Alex O. Mr. Bayne 1 st period

 President Lincoln believed that the South shouldn’t be punished for the Civil War.  5 days after Lee’s surrender, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on April 14,  The death of Lincoln lead to tragedy in the U.S.A. because the North lost their leader and the South lost the man who promised to reconstruct them.

 After Lincoln’s death V.P. Andrew Johnson became President.  Johnson gave back the rights of citizenship to Confederates who pledged loyalty to the U.S.  Southern states had to abolish slavery to be a part of the union. The 13 th Amendment was ratified in December 1865 which ended slavery.

 When Johnson removed federal troops from the South, Congress was upset and they replaced the President’s plan with their own plan.  Congress took away the new State governments and put the South under military rule.  The 14 th Amendment stated that all persons born in the U.S.A. except Native Americans are citizens.  Johnson was very upset with Congress’s Plan that limited his authority as President.  After Johnson fired a member of his Cabinet the Senate impeached him.

 As the Southern states approved the 14 th Amendment new elections were held.  It was the first time African Americans were elected to the United States Congress.  Most Confederates agreed with abolishing slavery, but some were against it.  Congress passed the 15 th Amendment that said no citizen shall be denied the right to vote because of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

 Before the war ended in 1865, Congress set up the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands.  The Freedmen’s Bureau helped all needy people in the South.  As well as giving food and supplies to former slaves, the Freedmen’s Bureau also built schools to educate them.

 Many former slaves searched for jobs and had to go back to working on Plantations.  The former slaves had to be paid for their work and usually their work was paid through sharecropping.  Sharecropping is when land owners gave a worker a cabin, tools, meals and seeds for working on their plantation.

 Carpetbaggers were Northerners who moved to the South to take part in Reconstruction. They got the name because their bags were made of carpet.  Scalawags were people who supported a cause for their own gain.  Some of the carpetbaggers really wanted to help the South but some only wanted to profit from the reconstruction.

 White Southerners did not like that their way of life was changing.  They began to organize against heavy taxes and the changing society.  They started using the secret ballot for voting.  Secret societies like the Ku Klux Klan used violence to keep African Americans from voting.  There was much segregation and by 1900 most African Americans were not allowed to vote or hold public office.