RECONSTUCTION

WHAT PROBLEMS EXIST NOW THAT THE CIVIL WAR IS OVER?

GROUP WORK DIRECTIONS

Read the description of your phase as a group.For each event listed in your phase, use

• American Nation glossary to define the event. • History Alive to further explain the event – What was

it? What did it do? How did it impact (positively or negatively) former slaves?

• If the box is shaded in, you can skip that box.

PRESIDENTIAL RECONSTRUCTION

1. 13th Amendment

• Abolished slavery• States needed to ratify it to

rejoin the Union2. Freedmen’s Bureau

• Provided food and medical care

• Helped freedmen bargain for wages and good working conditions

• distributed 40 acre plots of land• Education – build public schools

3. Black Codes • Limited rights of freedmen – couldn’t vote or serve on juries

• Required freedmen to work or they could be arrested or hired out

• Segregation of public places to keep freedmen at the bottom of the social order

CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION

4. Civil Rights Act of 1866

• Struck at the black codes by declaring freedmen to be full citizens with the same rights as whites

5. 14th Amendment

• Declared former slaves to be citizens with full rights

• Cannot be treated as less than equal6. Military Reconstruction Act

• Divided the south into 5 military districts, each governed by a general backed by troops

• New state governments were to be formed by southerners loyal to the United States

7. Sharecropping • Former slaves wanted land to farm; former owners needed workers

• Few freedmen were ever able to pay back any money they owed, leading to a life of debt & poverty

SOUTHERN RECONSTRUCTION

8. 15th Amendment

• Forbids the right to vote based on race

• Most abolitionists felt their work was done

9. New state constitutions/new state governments

• New state constitutions were very progressive and advanced

• Right to vote was granted to all males• Ended imprisonment for debt• Called for the establishment of public

schools• Taxes were raised (increased 400%!) to

fix war damages• Schools and hospitals were built.

10. African American Officeholders

• 1/5 of new officeholders were African American

END OF RECONSTRUCTION11. Ku Klux Klan

• Secret societies to drive African Americans out of political life

• Dressed in long hooded robes armed with guns and swords

• Started by threatening office holders, led to beating, tarring and feathering and murder

12. Enforcement Acts

• Three laws to combat terrorism against African Americans

• Made it illegal to prevent another person from voting by bribery, force or scare tactics

13. Amnesty Act of 1872

• Allowed most former Confederates to vote

• Democrats began to regain control in the South

14. Election of 1876/Compromise of 1877

• A Republican controlled Congress gave 20 disputed electoral votes to Hayes, the Republican presidential candidate

• In return, Hayes agreed to withdraw federal troops from the South

RECONSTRUCTION REVERSED15. Poll Tax • A luxury many black southerners

couldn’t afford16. Literacy Tests

• Tests were rigged to fail African Americans, regardless of education

• Grandfather Clause – taxes and tests did not apply to any man whose father or grandfather could on on 1/1/1867

17. Jim Crow Laws

• After Democrats returned to office, blacks and whites were segregated in public life

18. Plessy v. Ferguson

• Homer Plessy was arrested for not obeying Jim Crow laws, arguing the violated “equal protection of laws”

• Court ruled that separate facilities were okay as long as they were equal

• More Jim Crow laws were passed: separate schools, parks, theaters

• African American facilities inferior to those of whites