The person who is dependent, economically dependent on someone else for their livelihood, is not truly free. Now, that's not an idea that was limited only to African Americans. Jefferson had said the same thing: The truly free person is the small farmer, the yeoman farmer. Lincoln had said the same thing many times: The person who works for wages his entire life is not truly free.
This was a very common idea in 19th-century America. The basis of freedom is economic independence. And in a rural, agricultural society, the only way you're going to get economic independence is by owning land. Land's not a panacea. Plenty of white farmers are having trouble at this time. But land at least gives you the wherewithal to decide for yourself how you're going to work, when you're going to work, what crop you're going to grow, not being under the direction of white either slaveowners or employers.
So for blacks, land is essential to freedom. Many in the North think that distributing land will be a punishment. They're responsible for this terrible destruction and loss of life. Take away their land. Then you will really destroy the planter class, which has been the cause of so much trouble. And then there's the question of what is going to be the nature of the Southern economy after the war. If the plantations remain intact, it'll still be an aristocratic society with a small group owning all the major economic resources, and then you have landless workers working for them.
Is that really a democratic society? The South should be modeled on the North. The North is a society of small farmers out in the West, the Midwest. That's what the South should be. In other words, if you're going to really change Southern society and get away from the social structure of slavery as well as the ownership of man by man of slavery, you're going to have to break up these big plantations.
David Blight: Taxation was a huge problem. It's not the most exciting subject in history to some people, but think about it. It was a huge problem in the Reconstruction states. How do you fund public facilities? How do you fund the public school? How do you build a hospital? How do you fund the dredging of a river? How do you rebuild Charleston, South Carolina?
How do you rebuild Richmond? Where would the money come from? What do you tax? During Reconstruction, he fought to minimize the power of the ex-Confederates and to guarantee equal rights to the freedmen. Concerned that President Johnson was attempting to subvert congressional authority, Republicans in Congress took control of Reconstruction policies after the election of Radical Republicans, led by Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, opened the way to suffrage for male freedmen.
The Radical Republicans were generally in control of policy, although they had to compromise with the moderate Republicans. The Democrats in Congress had almost no power. During fall , as a response to the Black Codes and worrisome signs of Southern recalcitrance, the Radical Republicans blocked the readmission of the former rebellious states to the Congress.
Johnson, however, was content with allowing former Confederate states into the Union as long as their state governments adopted the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. By December 6, , the amendment was ratified, and Johnson considered Reconstruction over. Radical Republicans in Congress disagreed. Although Johnson sympathized with the plights of the freedmen, he was against federal assistance. An attempt to override the veto failed on February 20, This veto shocked the congressional Radicals.
In response, both the Senate and House passed a joint resolution not to allow any senator or representative seat admittance until Congress decided when Reconstruction was finished.
He proposed the first Civil Rights Law, because the abolition of slavery was empty if laws were to be enacted and enforced depriving persons of African descent of privileges which were essential to free citizens. The law stated that African Americans were to be granted equal rights as citizens.
Congress later passed the Civil Rights Bill. Although strongly urged by moderates in Congress to sign the Civil Rights Bill, Johnson broke decisively with them by vetoing it on March 27, It had no warrant in the Constitution and was contrary to all precedents.
However, the Republicans in Congress overrode his veto. The Senate overrode the veto by the close vote of , the House by Then, the Civil Rights Bill became law. The Radical Republicans also passed the Reconstruction Amendments, which were directed at ending slavery and providing full citizenship to freedmen. Northern Congressmen believed that providing black men with suffrage would be the most rapid means of political education and training.
For instance, the Fourteenth Amendment, whose principal drafter was John Bingham, was designed to put the key provisions of the Civil Rights Act into the Constitution.
It extended citizenship to everyone born in the United States except visitors and Indians on reservations , penalized states that did not give the vote to freedmen, and most importantly, created new federal civil rights that could be protected by federal courts.
Johnson used his influence to block the amendment in the states. While many blacks took an active part in voting and political life, and rapidly continued to build churches and community organizations, white Democrats and insurgent groups used force to regain power in the state legislatures, passing laws that effectively disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites in the South.
The end of Reconstruction was a staggered process, and the period of Republican control ended at different times in different states. With the Compromise of , army intervention in the South ceased and Republican control collapsed in the last three state governments in the South.
Many of the ambitions of the Radical Republicans were, in the end, undermined and unfulfilled. Early Supreme Court rulings around the turn of the century upheld many of these new Southern constitutions and laws, and most blacks were prevented from voting in the South until the s. Full federal enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments did not occur until passage of legislation in the mids as a result of the African-American Civil Rights Movement — Privacy Policy.
Skip to main content. Reconstruction: — Search for:. The South after Reconstruction. The Freed Slaves Southern states undermined efforts at equality with laws designed to disfranchise blacks, despite of a series of federal equal-rights laws. General William Tecumseh Sherman passed an ordinance guaranteeing recently freed slaves land after his March to the Sea, but his orders had no force of law and were overturned.
Jim Crow laws : State and local laws in the United States enacted between and that mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy.
Joseph Hayne Rainey was the first African American to serve as a congressman. The Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed African-American men the right to vote, but it did not guarantee that the vote would be counted or that the districts would be apportioned equally. Key Terms Reconstruction : A period of U. It was ratified on February 3, Many carpetbaggers were said to have moved South for their own financial and political gains. Scalawags were white Southerners who cooperated politically with black freedmen and Northern newcomers.
Scalawags typically supported the Republican Party. Key Terms scalawag : Any white Southerner who supported the federal plan of Reconstruction after the Civil War, or who joined with the black freedmen and the carpetbaggers in support of Republican Party policies.
Reconstruction : A period of U. This term also can refer to someone perceived as intervening in the politics of an area without actually having a connection to that area. Scalawags In U.
Agriculture, Tenancy, and the Environment The American South remained heavily rural for decades after the Civil War; sharecropping was widespread as a response to economic upheaval. Learning Objectives Explain the social and economic organization of the rural South in the late nineteenth century.
They enjoyed more freedom than the sharecroppers. Sharecroppers included both black and poor white farmers and had little, if any, chance for advancement or profit. Key Terms tenant farmer : A person who farms land rented from a landlord. The renter provides his or her own farming tools and resources. Landowners provide most or all of the resources needed to farm. The Radical Record Radical Republicans in Congress, led by Stevens and Sumner, opened the way to suffrage and legal equality for freedmen.
Key Takeaways Key Points The Radical Republicans aimed to undermine the power of ex-Confederates and provide civil rights, such as suffrage, for the recently freed slaves. Senator Lyman Trumbull proposed the first Civil Rights Law, which stated that African Americans were to be granted equal rights as citizens in all aspects.
Many of the political and legal advances made by African Americans during the Reconstruction period were undermined by laws passed by individual states and the Supreme Court. Constitution, adopted between and , the five years immediately following the Civil War. Radical Republicans : A loose faction of American politicians within the Republican Party from about before the American Civil War until the end of Reconstruction in Radicals strongly opposed slavery during the war and after the war distrusted ex-Confederates, demanding harsh policies for the former rebels, and emphasizing civil rights and voting rights for freedmen recently freed slaves.
Battles over Reconstruction Policy During fall , as a response to the Black Codes and worrisome signs of Southern recalcitrance, the Radical Republicans blocked the readmission of the former rebellious states to the Congress.
The End of Radical Reconstruction The end of Reconstruction was a staggered process, and the period of Republican control ended at different times in different states. Licenses and Attributions. CC licensed content, Shared previously. To do so, he feared, would drive the border slave states still loyal to the Union into the Confederacy and anger more conservative northerners.
Emancipation changed the stakes of the Civil War, ensuring that a Union victory would mean large-scale social revolution in the South. It was still very unclear, however, what form this revolution would take. Over the next several years, Lincoln considered ideas about how to welcome the devastated South back into the Union, but as the war drew to a close in early , he still had no clear plan.
In a speech delivered on April 11, while referring to plans for Reconstruction in Louisiana , Lincoln proposed that some Black people—including free Black people and those who had enlisted in the military—deserved the right to vote. He was assassinated three days later, however, and it would fall to his successor to put plans for Reconstruction in place.
Apart from being required to uphold the abolition of slavery in compliance with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution , swear loyalty to the Union and pay off war debt, southern state governments were given free rein to rebuild themselves. These repressive codes enraged many in the North, including numerous members of Congress, which refused to seat congressmen and senators elected from the southern states.
The first bill extended the life of the bureau, originally established as a temporary organization charged with assisting refugees and formerly enslaved people, while the second defined all persons born in the United States as national citizens who were to enjoy equality before the law. After Johnson vetoed the bills—causing a permanent rupture in his relationship with Congress that would culminate in his impeachment in —the Civil Rights Act became the first major bill to become law over presidential veto.
The participation of African Americans in southern public life after would be by far the most radical development of Reconstruction, which was essentially a large-scale experiment in interracial democracy unlike that of any other society following the abolition of slavery.
Southern Black people won election to southern state governments and even to the U. Congress during this period.
After , an increasing number of southern whites turned to violence in response to the revolutionary changes of Radical Reconstruction. The Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations targeted local Republican leaders, white and Black, and other African Americans who challenged white authority.
Though federal legislation passed during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant in took aim at the Klan and others who attempted to interfere with Black suffrage and other political rights, white supremacy gradually reasserted its hold on the South after the early s as support for Reconstruction waned.
Racism was still a potent force in both South and North, and Republicans became more conservative and less egalitarian as the decade continued. In —after an economic depression plunged much of the South into poverty—the Democratic Party won control of the House of Representatives for the first time since the Civil War.
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