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Source A
There is no such thing as reconstruction. These States have not gone out of the Union, therefore reconstruction is unnecessary. I do not mean to treat them as inchoate States, but merely as existing under a temporary suspension of their government, provided always they elect loyal men. It is the province of the Executive to see that the will of the people is carried out in the rehabilitation of the rebellious States, once more under the authority as well as the protection of the Union.
President Andrew Johnson, May 1865.
Source B
No reform can be effected in the Southern States if they have never left the Union. But reformation must be effected; the foundation of their institutions, both political, municipal and social, must be broken up and re-laid, or all our blood and treasure have been spent in vain. This can only be done by treating and holding them as a conquered people.
We propose to confiscate all the estate of every rebel
belligerent whose estate was worth $10,000, or whose land exceeded two
hundred acres in quantity.
The whole fabric of Southern society must be changed, and never can it be done if this opportunity is lost.... The Southern States have been despotisms, not governments of the people.... How can republican institutions, free schools, free churches, free social intercourse, exist in a mingled community of owners of twenty thousand acre manors with lordly palaces, and the occupants of narrow huts?
If the South is ever to be made a safe republic, let her lands be cultivated
by the toil of the owners, or the free labor of intelligent citizens.
Congressional leader of the radical Republicans, Thaddeus Stevens,
September 1865.
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- The Union was saved.
- A Stronger Federal Government.
The 13th Amendment included the phrase: “Congress shall have power to
enforce this article”.
- A Weaker President: after the
assassination of Abraham Lincoln, President Andrew Johnson tried to
implement a moderate settlement, and he gave all southerners who had not
fought for the Confederacy a pardon and returned much of the land to its
former owners. He opposed the 14th Amendment and military governors.
Congress overruled him and passed two laws limiting the powers of the
President. It tried (but failed) to impeach him.
- The 13th Amendment (1865) ended slavery throughout the United States.
The
14th Amendment (Civil Rights Act) guaranteed citizenship and “equal protection of the laws” to all people born or naturalized in the United States, including formerly enslaved individuals, and provided equal protection under the law.
The
15th Amendment granted African American men the right to vote. Southern states were required to write new constitutions, accept the abolition of slavery, and grant civil rights to African Americans before they could be readmitted to the Union.
When the Ku Klux Klan began to attack Black people, the government passed
Enforcement Acts to protect them.
- Military Rule in the South: Congress overruled President Johnson and
passed the Reconstruction Act (1867), sending military governors with Union troops to rule in the southern states.
This ended when a state had rewritten its constitution and had been
readmitted to the Union; all the states had been readmitted by 1870.
- Successes of Reconstruction:
- 80% of Black males registered to vote; in 1870 Hiram Revels became the first Black
Senator (for Mississippi) and Joseph Rainey became the first of seven Black
Congressmen. Two thousand Black Americans, most of them formerly
enslaved, served at every level of government throughout the South.
- Families, divided by sale or war,
were re-united and thousands of Black Americans married.
- More than 1,000
Black Schools and hundreds of Black Churches were built.
- The government's Freedmen's Bureau provided food,
clothing and shelter to destitute Black people; provided medical
facilities, schools and teachers; and even acted as a Court for Black
people where they would not get a fair trial in the normal courts.
- Reconstruction administrations in the southern states established the South's first state-funded public school systems, strengthened the bargaining power of plantation labourers, and outlawed racial discrimination in public transportation and accommodation.
- The Compromise of 1877: many Southerners resisted
Reconstruction fiercely.
- Northerners moving south in search of work were hated as ‘Carpetbaggers’ (because they carried their possessions in a cheap bag made from carpet), as were ‘Scallawags’ (southerners who supported the Union).
- There were complaints (some justified) about corruption and speculation.
- There was a war of terror – beatings, lynchings, assassinations – against
Black people and white Republican officials by groups such as the KKK, the White League, and the Red Shirts. In 1872 the government
stopped funding the Freedmen's Bureau (see
here) after criticism and a wave of violence towards
Bureau schools and teachers.
- In 1877 the Democrats took advantage of a disputed
Presidential election to make theCompromise of 1877, which secured the
withdrawal of federal troops and gave'Redeemer Democrats'
political licence in the South.
- Reconstruction came to an end, with
Southern States passing political measures such as poll taxes, literacy
tests to deprive Black Americans of the vote, and Jim Crow laws to maintain
white political supremacy (eg
Black Americans were not allowed to marry a white person, serve on a jury,
or testify in court against a white person).
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President Andrew Johnson:
- Johnson came from the South (Tennessee);
- was a former slave-owner;
- believed that the Southern states had never truly left the Union;
- believed that the South should be welcomed back into the Union;
- believed that Congressional Reconstruction was unconstitutional and prioritized the North's needs over the South's;
- believed that States ought to be in charge of their own
affairs.
- distrusted and feared Black people, and believed the lowest white person should be above the highest Black person;
- wanted "a white man's government".
Consider:
1. "The epic failure of reconstruction".
a. Collect the facts that show that Reconstruction failed, 1865-77.
b. Use
this page to suggest reasons WHY Reconstruction failed.
2. Who won – Andrew Johnson or Thaddeus Stevens?
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The social and cultural consequences of the American Civil War in the Southern States extended through Reconstruction (1865–1877) and into the 20th century:
1. ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES
The Southern economy was ruined by the war:
Impact by 1890:
- The Cotton Industry was damaged: Egypt and India had
filled the gap in cotton production during the war and, trying to
rebuild the industry without enslaved tabour, the industry struggled to
regain its pre-war profitability.
- The Southern elite slavocracy was ruined:
- Much of their wealth had been in the form enslaved people; with
the abolition of slavery, they lost $3 billion.
- In addition, land was confiscated. In 1865, General Sherman issued Special Field Order Number 15, which set aside more than 400,000 acres of coastal plantations for settlement by formerly-enslaved people. Also (citing the U.S.
Revenue Act of 1862) the US seized lands from Southern landowners who did
not pay taxes to the Union.
- To finance the war, many Southerners had bought
Confederate bonds, which were now worthless after the defeat.
- White incomes fell by 40% after the war.
- The end of slavery meant the Southern plantation system could no longer function as it had before.
Instead landowners replaced it with tenant farming (letting their land for rent)
or – for formerly-enslaved people and poor whites – sharecropping (letting a
farm for a share of the crop). Sharecropping re-asserted the dominance of
the landowners, and trapped both poor blacks and whites who became increasingly
impoverished and debt-obliged; debt tied the tenants
to the landowner almost as completely as slavery had done, and meant that some
formerly-enslaved people were actually worse off.
Longer-term Effects:
- During Reconstruction, taxes were imposed to rebuild infrastructure, but the South remained economically underdeveloped compared to the North
for a century.
This was exacerbated because Northern financiers and industrialists
bought up Southern land, railroads, and businesses, further increasing
the South’s economic dependence on the North.
- Poverty and lack of social mobility persisted
throughout the 20th century, as the economic gap between the elite and the
poor interacted with racism to embed and deepen the social rift.
2. SEGREGATION and TERROR
The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments abolished slavery and gave Black Americans citizenship and voting rights, but they did not lead to racial equality. Especially after the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction, these rights were undermined.
By 1890, the Southern states had enacted Jim Crow laws that enforced racial
segregation, and embedded white supremacy into the social structures of the
South.
Impact by 1890:
- A “rigid racial caste system” developed, in which African
Americans were treated as socially inferior, and faced discrimination, bullying,
violence (including lynching), and poverty (eg as sharecroppers).
- Segregation was legally upheld by the
Plessy v. Ferguson
case in 1896.
Longer-term Effects:
- The culture of racial segregation institutionalized
inequalities in schools, public facilities, and voting until the 1960s.
- White supremacy organizations like the Ku Klux Klan
terrorized communities until the 1980s, with members throughout the police
and the justice system to protect them.
- The Southern white elite became increasingly paranoid
and entrenched.
3. MOTHERHOOD and APPLE PIE
After the war, a conservative ideal of womanhood known as the
‘Southern Belle’ reemerged, emphasizing genteel motherhood, family honour, and
subservience to her husband.
Impact by 1890:
- Women’s public roles were curtailed, with an emphasis on
traditional gender roles.
Longer-term Effects:
- Race, class and this repressive cultural ideal intersected
to limit Southern women’s opportunities.
- Culturally, the image of the virtuous white Southern
woman led to the 'protection-of-white-women' as a justification for KKK
violence (particularly lynching); eg in 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old
black boy from Chicago, was murdered when – on a visit to Mississippi – he
whistled at a white woman shopkeeper.
4. IDENTITY
Defeat in the Civil War led to the ‘Lost Cause’ cultural movement, which sought to romanticize the war as a defence of states' rights, rather than slavery.
Southerners saw themselves as the true
Americans-trying-to-preserve-the-Republic, and northerners as the aggressors who
caused the war.
Impact by 1890:
- The Lost Cause narrative spread through monuments, books, and public memory, glorifying Confederate leaders like Robert E.
Lee and creating hatred and a sense of victimhood among white Southerners.
- Organizations such as the United Daughters of the
Confederacy shaped public education to ensure that the Civil War was
remembered as an act of Southern heroism.
Longer-term Effects:
- The Lost Cause myth was used to support opposition to
civil rights movements in the 1950s and ‘60s, and is still believed today.
5. EDUCATION
The period following Reconstruction saw literacy tests
introduced as a way to prevent Black Americans voting. Since literacy
tests involved literacy, education for Black Americans was kept underfunded,
overcrowded and second rate.
Impact by 1890:
- In 1865, Congress had set up the
Freedmen's Bureau, to
help freed former enslaved people and poor whites set up after the war; one of
the most important work its did was in education, and by 1869 it had set up
2,677 Freedmen's Schools with 150,000 students ... but this work came to an end
after criticism and a wave of violence towards Bureau schools and teachers
caused the federal government to end funding in 1872.
- In 1880, three-quarters of Black Americans were
illiterate, and still 61% in 1890.
Longer-term Effects:
- Political power consolidated on a white elite, which
enforced policies that maintained social and racial inequalities.
- Southern states developed a culture where civil rights were routinely denied to Black Americans.
Black schoolchildren in some Southern schools were not allowed to read the
Declaration of Independence, because it might give them ideas about equality
and freedom.
- Schools for Black Americans remained underfunded and
substandard into the 1970s.
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Consider:
1. Explain HOW the South managed to defeat the
North's attempt at Reconstruction 1865-77.
2. "The South lost the war but won the peace".
Do you agree?
- AQA Exam Examples
1. In what ways were the lives of people in the Southern states affected by the American Civil War?
2. Which of the following was the more important reason why the economy of the Southern States struggled after the war:
• the damage done by 'total war'
• the abolition of slavery?
3. Which of the following was the more important consequences of the American Civil War for those living in the Southern states:
• political consequences
• social and economic consequences?
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