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Chapter 15: "What Is Freedom?": Reconstruction, 1865-1877

  1. Contested meanings of freedom at end of Civil War
    1. For southern blacks, an expansive quest
      1. Self-ownership
      2. Autonomous institutions
        1. Family
          1. Reuniting families separated under slavery
          2. Adopting separate gender roles
        2. Church
          1. Worship
          2. Social events
          3. Political meetings
        3. Schools
          1. Motivations
          2. Backgrounds of students and instructors
          3. Establishment of black colleges
      3. Political participation
        1. Right to vote
        2. Engagement in political events
      4. Land ownership
    2. For southern whites, an imperiled birthright
      1. Postwar demoralization
        1. Loss of life
        2. Destruction of property
        3. Draining of planters' wealth and privilege
        4. Psychic blow of emancipation
          1. Inability to accept
          2. Intolerance of black autonomy or equality
    3. For northern Republicans, "free labor"
      1. Middle approach between aspirations of freedpeople and planters
      2. Ambiguous role of federal government; Freedmen's Bureau
        1. Achievements in education and health care
        2. Betrayal of commitment to land reform
    4. Post-emancipation labor systems
      1. Task system (rice)
      2. Wage labor (sugar)
      3. Sharecropping (cotton, tobacco)
    5. Subversion of independent white yeomanry
      1. Spread of indebtedness, dependence on cotton production
      2. Sharecropping and crop lien systems
    6. Urban growth
  2. Presidential Reconstruction
    1. Andrew Johnson
      1. Background and character
        1. Humble origins
        2. "Honest yeoman" identity
        3. Political career
        4. Hostility to southern secession and racial equality
      2. Approach to Reconstruction
        1. Pardons
        2. Reserving of political power to whites
    2. Southern white response
      1. Restoration of Confederate leaders and Old South elite
      2. Violence against freedpeople and northerners
      3. Black Codes
    3. Northern reaction
      1. Johnson satisfaction
      2. Republican outrage
    4. Republican goals and principles
      1. Moderate and Radical Republicans
        1. Equality of races before the law
        2. Federal enforcement
      2. Radical Republicans only
        1. Dissolution of Confederate-run state governments
        2. Enfranchisement of blacks
        3. Redistribution of land to former slaves
    5. Congressional Republicans vs. Johnson
      1. Passage of bill extending life of Freedmen's Bureau
      2. Passage of Civil Rights Bill
      3. Vetoes and override
      4. Fourteenth Amendment
        1. Terms and significance
        2. Approval by Congress, transmission to states
        3. Controversy in North
          1. Democrats vs. Republicans
          2. Congress vs. Johnson
      5. 1866 midterm election
        1. Bitter campaign
        2. Republican sweep
        3. Growing breach between Johnson and Republicans
  3. Radical Reconstruction
    1. Reconstruction Act
      1. Placement of South under federal military authority
      2. Call for new state governments, entailing black right to vote
    2. Tenure of Office Act
    3. Impeachment of Johnson
      1. Charges
      2. Acquittal
    4. 1868 presidential election
      1. Republican waving of "bloody shirt"
      2. Democratic race-baiting
      3. Ulysses S. Grant victory
    5. Fifteenth Amendment
  4. Significance of "Great Constitutional Revolution"
    1. Idea of national citizenry, equal before the law
    2. Expansion of citizenry to include blacks
    3. Empowerment of federal government to protect citizens' rights
    4. New boundaries of American citizenship
      1. Exclusion of Asian immigrants
      2. Exclusion of women
        1. Unfulfilled campaigns for women's emancipation
        2. Split within feminism over Reconstruction amendments
  5. Radical Reconstruction in the South
    1. Black initiatives
      1. Mass public gatherings
      2. Grassroots protests against segregation
      3. Labor strikes
      4. Political mobilization
      5. Forming of local Republican organizations
        1. Union League
        2. Voter registration
    2. Reconstructed state governments
      1. Composition
        1. Predominance of Republicans
        2. Black Republicans
          1. Officeholding at federal, state, and local levels
          2. Varied backgrounds
        3. White Republicans
          1. Carpetbaggers
          2. Scalawags
          3. Varied motivations of each
      2. Achievements
        1. Public education
        2. Affirmation of civil and political equality
        3. More equal allocation of public services and resources
        4. Measures to protect free labor
        5. Fairer system of justice
        6. Improvement in public facilities
      3. Shortcomings
        1. Uneven enforcement of laws
        2. Economic stagnation
        3. Persistence of black poverty
  6. Overthrow of Reconstruction
    1. Southern white opposition
      1. Grievances expressed
        1. Corruption
        2. Incompetence
        3. High taxes
        4. Black supremacy
      2. Underlying motivations
        1. Antipathy for racial equality
        2. Desire for controllable labor
      3. Use of terror
        1. Against any perceived threat to white supremacy
        2. Against Republicans, black and white
        3. Ku Klux Klan and other secret societies
    2. Northern response
      1. Measures to protect blacks' rights
        1. Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871
        2. Civil Rights Act of 1875
      2. Waning commitment to Reconstruction
        1. Liberal Republicans; Horace Greeley
        2. Resurgence of northern racism
        3. Economic depression
        4. Supreme Court decisions
          1. Slaughterhouse Cases
          2. U.S. v. Cruikshank
    3. Death throes of Reconstruction
      1. 1874 Democratic gains in South; "Redeemers"
      2. Resurgence of terror
      3. Rise of electoral fraud
      4. Election of 1876 and Bargain of 1877

 

Subject: 
US History
Subject X2: 
US History

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