1. Section 17.3: Southern Politics and Society

2. A. Southern Republicans 1.Most northerners were satisfied with a reconstruction that brought the South back into the Union with a viable Republican Party. - Achieving this goal required active Federal support to protect the African-American voters upon which it depended. 2.Republicans also drew strength from: a.white, northern, middle-class emigrants called carpetbaggers b.native southern white Republicans called scalawags who were businessmen and Unionists from the mountains with old scores to settle 3.The result was an uneasy alliance, with each group pushing an agenda that was incompatible with the plans devised by its allies.

3. W. L. Sheppard, “Electioneering at the South,” Harper’s Weekly, July 25, 1868. Throughout the Reconstruction-era South, newly freed slaves took a keen interest in both local and national political affairs. The presence of women and children at these campaign gatherings illustrates the importance of contemporary political issues to the entire African American community. SOURCE:Library of Congress.

4. B. Reconstructing the States 1.Throughout the South, state conventions that had a significant African-American presence drafted constitutions and instituted political and humanitarian reforms. - The new governments insisted on equal rights, but accepted separate schools. 2.The Republican governments did little to assist African Americans in acquiring land though they did help protect the rights of black laborers to bargain freely. a.Republican leaders envisioned promoting northern-style prosperity and gave heavy subsidies for railroad development. b.These plans frequently opened the doors to corruption and bankrupted the states.

5. C. White Resistance 1.Many white southerners believed that the Republicans were not a legitimate political group. 2.Paramilitary groups like the Ku Klux Klan used terror to destroy the Reconstruction governments and intimidate their supporters. - Congress passed several laws to crack down on the Klan. 3.The Civil Rights Act of 1875 outlawed racial discrimination in public places.

6. The Ku Klux Klan emerged as a potent political and social force during Reconstruction, terrorizing freed people and their white allies. An 1868 Klan warning threatens Louisiana governor Henry C. Warmoth with death. Warmoth, an Illinois- born “carpetbagger,” was the state’s first Republican governor. Two Alabama Klansmen, photographed in 1868, wear white hoods to hide their identities. SOURCE:(a)University of North Carolina Southern Historical Collection;(b)Rutherford B.Hayes Presidential Center.

7. This 1871 painting by Richard Norris Brooke depicts Confederate soldiers at the end of the Civil War, furling the rebel battle flag for the last time. In the postwar Reconstruction years, the Ku Klux Klan adapted it as a symbol of white supremacy and resistance to Federal authority. AP Wide World Photos.

8. D. Redemption 1.As wartime idealism faded and Democrats gained strength in the North, northern Republicans abandoned the freed people and their white allies. 2.Conservative Democrats (Redeemers) won control of southern states. 3.Between 1873 and 1883, the Supreme Court weakened enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and overturned convictions of Klan members.

9. E. “King Cotton” 1.The South grew more heavily dependent on cotton. 2.The crop lien system provided loans in exchange for a lien on the crop. 3.As cotton prices spiraled downward, cotton growers fell more deeply into debt. 4.Merchants became the elite in the South. 5.The South emerged as an impoverished region.

10. MAP 17.3 Southern Sharecropping and the Cotton Belt, 1880 The economic depression of the 1870s forced increasing numbers of Southern farmers, both white and black, into sharecropping arrangements. Sharecropping was most pervasive in the cotton belt regions of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and east Texas.