Topic 9 - The Reconstruction Era (1865-1877)

Lesson 3 - Reconstruction and Southern Society

Reconstruction and Southern Society

Before the Civil War, a small group of rich planters dominated politics in the South. During Reconstruction, however, new groups tried to reshape southern politics.

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In this image, a member of the Freedmen’s Bureau holds off outraged white men. Look at other images and headings in this topic, then write two predictions of what you will read about.

Guiding Questions

How did conservatives resist Reconstruction?
What economic, political, and social challenges faced Reconstruction governments?
How did Reconstruction redefine what it meant to be an American?

Vocabulary

scalawag
carpetbagger
Ku Klux Klan
sharecropper

Academic Vocabulary

notorious
anticipate

How Did New Political Groups Shape the South?

The state governments created during Radical Reconstruction were different from any governments the South had known before. The old leaders had lost much of their influence. Three groups stepped in to replace them.

White Southern Republicans

One group to emerge consisted of white southerners who supported the new Republican governments. Many were businesspeople who had opposed secession in 1860. They wanted to forget the war and get on with rebuilding the South.

However, many whites in the South felt that any southerner who helped the Republicans was a traitor. They called the white southern Republicans scalawags, a word used for small, scruffy horses.

Northerners

Many northerners came to the South after the war. White southerners accused the new arrivals of hoping to get rich from the South’s misery. Southerners jested that these northerners were in such a hurry to move south that they had time only to fling a few clothes into carpetbags, a type of cheap suitcase. They became known as carpetbaggers.

In fact, northerners went south for various reasons. While a few did hope to profit as the South rebuilt, many more were Union soldiers who had grown to love the South’s rich land. Others, both white and black, were teachers, ministers, and reformers who wanted to help the freedmen succeed in their new lives.

African Americans

African Americans were the third major new group in southern politics. Before the war, they had no voice in government. During Reconstruction, they not only voted in large numbers, but they also ran for and were elected to public office. They became sheriffs, mayors, and legislators in the new state and local governments. As well, sixteen African Americans were elected to the United States Congress between 1869 and 1880.

Two African Americans, both representing Mississippi, served in the Senate. In 1870, Hiram Rhodes Revels, a clergyman and teacher, became the nation’s first black senator. He completed the unfinished term of former Confederate president Jefferson Davis. In 1874, Blanche Kelso Bruce became the first African American elected to a full term in the Senate. Bruce served from 1875 to 1881.

Revels’s election was an important victory for African Americans. He served on the Committee on Education and Labor, where he opposed attempts to segregate, or separate, schools for African Americans and whites. He also promoted opportunities for African American workers.

Freedmen had less political influence than many whites claimed, however. Only in South Carolina did African Americans win a majority in one house of the state legislature. No state elected a black governor.

Analyze Images

This illustration shows the first seven African Americans to serve in Congress, including Hiram Revels (far left).

Identify Cause and Effect What changes made it possible to elect freedmen to national office?

READING CHECK

Describe how politics in the South changed during Reconstruction.

Why Did Conservatives Resist Reform?

Most white southerners who had held power before the Civil War resisted Reconstruction. These conservatives resented the changes imposed by Congress and enforced by the military. Conservatives were willing to let African Americans vote and hold a few offices, but they were determined to keep real power in the hands of whites. A few wealthy planters tried to force African Americans back onto plantations. Many small farmers and laborers wanted the government to take action against freedmen, who now competed with them for land and power.

Most of these conservatives were Democrats. They declared war on anyone who cooperated with the Republicans. “This is a white man’s country,” declared one southern senator, “and white men must govern it.”

The Ku Klux Klan

Some white southerners formed secret societies to help them regain power. The most notorious was the Ku Klux Klan, or KKK. The Klan worked to keep African Americans and white Republicans out of office.

Dressed in white robes and hoods to hide their identities, Klansmen rode at night to the homes of African American voters, shouting threats and burning wooden crosses. When threats did not work, the Klan turned to violence. Klan members murdered hundreds of African Americans and their white allies.

The Klan’s Reign of Terror

Many moderate southerners condemned the Klan’s violence, but most did little to stop the reign of terror. Freedmen turned to the federal government for help. In Kentucky, African American voters wrote to Congress:

Primary Source

“We believe you are not familiar with the Ku Klux Klan’s riding nightly over the country spreading terror wherever they go by robbing, whipping, and killing our people without provocation.”

—Records of the U.S. Senate, April 11, 1871

In 1870, Congress made it a crime to use force to keep people from voting. Klan activities decreased, but the threat of violence remained. Some African Americans continued to vote and hold office, but others were frightened away from the ballot box.

Analyze Political Cartoons

Both the KKK and White League used violence to try to prevent freedmen from voting.

Infer What does the phrase “worse than slavery” suggest about the effect of this violence on African American families?

READING CHECK

Explain the social and political impact of southern conservatives during Reconstruction.

How Did Political Problems Slow Progress?

Republican-dominated governments tried to rebuild the South. They made notable advances. They established the first publicly financed school systems in the South. These provided education for both black and white children.

Many states gave women the right to own property and otherwise expanded women’s rights. In some cases, the legislatures provided debt relief for the poor.

In addition, Reconstruction governments rebuilt railroads, telegraph lines, bridges, and roads. Between 1865 and 1879, the South laid 7,000 miles of railroad track. However, progress was hindered by economic difficulties, white resistance to reform, and government corruption.

Taxation and Voting Rights

Before the war, southerners paid low taxes, but rebuilding the South cost money, and taxes rose sharply. This created discontent among many southern whites. Many former Confederate officers and officials resented being denied voting rights while people they considered inferior were allowed to vote. The tax increases also caused some landowners to lose their land.

Widespread Corruption

Southerners were further angered by reports of widespread corruption in the Reconstruction governments. One state legislature, for example, voted $1,000 to cover a member’s bet on a horse race. Other items billed to the state included hams, perfume, and a coffin.

Mixed Results for Legislative Reform

State legislative reform in the South met with mixed success. New state constitutions allowed all adult men to vote, removed restrictions for holding office, and made public officials elected rather than appointed. Executive branches were given increased power to provide government services.

However, legislation to enroll voters was hindered by new restrictions that kept many African Americans from registering or voting. Many of the laws preventing former Confederates from voting and holding office did not last. In Georgia, African Americans were forced from the state legislature.

Analyze Images

This 1872 newspaper cartoon was titled “Lincoln, the Emancipator.”

Synthesize Visual Information What are the people in the cartoon doing? Why?

READING CHECK

Summarize the problems that faced Reconstruction governments trying to rebuild the South.

Economic Problems in the South

In the first months after the war, many freedmen left the plantations on which they had lived and worked. Some searched for family members. Others went in search of work. They found few opportunities, however.

Freedmen Have Limited Opportunities

Some Radical Republicans talked about giving each freedman “40 acres and a mule” as a fresh start. This idea stemmed from a field order given by General William Tecumseh Sherman in 1865. Thaddeus Stevens suggested breaking up big plantations and distributing the land. Most Americans opposed the plan, however. In the end, former slaves received—in the words of a freedman—”nothing but freedom.”

Through hard work or good luck, some freedmen did become landowners. Most, however, felt they had little choice but to return to where they had lived in slavery. At the same time, some large planters found themselves with land but nobody to work it.

Analyze Images

This photograph shows a group of freedmen in Richmond, Virginia.

Identify Main Ideas Why did many freedmen have trouble finding jobs?

Rebuilding the South’s Economy

Before the Civil War, southern planters enjoyed prosperity because of strong demand for cotton, tobacco, and other farm products in the North and in Britain and Europe. During the war, a Union blockade cut off those markets. As a result, worldwide prices for those products rose, and suppliers in Latin America, India, and elsewhere began producing more tobacco, cotton, sugar cane, and rice. When the war ended and southern farmers returned to the market, they faced much greater competition from foreign producers. Predictably, according to the laws of supply and demand, this led to lower prices and less income. Some farmers went into debt and lost their land.

Meanwhile, the war had destroyed many of the South’s cities and factories. Moreover, Southern planters had lost their enslaved workers, who were often a planter’s main investment. As a result, the South had little money to invest in industry. It remained dependent on farming at a time when farming brought less income.

Poverty in the South

During Reconstruction, many freedmen and poor whites became sharecroppers on plantations. As sharecroppers, they rented and farmed a plot of land in exchange for a share of the crop at harvest time. They also commonly purchased seed, fertilizer, and tools on credit, to be paid for with an additional share of their crop. To many freedmen, sharecropping offered a measure of independence. Many anticipated owning their own land one day.

In fact, this arrangement locked sharecroppers into a cycle of poverty. Each spring, they received supplies on credit. In the fall, they used their harvest to repay what they had borrowed. Since prices for farm products were low, the harvest often did not cover what they owed. Each year they fell further behind. Instead of rising toward independence, they sank deeper into debt.

Sharecropping was not the only way freedmen could be trapped in peonage, or debt slavery. Under new laws against vagrancy, black men were stopped, arrested, and fined for being unemployed. Victims who could not pay the fine would be imprisoned and forced to work without pay. Sometimes, a local business owner would offer to pay the fine in exchange for a term of servitude. If the paperwork became lost, a victim might never regain his freedom.

Analyze Images

This photograph shows freedmen planting sugar cane in Georgia in the late 1860s.

Identify Cause and Effect What impact did sharecropping have on African Americans’ economic status?

READING CHECK

Express Problems Clearly What was the biggest problem with sharecropping?

Lesson Check

What were the differences between scalawags and carpetbaggers?
What was the Ku Klux Klan, and what did it try to accomplish?
Why did sharecroppers often end up in debt?
Summarize why white southern conservatives resisted Reconstruction.
Identify Main Ideas What were the central challenges to rebuilding the South?
Writing Workshop: Support Ideas With Evidence Outline your research paper by writing your main ideas. Under each main idea, write facts and other evidence from your research that support that idea.

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