Topic 9 - The Reconstruction Era (1865-1877)

Lesson 4 - The Aftermath of Reconstruction

The Aftermath of Reconstruction

Reconstruction had brought both positive change and turmoil to the South. The end of Reconstruction led to new hardships for African Americans in the South.

GET READY TO READ

Start up

How might massive rebuilding in the South change these freedmen’s lives and the future southern economy?

Guiding Questions

What events led to the end of Reconstruction?
How were the rights of African Americans restricted in the South during Reconstruction and for decades afterward?
What industries flourished in the “New South”?

Vocabulary

Compromise of 1877
poll tax
literacy test
grandfather clause
segregation
Jim Crow laws
Plessy v. Ferguson
“New South”

Academic Vocabulary

Employ
specifically

How Did Reconstruction Come to an End?

By the 1870s, Radical Republicans were losing power. Many northerners grew weary of trying to reform the South. It was time to let southerners run their own governments, they said—even if it meant that African Americans in the South might lose their rights.

Political Changes In the South

The disclosure of widespread corruption also hurt Republicans. President Grant appointed many friends to government offices. Some used their position to steal large sums of money from the government. Grant won reelection in 1872, but many northerners had lost faith in Republicans and their policies.

Congress passed the Amnesty Act in 1872. It restored the right to vote to nearly all white southerners, including former Confederates. These white southerners voted solidly Democratic. At the same time, they employed violence in order to prevent African Americans from voting. By 1876, only three southern states—South Carolina, Florida, and Tennessee—remained under Republican control.

A Disputed Election Leads to the End of Reconstruction

The end of Reconstruction came with the election of 1876. The Democrats nominated Samuel Tilden, governor of New York, for president. The Republicans chose Ohio governor Rutherford B. Hayes. Both candidates vowed to fight corruption.

Tilden won the popular vote. However, he had only 184 electoral votes, one short of the number needed to win. The outcome of the election hung on 20 disputed electoral votes. Of the 20, 19 were from the three states that had not yet been reconstructed—South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida. Democrats in these states accused Republican election officials of throwing out Democratic votes.

As inauguration day drew near, the nation still had no winner to swear in as president. The Republican-controlled Congress set up a special commission to settle the crisis. The commission, made up mostly of Republicans, gave all the disputed electoral votes to Hayes.

Southern Democrats could have fought the decision. Instead, they agreed to support the commission’s decision in return for a promise by Hayes to end Reconstruction. This agreement is known as the Compromise of 1877. Once in office, Hayes removed all remaining federal troops from Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida. Reconstruction was over.

GEOGRAPHY SKILLS

The 1876 presidential election between Tilden and Hayes was extremely close.

Location Why is the vote in New York, New Jersey, and Delaware surprising?

Draw Conclusions Based on the information in the map, why might Hayes’s victory in the 1876 election have come as a surprise to some?

Reconstruction’s Political Impact

Reconstruction had a deep and lasting impact on southern politics. White southerners had bitter memories of Radical Republican policies and military rule. For the next hundred years, the South remained a stronghold of the Democratic party. At the same time, southern African Americans steadily lost most of their political rights.

READING CHECK

Sequence Explain the sequence of events that resulted in the end of Reconstruction.

New Restrictions on African American Rights

As federal troops withdrew from the South, conservative Democrats found new ways to keep African Americans from exercising their rights. Many of these were laws specifically intended to prevent African Americans from voting.

Southern States Limit Political Participation

Over time, many southern states passed poll taxes, requiring voters to pay a fee each time they voted. As a result, freedmen could rarely afford to vote.

States also imposed literacy tests that required voters to read and explain a section of the Constitution. Since most freedmen had little education, such tests kept them from voting. Election officials also applied different standards to black and white voters. Blacks who were able to read often had to answer more difficult questions than whites.

Still, many poor whites could not have passed any literacy test. To increase the number of white voters, states passed grandfather clauses. These laws stated that if a voter’s father or grandfather had been eligible to vote on January 1, 1867—a date after Johnson had restored rebels’ right to vote—the voter did not have to take a literacy test. No African Americans in the South could vote before 1868, so the only effect of the grandfather clauses was to ensure that white men could vote.

Analyze Political Cartoons This cartoon mocks the literacy tests that were intended to prevent African Americans from voting.

Synthesize Visual Information How does this cartoon portray the new literacy tests?

Jim Crow Laws Separate Whites and African Americans

After 1877, segregation, or separation of races, became the law of the South. Blacks and whites were kept separate from each other in schools, restaurants, theaters, trains, streetcars, playgrounds, hospitals, and even cemeteries by Jim Crow laws. In some cases, African Americans were restricted to completely separate facilities. In others, facilities were divided, with favorable areas reserved for whites. Louisiana novelist George Washington Cable described segregation as

Primary Source

“A system of oppression so rank that nothing could make it seem small except the fact that [African Americans] had already been ground under it for a century and a half.”

—George Washington Cable, “The Freedman’s Case in Equity”

African Americans brought lawsuits to challenge segregation. In 1896, in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was legal so long as facilities for blacks and whites were equal. In fact, facilities were rarely equal. For example, southern states spent much less on schools for blacks than for whites.

Despite such setbacks, the Constitution now recognized African Americans as citizens. Laws passed during Reconstruction—especially the Fourteenth Amendment—would become the basis of the civil rights movement almost 100 years later.

Analyze Images Jim Crow laws made racial segregation legal in places such as this theater.

Draw Conclusions What impact did these laws have on the equality of educational opportunities for whites and African Americans?

Freedmen Leave the South

Their treatment as second-class citizens pushed many freedmen out of the South. They clung to the South because it was their home. Their families lived there. But they could also feel the pull of better opportunities elsewhere.

African Americans in northern cities published newspapers to help their brethren in the South cope with their new challenges. They often encouraged freedmen to come north. Factories needed more workers and sent recruiters to the South. They promised jobs, better housing, freedom to vote, and freedom from fear. Many African Americans began leaving the South for cities in the North and West.

Some freedmen were permitted to join the U.S. Army. Congress authorized four regiments of African Americans, to be commanded by white officers. Nicknamed “buffalo soldiers,” African Americans served protecting settlers and enforcing federal laws in the western territories. Fourteen buffalo soldiers earned the medal of honor.

READING CHECK

Summarize the ways in which southern governments restricted the rights of freedmen.

How Did the South Rebuild Its Economy?

During Reconstruction, the South made modest progress toward rebuilding its agricultural economy. By 1880, planters were growing as much cotton as they had in 1860.

After Reconstruction, a new generation of southern leaders worked to expand and diversify the economy. In stirring speeches, Atlanta journalist Henry Grady described a “New South” that used its vast natural resources to build up its own industry instead of depending on the North.

Analyze Graphs

The war set back the South’s development by many years, but by 1880, its economy began improving rapidly.

Use Evidence Cite evidence from the charts that the southern economy diversified after Reconstruction ended.

Old Industries Grow

In 1880, the entire South still produced fewer finished textiles than Massachusetts. In the next decade, more communities built textile mills to turn cotton into cloth.

The tobacco industry also grew. In North Carolina, James Duke used new machinery to revolutionize the manufacture of tobacco products. Duke’s American Tobacco Company eventually controlled 90 percent of the nation’s tobacco industry.

The Environment Shapes New Industries

The New South also used its natural resources to develop new industries other than those based on farming. With its large deposits of iron ore and coal, Alabama became a center of the steel industry. Oil refineries sprang up in Louisiana and Texas. Other states produced copper, granite, and marble.

By the 1890s, many northern forests had been cut down. The southern yellow pine competed with the northwestern white pine as a lumber source. Southern factories produced cypress shingles and hardwood furniture.

Factories, farming, and mining modified the South’s physical environment. Clearing land and using the natural resources provided jobs and opportunities. The South’s wood, steel, and other products were used in industry around the country.

The South had developed a more balanced economy by 1900. “We find a South wide awake with business,” wrote a visitor, “eagerly laying lines of communication, rapidly opening mines, building furnaces, foundries, and all sorts of shops.” Still, the South did not keep up with even more rapid growth in the North and the West.

Analyze Images

This poster advertised “OUR NATIONAL INDUSTRIES: METHODS OF IRON MINING AT CARTER’S FURNACE.”

Summarize How were companies like Carter’s important to rebuilding the South?

READING CHECK

Compare and Contrast the post-Reconstruction economy of the South with its pre-Civil War economy.

Lesson Check

How did poll taxes and literacy tests make it hard for African Americans to vote?
What were Jim Crow laws?
What was the effect of the Compromise of 1877?
Analyze Information How was the decision in Plessy v. Ferguson inconsistent with reality?
Compare and Contrast What was life like for African Americans in the South after Reconstruction ended? How did it differ from life under slavery?
Writing Workshop: Cite Sources Create citations on all the sources you have used. Include the name of the article or text, the author, the publisher, the date of publication, and the web address.

Google Sites

Report abuse