Chapter 22
The Ordeal of
Reconstruction, 1865–1877
Chapter
Themes
Theme: Johnson’s
political blunders and Southern white recalcitrance led to the imposition of
congressional military Reconstruction on the South. Reconstruction did address
difficult issues of reform and racial justice in the South and achieved some
successes, but was ultimately abandoned, leaving a deep legacy of racial and
sectional bitterness.
Theme: During
Reconstruction, the Constitution was strengthened with the Fourteenth
(citizenship and equal protection of the laws) and Fifteenth (black voting
rights) Amendments, but it was also tested with the conflicts between the
President and Congress that culminated in an impeachment process.
Theme: Southern
resistance to Reconstruction began immediately with the sending of ex-rebels to
be seated in Congress and continued with the creation of violently oppressive
groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Although forced to make some concessions,
Southern "Redeemers" successfully outlasted the Congressional
Reconstruction efforts.
chapter summary
With the Civil War over, the nation faced the difficult
problems of rebuilding the South, assisting the freed slaves, reintegrating the
Southern states into the Union, and deciding who would
direct the Reconstruction process.
The South was economically devastated and socially
revolutionized by emancipation. As slaveowners
reluctantly confronted the end of slave labor, blacks took their first steps in
freedom. Black churches and freedmen’s schools helped the former slaves begin
to shape their own destiny.
The new President Andrew Johnson was politically inept and
personally contentious. His attempt to implement a moderate
plan of Reconstruction, along the lines originally suggested by Lincoln, fell
victim to Southern whites’ severe treatment of blacks and his own political
blunders.
Republicans imposed harsh military Reconstruction on the
South after their gains in the 1866 congressional elections. The Southern
states reentered the Union with new radical governments,
which rested partly on the newly enfranchised blacks, but also had support from
some sectors of southern society. These regimes were sometimes corrupt but also
implemented important reforms. The divisions between moderate and radical
Republicans meant that Reconstruction’s aims were often limited and confused,
despite the important Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
Embittered whites hated the radical governments and mobilized
reactionary terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan to restore white
supremacy. Congress impeached Johnson but failed narrowly to convict him. In
the end, the poorly conceived Reconstruction policy failed disastrously.
Note Cards: Analyze the
following terms; include historical context, chronology, drawing conclusions,
and cause/effect where appropriate. Each note card you complete is worth one
extra credit point; pick the terms you need the most help with to understand.
Chapter 22 Study Guide
Thought Questions: While you are reading
the chapter for the first time, write down a couple questions or observations
that come to mind for class discussion. These thoughts
could be about ideas you do not understand or ideas you find curious or
interesting.
1.
2.
Bull Run Ends the "Ninety Day War” The Problems of
Peace
3. "Dismal
indeed was the picture presented by the war-wracked South when the rattle of
musketry faded." Explain.
Freedmen Define Freedom
4. How did
African-Americans respond to emancipation in the decade following the war?
The Freedmen's Bureau
5. Assess the effectiveness of the Freedmen's Bureau.
Johnson: The Tailor President
6. Explain
the strengths and weaknesses of Andrew Johnson.
Presidential Reconstruction
7. How did
the Presidents' plan for reconstruction differ from the plan of the Radical
Republicans?
The Baleful Black Codes
8. How were Black Codes used to keep the freedmen down?
Congressional Reconstruction
9. Why did
northern congressmen refuse to seat the southerners when they came to take
their seats? (Hint: there are two reasons -- one moral and one
practical)
Johnson Clashes with Congress
10. How did
Republicans use their dominance of Congress?
What did President Johnson do in response?
Swinging `Round the Circle with
Johnson
11. How did
Johnson's campaigning during the 1866 congressional elections backfire? Why did it backfire?
Republican Principles and
Programs
12. How did
the views of Moderate Republicans about reconstruction differ from the views of
Radical Republicans?
Reconstruction by the Sword
13. Describe
military reconstruction.
No Women Voters
14. Why did
some women feel that they did not receive their due after the Civil War?
The Realities of Radical
Reconstruction in the South
15. In what
ways did African-Americans become politically involved in the years immediately
following the Civil War? How did White
southerners view their involvement?
The Ku Klux Klan
16. In what ways
did Southern whites attempt to keep former slaves down?
Johnson Walks the Impeachment
Plank
17. How did the Radical Republicans
"manufacture" an impeachment of Andrew Johnson?
A Not-Guilty Verdict for Johnson
18. Why were
the Radicals unsuccessful in removing Johnson from office?
The Purchase of Alaska
19. Explain
why Alaska was called "Seward's Folly," but was
purchased anyway.
The Heritage of Reconstruction
20. Assess the success of Republican reconstruction.
Varying Viewpoints: How Radical Was Reconstruction?
21. Do you
believe that the primary motive in Reconstruction was revenge or the desire to
help African-Americans? Explain.
expanding the “varying
viewpoints”
·
William A. Dunning, Reconstruction: Political and Economic (1907).
A view of Reconstruction as a national disgrace:
“Few episodes of recorded history more urgently invited
thorough analysis than the struggle through which the southern whites,
subjugated by adversaries of their own race, thwarted the scheme which
threatened permanent subjection to another race.…The most rasping feature of
the new situation to the old white element of the South was the large
predominance of northerners and negroes in positions of political power.…The
most cunning and malignant enemy of the United States could not have timed
differently this period of national ill-repute; for it came with the centennial
of American independence.…”
·
Kenneth Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction (1965).
A favorable view of Reconstruction:
“Finally, we come to the idealistic aim of the radicals to
make southern society more democratic, especially to make the emancipation of
Negroes something more than an empty gesture. In the short run this was their
greatest failure.…Still, no one could quite forget that the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments were now part of the federal Constitution.…Thus Negroes
were no longer denied equality by the plain language of law, as they had been
before radical reconstruction, but only by coercion, by subterfuge, by deceit,
and by spurious legalisms.…The blunders of that era, tragic though they were,
dwindle into insignificance. For if it was worth four years
of civil war to save the Union, it was worth a few years of radical reconstruction to give the
American Negro the ultimate promise of equal civil and political rights.”
questions about the “varying
viewpoints”
22. What
does each of these historians see as the fundamental goals of Reconstruction?
How well does each think it achieved those goals?
23. According
to each of these viewpoints, what were the roles of Northern whites, Southern
whites, and blacks in Reconstruction?
24. How
would each of these historians interpret the overturning of Reconstruction and
its continuing meaning for American society?
Analysis Questions
(In reply to hecklers’ shouts of “Judas!”): “There was a Judas, and he was one of the twelve apostles.…If I have
played Judas, who has been my Christ that I have played Judas with? Was it Thad
Stevens? Was it Wendell Phillips? Was it Charles Sumner?” Andrew Johnson (1808–1875) (Swing around
the circle, 1866)
“A brief experience showed us
that the negro people were capable of education, with no limit that men could
set on their capacity. What white men could learn or had learned, they, or some
of them, could learn.” Oliver O. Howard (1830–1909)
(Autobiography, 1907)
“The colored members, after
consulting together on the subject, agreed to give their influence and votes
for one of their own race, as it would in their judgment be a weakening blow
against color line prejudice, and they unanimously elected me for their
nominee.…Some of the Democracy favored it because they thought it would
seriously damage the Republican party.” Hiram Revels (1822–1901)
(1884)
“I repose in this quiet and
secluded spot, not from any natural preference for solitude, but, finding other
cemeteries limited by charter rules as to race, I have chosen this, that I
might illustrate in my death the principle which I have advocated through a
long life—Equality of Man before his Creator.” Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868) (Inscription on
Stevens’s tombstone, written by himself, 1868)
1. Could
presidential Reconstruction have succeeded if politically skilled Abraham
Lincoln instead of politically inept Andrew Johnson had been president?
2. How
truly “radical” was “radical Reconstruction”?
3. How
did both Southern and Northern racial attitudes shape Reconstruction, and what
effect did Reconstruction have on race relations and the conditions of blacks?
Did Reconstruction really address the problems of race?
4. Was
Reconstruction a noble experiment that failed, a
vengeful Northern punishment of the South, a weak effort that did not go far
enough, or the best that could have been expected under the circumstances? What
has been the historical legacy of Reconstruction? (Consider particularly the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.)
HISTORIC NOTES
·
The Union victory is significant in transforming
and diversifying the South’s production.
It also represents the defeat of the planter-slaveholder and the
continued rise of the industrialist capitalist.
·
In the aftermath of the war, especially in those
southern states that reenter the Union under Johnson’s
lenient plan, Black Codes again segregate and subordinate the South’s
blacks. Organizations such as the Ku
Klux Klan of the White Camellia use violence and intimidation to deny blacks
access to institutions, such as voting, that would improve their lives. Blacks are reduced to a form of slavery
without chains in that they are economically dependent and subservient to the
owner of the land to which they are sharecroppers.
·
President Johnson wrangles with the Radical
Republicans over who will administer Reconstruction. The conflict is not resolved until Johnson is
impeached. He barely survives the trial
by the Senate, but the Radical Republicans dominate until he leaves office.
·
Under the Radical Republicans, the South is
placed under military rule in order to enforce blacks’ rights and prepare
states for readmission to the Union.
·
One legacy of Reconstruction is the passage of
three amendments: the thirteenth (abolishing slavery), the fourteenth (defining
citizenship rights), and the fifteenth (defining voting rights).
·
Lincoln
premised he lenient Reconstruction plan on the belief that the southern states
had not seceded but had pulled out of the Union by their
political, economic, and military leaders.
·
Even though Reconstruction lasted little more
than a decade, it provided blacks and their white supporters
valuable experience in establishing grassroots civil rights movements and
developing organizational skills. When
Reconstruction ended in 1877, blacks were reduced to a state of political and
economic subordination and social submissiveness in a nation that,
constitutionally at least, had granted them citizenship rights.
Advanced
Placement United States History Topic Outline
10. The Crisis of the Union
A. Pro- and antislavery arguments and conflicts
B. Compromise of 1850 and popular sovereignty
C. The Kansas-Nebraska Act and the emergence of the
Republican Party
D. Abraham Lincoln, the election of 1860, and secession
11. Civil War
A. Two societies at war: mobilization,
resources, and internal dissent
B. Military strategies and foreign diplomacy
C. Emancipation and the role of African Americans in the
war
D. Social, political, and economic effects of war in the
North, South, and West
12. Reconstruction
A. Presidential and Radical Reconstruction
B. Southern state governments: aspirations, achievements,
failures
C. Role of African Americans in politics, education, and
the economy
D. Compromise of 1877
E. Impact of Reconstruction
13. The Origins of the New South
A. Reconfiguration of southern agriculture: sharecropping
and crop lien system
B. Expansion of manufacturing and industrialization
C. The politics of segregation: Jim Crow and
disfranchisement