Chapter 16

Question 1

What were white southerners returning to when they went home after the Civil War?

Answer 1

• Destroyed homes and destitute conditions.

* South had psychological and economic casualties.

Question 2

Explain the notion of the Civil War as a “Lost Cause.”

Answer 2

• Southerners viewed the Civil War as a temporary setback in the South’s journey to greatness and pious attitudes.
• This converted “Reconstruction” to “Redemption;” allowed for a shared view of the Civil War amongst Southerners in order to deal with the humiliation of it.
• That ideology was exemplified in textbooks, spectacles, statues.
• Whites saw yankees and blacks as trying to impose a worldview they didn’t accept.

Question 3

How did the “Lost Cause” view of whites contrast with that of blacks?

Answer 3

• Blacks saw the war as a great victory for freedom, but whites systematically tried to undermine this perception with success.
• Blacks wanted rights and to be free of white-imposed authority, and in order to achieve that they had to ally the white power structure?

Question 4

James A. Garfield: who was he and what was his view on the blacks’ cause.

Answer 4

• Union vet; became US President.

* He sympathized with blacks’ want for rights and generally more than freedom from slavery.

Question 5

Freedmen’s Bureau

Answer 5

• Established by Congress in 1865 to provide social, educational, and economic services, advice, and protection to former slaves and destitute white Southerners.

Question 6

What was the greatest success of the Freedmen’s Bureau?

Answer 6

• Its educational efforts.
• Established 3000 freedmen’s schools in the South, served 150000 people, and coordinated >50 northern philanthropic/religious groups.

Question 7

What did Martha Schofield do and how did that exemplify the role of women in the teaching force of the Freedmen’s Bureau’s educational efforts?

Answer 7

• That young women from the Northeast comprised a significant chunk of the teaching force and they allied with the abolitionist movement.

Question 8

What caused the increase in opportunities for black teachers?

Answer 8

• Declining Northern interest in education and the financial difficulties of the Freedmen’s Bureau.
• Supplementary support from black churches including the African Methodist Episcopal Church?

Question 9

Overall, what were the effects of educational efforts for the former slave population?

Answer 9

• The former slaves crowded in shacks, churches, etc. to get educated.
• A decade after the Civil War, black literacy rose 30%.
• Some black southerners went on to attain degrees from various institutions.
• Whites were hostile to blacks and women getting education, to the extent that when the Freedmen’s bureau folded in 1872, education for blacks became haphazard.

Question 10

Why was landownership an important idea for blacks?

Answer 10

• Because it meant economic independence.

Question 11

What did General William T. Sherman’s Field Order No. 15 do and mean for former slaves? How did the Freedmen’s Bureau’s land grants correlate?

Answer 11

• It initially confiscated land during the Civil War in reservation for blacks.
• Freedmen’s Bureau fulfilled the “40 acres and a mule” expectation by granting 40 acre grants to blacks.
• By 1865, 40000 former slaves had settled on Sherman land.

Question 12

What was the Southern Homestead Act and South Carolina’s land redistribution program?

Answer 12

• 1866, SHA was passed by Congress, giving blacks preferential access to public lands in 5 Southern states.
• 1868, SC’s program sold state bonds; used the money to buy farmland, and resold that land to freedmen under state-funded, low-interest loans.
• By late 1870s, 14000 blacks had taken advantage of this program.

Question 13

What were the hardships facing landowning blacks?

Answer 13

• Crappy land; hostile white neighbors; lack of funds to invest in capital; poor managerial skills.
• Most success was found in groups of families settling together.
• Vast majority of former slaves didn’t fulfill their dreams of land ownership.

Question 14

How did gov’t initiatives play into the fact that the vast majority of blacks didn’t actually end up as landowners?

Answer 14

• Sherman’s field order was actually just a temporary measure for securing freedmen’s support during the war and was nullified by Pres. Andrew Johnson.
• Most gov’t programs required blacks to have capital; most former slaves didn’t have that.
• Republicans actually just rhetorically supported blacks becoming wage laborers, not landowners.
• Even the Freedmen’s Bureau was really just concerned with growing the economy.

Question 15

How did sharecropping arise and what was it about?

Answer 15

• Freedmen’s Bureau facilitated contracts between former slaves and masters but eventually stopped supervising these contracts.
• This led to sharecropping: blacks were indebted by former masters, forced to live on land and grow crops with most of the output received by the masters, rest of the output meant to be sold by blacks to pay off their debts; debts were designed so paying them off was impossible.

Question 16

Why were blacks attracted to migration to cities?

Answer 16

• Way for them to secure economic independence outside of the dream of owning land.
• To find their families, seek work, and escape farm life.
• To test their rights to move about.

Question 17

Why were black churches such a success and what did they provide for blacks?

Answer 17

• Because segregation between white and black churches arose naturally out of racial tensions; this was fueled by differing Biblical interpretations of the results of the Civil War between whites and blacks.
• Black churches became a focal point for community; gave blacks managerial, financial, and leadership skills.
• Drove the development of myriad other organizations for blacks; enforced the Christian ethic.

Question 18

What was Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan and what did it say about Lincoln’s attitudes towards Reconstruction?

Answer 18

• 1863, Lincoln proposed to readmit a seceding state if 10% of its prewar voters took an oath of loyalty to the Union and if it prohibited slavery in a new state constitution.
• It indicated how Lincoln favored a conciliatory policy towards the South.

Question 19

What were two obstacles of Reconstruction?

Answer 19

• That the Constitution gave no precedent for whether Congress or the President should handle this or how they should do it.
• And that there was no agreement on what Reconstruction policy should be.

Question 20

What was the disagreement between Andrew Johnson, conservative Republicans, and most Dems versus moderate and radical Republicans concerning Reconstruction?

Answer 20

• The former group held that there was no real need for formal readmission of the fCSA states because the Constitution made no mention of secession, and they also held that fCSA states ought to be given more autonomy and Federal intervention should be limited.
• The latter group generally held that CSA states had forfeited their rights and should be treated as occupied territories subject to Congressional legislation.

Question 21

What was President Johnson’s initial plan for Reconstruction?

Answer 21

• May 1865, Johnson extended Pardons and restored property rights.
• For Southerners with prominent positions in the fCSA and those with more than $20000 in taxable property, they had to petition Johnson directly for pardons.
• The plan included nothing for guaranteeing the civil rights or voting rights of blacks, which was indicative of Johnson’s quite explicit belief in black inferiority.

Question 22

What was the initial reaction to President Johnson’s plan for Reconstruction between the politicians and in the Southern states?

Answer 22

• Northern Democrats applauded it; Republicans generally approved.
• White Southerners immediately sought to reverse the outcomes of the Civil War, although most states accepted Johnson’s modest requirements. Mississippi, Texas, Alabama, and South Carolina raised issue with those requirements, however.

Question 23

What were black codes?

Answer 23

• Late 1865, South began to revise antebellum slave codes.
• Local officials could arrest black people who couldn’t document their employment/residence; who were “disorderly.”
• Restricted blacks from certain occupations and barred them from serving on juries.
• Allowed judges to take black children from parents who, according to the judges, couldn’t support the children.

Question 24

What did the 1865 Congress initially seek for Reconstruction and how did President Johnson react?

Answer 24

• Extending the Freedmen’s Bureau; authorizing it to punish state officials who failed to extend equal civil rights to blacks. Vetoed by Johnson.
• 1866, passed the Civil Rights Act in re to black codes. Created category of rights that superseded state laws. Vetoed by Johnson; veto was overridden by Congress.

Question 25

Explain the 14th Amendment and its relation to Congress’ efforts in Reconstruction.

Answer 25

• Congress passed it in June 1866.
• Incorporated provisions of the Civil Rights Act into the Constitution: said every citizen was equal before the law; formally outlawed black codes and gave states the choice of enfranchising black people or losing representation.

Question 26

Who were Susan B. Anthony and Wendell Philips and what did they indicate about the women’s suffrage movements attitudes towards this?

Answer 26

• Women’s suffrage objected to the exclusivity of the 14th amendment to males.
• Philips said “this hour belongs to the negro,” was a prominent abolitionist.
• Susan B. Anthony had campaigned for abolition of slavery; mounted a petition drive that collected 400000 signatures for the 13th amendment; founded American Equal Rights Association in 1866 to push for women’s suffrage at the state level.

Question 27

What was Johnson’s reaction to the 14th Amendment and how did the Congressional elections of 1866 play out?

Answer 27

• Johnson denounced the 14th; tried to win northern states but they questioned his claims of southern white loyalty to the Union.
• Democrats suffered humiliating defeats in the North from 1866; elections put 2/3 majority of Republicans in House and Senate.

Question 28

What was Congressional Reconstruction?

Answer 28

• Aka Radical Reconstruction.
• Started with Congress overriding Johnson’s veto of the Military Reconstruction Acts, March 1867.
• Separated the fCSA into military districts; enrolled black voters and barred whites who had held office before the Civil War and supported the CSA.
• This fostered legislators in support of the 14th, and whenever a fCSA state had ratified it, they could apply for readmission into the Union.

Question 29

What was the Tenure of Office Act?

Answer 29

• Republicans passed this to limit Johnson’s obstruction of their policies.
• Said he couldn’t fire certain officeholders without Senate consent.
• Led to Johnson deliberately letting off a radical republican in outrage; House proceeded with impeachment files.

Question 30

What did “scalawags” refer to?

Answer 30

• Native whites who supported Republican regime in the South—term applied to these people by opponents.

Question 31

Explain the impeachment trials for President Johnson and its results.

Answer 31

• 7 Republicans deserted their party in the trail; Johnson was acquitted.
• This weakened Radical Republicans; led to moderate Republican Ulysses S. Grant gaining the Party nomination for President in 1868.

Question 32

Explain the 1868 Presidential election.

Answer 32

• Grant won, narrowly.
• Republicans viewed it as a referendum on Congressional Reconstruction; Dems appealed to racism, saying Republican win would mean black rule over whites.
• Generally reflected growing Northern ambivalence towards issues of race and Federal authority.
• Republicans retained a strong majority in Congress.

Question 33

How did blacks vote?

Answer 33

• They were the Republican Party’s largest constituency in the South.
• In South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana, they were the largest group eligible to vote.
• They primarily wanted involvement in gov’t affairs.

Question 34

Union Leagues

Answer 34

• Republican Party organizations in northern cities.
• Blacks modeled their political organization off of these; demanded “the right to universal suffrage.”
• 1865-1867ish.

Question 35

How did racism thwart the Republican Party’s efforts in the South?

Answer 35

• Republicans couldn’t stop racism, violence, and the race-baiting of the Democratic Party.

Question 36

How did the conditions of 1874 indicate a paradigm shift for Americans economically?

Answer 36

• There were in a depression and became concerned with survival rather than racial justice.

Question 37

Ku Klux Klan

Answer 37

• Founded by 6 CSA vets in 1866.
• White supremacy paramilitary group.
• Fed gov’t tried to combat groups like this with the 15th Amendment, the Enforcement Act of 1870, and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.

Question 38

What did the growing political violence after 1871 indicate?

Answer 38

• Declining commitment on the part of the northern Republicans to support southern Republican admins.
• And growing hostility of white northerners to southern black aspirations.
• Continuation of a growing erosion of support for Reconstruction after 1867.

Question 39

How did northern complicity correlate with southern whites’ views?

Answer 39

• Both saw unqualified blacks and grasping carpetbaggers as corrupting forces in the South.
• Both were in principle racist; north’s racism indicated by New York draft riots of 1863.
• North and South converged on disdain for President Grant due to his emerging scandals.
• Scientific racism fueled northern complicity.

Question 40

What were the concerns of “Liberal Republicans” and how did they influence the 1872 election?

Answer 40

• Libs wanted to shift the Republican Party to limit gov’t subsidy/involvement in the economy and return the South to more self-governance.
• Libs failed to capture the party, so they split, which led Democrats to ally with them to challenge the reelection of Grant with their candidate Horace Greeley.
• Grant still won 1872; high black turnout in the South contributed to this.

Question 41

Who were the Redeemers?

Answer 41

• Southern Democrats who viewed the Civil War as a lost crusade and thought they had to “redeem” the South from “black Republican rule.”

Question 42

What happened to Southern Democrats in 1874 and how did this correspond to their political success?

Answer 42

• ex-CSA soldiers went in uniform to intimidate black neighborhoods from voting and to support Democrats at campaign rallies.
• Democrats were victorious across the South in 1874 election; only South Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi survived with their large populace of black voters, but eventually they fell to Dems as well.

Question 43

Explain the attempted coup in New Orleans in September 1874.

Answer 43

• 8500 White League troops attempted a coup to oust Republican Governor William P. Kellogg and his admin.
• The League’s manifesto indicated textbook white supremacy as their ideology.
• The League was met with the mixed Metropolitan police force led by fCSA general turned Republican James B. Longstreet.
• League was put down by Federal troops; were more successful in the Louisiana countryside.
• November 1784, the League contributed to a Democratic victory in Louisiana by overthrowing or murdering Republican officials in various places.

Question 44

Explain the White Liners.

Answer 44

• Mississippi group.
• Demanded resignation of all black officials including sheriff Peter Crosby.
• Republican Governor Adelbert Ames signed off on Crosby’s effort to muster a militia; they ended up in combat with Liners in Vicksburg; Liners tracked down and terrorized blacks across the city for 10 days.
• Their intimidation worked: Dems got victory in statewide elections in 1875.

Question 45

Explain the incident on July 4, 1876 in Hamburg, South Carolina.

Answer 45

• A conflict between parading black militia and a wagon carrying prominent whites led to 1000 armed whites surrounding a wooden armory where 100 black militia had taken refuge; battle broke out between the groups.
• This preceded whites terrorizing the black militiamen and burning buildings and robbing residents in the town.
• In the Nov. election, Dem and Rep set up rival gov’ts in that county, resolved by Fed intervention setting up a Dem gov’t, which led to the expulsion of Republican legislatures and the electing of Matthew C. Butler to US Senate – a figure who had led white attackers in Hamburg.

Question 46

Compromise of 1877.

Answer 46

• Congressional settling of the 1876 election.
• Installed Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House;
• In return gave Democrats control of all state governments in the South.

Question 47

How did Democrats utilize the memory of Reconstruction to appeal to Southern whites?

Answer 47

• Maintained the image of a horrendous “black Republican” rule during Reconstruction; maintained the Lost Cause perception and the the notion Redemption, having been “victorious” over Republican occupation during the Compromise of ‘77.
• Appealed to the fact that most Americans generally thought Reconstruction had brought great suffering to the white South.
• Romanticizing of the Redeemers ensued: praised their use of violence.

Question 48

Who were John R. Lynch, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Frederick Douglass in this picture of the memory of Reconstruction?

Answer 48

• Lynch, a former black Republican congressman from Mississippi, published The Facts of Reconstruction to argue against the view of the Redeemers/Lost Cause.
• Bois wrote Black Reconstruction, which attacked the prevailing view of Reconstruction as a horrendous attack on whites’ way of life.
• Frederick Douglass noted that the peace following the Civil War was concerning for the future of race relations given that the precedent for peace between North and South was based on agreement on the notion of black inferiority.

Question 49

Slaughterhouse Cases.

Answer 49

• Group of cases resulting in one sweeping decision by the SCOTUS in 1873 that contradicted the intent of the 14th Amendment by decreeing that most citizenship rights remained under state, not federal, control.

Question 50

United States v. Cruikshank.

Answer 50

• SCOTUS ruling in 1876 that overturned the convictions of some of those responsible for the Colfax Massacre, ruling that the Enforcement Act applied only to violations of black rights by states, not individuals.

Question 51

What did John Hope Franklin say regarding Reconstruction?

Answer 51

• That it “had no significant or permanent effect on the status of the black in American life. . .black people made no significant steps towards economic independence or stability.”