CM8: Reconstruction and the New South Flashcards
1
Q
What are the dates of reconstruction of the New South?
A
- 1865 - 1890
2
Q
Reconstruction under Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln’s plan
A
- 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
3
Q
Reconstruction under Abraham Lincoln: the radicals
A
- 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
4
Q
Lincoln’s assassination
A
- 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
5
Q
Reconstruction under Andrew Johnson
A
- 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
6
Q
Ku Klux Klan
A
- 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
7
Q
Civil rights legislation under Johnson
A
- 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
8
Q
First Reconstruction Act
A
- 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
9
Q
Tenure of Office Act
A
- 1867
- limited the president’s right to remove appointive officers
10
Q
The South during Reconstruction
A
- 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
11
Q
The Ulysses S.Grant administrations
A
- 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
12
Q
Controversial election of Rutherford B.Hayes
A
- 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
13
Q
Dates of the New South
A
1877-1890
14
Q
era of conservative domination
A
- 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
15
Q
Jim Crow legislation
A
- 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