harbor from Charleston, began asking the War Department for reinforcements and making plans to move his men to one of the fortifications on more secure islands in the harbor—Castle Pinckney closer to Charleston or the unfinished Fort Sumter near the harbor's entrance. Following South Carolina's secession on December 20, 1860, Governor Francis Pickens was pressured to do something about Anderson and his men since many believed that Anderson would not stay at Fort Moultrie but would take a better position at another of the harbor's forts. On December 24, Pickens sent proxies to Washington to negotiate what would be done about the occupied forts and to ensure Anderson remained at Fort Moultrie. However, on December 26 Anderson put his plan into action: he assembled his men, loaded them and their families onto boats, and rowed to Fort Sumter. What followed was basically a siege of Fort Sumter, with supplies and communication controlled by Pickens.

Confederacy

The Confederacy, when used within or in reference to North America, generally means the Confederate States of America. It is also called the Southern Confederacy and refers to 11 states that renounced their existing agreement with others of the United States in 1860-1861 and attempted to establish a new nation in which the authority of the central government would be strictly limited and the institution of slavery would be protected. Secession from the existing Union led to the American Civil War, a bloody, four-year struggle that left much of the South in ashes and ended its hope of creating a new confederacy of states on the North American continent.

Credit Mobilier

The Crédit Mobilier scandal of 1872-1873 damaged the careers of several Gilded Age politicians. Major stockholders in the Union Pacific Railroad formed a company, the Crédit Mobilier of America, and gave it contracts to build the railroad. They sold or gave shares in this construction to influential congressmen.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 may have been the single most significant event leading to the Civil War. By the early 1850s settlers and entrepreneurs wanted to move into the area now known as Nebraska. However, until the area was organized as a territory, settlers would not move there because they could not legally hold a claim on the land. The southern states' representatives in Congress were in no hurry to permit a Nebraska territory because the land lay north of the 36°30' parallel — where slavery had been outlawed by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Just when things between the north and south were in an uneasy balance, Kansas and Nebraska opened fresh wounds. The Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed each territory to decide the issue of slavery on the basis of popular sovereignty. Kansas with slavery would violate the Missouri Compromise, which had kept the Union from falling apart for the last thirty-four years. The long-standing compromise would have to be repealed. Opposition was intense, but ultimately the bill passed in May of 1854. Territory north of the sacred 36°30' line was now open to popular sovereignty. The North was outraged.

Panic of 1873

The Panic of 1873, also referred to as the Long Depression, was a financial crisis that triggered a depression that lasted for six years and led to economic hardships, civil unrest, protests, demonstrations and the first nationwide strikes.

Radical Republicans

The Radical Republicans also believed that southern society would have to be completely transformed to ensure that the South would not try to secede again. The Radicals therefore attempted to reshape the South by enfranchising blacks, putting Unionist and pro-Republican governments in southern legislatures, and punishing southern planter elites, whom many politicians held responsible for the Civil War. As "carpetbaggers" (northerners who moved to the South after the war) and "scalawags" (white Unionists and Republicans in the South) streamed into the South, southerners denounced them as traitors and falsely accused many of corruption. However, through organizations like the congressionally approved Freedmen's Bureau, the U.S. government did manage to distribute confiscated lands to former slaves and poor whites as well as help improve education and sanitation and foster industrial growth in rebuilt southern cities. Ultimately, the most important part of Reconstruction was the push to secure rights for former slaves. Radical Republicans, aware that newly freed slaves would face insidious racism, passed a series of progressive laws and amendments in Congress that protected blacks' rights under federal and constitutional law. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment granted blacks citizenship, the Fifteenth Amendment gave black men the right to vote, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875 attempted to ban racial discrimination in public places

Freedmen's Bureau Act

The U.S. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, popularly known as the Freedmen's Bureau, was established in 1865 by Congress to help former black slaves and poor whites in the South in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War (1861-65). Some 4 million slaves gained their freedom as a result of the Union victory in the war, which left many communities in ruins and destroyed the South's plantation-based economy. The Freedmen's Bureau provided food, housing and medical aid, established schools and offered legal assistance. It also attempted to settle former slaves on Confederate lands confiscated or abandoned during the war. However, the bureau was prevented from fully carrying out its programs due to a shortage of funds and personnel, along with the politics of race and Reconstruction. In 1872, Congress, in part under pressure from white Southerners, shut the bureau.

Compromise of 1850

The U.S. achieved peace by the 1820 Missouri Compromise, despite sectional differences. Views from the north and south were polarized but the Compromise of 1850 made them reach a temporary political equilibrium. It accomplished what it intended to achieve at the time, to revitalize the Union and peace. Most politicians knew that the compromise was a patchwork and that it was a temporary solution at best delaying the inevitable, Civil War. The south gained by the strengthening of the fugitive slave law, the north gained a new free state, California. Texas lost territory but was compensated with 10 million dollars to pay for its debt. Slave trade was prohibited in Washington DC, but slavery was not. Slavery was not restricted in the territories of Utah and New Mexico. The Compromise of 1850 also allowed the United States to expand its territory by accepting California as a state. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was approved in 1854 and created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, allowing its residents to decide whether to allow slavery or not by popular sovereignty. The unintended consequence was a rush of pro slavery and antislavery supporters to Kansas to vote for slavery or its repeal. The act nullified the 1820 Missouri Compromise as Kansas had been officially a slavery free territory. The result was a civil war in Kansas known as Bleeding Kansas, which was to be a prelude to the American Civil War. The Republican Party was created in response to the act and became the leading party in the north. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected as the first Republican president of the United States.

Compromise of 1877

The compromise of 1877 ended military reconstruction in the previously rebellious southern states. The loss of federal protection for blacks in the south meant that the whites were able to begin to intimidate black voters and pass laws that made it nearly impossible for blacks to vote such as poll taxes, literacy tests and the grandfather clause that exempted whites from these restrictions.

impeachment

The impeachment of President Andrew Johnson was a result of political conflict and the rupture of ideologies in the aftermath of the American Civil War. It rose from uncompromised beliefs and a contest for power in a nation struggling with reunity. Andrew Johnson was intent on carrying out this plan when he assumed the Presidency. This policy, however, did not sit well with certain radical Republicans in Congress who wanted to set up military governments and implement more stringent terms for readmission of the seceded states. As neither side was willing to compromise, a clash of wills ensued. The political backing to begin impeachment came when Johnson breached the Tenure of Office Act by removing Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War, from his cabinet. The Tenure of Office Act had been passed over Johnson's veto in 1867 and stated that a President could not dismiss appointed officials without the consent of Congress. Both Lincoln and Johnson had experienced problems with Stanton, an ally of the Radicals in Congress. Stanton's removal, therefore, was not only a political decision made to relieve the discord between the President and his cabinet, but a test for the Tenure of Office Act as well. Johnson believed the Tenure of Office Act was unconstitutional and wanted it to be legally tried in the courts. It was the President, himself, however, who was brought to trial.

Emancipation Proclamation

The proclamation did not free all of the slaves in the US, nor did it truly abolish slavery. In fact, it only applied to states that had already seceded from the Union and had not yet been returned to Union control. That meant that the Border states, as well as the Confederate states that the North had already brought back into their control, were not affected by the proclamation at all. The only slaves that were theoretically affected by the Proclamation were those that were in Confederate-controlled states - which were not under Lincoln's jurisdiction at the time. In other words, the slaves were not yet free until the Union won the war. In fact, the Proclamation was more of a symbolic statement than anything else. It didn't change the existence of slavery, but it did change the meaning of the Civil War. Originally, the war was merely a fight in which the North was trying to preserve the Union by reuniting the North and South. The Proclamation changed the war into a war on slavery. After the Proclamation, each Union victory was a victory for those who opposed slavery. It gave slaves who were fighting for their freedom a reason to hope again, and it gave those who supported the Union moral support to depend on. n the Proclamation, Lincoln declared that freed slaves could fight for the Union. Additional soldiers were desperately needed at that point, so the Union was utilizing the previous unelibible men to assist in conserving the country. By the war's end, close to 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought on the Union's side. In summary, why was the Emancipation Proclamation written? It was written to show that the Civil War was no longer just about a divided nation, but about stemming the tide of slavery. The Proclamation was used to increase morale and the number or soldiers to win the war. Although it did not accomplish anything tangible, it gave hope to those who wished and fought to abolish slavery.

Scalawag

The term "Scalawags" was a derogatory name used by Southerners as a name for Southern whites who supported Reconstruction. Scalawags took advantage of Reconstruction Laws of 1867. Black freedmen and Northerners teamed up with Scalawags to take control of local and state governments.

Which accomplishment of African Americans during Reconstruction do you consider most significant?

They gained political power. Black politicians such as Rainey, Smalls & Elliot won election to US House of Representatives. In South Carolina blacks held a majority in state house of representatives for several years & served as Speakers of the House for 4 years

Describe efforts of former slaves to improve their lives.

Traveling freely, many moved to the Southern Cities to find work. Voting, Holding Political Office, Seeking an education. o Separation from family members • Travel, Freedmen's Bureau, newspaper ads o Illiteracy • Attending a Freedmen's bureau's school or African American college o Poverty • Sign a contract with farm owner for sharecropping

What were the goals and practices of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction?

a. Improve conditions for poor whites B. PREVENT AFRICAN AMERICANS FROM EXERCISING THEIR RIGHTS c. Restore the confederacy d. Gain control of state legislatures

Dred Scott Case

in 1857, the United States Supreme Court issues a decision in the Dred Scott case, affirming the right of slave owners to take their slaves into the Western territories, there by negating the doctrine of popular sovereignty and severely undermining the platform of the newly created Republican Party. At the heart of the case was the most important question of the 1850s: Should slavery be allowed in the West? As part of the Compromise of 1850, residents of newly created territories could decide the issue of slavery by vote, a process known as popular sovereignty. When popular sovereignty was applied in Kansas in 1854, however, violence erupted. Americans hoped that the Supreme Court could settle the issue that had eluded a congressional solution. Dred Scott was a slave whose owner, an army doctor, had spent time in Illinois, a free state, and Wisconsin, a free territory at the time of Scott's residence. The Supreme Court was stacked in favor of the slave states. Five of the nine justices were from the South while another, Robert Grier of Pennsylvania, was staunchly pro-slavery. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney wrote the majority decision, which was issued on March 6, 1857. The court held that Scott was not free based on his residence in either Illinois or Wisconsin because he was not considered a person under the U.S. Constitution-in the opinion of the justices, black people were not considered citizens when the Constitution was drafted in 1787. According to Taney, Dred Scott was the property of his owner, and property could not be taken from a person without due process of law. In fact, there were free black citizens of the United States in 1787, but Taney and the other justices were attempting to halt further debate on the issue of slavery in the territories. The decision inflamed regional tensions, which burned for another four years before exploding into the Civil War.

Reconstruction Act of 1867

the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 were introduced, debated, and eventually passed within Congress but not without controversy. Products of Republican efforts, the purpose of these laws was to reshape the South and secure equal rights for African Americans. They also set ultimatums for former Confederate states before they could officially rejoin the Union. The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 included the following terms: New State Constitutions - Former Confederate states would have to create new state constitutions. Committees formed to create these constitutions were composed of mainly Republicans, including African Americans. A key component in all constitutions was that voting rights were extended to all adult men, including African Americans. Native American men on tribal lands were excluded. Military Districts- the South was divided into the following five military districts: Virginia North Carolina and South Carolina Georgia, Alabama, and Florida Mississippi and Arkansas Louisiana and Texas Each district was under the charge of a military commander who had the power to appoint and remove state officials. These military leaders would also register voters and organize state elections. Map showing military districts established by the Reconstruction Acts, 1867 Ratification of the 14th Amendment - Former Confederate states would have to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, which states, 'All persons born or naturalized in the United States... are citizens of the United States.' It also guarantees 'no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.' This amendment would essentially guarantee constitutional protection of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which ordered citizenship and equal rights to all people born in the United States 'without distinction of race or color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude.'