Embedded Files
Civil War Part IV_ Effects, Impacts, & Consequences - APUSH & US History.mp422 Reconstruction and 1876_ Crash Course US History #22.mp4Reconstruction.mp4Jim Crow.mp4The Jim Crow Era.mp4The time period after the Civil War is usually called Reconstruction (1865–1877).
Historians can use diaries to learn about the condition of the Southern states at the end of the Civil War. The diary entries below come from Emma LeConte, a Southern teenager who lived in the Confederate city of Columbia, South Carolina. Read the diary entries.
January 23, 1865
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.
February 22, 1865
Yesterday afternoon we walked all over the town. . . . I meant last night to write down some description of what I had seen, but was too wretchedly depressed and miserable to even think of it. . . . It is even worse than I thought. The place is literally in ruins. The entire heart of the city is in ashes—only the outer edges remain.
wretchedly: horribly
How poor was the South after the war?
Almost all of the Civil War battles were fought in the South. Union and Confederate 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.
By some estimates, over 620,000 Northerners and Southerners died in the Civil War. The chart below represents Southern men who were eligible, or allowed, to join the military.
During the Civil War, most of the eligible Southern men served in the Confederate military. Almost half of the Southern men who served in the Confederate military were killed, wounded, or captured.
Who was eligible for the Confederate army?
Most Confederate soldiers were between the ages of 18 to 35. As the war continued, the Confederacy became more desperate for soldiers. So, many older men and and teenagers also joined the army.
For almost the entire war, the Confederate government did not allow enslaved men to be soldiers, since so many enslaved people wanted the Union to win the war. In the last few months of the war, the Confederate army did begin to recruit African American soldiers, but these recruits were not used in battle.
Losing loved ones
At least 620,000 Union and Confederate soldiers died in the Civil War. Some historians argue the number was much higher. During Reconstruction, thousands of families had to deal with the loss of their brothers, husbands, and sons.
The Civil War changed the lives of both white and African American Southerners. In 1861, there were almost four million enslaved African American people in the Southern states. In 1865, slavery was made illegal.
By the end of the Civil War, over 180,000 African American men had served in the Union army. Some of these men were free before the war. However, most African American soldiers had been enslaved when the war began.
African American soldiers played an important role in the Union victory. After the war, many of these veterans returned to the Southern states, often to find family members whom they had been separated from during slavery.
Ratified in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment banned slavery in the United States. Despite the end of slavery, freed people, or formerly enslaved African Americans, still faced many challenges in the postwar South.
Did freed people get paid for all the time they had been enslaved?
Almost no freed people received pay for their years under slavery. Some Americans in the 1860s argued that freed people should get the land that they had worked on as enslaved people, but these land grants almost never happened.
Today, some Americans argue that the descendants of enslaved people should be given reparations, or payments to make up for past wrongs. Americans are divided on the issue of reparations for slavery.
In 1865, General William T. Sherman signed an order that said thousands of freed people would be given land in some southern states on the Atlantic Coast. This order was later canceled by President Andrew Johnson.
Created in 1865, the Freedmen's Bureau became one of the most important federal agencies during the era of Reconstruction.
How did the Freedmen's Bureau help freed people?
Here is a list of some of the Freedmen's Bureau's activities:
helping freed people find lost family members
making sure that employers treated freed people fairly
helping start schools for freed people
preventing violence against freed people
giving food to freed people
The Bureau was able to help many freed people, but it never had enough agents or money to fully accomplish its goals. There were only a few hundred agents to help over four million freed people. The passage below comes from a letter that a Freedmen's Bureau agent sent to a man in North Carolina. Read the letter.
January 14th, 1866
Sir:
[A] complaint has today been made at the headquarters by Sophia Dunford, a freedwoman, who states that she worked for you last year and that you have given her no money—to save further trouble, you [are] respectfully requested to settle with her. Such hours are worth at least four dollars per month.
Respectfully Yours.
William Fox
What kinds of jobs did freed people have?
Before the Civil War, most African American people were enslaved on plantations. They mainly gained experience doing farm work, so after the war, most of them continued to work in agriculture.
Most freed people were too poor to buy land. They often had to work for the same families that had once owned them.
During the first years of Reconstruction, Southern states adopted laws called Black Codes. Writing in 1935, an African American leader and historian named W.E.B. Du Bois made the following statement about Black Codes. Read the passage.
In all cases, there was [an] . . . attempt on the part of Southern states to make Negroes slaves in everything but name. . . . The Black Codes were deliberately designed to take advantage of every misfortune of the Negro.
Negroes: an old term for people of African heritage
deliberately: on purpose
misfortune: disadvantage
Why did the Southern states pass the Black Codes?
Before the Civil War, the economy of the Southern states had been based around slavery. Lawmakers hoped that passing Black Codes would stop the Southern economy from changing, even after slavery was illegal.
So, many of the Black Codes focused on stopping freed people from finding new work, learning new skills, or starting new businesses. The codes also were meant to stop freed people from organizing political groups to fight for their rights.
The Black Codes horrified freed people and many Northerners, including a group of Northern politicians called the Radical Republicans. Most Radical Republicans wanted to support freed people in the South and to stop former Confederate leaders from regaining power.
Some Radical Republicans and freed people hoped that President Andrew Johnson would oppose the Black Codes and protect the rights of African American people. Others worried that Johnson would not protect the rights of freed people.
Who was Andrew Johnson?
Andrew Johnson was a Democratic politician from Tennessee. Unlike most Southern leaders, Johnson had supported the Union during the Civil War. In the 1864 presidential election, President Lincoln chose Andrew Johnson as vice president as a sign of national unity. When Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, Johnson became president.
Born into a poor Southern family, Andrew Johnson disliked rich slaveholders, but he also disliked African American people. People were often shocked at the angry and offensive language Johnson used to describe African American people.
In 1866, Republicans in Congress passed laws to protect freed people in the South. One bill strengthened the Freedmen's Bureau, and another bill said that freed people's rights should not be taken away. President Andrew Johnson vetoed, or rejected, both bills.
How did Congress react to Johnson's vetoes?
The vetoes, along with some of Johnson's other actions, angered many congressmen. The Radical Republicans in Congress 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, impeaching Johnson was not enough to remove him from office. The Senate also had to vote against Johnson in order to remove him from office. The Senate failed to remove Johnson—by only one vote.
In the congressional elections of 1866, the Radical Republicans hoped to increase their power in the House of Representatives. Winning more congressional seats would make it easier to override, or overrule, President Johnson's vetoes. The pie charts below show how many seats each party had in the House of Representatives before and after the 1866 election.
After the 1866 election, the Republican Party had a larger share of the seats in the House of Representatives. The election gave the Radical Republicans a better chance of overriding President Johnson's
What were election days like in the 1860s?
Unlike elections today, there was no secret ballot. Often, voters would get ballots from political parties that were already filled out. Other times, voters would announce their votes out loud in front of a judge, who would write them down. With no easy way to hide their votes, voters were often intimidated or bribed by people who wanted to influence their decision.
On election days, political parties often held demonstrations and celebrations meant to encourage people to support them. These demonstrations could turn violent, and there were many election day riots throughout the 1800s.
If the Civil War was over, why keep the army in the South?
Radical Republicans argued that it was necessary to keep the army in the South. Radicals said that without the army, former Confederates could control local politics, and freed people would be attacked. Radicals saw the army as the best way to enforce the laws that the federal government passed during Reconstruction.
However, there were limits to what the army could do. Most volunteers in the Union army left the army after the war. With limited soldiers and resources, it was almost impossible for the army to oversee the entire South.
Ulysses S. Grant commanded the U.S. army through the first years of Reconstruction. In 1868, he was the Republican nominee for president. He served as president from 1869 to 1876.
Before the Civil War, African American people were not considered citizens by the federal government or the courts. During Reconstruction, the Radical Republicans wanted to pass a law that made sure freed people would be considered citizens with rights. Ratified in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution defined who was a citizen of the United States. It held that states could not take away the rights of United States citizens. The passage below comes from the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States . . . are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. . . . No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges . . . of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
wherein they reside: where they live
abridge: reduce
deprive: take away
jurisdiction: territory
Who is an American citizen?
According to the Fourteenth Amendment, anyone born in the United States or a territory of the United States is a citizen. Under federal law, any child of a U.S. citizen is also a citizen, even if the child is born outside the United States. Finally, the Fourteenth Amendment says that any immigrant who has been naturalized, or has followed the right legal steps, is a citizen.
The Fourteenth Amendment also said that a state could not pass laws to take away an American citizen's "life, liberty, or property" without a trial or other lawful process. Radical Republicans and freed people hoped this amendment would protect freed people's rights by stopping state laws such as the Black Codes. However, the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment did not mean that freed people's rights were always protected.
Does the Fourteenth Amendment still matter?
The Fourteenth Amendment still plays an important part in American law. Before the Fourteenth Amendment, most Constitutional rights only applied to federal laws, not to state laws.
The Fourteenth Amendment says that no state can take away the rights of its citizens. The amendment also says that each state must equally protect the rights of all of its citizens. For example, in 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board that it was unconstitutional to segregate schools based on race.
In 1954, the lawyer Thurgood Marshall argued before the Supreme Court that school segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1967, Marshall became the first African American Supreme Court justice.
Many Radical Republicans believed that the Fourteenth Amendment did not do enough to protect the rights of freed people. So, they organized a coalition, or group of political allies, to write and adopt another amendment. The Fifteenth Amendment was adopted in 1870. Read the first section of the amendment.
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 of: because of
previous condition of servitude: whether someone had ever been enslaved
Historians still debate how the laws passed during Radical Reconstruction changed the lives of Southerners. Below are some sources that historians use to learn about life in the Southern states during 1860s and 70s.
During Radical Reconstruction, freed people supported the establishment of public schools throughout the South.
What were schools for freed people like?
During Reconstruction, schools were segregated, or separated, by race.
Most freed people could not read, so public schools for freed African American people focused on reading. Often, African American parents would attend school along with their children so that the whole family could learn to read.
These schools succeeded in teaching reading and other subjects to hundreds of thousands of students.
Many white Southerners opposed the laws of the Radical Republicans. Some of these Southerners formed groups like the Ku Klux Klan, or the KKK. The members of the KKK hated how the South had changed during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Complete the text below about the KKK.
During the 1860s and 1870s, the KKK murdered thousands of African American and white Southerners. For example, the KKK wanted to prevent freed people from influencing politics, so they attacked African American voters. The KKK also wanted to stop freed people from becoming more educated, so they attacked teachers. By attacking these groups and many other types of people, the KKK hoped to spread terror among freed people and their allies.
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 think that freed people should have rights.
Julia Hayden, an African American teacher, was killed in 1874 by the White League, a group similar to the KKK.
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 go.
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.
During Reconstruction, Americans were divided about whether or not to support Radical Republican laws such as the Military Reconstruction Act, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Fifteenth Amendment.
Radical Reconstruction and the civil rights movement
Many of the reforms brought by Radical Reconstruction were rolled back in the late 1880s and 1890s. By the 1890s, many states had adopted Jim Crow laws to enforce racial segregation.
However, Radical Reconstruction's effects did not disappear entirely. In the 1950s and 1960s, civil rights activists often looked back to learn from Radical Reconstruction. These activists often used laws passed during Reconstruction, such as the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, to argue that the United States should protect the rights of all citizens. One historian even called the civil rights movement America's Second Reconstruction.
During the Civil War, the South tried to break away from the United States and start a new country called the Confederate States of America. After four years of bloody fighting, the United States defeated the Confederacy in 1865, ending the Civil War. The years following the war are referred to as the Reconstruction Era. During Reconstruction, there was political conflict, and sometimes violence, in the South.
How did the Civil War change the South?
The biggest change was that the war ended slavery. But it wasn't always clear what that meant. For example, people who had been enslaved were now free, but many still lived on their former masters' plantations. Since they usually couldn't afford to buy their own land, freed people often had to find work picking their former masters' crops. So, some people wondered what it really meant to be free.
But freedom did bring many changes, as you will see in the following questions. Some of the most important changes involved freed people fighting to be treated with respect.
After the Civil War, politicians disagreed over what to do with the South. Democrats wanted to leave it alone. But Republicans wanted to reconstruct, or change, the South to make it more like the North. These are some of the plans that Republicans supported:
replacing Confederate leaders with leaders who were loyal to the United States
building schools to improve workers' knowledge and skills, so some of them could take non-farming jobs
building railroads to get Southern products to Northern markets
reducing taxes on businesses so they could create new, non-farming jobs
Democrats called white Republicans "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags"!
Democratic Party leaders argued that all white people should stick together. They were angry at white people who sided with African Americans and supported the Republicans. So, they made up insulting names for them. They called Republicans who were born in the North carpetbaggers, meaning they could fit all of their possessions into a small suitcase. They called white Republicans born in the South scalawags, a word for ragged, underfed cattle.
Adelbert Ames, a governor of Mississippi, was called a "carpetbagger." His family was from Minnesota.
William W. Holden, a governor of North Carolina, was called a "scalawag." He was born in North Carolina.
Many Southerners supported Republican policies, so Republicans soon began to win elections in the South. But even though they had lots of voters, the Southern Republican governments still faced many challenges.
Did Southern states get any help from the North?
The federal government did help Southerners who didn't have enough to eat after the war. Also, individual people from the North sent money to help build schools. Some Northerners even came to the South to try to help. But the Civil War was hugely expensive. Most Northerners wanted the government to pay off its debts and help the families of Northern soldiers killed in the war instead of spending money to help the South. In addition, many Northern leaders felt angry at the South because of the war. They did not want their tax money to be given to Southerners.
Some white Southerners believed deeply that they should be shown more respect than African American people. They did not like the Republicans' plans to protect African American people's rights. Sometimes their anger at the changes to Southern society turned violent. The passage below comes from an investigation into the murder of an African American man named Johnson Stuart. The man's brother is describing what happened before the murder. Read the passage.
Question—Did you ever hear of any threats being made against him before he was killed? . . .
Answer—Major Tom Wadlington told me my brother was marked that day of the Sheriff's election.
Question—Did he say what he meant by marked?
Answer—He said he was marked. I said, "What about? He never did anything." He said, "He stood on the courthouse steps that day." I said, "Well, [the sheriff] told him to stand there to keep back the crowd from crowding up." Major Wadlington said, "Yes, but he kept back the white people, too." I said, "No, he let them in in their turn. All went in, and all were treated alike." He said, "Well, he should not have done that way; he ought to have let the white people in."
State of South Carolina, Evidence taken by the Committee of Investigation of the Third Congressional District, 1870.
How violent was Reconstruction?
It was a dangerous time, especially for Republicans. The Ku Klux Klan, the White League, and other violent groups supported the Democratic Party. They wanted to restore white supremacy, or white control, in the South. They beat, whipped, and sometimes killed Republicans. Most of their victims were African American people. But white Republicans were also targets.
One of the most important changes of Reconstruction came in 1866. A new law passed by Congress gave African American people the right to make and enforce contracts, or legal agreements. This law gave them control over their lives in ways that enslaved people had never had before.
A sale contract could prove they bought their house and land. If anyone tried to take their property, a sale contract would show who the rightful owner was.
A marriage contract could prove that they were legally married. Enslaved people had married each other, but their masters felt free to ignore those marriages. With a marriage contract, their marriages were protected by law.
An employment contract could make sure they got paid for their work. Employment contracts describe the work someone agrees to do and the amount they'll be paid. So, free people could use employment contracts to make sure employers paid them the money they promised to pay.
A rental contract could prove they owned equipment that other people had rented. A rental contract shows that someone borrowed property from someone else. If the borrower refused to return their property, free people could use a rental contract to prove it was theirs.
When 19th-century Americans wanted to persuade the government to help them, they often wrote and signed petitions, or letters explaining what they wanted. If they could not write, they showed support by marking petitions with an "X." Read the following passage.
Freedmen's Bureau official, 1866
I saw one [petition] . . . at least 30 feet in length, representing 10,000 negroes. It was affecting to examine it and note the names and marks (x) of such a long list of parents, ignorant themselves, but begging that their children might be educated.
negroes: an old term for people of African heritage
affecting: emotional or moving
ignorant: uneducated
John W. Alvord, quoted in James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (1988).
African American petition in Georgia, 1867
A Free school system is a great need of our state, and . . . we will do all in our power by voice and by vote to [demand the creation] of a system.
Black Equal Rights Association of Macon, Georgia, quoted in James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (1988).
Sometimes parents went to school, too!
Reconstruction was the first time many African American Southerners had a chance to go to school. So, sometimes adults went to school, too. In fact, children, parents, and even grandparents sometimes learned in the same classrooms! The list below shows some of the reasons why many adults felt it was important to go to school.
A man in Alabama sat in class next to his granddaughter. He said "he wouldn't trouble the [teacher] much, but he must learn to read the Bible."
A middle-aged woman in Florida wanted to learn to read and write "so that the [boss] can't cheat me."
An old man in Louisiana simply said, "If it's good enough for white folks, [it's] good for me, too."
Some parents couldn't go to school because they had to work. So, when the children got home from school, they taught their parents!
During Reconstruction, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875. This law protected the rights of African American people to use public accommodations without being treated differently because of their race. Public accommodations are businesses that serve the public. Read the following passage from the act.
From the Civil Rights Act of 1875
All persons . . . shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of . . . inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement.
conveyances: methods of transportation, such as trains or boats
US Statutes at Large, Vol. XVIII.
What happened after the Civil Rights Act was passed?
After the act was passed, many African American people tried to use businesses that had been segregated. For the most part, the businesses still refused to serve them. So, some African American people went to court to try to get the law enforced. Sometimes they were successful, especially in the North.
But most white people in the South, and even in the North, did not want the Civil Rights Act to be enforced. When African American people sued for their rights, most judges dismissed their claims. In 1883, the Supreme Court decided the act was unconstitutional, and it could no longer be enforced.
One of the biggest projects of Southern Reconstruction governments was expanding railroads in the South. The following maps show the railroads that had been built in the South by 1860 and by 1880.
In 1860, there were almost no railroad tracks west of the Mississippi River. But by 1880, those states had been connected to the rest of the South. Other Southern states expanded their railroads as well, so Southerners were more likely to have access to railroads in 1880 than they were in 1860. But these new railroads were expensive, so many states had to borrow money to build railroads.
Was it a good idea to spend so much money on railroads?
Southern governments hoped that building more railroad lines would help farmers get their crops to market. That would allow farmers to make more money and would help the state to grow more prosperous. But most historians think the Southern states spent too much money on railroads. Many of the railroads didn't have enough customers to stay in business. State governments often lost money by supporting these railroads.
In order to pay for railroads, schools, and other projects, Southern Republican governments often took on debt. The following chart shows the amount of money that several Southern states borrowed before and during Reconstruction.
How did states borrow money?
States borrowed money by selling bonds. Bonds were sheets of paper that states printed and sold to people.
This bond was used by the state of Louisiana to borrow money during Reconstruction. Here's how it worked:
A person would buy this bond for $1,000.
Twice a year, she would clip one of the coupons off the bottom and mail it to the state office.
The state would then send her an interest payment of $40. Interest is extra money the state pays to use her money.
Once all the coupons were clipped, she would send in the bond itself. In return, the state would give her back her original $1,000.
All together, after 40 years the investor would have turned her original $1,000 into a total of $4,200!
Most of the Southern state governments borrowed more money than they could pay back. So, they repudiated the debts, which means they announced that they would not pay back the money. The following passage comes from a letter from a cotton weaver in Massachusetts. Read the passage.
[I] have saved a little by [careful planning] & hard work beside supporting a small family. Last spring I [bought] South Carolina State bonds, [spending] a large portion of all I am worth . . . . I have held onto them ever since thinking they would not go under . . . . But I see by the papers that [there is] talk of their repudiation . . . I hope if those bonds are repudiated [the government] will first take a look at the case of honest people . . . & see that many [people like me] are to suffer severely by it.
go under: become worthless
S.W. Knight to Gov. R. K. Scott, n.d. 1871, in Box 18, Folder 29, Gov. R. K. Scott Papers, South Carolina Department of Archives and History.
The writer says that he is a hard worker who lent money to South Carolina. If the state does not pay back the money, he will lose most of his savings.
The United States economy had grown quickly after the Civil War. But in 1873, it suddenly began to collapse. This time of economic crisis is sometimes called the Panic of 1873 or the Depression of 1873.
As the economy continued to weaken, struggling American voters lost confidence in their government. The chart below shows how many members of Congress belonged to each party before and after the Panic of 1873.
What is a financial panic?
A panic like the one in 1873 happens when lots of people suddenly become afraid they will lose their money. In the 1870s, if your bank went out of business, you lost your money! So, if people became worried that a bank would close, they ran to the bank to take their money out. But when everyone tried to get their money at once, banks often ran out of cash and were forced to close. The same thing happened in the 1930s during the Great Depression.
Do financial panics still happen today?
Today, the U.S. government protects money that people put in the bank. But financial panics can still happen when people get worried that things they own, such as houses and investments, are losing value. The most recent panic was in 2008.
More Democrats in Congress meant less support for Reconstruction. In the North, even some Republicans began to turn against the Southern Republican governments. One reason for this change was that Northern newspapers harshly criticized these governments for corruption, or illegal behavior. The following passages are adapted from a Northern journalist's description of the South in 1874 and a historian's account from 1988.
Northern journalist
The atmosphere in South Carolina is so full of corruption that the politicians are not even embarrassed about their crimes. They plunder, and are proud of it. They steal, and dare you to prove it.
Adapted from James S. Pike, The Prostrate State: South Carolina Under Negro Government, 1874
Modern historian
There was nothing unusual about the corruption that was committed in nearly every Reconstruction state. Stealing, dishonesty, and abuse of power have always been part of American politics.
Adapted from Eric Foner, Reconstruction, 1988.
So, were the Southern Republicans corrupt, or not?
Some were corrupt and some were not! As in other parts of the country, there were politicians in the South who stole money or took bribes. But also, a lot of Southern Republicans were accused of crimes they did not commit.
John J. Patterson paid people to make him a U.S. senator in 1872. It was one of the most notorious examples of corruption during Reconstruction.
Francis L. Cardozo, a public official in South Carolina, was accused of corruption by Democrats. Historians now believe Cardozo was innocent.
During Reconstruction, Congress and the president wanted to reduce the size of the army. That meant they had to make difficult choices about where the remaining soldiers could be used.
In 1868, the line for the South is partway between 10,000 and 15,000. So, there were about 12,000 U.S. troops in the South. By 1876, the line is partway between 0 and 5,000. So, the number of troops in the South had declined to 3,000. Since the troops were helping protect Republicans from violence, this change meant that Republicans were less safe in 1876.
With Democrats in control of Congress, support for Reconstruction declined. During the election of 1876, white Democrats wanted to elect a Democratic president, too. They hoped this would finally end Reconstruction, allowing them to return to power in the South. The cartoon below describes the presidential election of 1876. The candidates were Samuel Tilden, a Democrat, and Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican.
Was there a lot of violence in 1876?
There was some violence, but the real problem was election fraud. Election fraud happens when people vote more than once, or when they use tricks to keep other people from voting.
During Reconstruction, people voted with ballots, or "tickets," like the one shown here. Each party printed tickets that had the names of only their party's candidates. To vote, people picked up the ballot for the party they liked and dropped it into a large wooden box.
Each person was only supposed to add one ballot to the box. But if a voter could steal or make extra ballots, he could sneak them all into the box. Then, his party would get many extra votes!
In 1876, this kind of election fraud happened in many different places, especially in the South.
Some historians believe that the election of 1876 was decided by an event known as the Compromise of 1877 A compromise is an agreement in which each group gives up something the other group wants. The following events describe what happened after the election.
There was a lot of cheating in the election of 1876. When the voting ended, it was not clear who the real winner was. In January of 1877, Congress formed a committee to choose the president. The committee chose the Republican, Rutherford B. Hayes. But Democrats refused to accept this decision.
On February 26, Northern Republicans met with Southern Democrats, and rumors said they reached a deal: Democrats would allow Hayes to win, and Hayes would end Reconstruction. After the meeting, Democrats stopped delaying the election of Hayes, who became president in March 1877. Over the next couple of months, President Hayes ordered troops to stop protecting Southern Republican governments.
Why didn't people agree about who won the election of 1876?
Tilden would have won more electoral votes than Hayes if all the ballots had been counted. But some Southern states threw out votes they said were illegal. That was enough to elect the Republican candidate, Hayes, by one electoral vote!
Democrats thought the Republican governments cheated by throwing out votes. Some Democrats even threatened violence if Hayes became president. Many Americans worried this could start another civil war! So, Congress created the election committee to try to end the crisis without violence. But at first, Democrats refused to accept the ruling of the committee.
Did the Compromise of 1877 actually happen?
Historians disagree! Some believe there was a deal: Southern Democrats allowed Hayes to win, and in return he ended Reconstruction. But other historians don't think there was a compromise. They argue that Democrats allowed Hayes to be elected in order to prevent another civil war, not because of a compromise. They also claim that Hayes ended Reconstruction because it had become less popular, not because he had promised Southern Democrats he would.
Reconstruction ended when the last Southern Republican governments were replaced by Democrats in 1877. The Democrats reversed many of the policies of the Republican governments. Over the years, historians have debated the question of whether Reconstruction should be considered a success or a failure.
Why was it so hard to protect people in the South?
In many cases, violent groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, or KKK, were made up of Confederate veterans. These men were experienced soldiers, and many of them had horses and good weapons. States tried to form militias to fight against the KKK and other violent groups. But these militias were often made up of people who had not been soldiers before, and they couldn't defeat experienced Confederate soldiers.
The U.S. Army was stronger than the violent groups. For example, it broke up the KKK in the early 1870s. But as Reconstruction went on, fewer and fewer soldiers were stationed in the South. As a result, other violent groups kept fighting for white supremacy, or white control, in the South.
Once Reconstruction ended, Democrats were in control of the Southern states. They began to pass disfranchisement (dis-FRAN-chize-ment) laws that made it easier to keep African American people from voting. One common type of disfranchisement law said that only educated people could vote.
How did disfranchisement laws work?
The Fifteenth Amendment made it illegal to limit voting rights based on race. Southern Democrats tried to find ways around this by passing disfranchisement laws. These laws didn't mention race, but they were enforced in a way that kept African American people from voting. Here are some examples:
Some states passed laws saying only educated people could vote.But Democratic poll workers were allowed to judge who was educated, and they favored white voters.
Some states required voters to pay a tax before they could vote. Poll workers would often ask African American people to show proof that they had paid the tax. But poll workers might not ask white voters for proof, so white people could often vote even if they hadn't paid the tax.
Once the Democrats were fully in control of the Southern states, they began to pass laws that helped white landowners and hurt workers. These laws were often enforced in an unfair way, so that most of the workers who were hurt were African American people. Read the description of some of these laws. Then answer the question below.
Vagrancy laws allowed police to arrest people who came to towns where they didn't have jobs or own property.
Enticement laws made it a crime to offer work to someone who already worked for someone else.
Convict lease laws forced people convicted of crimes to work for anyone who leased, or rented, them from the state.
Why wasn't the convict lease seen as slavery?
The Supreme Court said that the Thirteenth Amendment only banned individuals from forcing people to work. But states were still allowed to force people to work! Some states decided that, if a person was convicted of a crime, he could be forced to work for the state. Then, the state could sell that work to an individual.
Are prisoners still forced to work today?
Convict lease laws were ended by 1928, so people can no longer rent prisoners from the state. But even today, states can still force prisoners to work. Prisoners help maintain highways, make license plates, or even fight fires. This saves money for the state and for taxpayers, so some people think it is a good idea. Other people think it is wrong because it is like slavery. What do you think?
Many African American people were so frustrated with conditions in the South that they decided to leave. Some hoped to start a new colony of their own, possibly in a western state or territory, like Kansas. These travelers are often called Exodusters. The passage below is from a poem written by an African American poet in 1879. Read the passage.
"Good-bye! Off for Kansas"
By John Willis Menard
Good-bye ye bloody scenes of long ago!
Good-bye to cotton fields and hounds!
From you, vile sources of my earthly woe,
My freed and leaping spirit bounds!
Though free, my work to me no profit yields,
And for my politics, am mobb'd;
No more thank God! upon these bloody fields
Shall I be of my labor robb'd!
woe: pain or sadness
no profit yields: makes no money
mobb'd: attacked
How many African American people went to Kansas?
In 1879 alone, about 6,000 African American Southerners traveled to Kansas. Over the next decade, as many as 20,000 people may have gone. But most African American people did not leave. Until the 1910s, more than 90% of African American people still lived in the South.
Why didn't more people leave?
Moving was expensive, and most Southerners did not have enough money. Also, they didn't know whether they could find good jobs in other places. But by the 1900s, Northern companies began recruiting African American workers. Sometimes they even paid for them to travel to Northern jobs. These opportunities led millions of African American Southerners to move north in what is often called the Great Migration.
For African Americans who remained in the South, conditions got even worse in the 1880s and 1890s. Southern states began passing laws that required segregation, or keeping people of different races separate. These laws, known as Jim Crow laws, lasted a long time. In the passage below, an African American leader describes what segregation was like in the 1920s. Read the passage.
Buying a ticket at a segregated window in a segregated waiting room in Atlanta and riding in a segregated coach on a train out of Atlanta was a most humiliating experience, especially when the waiting rooms and the trains were crowded. Everything was done to degrade Negroes. Usually the segregated window to serve Negroes was [ignored] as long as white people were waiting to be served on the other side. Often the ticket sellers were mean and rude to Negroes, making it painfully clear that they did not want to serve them.
degrade: make someone feel shame and frustration
Benjamin Mays, Born to Rebel: An Autobiography (1971).
Who was Jim Crow?
Jim Crow was a character in minstrel shows. Minstrel shows were popular music and comedy shows in the nineteenth century. They claimed to represent African American culture. But instead, they often mocked African American people so that white people could laugh at them.
Eventually, Jim Crow became an insulting term for African American people. Then, the term was used to describe laws and customs created to give white people advantages and keep African American people below them in society.
During Reconstruction, several amendments to the Constitution were passed to protect African American people's rights. But the protections they offered were seriously weakened once the Jim Crow laws went into effect.
The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery, which is a system of forcing people to work without pay. But convict lease laws created a new system that forced people to work without paying them.
The Fourteenth Amendment recognized that African American people were citizens, which meant that they had some rights. But the Jim Crow system created two different, unequal classes of citizens, meaning that white people had more rights than African American people.
The Fifteenth Amendment made it legal for African American men to vote, so white Southerners could not stop them from voting just because of their race. But white Southerners found other ways to keep most African American men from voting, even without mentioning race.
The following timeline shows some of the important events during and after Reconstruction.
Why did segregation last so long?
It took a lot of time, and a lot of people working together, to end segregation.
African American people opposed segregation from the beginning, but they were not able to defeat it until they had built up enough money over decades of hard work and saving. With more money, they could
protest segregation even if their employers told them not to;
force companies to treat them fairly by boycotting the companies, or refusing to buy from them; and
start organizations to fight for equal rights.
All these years of hard work began to pay off in the 1950s with the start of the Civil Rights Movement, which ended legal segregation in the United States. Today, people use many of these same strategies to fight against other injustices.
Page updated
Report abuse