Chapter 15 Reconstruction 1865–1877 Teaching Resources 4. As some African Americans began to agi- tate for political rights, congressional Re- Chapter Instructional Objectives publicans proposed the Wade-Davis Bill, a stricter substitute for Lincoln’s Ten Percent After you have taught this chapter, your students Plan, which laid down, as conditions for should be able to answer the following questions: the restoration of the rebellious states to 1. How did Presidents Lincoln and Johnson envision the Union, an oath of allegiance by a ma- Reconstruction? jority of each state’s adult white men, new state governments formed only by those 2. How and why did Republicans in Congress take who had never carried arms against the control of Reconstruction? Union, and permanent disfranchisement 3. What did African Americans expect after the Civil of Confederate leaders. War? What were the realities they encountered 5. The Wade-Davis Bill served notice that during Reconstruction? congressional Republicans were not going to turn Reconstruction policy over to the 4. What was the southern response(s) to Reconstruc- president. tion? 6. Rather than openly challenge Congress, 5. Why did a political crisis emerge in 1877? How did Lincoln executed a pocket veto of the it shape Reconstruction? Wade-Davis Bill by not signing it before Congress adjourned. 6. What were the successes and failures of Recon- 7. Lincoln also initiated informal talks with struction? congressional leaders aimed at finding common ground; Lincoln’s successor An- Chapter Annotated Outline drew Johnson, however, held the view that Reconstruction was the president’s prerog- I. Presidential Reconstruction ative. A. Presidential Initiatives 8. Andrew Johnson, a Jacksonian Democrat, 1. Based on a separation of powers, the championed poor whites. A slave owner Constitution did not address the question himself, he had little sympathy for for- of secession or any procedure for Recon- merly enslaved blacks. struction, so it did not say which branch 9. The Republicans had nominated Johnson of government was to handle the readmis- for vice president in 1864 in order to pro- sion of rebellious states. mote wartime political unity and to court 2. Lincoln offered general amnesty to all but southern Unionists. high-ranking Confederates willing to 10. After Lincoln’s death, Johnson offered pledge loyalty to the Union; when 10 per- amnesty to all southerners, except high- cent of a state’s voters took this oath—and ranking Confederate officials and wealthy abolished slavery—the state would be re- property owners, who took an oath of al- stored to the Union. legiance to the Constitution. 3. Most Confederate states rebuffed the offer, 11. Johnson also appointed provisional gover- assuring that the war would have to be nors for the southern states and, as condi- fought to the bitter end. tions for their restoration, required only 217 218 Chapter 15: Reconstruction, 1865–1877 that they revoke their ordinances of seces- tracts of land for liberated blacks in his sion, repudiate their Confederate debts, March to the Sea. and ratify the Thirteenth Amendment. 3. When the war ended, the Freedmen’s Bu- 12. Within months, all the former Confeder- reau was charged with feeding and cloth- ate states had met Johnson’s requirements ing war refugees, distributing confiscated for rejoining the Union and had function- lands to “loyal refugees and freedmen,” ing, elected governments. and regulating labor contracts between 13. Southerners held fast to the antebellum freedmen and planters. order and enacted Black Codes designed 4. Johnson’s amnesty plan entitled pardoned to drive the ex-slaves back to plantations; Confederates to recover confiscated prop- they had moved to restore slavery in all erty, shattering the freedmen’s hopes of but the name. keeping the land on which they lived. 14. Southerners perceived Johnson’s liberal 5. To try to hold onto their land, blacks amnesty policy as tacit approval of the fought pitched battles with plantation Black Codes; emboldened, the ex- owners and bands of ex-Confederate sol- Confederates filled southern congressional diers; generally, the whites prevailed. delegation with old comrades, even in- 6. A struggle took place over the labor sys- cluding the vice president of the Confed- tem that would replace slavery; because eracy, Alexander Stephens. owning land defined true freedom, ex- 15. Republicans in both houses refused to slaves resisted working for wages as it im- admit the southern delegations when plied not freedom but dependency. Congress convened in early December 7. To overcome any vestiges of dependency, 1865, blocking Johnson’s Reconstruction formalizing marriage was an urgent mat- program. ter after emancipation as was resisting 16. In response, some Black Codes were re- planters’ demands that freedwomen go placed with nonracial ordinances whose back to work in the fields. effect was the same, and across the South 8. Many freedpeople abandoned their old a wave of violence erupted against the plantations in order to seek better lives freedmen. and more freedom in the cities of the 17. Republicans concluded that the South had South; those who remained refused to embarked on a concerted effort to circum- work under the gang-labor system. vent the Thirteenth Amendment and that 9. Whatever system of labor finally might the federal government had to intervene. emerge, it was clear that the freedmen 18. Congress voted to extend the life of the would never settle for anything resem- Freedmen’s Bureau, gave it direct funding bling the old plantation system. for the first time, and authorized its agents 10. The efforts of former slaves to control to investigate cases of discrimination their own lives challenged deeply en- against blacks. trenched white attitudes and resulted in 19. Lyman Trumbull, chairman of the Judi- racial violence; the governments estab- ciary Committee, proposed a Civil Rights lished under Johnson’s plan only put the Bill that declared all persons—regardless stamp of legality on the pervasive efforts of race—born in the United States to be to enforce white supremacy. citizens and gave them equal rights. 11. Freedmen turned to Washington for help. 20. Even the most moderate Republicans de- C. Congress versus President manded that the federal government as- 1. In February 1866, Andrew Johnson vetoed sume responsibility for securing the civil the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill and a month rights of the freedmen. later vetoed Trumbull’s Civil Rights Bill, B. Acting on Freedom calling it discriminatory against whites. 1. Across the South, ex-slaves held mass 2. Galvanized by Johnson’s attack on the meetings and formed organizations; they Civil Rights Bill, Republicans enacted the demanded equality before the law and the Civil Rights Act of 1866; Congress had right to vote. never before overridden a veto on a major 2. In the months before the end of the war, piece of legislation. freedmen had seized control of land where 3. As an angry Congress renewed the Freed- they could; General Sherman had reserved men’s Bureau over a second Johnson veto, Chapter 15: Reconstruction, 1865–1877 219 Republican resolve was reinforced by news 5. When the Senate reconvened, it overruled of mounting violence in the South. Stanton’s suspension, and Grant, by now 4. Republicans moved to enshrine black civil Johnson’s enemy, resigned so that Stanton rights in the Fourteenth Amendment to could resume office. the U.S. Constitution. 6. On February 21, 1868, Johnson dismissed 5. Johnson urged the states not to ratify the Stanton; the House Republicans intro- amendment and began to maneuver polit- duced articles of impeachment against ically against the Republicans; the Four- Johnson, mainly for violations of the teenth Amendment became a campaign Tenure of Office Act. issue for the Democratic Party. 7. A vote on impeachment was one vote 6. Republicans responded furiously by de- short of the required two-thirds majority crying Democrats as traitors, a tactic that needed, but Johnson was left powerless to came to be known as “waving the bloody alter the course of Reconstruction. shirt.” 8. Grant was the Republicans’ 1868 presiden- 7. Johnson embarked on a disastrous rail- tial nominee, and he won out over the road tour campaign and made matters Democrats’ Horatio Seymour; Republi- worse by engaging in shouting matches cans retained two-thirds majorities in and exchanging insults with the hostile both houses of Congress. crowds. 9. The Fifteenth Amendment forbade either 8. Republicans won a three-to-one majority the federal government or the states to deny in the 1866 congressional elections, which citizens the right to vote on the basis of registered overwhelming support for se- race,color, or “previous condition of ser- curing the civil rights of ex-slaves. vitude,” although it left room for poll taxes, 9. The Republican Party had a new sense of property requirements or literacy tests. unity coalescing around the unbending 10. States still under federal control were re- program of the radical minority, which quired to ratify the amendment before represented the party’s abolitionist strain. being readmitted to the Union; the Fif- 10. For the Radicals, Reconstruction was teenth Amendment became part of the never primarily about restoring the Union Constitution. but rather remaking southern society, be- B. Woman Suffrage Denied ginning with getting the black man suf- 1. Women’s rights advocates were outraged frage—his right to vote. that the Fifteenth Amendment did not ad- II. Radical Reconstruction dress women’s suffrage. A. Congress Takes Command 2. At the 1869 annual meeting of the Equal 1. The Reconstruction Act of 1867 divided Rights Association, Elizabeth Cady Stan- the South into five military districts, each ton and Susan B. Anthony spoke out under the command of a Union general. against the amendment. 2. The price for reentering the Union was 3.