1. Chapter 13 The Meaning of Freedom, The Failure of Reconstruction

2. The First Seven African Americans to Serve in the U.S.
The first seven African Americans to serve in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. Three of them—Benjamin S. Turner, Josiah T. Walls, and Jefferson H. Long—were former slaves.

3. I. State Constitutional Convention
Delegates - Former Confederate states elect delegates,
265 black men in ten southern states
First time black men cast ballots
Mostly Republicans
Carpetbaggers
Northern white migrants moving south to profit off of war devastation
Scalawags
Scoundrels – native white southerners who hoped for economic relief from Republican government

4. Constitutional Convention (cont.)
New state constitutions were progressive Constitution
All adult males vote – except Mississippi and Virginia
Statewide public education
State support for private businesses – especially railroad construction

5. Elections Held in 1868 to ratify new state constitutions
Democratic responses varied
Boycotted
Some voted for ratification – attempt to elect large number of Democrats
Others voted against ratification

6. Southern black men cast ballots for the first time in 1867 in the election of delegates to state constitutional conventions. The ballots were provided by the candidates or political parties, not by state or municipal officials. Most nineteenth-century elections were not by secret ballot.

7. Black Political Parties
White Republicans dominate
1,465 black men held political office
378 free blacks before the Civil War
Most from Mississippi and South Carolina
Majority of representatives in state houses were black men
Did not dominate any state politically
None elected governor
Six lieutenant governors
14 served in the U.S. House of Representatives

9. II. The Issues Promote the welfare of all citizens
Education and social welfare
Improve literacy and education for black people
Public schools
Segregated (except New Orleans)
Necessary education
Uneven results
Establish state supported schools
The deaf, the blind, and the insane
Criminal reform

10. The Issues (cont.) Civil rights Public facilities for all people
Introduce laws to prohibit discrimination
Seen by white people as an attempt at social equality
White politicians defeated anti-discrimination bills
South Carolina passed but not effectively enforced

11. III. Economic Issues
Black politicians - Supported economic development
Enacted laws to prevent abuse of laborers
Paid before or when crop sold
Some even wanted to regulate laborers’ wages
Protect land and property of small farmers against seizure
Republicans hoped to gain support from white working class

12. Economic Issues (cont.)
Land
No programs to provide land to landless - except South Carolina
State land commission, 1869
Loans on generous terms
14,000 families gain land
Corrupt and inefficiently managed
High property taxes
Forced landowners to sell

13. IV. Black Politicians: An Evaluation
Failed to significantly improve lives
Outnumbered by white Republicans
Could not enact their own agenda
Disagreement among black leaders
Divided by class and prewar status

14. V. Republican Factionalism
Southern Republicans – Factious
Disagreements -Who should run and hold political office
Desperate for an office that paid a salary
Ran against each other
Re-nomination and re-election unusual
Inexperienced leadership

15. VI. Opposition White southerners
Opposed black men in the political system
Did not accept the Fourteenth Amendment
Blamed Republicans for waste and corruption
Redeemers – Restore white democratic power

16. VII. White Southern Opposition
Militant terrorist organizations
Knights of the White Camellia
The White Brotherhood
The Whitecaps
Remove black men from politics
Accepted the use of violence
Threats, intimidations, rapes, beatings, and murder

17. The Ku Klux Klan Establish in Pulaski, Tennessee, 1866
Social club - Confederate veterans
General Nathan Bedford Forrest
Attracted all classes of white society
Active in areas they could influence voting
Controlled western Alabama, northern Georgia and Florida panhandle
Never appeared in Carolina and Georgia Low Country

18. The flowing white robes and cone-shaped headdresses associated with the Ku Klux Klan today are mostly a twentieth-century phenomenon. The Klansmen of the Reconstruction era, like these two men in Alabama in 1868, were well armed, disguised, and prepared to intimidate black and white Republicans. The note is a Klan death threat directed at Louisiana’s first Republican governor, Henry C. Warmoth.

19. The Ku Klux Klan (cont.) A campaign of violence
Not well-organized or unified
Reduced support for the Republican party
Eliminated leaders
Benjamin F. Randolph – black chairman of republican party, murdered
Enforcement -Generally weak

20. Cool Down
In what ways could African Americans deal with the KKK. Why would they have problems combating the KKK?

21. Protecting Civil Rights
Section 3
Protecting Civil Rights

22. VIII. The Fifteenth Amendment
Forbade states from excluding citizens from voting “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
Does not guarantee the right to vote
Women
Poll taxes
Literacy tests
Property qualifications

23. The Fifteenth Amendment
This optimistic 1870 illustration exemplifies the hopes and aspirations generated during Reconstruction as black people gained access to the political system. Invoking the legacy of Abraham Lincoln and John Brown, it suggests that African Americans would soon assume their rightful and equitable role in American society.

24. IX. The Enforcement Act Northern response to southern terrorism
Increased federal authority
1870 Act
Outlawed disguises and masks
Ku Klux Klan Act, 1871
Federal offense to interfere with:
Voting, hold office, serve on jury
Authorize President to send in federal troops
Suspend the writ of habeas corpus (rights to be brought before a judge and not be arrested and jailed without cause)

25. X. The North Loses Interest
Northern commitment weakened
Other issues
Patronage, veterans benefits, tariffs
Economy
Panic of 1873 – Economic Depression
Violence
Racism
Southern redemption

26. XII. The Civil Rights Act of 1875
“Full and equal enjoyment”
Prohibit racial discrimination
Public facilities, conveyances, theaters, and others
No attempt to enforce
U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional, 1883

27. XIII. The End of Reconstruction
Reconstruction ended just as it started, with violence and controversy.
Violent Redemption
In every Louisiana election,
Colfax Massacre
Blacks hid in small town in defense of democratic takeover
Held out for three weeks
Easter Sunday 1873 – well armed white mob attacked, killing 105
Worst single day bloodshed during reconstruction

28. End of Reconstruction con.
White League – 1874 Louisiana, white takeover of city
Murdered blacks, attacking courts
Whites refused to pay taxes to republican state government
President Grant sent in federal troops to New Orleans after 3,500 White Leaguers attacked and wiped out the black militia and Metropolitan Police.

29. Continued Violence 1875 Mississippi Shotgun Policy
Mississippi declared open war on black majority
No longer feared federal government
Masks and hoods discarded
Republicans fled the state, others murdered
Late 1874, 300 black people were hunted down
1875 – 30 teachers, church leaders, republican officials were murdered
Black voters hid on election day

30. Dates of Readmission and Reestablishment
Map 13–1. Dates of Readmission of Southern States to the Union and Reestablishment of Democratic Party Control
Once conservative white Democrats regained political control of a state government from black and white Republicans, they considered that state “redeemed.” The first states the Democrats “redeemed” were Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina. Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina were the last. (Tennessee was not included in the Reconstruction process under the terms of the 1867 Reconstruction Act.)

31. More Violence Hamburg Massacre, July 1876
Rifle clubs – demanded disarming of black militia
Battle over armory
29 blacks taken prisoner
5 black leaders shot in cold blood
Seven white men indicted for murder
Zero convictions
Federal troops sent to South Carolina
South Carolina adopts “Shotgun Policy”

32. Hamburg Massacre cont. Republicans running for office harassed
Registered democrats attacked, beat and killed blacks to prevent from voting.
Democratic leaders gave direction:
“In speeches to negroes you must remember that argument has no effect on them. They can only be influenced by their fears, superstitions, and selfishness…Treat them so as to show them you are a superior race and that their natural position is that of subordination to the white man.”

33. The End of Reconstruction (cont.)
The Compromise of 1877
Election 1876
Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, won popular election by 250,000
Rutherford B. Hayes, needed nineteen electoral votes,
Election fraud – 20 electoral votes were disputed
Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, both sides claimed victory
Republican North and Democratic South compromise
Hayes wins
Removal of federal troops
“The whole South – every state in the south had got into the hands of the very men that held us as slaves”

34. The Election of 1876 The Election of 1876
Although Democrat Samuel Tilden appeared to have won the election of 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes and the Republicans were able to claim victory after a prolonged political and constitutional controversy involving the disputed electoral college votes from Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina (and one from Oregon). In an informal settlement in 1877, Democrats agreed to accept electoral votes for Hayes from those states, and Republicans agreed to permit those states to be “redeemed” by the Democrats. The result was to leave the entire South under the political control of conservative white Democrats. For the first time since 1867, black and white Republicans no longer effectively controlled any former Confederate state.
The Election of 1876

35. XIV. Conclusion – Do not need to write
“A revolution but half-accomplished”--Carl Schurz, 1865
Despite the gains, freedom, citizenship, and the right to vote, Reconstruction was not a success
Bloody era
Persistent racism
Black people not prepared for roles in government

36. Work on Unit 7 Study Guide