1. Southern Resistance to Reconstruction
Do Now
How could Southern state governments deny African-Americans their rights of voting and equality? (Think of 3 ways)
Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?

2. Denying African American Voting Rights
Literacy Tests
You had to know how to read in order to vote
Is this a good idea?
Overturned by Voting Rights Act 1965
Poll Taxes
You had to pay to vote
Is this fair?
Overturned 24th amendment 1964
Grandfather Clauses
If your grandfather was eligible to vote
If your grandfather fought in a war
If you were eligible to vote in 1867 etc. etc.!!
then you are excluded from the above 2 rules
What is the purpose of these exemptions?
Various ways to exclude poor whites from literacy test/poll taxes, etc.
Overturned by Guinn vs. United States (1915)
Jim Crow Laws = Segregation
How was this allowed to exist as laws?
Upheld by Plessy vs. Ferguson
Overturned by lots of cases, laws during Civil Rights movement, Brown vs. Board of Ed was main thrust
Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?

3. Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?

4. Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?

5. Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?

6. Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?

7. Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?
Plessy vs. Ferguson-1896
Background of case
La. had segregated RR cars
Plessy (black) bought ticket to white section
so he could buy the white ticket,, then announce on the train that he was black
Plessy hired to fight the law b/c he was an “octoroon” (1/8th black),
Also to show the vagaries of definitions of race!!
he was arrested, appeal went to Supreme Court
Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?

8. Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?
Plessy Decision
7-1 against Plessy
Justice Brown declared, "We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it."
“SEPARATE BUT EQUAL”
Made segregation legal in the South for over ½ century
Finally overturned in Brown vs. Board of Ed. (1954)
Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?

9. Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?
KKK
Formed as a social club of Confederate Veterans-Tennessee 1866
Nathan Bedford Forest
Why do they wear the outfit?
Disguise/anonymity
Confederate soldier ghosts
Methods
Intimidation/violence/burnings/lynching's
Polling places
Who would they target the most and why?
Targeted freedmen (usually landowners more than sharecroppers)/ Republican Party
Why was it successful?
Most southern leaders were either in the Klan or sympathetic towards its
Prosecution??
What jury is going to stand up to KKK (think mob trials)
KKK acts gave federal enforcement and pretty much ended the KKK
KKK actually reached its height in 1920’s
Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?

10. Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?

11. Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?

12. Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?

13. Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?

14. Economic Devastation of the South
50% of machinery destroyed
40% livestock killed
$3.3 billion infrastructure destroyed
$1.6 billion in value of slaves lost
Huge inflation led to Confederate dollars worthless
30%↓ wages
25% Southern white workforce dead
Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?

15. “Southern Redemption”
Return of Democratic Party to power
Aided by wimpy/indifferent North
Lack of federal power because of federal scandals under Grant
Amnesty Act allowed former Confederate leaders to rejoin federal government
1872- Freedmen’s Bureau disbanded
Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?

16. How does the cartoonist feel about the Freedmen’s Bureau
How does the cartoonist feel about the Freedmen’s Bureau? Cite your specific evidence to prove your argument!!

17. Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?
2 Term Grant
Scandals, but still popular
His “boys” wanted a 3rd term, but Congress passes resolution reminding country of GW’s 2 term precedent
Specifics to come later!! Fits more with the corruption of Gilded Age (thematically speaking over timeline wise)
Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?

18. Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?
Election of 1876
Rutherford B. Hayes-Republican (“The Great Unknown”)
“Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some are born in Ohio!!”
Samuel Tilden- Democrat- Governor of NY
Fame for bring down Boss Tweed
Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?

19. Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?
Results?
Tilden wins popular vote
Seemed to have electoral college count also, but Republicans charged that there were 3 Southern states where election results were fraud
Are the Republican claims realistic?
Democrats charged that Republicans using their power to fix the election
Special commission set up to count the vote in the 3 disputed states (La. Fla. S. Car.)
8 Republicans/7 Dems on the commission
Who wins the election???????
Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?

20. “President Compromise”
Compromise of 1877
Hayes (Rep.) becomes President
Troops removed from the South
Hayes has Southerner in cabinet
Congress agrees to give $$ to rebuild South and pay for Southern Transcontinental RR
Who gets the better deal, North or South???
Reconstruction over!!
Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?

21. Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?
3 sentences explaining why you believe Reconstruction was a success or failure?
Aim: How did the South try to resist Reconstruction?