Reconstruction

The Civil War left many Southern families poorer than before. Read the 1865 diary entry by Southern teenager Emma LeConte. Use it to answer the question below.

My shoes are 150 dollars a pair. In two or three months these prices will be doubled. Two meals a day. . . . We have no reason to complain, so many families are so much worse off. Many have not tasted meat for months, and we [have] a cow [and] are able to have butter.

How poor was the South after the war?

Almost all of the Civil War battles were fought in the South. Armies marched through and took any supplies that were useful. They often burned everything else.

By the end of the war, most Southern railroads were destroyed. Almost half of Southerners' livestock had been killed. That livestock included valuable animals such as pigs and cows.

After the Confederacy was defeated, Americans wondered how to rebuild the South.

Who was Andrew Johnson?

Andrew Johnson was a Southerner from Tennessee. He was a Democrat. President Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. President Lincoln chose Andrew Johnson as vice president to try to gain Southern support in the election.

Andrew Johnson did not like rich slaveholders, but he also disliked African American people. Republicans and African American leaders worried that Andrew Johnson would be against helping the freed people of the South.

During the first years of Reconstruction, Southern states passed laws called Black Codes.

The passage below is about the Black Codes. It was written by W.E.B. Du Bois, a historian and African American leader in the 1900s.

In all cases, there was [an] . . . attempt on the part of Southern states to make Negroes slaves in everything but name.

Negroes: an old term for people of African heritage

The following laws fit Du Bois's description of the goals of the Black Codes:

• laws that made it illegal for African American people to be out at night

• laws that required African American people to work for white people

How did people respond to the Black Codes?

Many people looked to the federal government to end the Black Codes. In 1866, Frederick Douglass and other African American leaders met with President Andrew Johnson. They hoped to get him to act against the Black Codes.

Republican congressmen also began thinking of laws that could stop the Black Codes.

The Freedmen's Bureau was one of the most important federal agencies during Reconstruction.

How did the Freedmen's Bureau help freed people?

• Here is a list of some of the Freedmen's Bureau's goals:help freed people find lost family members

• start schools for freed people

• prevent violence against freed people

• give food to freed people

The Bureau never had enough agents or money to meet all its goals. There were only a few hundred agents to help over four million freed people. Still, the Bureau was able to help many freed people in the South.

From 1865 to 1868, Congress passed bills to protect freed people. President Andrew Johnson vetoed these bills. By vetoing a bill, a president rejects the bill.

How did Congress react to Johnson's vetoes?

The vetoes, along with some of Johnson's other actions, angered many congressmen. A group of politicians called the Radical Republicans decided they needed to remove President Johnson from office.

Was Johnson removed from office?

In 1868, the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Johnson. Impeaching Johnson was similar to charging him with a crime.

However, the Senate also had to vote in order to remove Johnson from office. The Senate failed to remove Johnson by only one vote.

During Reconstruction, the Radical Republicans in Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment. After the amendment, freed people became

citizens with rights. State governments could no longer ignore these rights.

Why did the Radical Republicans want the Fourteenth Amendment?

The Radical Republicans wanted to stop the Black Codes. They needed a way for the federal government to have power over the state laws. So, the Radical Republicans came up with the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Fourteenth Amendment said freed people were American citizens with rights. It also said that state laws could not take away the rights of an American citizen. The amendment gave the federal government the power to overturn the Black Codes.

Who is an American citizen?

Before the Fourteenth Amendment, there was no clear law about who was a citizen. The amendment says that anyone born in the United States is a citizen. The amendment also says that any immigrant who has been naturalized, or has followed the right legal steps, is a citizen.

Many Radical Republicans believed that the Fourteenth Amendment still did not do enough to protect the rights of freed people. So, they passed the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. Below is the first section of the amendment. Use it to answer the question below.

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied . . . by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

denied: refused

on account :because

previous condition of servitude: whether someone was ever enslaved

The Fifteenth Amendment protected the right to vote.

The Fifteenth Amendment gave African American men the right to vote throughout the United States. However, the Fifteenth Amendment did not say anything about women being allowed to vote.

When did women get the right to vote?

During Reconstruction, some territories and states began to let women vote. But it wasn't until the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 that most women were allowed to vote in all the states.

Many of the people who fought for women's rights also fought against slavery. For example, Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass both fought for women's rights and the end of slavery.

Many freed people wanted to protect their new rights and help their communities. Churches, political clubs, and charities were organizations that freed people formed in order to achieve these goals.

• churches - Most freed people were Christians. Churches were places their communities could meet together. Many African American leaders during Reconstruction were ministers, or church leaders.

• political clubs - In political clubs, freed people talked about problems in their communities. Most political clubs for freed people supported the Republican Party. The Republican party had pushed to end slavery.

• charities - Most freed people were poor. African American people set up charities to deliver food and clothing to each other.

The passage below comes from the autobiography of a former enslaved person, the Reverend James W.C. Pennington.

There is one sin that slavery committed against me, which I never can forgive. It robbed me of my education.

sin: crime

committed: did

Freed people wanted their free children to have better lives than they had. Based on Reverend Pennington's quote, many freed people wanted to start new schools for African American people during Reconstruction.

What were schools for freed people like?

During Reconstruction, schools were segregated, or separated, by race.

Most freed people could not read. Public schools for freed African American people focused on reading. Often, African American parents would attend school along with their children so that they could learn to read, too.

These schools succeeded in teaching reading and other subjects to hundreds of thousands of students.

Carpetbaggers

Many Northerners moved to the South after the war. Some of these Northerners wanted to help freed people, while others hoped to find jobs in the South. The Northerners who moved to the South were called carpetbaggers. The name "carpetbagger" came from the type of bags people would use when they moved to the South.

Many white Southerners disliked carpetbaggers. They thought that carpetbaggers were trying to make money off of the defeated South.

A group called the Ku Klux Klan, or the KKK, attacked many people in the South. The members of the KKK hated that the South had changed during the Civil War and Reconstruction. The kind of people the KKK attacked were:

• African American people

• Southern Republicans

What kind of people joined the KKK?

Many of the men who joined the KKK were former Confederate soldiers. They blamed Republicans and African American people for the Confederacy losing the war. The KKK also blamed these groups for the changes that came after the war. Some former slaveholders joined the KKK because they did not like that former enslaved people had rights.

Were there other groups like the KKK?

Groups similar to the KKK committed violence across the South. For example, a group called the White League killed ministers, teachers, and Union army veterans. They blamed those people for the changes in the South.

Why didn't the government stop the KKK?

Often, white Southern government officials supported the KKK. If a KKK member was arrested, the judge and jury would usually let him or her go.

However, the federal government did try to stop the KKK. Congress passed laws to arrest KKK members. For example, President Ulysses S. Grant ordered the army to find KKK members in the Southern states. In the 1870s, the federal government was able to break up most of the KKK. However, the KKK still exists today.

In the decades after Reconstruction, most poor African American and white southerners became sharecroppers.

Lies and debts

Landowners sometimes cheated their sharecroppers. They would lie about how much money sharecroppers owed them or how much the harvested crops were worth. This cycle of debt kept most white and African American sharecroppers poor.

Sharecroppers in the 1940s

If sharecropping was so bad, why did people keep agreeing to do it?

Almost all sharecroppers were too poor to buy their own land. The cycle of debt made it almost impossible to save money. So, sharecropping remained a common practice in the South until the 1950s.

After Reconstruction, African American people lost many rights. In the 20th century, civil rights activists tried to win back African American people's freedoms.

Civil rights activists often looked back to learn from Reconstruction. One historian called the civil rights movement America's Second

Reconstruction.

People living in the 1950s and 1960s faced similar questions to those living through Reconstruction. What should the federal government's role be? Who counts as a citizen? What rights should be protected by the Constitution?