Third Party System [1854–1890s] III Flashcards
Review - Timeline: The Civil War, 1860-1865
1860: South Carolina secedes from Union. 1861: Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter; First Battle of Bull Run. 1862: Confederate forces retreat after Battle of Shiloh; General Robert E. Lee defends Richmond; Battle of Antietam. 1863: Abraham Lincoln signs Emancipation Proclamation; Racially motivated riots break out in New York; General Ulysses S. Grant leads Vicksburg Campaign; Battle of Gettysburg. 1864: General William Tecumseh Sherman invades the South; Atlanta falls to Sherman’s forces; Lincoln is reelected. 1865: Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrenders.
Timeline: The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877
1863: Abraham Lincoln unveils “Ten Percent Plan” or ‘Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction’. 1865: John Wilkes Booth assassinates Lincoln; Congress establishes ‘Freedmen’s Bureau’; 13th Amendment ratified. 1866: Congress passes ‘Civil Rights Act’. 1867: Radical Republicans pass ‘Military Reconstruction Act’. 1868: Congress moves to impeach Andrew Johnson; 14th Amendment ratified. 1870: 15th Amendment ratified. 1876: Rutherford B. Hayes defeats Samuel Tilden in contested presidential election. 1877: ‘Compromise of 1877’ ends Reconstruction.
*Restoring the Union*
President Lincoln worked to reach his goal of reunifying the nation quickly and proposed a lenient plan to reintegrate the Confederate states. After his murder in 1865, Lincoln’s vice president, Andrew Johnson, sought to reconstitute the Union quickly, pardoning Southerners en masse and providing Southern states with a clear path back to readmission. By 1866, Johnson announced the end of Reconstruction. Radical Republicans in Congress disagreed, however, and in the years ahead would put forth their own plan of Reconstruction.
Understand the issues that needed to be addressed after the Civil War.
Physical damage to people and places needed to be repaired. Former slaves needed help building free lives and securing their rights. Enemies needed to be reconciled, and a broken Union needed political repair.
Define Reconstruction (simple).
The process of trying to rebuild the South’s economy, society, and infrastructure was called Reconstruction.
Define Reconstruction (complex).
The Union victory in the Civil War in 1865 may have given some 4 million slaves their freedom, but the process of rebuilding the South during the Reconstruction period (1865-1877) introduced a new set of significant challenges. Under the administration of President Andrew Johnson in 1865 and 1866, new southern state legislatures passed restrictive “black codes” to control the labor and behavior of former slaves and other African Americans. Outrage in the North over these codes eroded support for the approach known as Presidential Reconstruction and led to the triumph of the more radical wing of the Republican Party. During Radical Reconstruction, which began in 1867, newly enfranchised blacks gained a voice in government for the first time in American history, winning election to southern state legislatures and even to the U.S. Congress. In less than a decade, however, reactionary forces–including the Ku Klux Klan–would reverse the changes wrought by Radical Reconstruction in a violent backlash that restored white supremacy in the South.
*Congress and the Remaking of the South, 1865–1866*
The conflict between President Johnson and the Republican-controlled Congress over the proper steps to be taken with the defeated Confederacy grew in intensity in the years immediately following the Civil War. While the president concluded that all that needed to be done in the South had been done by early 1866, Congress forged ahead to stabilize the defeated Confederacy and extend to freed people citizenship and equality before the law. Congress prevailed over Johnson’s vetoes as the friction between the president and the Republicans increased.
Define Lincoln’s ‘Ten Percent Plan’ or ‘Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction’
The ‘Ten Percent Plan’ or ‘Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction’ required that former Confederates take an oath pledging allegiance to the Union and accepting the end of slavery. When just 10% of the voting population had taken this oath, they could set up a new state government. Once the new government had outlawed slavery, the state could then be readmitted to the Union. Lincoln also hoped to expand suffrage. He insisted that new state governments allow African Americans the right to vote, as long as they met the same requirements as everyone else in terms of property ownership, literacy, and military service for the Union. Lincoln favored this moderate approach because he wanted Northerners to view Southerners as their countrymen, not as a defeated enemy. For more practical reasons, if all of the experienced leaders were shut out of the process, then the political offices would be left open for unqualified opportunists or idealists. Contrast with Radical Republicans’ ‘Wade-Davis Bill’.
Describe Radical Republicans’ ‘Wade-Davis Bill’.
Radicals in Congress passed their own plan for reconstruction in the Wade-Davis Bill. Under this plan, the president would appoint a governor for each state once a majority of its voting citizens swore that they had always been loyal to the Union. Only then could the state organize a constitutional convention. The new state constitutions had to abolish slavery, take away political rights from Confederate leaders, and cancel war debts. The Wade-Davis Bill left political rights for blacks up to each state, but it would be nearly impossible for any Southern state to get half of the men to swear they had never been disloyal without franchising African Americans. Congress passed the bill in 1864, but Lincoln swiftly vetoed it. Contrast with Lincoln’s ‘Ten Percent Plan’.
Define ‘40 acres and a mule’.
On January 16, 1865, General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Orders No. 15 during his march to the sea. It redistributed abandoned or confiscated plantation land to former slaves, and the recipients were often lucky enough to also obtain an unneeded mule from the army. However, after Lincoln’s death a few months later, President Johnson restored all property back to its original owners. Ever since, the concept of ‘40 acres and a mule’ has come to represent failed promises.
Explain the purpose of the ‘Freedmen’s Bureau’.
In March of 1865, just a month before the end of the war, the president urged Congress to pass a bill creating the ‘Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands’, commonly called the ‘Freedmen’s Bureau’. Radicals in Congress were happy to comply. Created as part of the War Department, the goal of the Freedmen’s Bureau was to help ease the transition from slave to free man successfully. Immediately after the war, they helped former slaves survive in the short term, so they could build free lives in the long term. This often meant clothing, food, shelter, or medical care. The Freedmen’s Bureau also helped former slaves find work and provided assistance in negotiating labor contracts. Since Southern states had made it illegal to educate a slave, most freedmen were illiterate. The Bureau built schools throughout the South to provide an education to thousands of African Americans of every age. Many of the schools were run by Christian missionary organizations and former abolitionists.
Andrew Johnson (D)
Andrew Johnson (1808-1875), the 17th U.S. president, assumed office after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). Johnson, who served from 1865 to 1869, was the first American president to be impeached. A tailor before he entered politics, Johnson grew up poor and lacked a formal education. He served in the Tennessee legislature and U.S. Congress, and was governor of Tennessee. A Democrat, he championed populist measures and supported states’ rights. During the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), Johnson was the only Southern senator to remain loyal to the Union. Six weeks after Johnson was inaugurated as U.S. vice president in 1865, Lincoln was murdered. As president, Johnson took a moderate approach to restoring the South to the Union, and clashed with Radical Republicans. In 1868, he was impeached by Congress, but he was not removed from office. He did not run for a second presidential term.
Civil Rights Act of 1866
The Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27–30, enacted April 9, 1866, was the first United States federal law to define citizenship and affirm that all citizens are equally protected by the law. It was mainly intended, in the wake of the American Civil War, to protect the civil rights of persons of African descent born in or brought to the United States. This legislation was passed by Congress in 1865 and vetoed by United States President Andrew Johnson. In April 1866 Congress again passed the bill to support the Thirteenth Amendment. Johnson again vetoed it, but a two-thirds majority in each chamber overrode the veto to allow it to become law without presidential signature.
Define ‘Carpetbagger’.
Carpetbagger, during the Reconstruction period (1865–77) following the American Civil War, any Northern politician or financial adventurer accused of going South to use the newly enfranchised freedmen as a means of obtaining office or profit. The epithet originally referred to an unwelcome stranger coming, with no more property than he could carry in a satchel (carpetbag), to exploit or dominate a region against the wishes of some or all of its inhabitants. Although carpetbaggers often supported the corrupt financial schemes that helped to bring the Reconstruction governments into ill repute, many of them were genuinely concerned with the freedom and education of black citizens.
Explain how President Johnson attempted to carry out Lincoln’s plans for Reconstruction.
Johnson didn’t have the same popular appeal as Lincoln and soon found himself at odds both personally and politically with many groups. His belief in states’ rights and his weak appointments for interim governors led to the passage of ‘Black Codes’ throughout the South. And when Southern leaders were reelected to their old positions at the federal level, the Radical Republicans in Congress refused to seat them. The midterm elections gave the Radicals enough votes in Congress to override Johnson’s presidential veto, ending the short-lived era of Presidential Reconstruction.
Describe the ‘Black Codes’.
Black codes were restrictive laws designed to limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure their availability as a cheap labor force after slavery was abolished during the Civil War. Though the Union victory had given some 4 million slaves their freedom, the question of freed blacks’ status in the postwar South was still very much unresolved. Under black codes, many states required blacks to sign yearly labor contracts; if they refused, they risked being arrested, fined, and forced into unpaid labor. Outrage over black codes helped undermine support for President Andrew Johnson and the Republican Party.
Describe the conflict between Mexico and France during the American Civil War and how the United States and the A. Johnson administration responded to it.
Following the Mexican-American War, which ended in 1848, Mexico endured a series of civil wars that left the nation bankrupt. When the Mexican government announced that it would not be able to pay its debts to foreign nations, a coalition of forces landed an army in direct violation of the Monroe Doctrine, which insisted that European nations could no longer establish colonies in the Americas. Britain and Spain negotiated a settlement with Mexico, but France decided to invade in 1861 and appoint an emperor, Archduke Maximilian I, to take control. On May 5, 1862, Mexican forces won an unlikely victory over the French, spawning the famous celebration of Cinco de Mayo. As soon as the American Civil War ended in 1865, the U.S. demanded that France withdraw its forces and sent 50,000 U.S. army veterans to the border. France agreed to leave, evacuated all forces by 1867, and Maximilian was executed by a ring squad.
Summarize the A. Johnson administrations’ purchase of Alaska from Russia and how Americans viewed it.
In 1867, Russia offered to sell its American holdings to the United States. This is because the fur trade had ended, Russia needed money, and was afraid Great Britain might go to war with them and seize the land anyway. The A. Johnson administration offered $0.02 an acre for the territory. Many Americans ridiculed the purchase, calling it ‘Seward’s Folly’ (after Secretary of State Seward who managed the purchase), but the Senate loved the idea and enthusiastically approved the treaty.
Summarize the conflicts between Congress and President Johnson.
Republicans were the majority in the U.S. Congress during Lincoln’s presidency and pursued their goals of remaking the social order of the South and securing equal rights for black men; however, many radicals, such as Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, felt limited by Lincolns moderate views. When A. Johnson acceded to the presidency, many Americans were concerned about the spread of Black Codes and feared that he was a Southern sympathizer, despite his support for the 13th Amendment banning slavery. In response, many more Republicans won Congressional seats during the mid-term elections. Johnson refused to sign piece after piece of Radical legislation, but they had enough votes to override his veto.
*Radical Reconstruction, 1867–1872*
Though President Johnson declared Reconstruction complete less than a year after the Confederate surrender, members of Congress disagreed. Republicans in Congress began to implement their own plan of bringing law and order to the South through the use of military force and martial law. Radical Republicans who advocated for a more equal society pushed their program forward as well, leading to the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, which finally gave blacks the right to vote. The new amendment empowered black voters, who made good use of the vote to elect black politicians. It disappointed female suffragists, however, who had labored for years to gain women’s right to vote. By the end of 1870, all the southern states under Union military control had satisfied the requirements of Congress and been readmitted to the Union.
Define the ‘14th Amendment’.
The 14th Amendment was put forward as the country was healing itself from the Civil War and was ratified in 1868. It stated that all persons born or naturalized in the United States - including African Americans - are citizens of the country. Its Due Process Clause also stated that local and state governments cannot deprive any citizen of ‘life, liberty, or property’ without due cause. (1868)
Define the ‘Military Reconstruction Act’ or ‘Reconstruction Act’.
All Southern states except Tennessee refused to ratify the 14th Amendment, so Congress passed the ‘Military Reconstruction Act’ in 1867 - the first of four such measures to be passed by Congress, vetoed by the President, and then passed again with a 2/3 vote. As a result, the South was divided into five occupied military districts, each ruled by a military governor to supervise Reconstruction. Under the ‘Military Reconstruction Act’, states had to ratify the 14th Amendment and allow African Americans to vote, or else they would lose their representation in Congress. The 14th Amendment was ratified within a year.
Define the ‘Tenure of Office Act’
Enacted in 1867, this law required the president to get Senate approval before firing anyone who had been appointed by a past president. It was passed by Republicans who appointed Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (a radical) to enforce the Reconstruction Acts without interference from A. Johnson. The Tenure of Office Act was overturned nine years after Johnson’s impeachment attempt; and though it was never tested in the Supreme Court, a decision in 1926 noted that the Act was invalid.
Understand how Congress passed laws against President Johnson’s will.
After the Republicans gained a super majority in the 1866 midterm elections, they overroad many of A. Johnsons vetos with their own reconstruction legislation.
