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Topic 2: Reconstruction

Reconstruction: An "Unfinished Revolution" 

Reading Notes: American Yawp Chapter 15

II. Politics of Reconstruction

  • When Black Americans and their radical allies succeeded in securing citizenship for freedpeople, a new fight commenced to determine the legal, political, and social implications of American citizenship. (page 2)
  • Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment on January 31, 1865. The amendment legally abolished slavery “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” Section Two of the amendment granted Congress the “power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
  • Lincoln’s policy was lenient, conservative, and short-lived
    • Assassinated in April 1865
    • Propelled Vice President Andrew Johnson into the executive office in April 1865. Johnson, a states’-rights, strict-constructionist, and unapologetic racist from Tennessee, offered southern states a quick restoration into the Union.
    • Black Codes were passed to "to regulate Black behavior and impose social and economic control"
      • forbade Black men from serving on juries or in state militias, refused to recognize Black testimony against white people, apprenticed orphaned children to their former enslaver, and established severe vagrancy law
      • Black Codes effectively criminalized Black people’s leisure, limited their mobility, and locked many into exploitative farming contracts (page 5)
  • Land was one of the major desires of the freed people. (page 10)
    • Freedpeople’s hopes of land reform were unceremoniously dashed as Freedmen’s Bureau agents held meetings with the freedmen throughout the South, telling them the promise of land was not going to be honored and that instead they should plan to go back to work for their former enslaver as wage laborers. (page10)
    •  Radicalism had its limits, and the Republican Party’s commitment to economic stability eclipsed their interest in racial justice. (Page 11)

III. The Meaning of Black Freedom

  • reconstitution of families
  • rushed to solemnize unions with formal wedding ceremonies
  • Freedpeople placed a great emphasis on education for their children and themselves
  • Religion

IV - Reconstruction and Women

  • Elizabeth Cady Staton & Susan B. Anthony
  • Some worried that political support for freedmen would be undermined by the pursuit of women’s suffrage (page 14)
  • Frederick Douglass insisted that the ballot was literally a “question of life and death” for southern Black men, but not for women. (page 14)
  • rances Harper, for example, a freeborn Black woman living in Ohio, urged them to consider their own privilege as white and middle class (page 14)
  • Disheartened, Stanton and Anthony allied instead with white supremacists who supported women’s equality. (page 14)
  •  In 1875, the Supreme Court addressed this constitutional argument: acknowledging women’s citizenship but arguing that suffrage was not a right guaranteed to all citizens. (page 15)

    V - Racial Violence in Reconstruction

    • 1865, southerners shared a near-unanimous sentiment that “You cannot make the negro work, without physical compulsion.” Violence had been used in the antebellum period to enforce slave labor and to define racial differences. In the post-emancipation period, it was used to stifle Black advancement and return to the old order. (page 18)
    • Racial violence in the Reconstruction period took three major forms: (page 19-20)
      • riots against Black political authority
      • interpersonal fights
      • organized vigilante groups
        • Nightriders & KKK
    • Enforcement Acts 1870 & 1871 - (page 21)
      • The acts made it criminal to deprive African Americans of their civil rights. 
      • The acts also deemed violent Klan behavior as acts of rebellion against the United States and allowed for the use of U.S. troops to protect freedpeople

    VI. Economic Development during the Civil War & Reconstruction


    VIDEO LECTURE NOTES

    The unprecedented nature of the reconstruction

    Rebuilding the South & the Rebuilding of the Entire Nation

    • Did the rebuilding of the nation after 1865 mean a return to peaceful coexistence?
      • No, it was chaotic and violent but there is resistance
    • Who has the authority to oversee reconstruction and legislate reconstruction policies?
      • Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 (successor - Andrew Johnson)

    • The problem of nearly 4 million freedpersons:
      • What will be the dimensions of black freedom? Blacks as wage laborers? Blacks as landowners?
      • The enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 did not lead to immediate freedom for nearly 4 million African American slaves. 
    • How to treat the South:
      • Defeated nation? Punish with no impunity?
      • What are the terms for readmission? Who would rule in the South?
      • The transition of the southern political economy

    Three Phases of Reconstruction (end of reconstruction 1877)

    1. Wartime Reconstruction
      • Since Lincoln saw it as a political struggle he would put national healing before issues such as black Justice.
      • Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan required 10% of voters to take an oath of allegiance to the Union before re-admission
      • "Malice towards none, charity towards all" - Lincoln
      • Wade-Davis Bill - (Radical Republicans)
        • Require 50% of eligible voters have to renounce the succession
        • Required no ex-confederate be elected to office
        • Require a policy that requires a plan for the freedom of black slaves
        • counter to Lincoln's 10% plan
    2. Presidential (Andrew Johnson)
      • wants to leave it behind and reconstruct the nation
      • see the war as a political one
    3. Congressional, aka "Radical" (In response to Johnson)
      • Want to punish the south
      • make reconstruction hard on the south
      • saw it as an opportunity to reshape the south and the nation
    • Moderate Republicans vs. Radical Republicans
      • Freeperson rights that needed to be decided: citizens, right to vote, run for office, sell their labor, right to own land?
      • Moderate - believed in 'gradualism'
      • Radicals - demanded immediate political rights for freepersons

    Freedman's Bureau

    • North - Industrial economy
    • South - agrarian economy
    • Compulsory free labor - forced free labor (free labor means earning a wage)
    • Freedman's Bureau 1865
      • Created by the Republican party
      • Meant to ease the transition from slavery to freedom
      • Education
      • Adjudicating in the disputes between whites and freedpersons
      • Provide jobs, healthcare, and landowning
    • President Andrew Johnson - after Lincoln's assassination, tore down all the work of the Freedman's Bureau
    • How did ex-slaves think about this issue?
      • They believed they had a right to it
        • Bailey Wyatt - former slave speaking at a freedman's political league meeting about political organization 

        • Why? Slaves have been the ones suffering so the nation is getting rich off their work. Believes that they deserve it. 

    Presidential Reconstruction: Andrew Johnson vs. Congress

    • Andrew Johnson
      • VP Southern was chosen by Lincoln to appease the southern states
        • Racist & defender of slavery
        • Worst president in history
        • Defender of the Constitution
        • Despised the plantation owners of the south (class resentment)
    • A power struggle between the executive branch and the legislative branch (congress)
    • Andrew Johnson's 3-point plan (logic of reconciliation)
      • Renounce secession
        • Give oath of allegiance
      • Ratify 13th Amendment
        • All states had to ratify the 13th in order to enter the Union
      • Deny confederate debts 
        • cut the opportunity to sue the government for Confederate deaths
      • Doesn't include anything in terms of Black freedom or the right to vote
        • returns confiscated land to former owners
        • Plantation owners had to meet him in person & beg for their land back
        • seen as sympathetic towards the confederates & emboldening them
    • Results in the emergence of Black Codes
      • attempt to keep ex-slaves subordinate to White Southerners
      • Example:
        • illegal for blacks to own firearms
        • illegal for blacks to insult whites
        • illegal for blacks to be members of a jury
        • illegal for blacks to purchase alcohol
        • vagrancy codes - caught in public loitering = return to the plantation to work
        • apprenticeship laws - take children away and put them in apprenticeship to learn a job but then returned back to the field
      • South got away from it because of Johnson - he embolden the south
        • He doesn't see anything wrong with the codes
      • Southern Intransigence - southern defiance
        • see Johnson as the means to take back their control
      • Forcing the Republican Party to act
        • merged the two factions
        • Extends the Freemans Breau's Bill (Johnson Veto it)
        • Civil Rights Act
          • Nullify Black Code
          • Citizenship of Freedmen
        • Bring impeachment charges against Andrew Johnson
          • Impeached but not removed

    Reconstruction Amendments - (13th, 15th, & 15th)

    • Southern Intransigence - southern defiance
    • 13th Amendment 
      • Abolishes slavery
    • 14th Amendment (considered 'radical republican amendment')
      • Birthright citizenship - if you were born in the US you are granted citizenship
        • keeping in the form of not addressing slavery in the constitution
      • *equal protection clause: states cannot deny citizens equal protection under the law
      • White women were upset about the "Negro first approach"
        • splits the suffrage movement
    • 15th Amendment (considered 'radical republican amendment') 1869
      • Prohibits state governments from denying citizens the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude (slavery)
      • Saying states cannot pass laws that are rigid or affect ex-slaves
      • The debates surrounding the passage of the 15th Amendment was a major event in the history of women's suffrage.
    • Military Reconstruction Act 1867
      • Should the Union Army withdraw or remain in the South?
        • Part of the Army remained in the South
      • South was divided
        • arranged into 5 military districts
        • Voter registration
        • New State Constitution
        • Military Rule
      • Johnson Veto'd it and it lead to his impeachment
    • These we all placed into effect because of Radical Reconstruction 
      • Republican Rule: "logic of black justice"
    • Sharecropping -
      • Sale your labor for a wage
      • looked fair in the beginning
      • Freeman did not have materials, food, or anything to work
        • Crop-lien system - buy against your crops
        • Cultivation goals not ever met
        • Had to pay back what they owed
        • Peonage - working for free in sharecropping because you owed so much
          • Slavery by another name

    Southern Intransigence

    • Redemption Movement
      • Since Johnson was seen as an Ally, the south was emboldened
      • A political movement, represented by the democratic party
        • Agenda was to promote the restoration of the southern way of living (minus slavery)
        • Wanted to go from Military/Negro rulers back to home rule
      • Redeemers - relentless intimidation
        • used race as a fault line to separate political lines
      • Blames the plight of white farmers on the republicans
    • Klu Klux Klan and extralegal violence
      • extralegal violence - violence committed even though the law prohibits it. 
        • Do it anyways and not subject to legal repercussions
      • the terrorist organization created to restore the southern rule & way of life
    • Sharecropping
      • a contractual agreement that keeps them in the cycle of "slavery but by another name"
      • way of keeping African Americans subordinate
    Fall of Reconstruction
    • The Dunning School
      • Reconstruction's failure due to "negro incapacity"
    • W.E.B. Du Bois, and later Eric Foner:
      • African American agency was central to the Reconstruction
      • Yet, it could not overcome the forces of southern intransigence
        • it was too great of an obstacle
      • Foner: Reconstruction was a revolutionary event; a "second founding"

    Why did Reconstruction fall apart?

    • The decline of the Radical Republicans
      • some of them not re-elected and some died of old age
    • Southern intransigence
    • Northern weariness of "black justice"
    • Grant Administration
      • U. Grant - Union General & become president
      • Were radical but then became more connected to big business and corrupted
      • Divided the Republican party, rather than unified
    • National shift attention from the war towards industrialization and westward expansion
    • Election of 1876 > end of Military Reconstruction


    Reading:

    American Yawp (your primary textbook), a free online textbook published by Stanford University Press http://www.americanyawp.com - Chapter 15

    http://www.americanyawp.com/text/15-reconstruction/

    Video Lectures:

    Reconstruction 1 - https://youtu.be/VmOU_tvAxcg

    Reconstruction 2 - https://youtu.be/zdRLv7N70ME

    Reconstruction 3 - https://youtu.be/t0JC1nvN0s0

    Reconstruction 4 - https://youtu.be/7deHR03qIBU

    Reconstruction 5 - https://youtu.be/bnZLh_IxoVw

    Reconstruction 6 - https://youtu.be/Ctd2WylK8cc

    Reconstruction 7 - https://youtu.be/3PDxBcMYl0s

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