Reconstruction & African American Liberty (OCR GCSE History B (Schools History Project)): Revision Note

Summary

Abraham Lincoln was killed before the Reconstruction of the USA could get underway after the Civil War. His successor, Andrew Johnson, quickly went about readmitting the Confederate states to the Union and pardoning almost all those who had fought against the Union.

This caused great anger amongst many people in Congress. They introduced a Radical Reconstruction programme that saw the ex-Confederacy states occupied by Union soldiers and all those who fought against the Union being banned from voting. The ex-Confederacy states were not readmitted to the Union until they met certain conditions, such as accepting the 13th and 14th Amendments to the US Constitution.

When President Johnson stood for reelection in 1868, he lost and was voted out of office.

However, many people in the south were strongly against the changes introduced by the Radical Reconstruction and attempted to reverse them. They were helped by Supreme Court rulings that stated state laws did not have to treat all people equally. This led to segregation in many states in the south where African Americans were forced to attend separate schools, parks, etc.

A campaign of violence was also launched against the African Americans in the south by the Ku Klux Klan and the White League. The system of sharecropping also kept African Americans poor and under the control of Euro-American landowners.

Reconstruction and Andrew Johnson

• By the end of the American Civil War on 9 April 1865,

  • Approximately 800,000 Americans had been killed, about 2 per cent of the entire population

  • It had cost a total of $8.3 billion in 1860s dollars - the equivalent of several trillion dollars today

  • Enormous damage had been caused, particularly in the southern states where railroads, cities and plantations had been severely damaged or destroyed

• It also resulted in 4 million enslaved people becoming emancipated

• It directly led to Congress passing the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution in January 1865, which states:

• Almost the entire first term of Abraham Lincoln's Presidency had been spent fighting the Civil War

  • He began his second term in March 1865, just over a month before the end of the war

  • The focus was now on rebuilding the United States and healing the deep wounds it had caused

  • This task became known as Reconstruction

The death of Abraham Lincoln

• Less than one week after accepting the surrender of the Confederacy, Lincoln was shot in the back of the head as he sat at the theatre in Washington with his wife

  • Lincoln's killer was John Wilkes Booth

  • He was motivated by trying to stop African Americans from gaining full citizenship

President Andrew Johnson

• Andrew Johnson was Lincoln's vice president

• He took over as president after Lincoln's death

  • The actions of President Johnson caused shock and surprise amongst many people in the north, including those in the president's own Republican Party

Johnson's reconstruction

• President Johnson's main priority was to reunite the country

  • He only planned to punish the most powerful generals and plantation owners from the Confederacy

    • All others who fought in the Confederate Army were pardoned

  • The Confederate states were allowed to reapply and were admitted back into the Union almost immediately

    • Some of these southern states were still governed by plantation owners

'Black Codes' in the southern states

• The 13th Amendment to the Constitution meant the southern states could not reintroduce slavery

  • Instead, they introduced laws that treated African Americans differently

  • These laws:

    • Kept African Americans powerless and impoverished

    • Became known as the 'Black Codes'

    • Were slightly different in each state

• Some laws banned African Americans from:

  • Giving evidence in trials

  • Owning weapons

  • Serving on juries in court cases

• In Louisiana, African Americans had to work for the same employer for a year and were not allowed to leave the land during that time

  • This meant they were essentially living the same lives as they were when they were enslaved

  • In Mississippi, African Americans were banned from even renting farmland

• Despite these restrictions on African Americans, just months after becoming President, Johnson declared that Reconstruction was over in December 1865

Radical Reconstruction, 1866-70

• Much of Johnson's Reconstruction had taken place while Congress had not been sitting

• When Congress finally met in December 1865, Johnson had declared that Reconstruction was over

• Many anti-slavery members of Congress believed Johnson's actions had been a betrayal of all the sacrifices and deaths that had taken place during the Civil War

• They believed that:

  • The former Confederate States should be occupied by the Army to protect African Americans

  • The southern states should be governed by Congress rather than by the plantation owners who had gone to war with the Union

• The members of Congress started to undo Johnson's Reconstruction and protect the lives and rights of African Americans in the southern states

  • These changes to Reconstruction became known as Radical Reconstruction

Readmitting the ex-Confederate States

• In July 1868, the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution became law

  • All Americans who were descended from enslaved Africans were legally citizens of the United States and had rights protected by law

  • This overturned a Supreme Court ruling of 1857, which had judged that African Americans could not be citizens of the United States

• By the end of 1868, the ex-Confederacy states of Texas, Virginia, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Florida, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia had met the conditions set out by Congress

  • They were then re-admitted to the Union

• Further proof of people's anger with Andrew Johnson for his handling of Reconstruction came in the Presidential election in November 1868

  • Johnson lost that election and was voted out of office after a single term

Sharecropping & segregation in the South

• After 1870, the pace of change in the southern states, because of Reconstruction, slowed

  • Many of the members of Congress who were responsible for the Radical Reconstruction died

  • Many people in the southern states were increasingly angry about Reconstruction

    • They believed widespread corruption was taking place and people from the north were robbing the south of its wealth

• There was also fear amongst the Euro-Americans in the southern states

  • In many southern states, Euro-Americans were outnumbered by African Americans

  • Many southern Euro-Americans believed that, by giving African Americans the right to vote, the lives of southern Euro-Americans would be ruined

The Ku Klux Klan and the White League

• Some Euro-American southerners turned to violence and intimidation to prevent African Americans from achieving equality

• The Ku Klux Klan was a secret white supremacist group formed in Tennessee in the late 1860s

  • The Ku Klux Klan used violence against African Americans; they:

    • attacked schools and churches

    • murdered community leaders

    • launched night raids on African American communities

    • wore hoods that covered their faces to hide their identities

NOTE: Please insert KKK night raid picture here

• The White League was formed in Louisiana in 1874

• It was not a secret organisation

• Its members openly called for the return of slavery

• The White League used violence and intimidation to prevent African Americans from:

  • Voting

  • Becoming involved in politics

• In September 1874, thousands of White League members seized control of the city government buildings in New Orleans

  • It became known as the Battle of Liberty Place

  • Between 30 and 50 people were killed before government troops took back control of the buildings

Supreme Court Rulings

• In 1873, the Supreme Court ruled that:

  • The US Constitution stated that all citizens had to be treated equally by the national government on national issues, regardless of their race

• It also ruled that the US Constitution did not state that people of different races had to be treated equally by state laws

  • Southern governments began to legally reintroduce segregation

    • This meant separate schools, parks, public toilets, etc., for Euro-Americans and African Americans

• In 1875, the Supreme Court ruled that the national government had no right to intervene if state governments were preventing African Americans from voting

  • This meant the majority of voters remained Euro-Americans

  • The majority of these voted for Euro-American politicians who introduced racist and discriminatory state laws

Sharecropping

• Many African Americans lived on and farmed land owned by Euro-Americans

  • The terms involved handing over two-thirds of the crops grown every year to the landowner as rent

  • This was known as sharecropping

    • It kept the African American farmers very poor

    • Landowners became rich

• It also meant landowners were very powerful

  • They could evict any tenants who did not act as they wished

• As voting was done in public, most sharecroppers would not vote for candidates their landowners did not approve of

  • Many sharecroppers were bullied into not voting at all