Alex O.

Mr. Bayne

1st period

Reconstruction

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, 1865.

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.

One More Tragic Death

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 13th Amendment was ratified in December 1865 which ended slavery.

The President's Plan

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 14th 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.

Congress's Plan

As the Southern states approved the 14th 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 15th Amendment that said no citizen shall be denied the right to vote because of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

Reconstruction Governments

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.

The Freedmen's Bureau

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.

Sharecropping

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.

Carpetbaggers and Scalawags

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.

Reconstruction Ends