This document provides an overview of Reconstruction in the US following the Civil War. It discusses the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, the 15th Amendment granting Black men the right to vote, and the split over women's suffrage. It also summarizes the experiences of freed slaves, the rise and fall of Republican state governments in the South during Reconstruction, and the eventual "redemption" of Southern states by Democrats which reversed Reconstruction policies.

1. US history survey
May 22, 2012
final class
Reconstruction (continued)

2. announcements
• paper # 2 due today, Tuesday, May 22.
• late papers will be accepted until Tuesday,
May 29, but points will be deducted. No
emails!
• final exam: Tuesday, May 29, noon. Eat first,
or bring a snack with you.

3. Ulysses S. Grant
• former Union general.
• President 1869 – 1877.

4. enfranchisement – 15th Amendment
• women’s rights advocates, former abolitionists
(both men and women), disagreed about who
should be enfranchised.
• 14th Amendment introduced the word “male”
into Constitution for 1st time.
• split between those favoring Black men’s vote
first & those who wanted women’s suffrage at
same time.

5. “This is the Negro’s hour.”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton &
Susan B. Anthony opposed
15th Amendment w/o
women’s suffrage. “Lower
order of Chinese, Africans,
Germans, & Irish” would
make laws for women.
Frederick Douglass & Lucy
Stone.

6. women’s rights advocates
• split into 2 organizations, both working for
women’s suffrage.
• not reunited until 1890.
• women’s suffrage as a constitutional amendment
didn’t happen until 1920 (19th Amendment).
• women’s organizations also worked on marriage
& divorce laws, unequal pay, property rights.
• defeat of radical reconstruction & expanded
citizenship meant there was little support for
women’s suffrage.

7. freedom for former slaves
• ability to move. Some freedpeople moved
into cities & to Black Belt, in search of
community.
• family strengthened – searched for family
members; made decisions about whether/
when women & children worked.
• churches & family – central institutions of
Black communities.
• schools – thirst for education & knowledge.

9. Florida, 1870s or
1880s.

10. work
• white planters tried to retain African
Americans as permanent agricultural workers.
• Black people resisted working in gangs.
• desired to establish independent homesteads.
• compromise: sharecropping. By 1880, ¾
Black southerners were sharecroppers.
• white owners exploited system & illiteracy of
some Blacks to ensure indebtedness.

11. work in freedom

12. African American politics
• freedom celebrations, mass meetings, parades,
petitions, conventions – dominated by previously
free, preachers, artisans, veterans of Union Army.
• whites: “insolent,” “outrageous spectacles,”
“putting on airs.”
• Union League – Republican organization.
• Black majority existed only in South Carolina,
Mississippi, Louisiana – needed white Republican
voters as well.

13. Carpetbaggers
• white Northerners,
Union veterans,
businessmen, teachers,
Freedmen’s Bureau
agents.
• won many Reconstruc.
offices, especially in
areas w/ large Black
populations.

14. Scalawags
• white Southerners from
up-country, non-slave
areas. Loyalists in CW.
• wanted Republican
Party to help settle old
scores, get debt relief, &
help with wartime
devastation.
• mostly committed to
whites remaining in
power.

15. S desire for economic development
• “Yankees & Yankee notions are just what we
want. We want their capital to build factories
& workshops. We want their intelligence,
their energy, and enterprise.” (Thomas Settle,
North Carolina)
• Scalawag ideas.

16. what S states accomplished
• Republicans dominated 10 S constitutional
conventions, 1867 – 1869.
• 258/1027 constitutional delegates were AfAm.
• expanded democracy – improved situation of
poor whites as well as Blacks.
– guaranteed political & civil rights for Blacks.
– abolished property qualifcatns. for voting & juries.
– abolished imprisonment for debt.
• created 1st state-funded systems of education.
• more than 600 Black state legislators post-CW.

17. S white resistance
• KKK violence.
• Colfax, Louisiana, 1873 – almost 100 Blacks
murdered.

18. Black members of Congress
• largest number in
1870s = 16.
2 senators.
• declined to 0 in
1901.
• all Republicans.

19. “redemption”
• S Democrats “redeemed” S states.
• results: created obstacles to Black voting, put
more stringent controls on plantation labor,
cut social services.
• Supreme Court decisions curtailed protection
of Black civil rights.
• end of federal attempts to protect Black civil
rights until mid-20th century.

20. Reconstruction results for South
• unable to attract much investment from N or
Europe, so little industrialization.
• S declined into poorest agricultural region in
country.
• increased cotton dependency – King Cotton.
• changed from diversified local farming to
market-oriented production of cotton.
• cotton prices declined – competition from
Egypt & India.

21. Reconstruction results for North
• industrial boom of war years continued.
• 3 million immigrants, 1860 – 1880; all settled
in N & W.
• railroads continued to expand to more than all
the rest of the world’s RRs combined.
• RR companies were first big businesses.
• Republican Party increasingly identified with
interests of business.

24. election of 1876
• Democrats expected to win presidency.
• fraud, intimidation, disputed votes.
• an electoral commission created to resolve it
voted strictly on party lines.
• compromise: Rutherford Hayes (R) became
president.
– more money for S internal improvements.
– a Southerner in Hayes’ cabinet.
– non-interference in South – “home rule.”

25. Rutherford B. Hayes
Compromise of 1877
• Hayes ordered removal of
remaining federal troops.
• Republicans abandoned
freedpeople, carpetbaggers,
scalawags, & Radicals.
• “home rule” nullifed 14th & 15th Amendments &
Civil Rights Act of 1866.
• compromise repudiated idea of federal
government protecting rights of all citizens.

26. and at the same time….
• mining & oil refining, as well as RR, become
big businesses.
• Depression of 1873.
• Great RR strike of 1877.
• struggle between capital & labor replaced the
“southern question” as main political issue.

27. Great RR Strike of 1877

28. coming soon:
workers vs. robber barons

29. aftermath of Civil War
• Is political freedom meaningful without
economic freedom?
– propertied independence.
– self-ownership & right to compete in labor
market.
• Reconstruction solidified separation of
political & economic spheres.
• old idea of economy autonomy as essence of
freedom became idea of radicals only.

30. announcements
• paper # 2 due today, Tuesday, May 22.
• late papers will be accepted until Tuesday,
May 29, but points will be deducted. No
emails!
• final exam: Tuesday, May 29, noon. Eat first,
or bring a snack with you.

31. It’s been great! See you in the USA.