CM8: Reconstruction and the New South

Question 1

What are the dates of reconstruction of the New South?

Answer 1

• 1865 - 1890

Question 2

Reconstruction under Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln’s plan

Answer 2

• december 1863: promise to:
  - recognize the government of any state that pledged to support the Constitution and the Union
  - emancipate enslaved persons (with only 10% of voters)
• Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee formed loyal governments
• Andrew Johnson, democrat, nominated as vice president on the Republican ticket with Lincoln in 1864

Question 3

Reconstruction under Abraham Lincoln: the radicals

Answer 3

• Republicans: harshly critical of this plan
• July 2, 1864: the Wade-Davis Bill: majority of voters + oath of past loyalty
• Lincoln vetoed it
• Congress defeated the president’s proposal to recognize the Louisiana government

Question 4

Lincoln’s assassination

Answer 4

• April 14, 1865 = Good Friday evening
• John Wilkes Booth: ‘sic semper tyrannis’ or ‘the South shall be free!’
• Seward (secretary of state) was attacked
• Lincoln died in 15 april
• explosion of grief and rage

Question 5

Reconstruction under Andrew Johnson

Answer 5

• vice president and governor of Tennessee
• radical Benjamin F. Wade said ‘Johnson, we have faith in you’ ‘By the gods, there will be no trouble running the government’
• Johnson’s policy:
  - southerner and democrat
  - attitude towards African Americans
  - state conventions where southern states ratified the 13th amendment abolishing slavery
• Black Codes:
  - regulations of the rights and privileges of freedmen
  - May and July 1866: riots in Memphis and New Orleans

Question 6

Ku Klux Klan

Answer 6

• founded at Pulaski, Tennessee, Christam Eve, 1865
• Southern tradition of regulation; taking the law into your own hands
• Secret Society; origin of the name (Greek kyklos = circle)
• Goal: restore democratic control of the Southern states
• active in 1865-73; 1915-present

Question 7

Civil rights legislation under Johnson

Answer 7

• conflict between president Johnson and Congress
• 1867 First Reconstruction Act
• July 1868: Congress agreed to seat senators and representatives from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, North and South Carolina
• July 1870: all Southern states were readmitted
• Congress limited president’s power
• 1867: Tenure of Office Act
• February 1868: Johnson removed Radical secretary of war Edwin M. Stanton
• Impeachment proceedings

Question 8

First Reconstruction Act

Answer 8

• 1867
• swept away the regimes the president had set up in the South
• put the former Confederacy back under military control
• called for the election of new constitutional conventions
• required the constitution to include African American suffrage
• disqualified former Confederate leaders from officeholding

Question 9

Tenure of Office Act

Answer 9

• 1867
• limited the president’s right to remove appointive officers

Question 10

The South during Reconstruction

Answer 10

• Conflict between Southern whites and African Americans
• Southern Homestead Act of 1886
• African American religious organizations
• Sharecropping
  - tenants agreed to farm the land
  - in return they were given a share of the crops they raised
• poverty
• few Black office holders
• political education programme
• radical’s supporters: scalawags and carpetbaggers ; Union League + Freedmen’s Bureau
• reconstructionists
• South = wilderness, a frontier
• public education
• corruption
• the North turned their attention away from Reconstruction
• class division in the South: yeomen farmers vs planters / merchant class
• laboring class = ill-clothed, ill-fed, illiterate
• majority of Southern Whites = opposed to African American poolitical, civil and social equality
• KKK and support of Democratic Party

Question 11

The Ulysses S.Grant administrations

Answer 11

• 1869-1877
• decline of republican strength
• 1870: adoption of the 15th Amendment prohibiting discrimination in voting on account of race
• 1870-71: 3 Force Acts passed, giving the president the power to suspend habeas corpus and impose penalties on terroristic organizations (the KKK)
• 1872: growing disillusionment with Radical Reconstruction and Grant administration reflected in nominating Horace Greeley for president
• Grant was reelected but Democrats gained control of the House of Representatives in 1874

Question 12

Controversial election of Rutherford B.Hayes

Answer 12

• the Democratic candidate, Samuel J. Tilden, received the majority of the popular vote but vote in Electoral College was undecisive
• Agreements with Southern Democratic congressmen helped to tilt the balance
• Restauration of ‘home rule’ for the South

Question 13

Dates of the New South

Answer 13

1877-1890

Question 14

era of conservative domination

Answer 14

• 1877 - 1890
• South under the leadership of the ‘Bourbons’
• no attempt to disfranchise African Americans
• state programs benefiting poor people were reduced
• public education; prisons; asylums; hospitals = under funded
• corruption and embezzlement

Question 15

Jim Crow legislation

Answer 15

• Between 1890-1908: move to disfranchise African Americans
• Southern states found various strategies:
  - requiring that potential voters be able to read
  - the ‘grandfather clause’
  - property qualifications
• African Americans = relegated to a subordinate and segregated position
• 1889-1899: lynchings averaged 190 per year

Question 16

Booker T. Washington and the Atlanta Compromise

Answer 16

• 1880s and 1890s: era of compromise for African Americans
• Bookers T. Washington: head of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama
• urged his fellow men to learn a craft; to gain their independence economically
• enthusiastic reaction of Southern Whites and Southern Blacks
• Problem: the South was desperately impoverished