Reconstruction Era Flashcards
What is The Reconstruction Era?
A 12 year time period between the end of the Civil War ended (1865) to 1877. The country was trying to figure out how to rebuild the South and bring them back to the Union and figuring out what happened to the millions of people who were just enslaved and their transition from slavery to freedom.
What are some Post Civil War Questions?
*What should Blacks receive in compensation?
*What rights should Blacks be given?
*What do the Southern states have to do to get back into the Union?
* Which branch should oversee Reconstruction?
* What is the definition of freedom?
* What would happen to the South that was economically dependent on slavery?
What is the 13th Amendment?
The 13th amendment was the first of the 3 reconstruction amendments. It was passed in 1865 and states that “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.”
What was the biggest problem in the 13th Amendment?
Many found a loophole in the 13th Amendment through the words “except as a punishment for crime” and caused mass incarcerations against black people through the use of Black Codes to bring them back into servitude legally.
What is the 14th Amendment ?
The 1868 amendment prohibits the states from diminishing the privileges and immunities of citizens or denying anyone equal protection from the laws, regardless of race. The amendment however, did not grant African Americans the right to vote but it did provide that if a state denied the vote to any group of men, the state’s representation in Congress would be reduced. It defines an American citizen without the use of race instead using birthright citizenship and overturned the Dred Scott vs Sanford Case where black people are not citizens.
What is the 15th Amendment?
The Reconstruction Era’s final amendment ratified in 1870 which prohibited the federal and state governments from denying any citizen the right to vote because of race.
What is the biggest problem of the 15th Amendment?
The amendment failed to address the loopholes of restricting suffrage by using literacy tests, property qualifications, and poll taxes and didn’t give women the right to vote and only eight northern states allowed African Americans to vote.
What was Lincoln’s 10% Plan?
The 10% plan allowed Confederate states to establish new state governments after 10 percent of their population who voted in the Election of 1860 took loyalty oaths to the Union and the states recognized the permanent freedom of the formerly enslaved. It followed Lincoln’s “With Malice Toward None” philosophy and just wanted the South to return to the Union quickly rather than making the South pay for their actions.
What was the Wade-Davis Bill?
2 radical Republicans believed that the South needed to wait until 50% of their population not only took a loyalty oath and had no relationship with the Confederacy whatsoever.
The South would stay out of the Union for a generation as most adult men fought for the Confederacy. They wanted the South to pay for their actions against the Union. Lincoln vetoes the bill.
What happened in Abraham Lincoln’s assassination?
On April 15, 1865, Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., as the American Civil War was drawing to a close, just six days after the surrender of General Robert E. Lee. The assassination was planned and carried out by a confederate sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth as part of a larger conspiracy in an effort to target major members of government to revive the Confederate cause. Lincoln’s death shocked the nation and altered the course of Reconstruction.
Who was Andrew Johnson?
The vice president of Abraham Lincoln in his second term and succeeded Lincoln after his assassination in 1865. He was a senator from Tennessee and was the only one to not leave with the Confederacy before the Civil War and stayed loyal to the Union. He was chosen as vice president as a symbol of unity between North and South and Republicans and Democrats.
What were the major flaws of Andrew Johnson
*He was very argumentative and stubborn and wasn’t a good person for Reconstruction. He vetoes a lot of legislation meant to help African Americans.
* Issued Lincoln’s 10% plan for the Southern states to come back to the Union quickly and issued many pardons to the point many Confederate leaders started making state governments and constitutions under their racist ideals.
What were Black Codes?
Laws passed by the new Southern governments that attempted to regulate the lives of former slaves and keep their lives as close to their lives as slaves as possible.
What were some restrictions set on Black people in the Black Codes?
- Some Black Codes granted African Americans rights to legalized marriage, ownership of property (not all states), and limited access to courts.
- Denied them the rights to testify against whites, to serve in juries or in state militias, or vote.
*They declared that those who fail to sign a yearly labor contract, they could be arrested and hired out to white landowners, who demanded that former slaves should be required to work on the plantations (Vagrancy Acts). - Some states limit the occupations opened to blacks and barred them from acquiring land. Other states provided judges with the power to assign black children to work for their former owners without the consent of the parents
How were African Americans’ understanding of freedom shaped from?
It was shaped from their experiences with being enslaved and what they see as a free society around them. Freedom meant escaping the injustices of slavery such as inhumane punishments, the separation of families, the denial or limited access to education and religion, and sexual exploitation in exchange for sharing the same rights and opportunities as American citizens.
