AHIS 100

Reconstruction

Dr. Kane

mkane2@albany.edu

Office Hrs: W 10:30-11:30 & F 11:30-12:30

Social Science 60S


maevekane.net/ahis100/lecture-slides

December 7

coming up

  • last paper Dec 4
  • studyguide on Blackboard
  • final exam Tuesday December 15 3:30-5:30pm
  • exam in this room!
  • review sessions: Dec 10 12-3 Social Science 60W; Dec 11 5-7 Sci Lib group study L10J

last time

  • turning the tide
  • Emancipation Proclamation
  • impact of Emancipation
  • terms of surrender
  • Lincoln's legacy?

Reconstruction 1865-1877

  • consequences of war
  • federal occupation
  • expansion of rights
  • restriction of rights
  • abandonment of Reconstruction

consequences of war

  • 30% of Southern men 18-40 dead
  • 40% of Southern property & assets destroyed
  • presidential reconstruction: 1865-1866
  • radical reconstruction: 1867-1877
  • military reconstruction: 1867-1870

military reconstruction 1867-1870

  • martial law and military governance in all former Confederate states
  • occupation of enemy territory?
  • temporary exclusion of Confederate leaders
  • 10% loyalty oath for readmission to Union
  • 1872 general amnesty - no Confederates ever tried for treason

Reconstruction Amendments

  • 13: ends slavery throughout US
  • 14: all men born in US are citizens
  • women's citizenship determined by marriage until 1946
  • 15: no citizen may be denied the right to vote based on race, color, or previous servitude

Civil Rights Act of 1866

  • "the reward of treason will be an increased representation" - 3/5ths
  • states' rights vs individual rights
  • vetoed by anti-slavery but racist President Johnson
  • pushed through by Republican majority - black votes

legacies of Reconstruction Amendments

  • barriers to voting litigated under 15th Amendment: poll taxes, grandfather clause, literacy test, Voter ID laws
  • Voting Rights Act of 1965 - SCOTUS Shelby County v Holder 2013
  • SCOTUS: Georgia vs Foster 2016

whose suffrage?

  • Southern support for white women's suffrage to balance black mens' votes
  • 14th Amendment: defines citizenship by gender for the first time
  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony: white women more qualified as voters bc of republican motherhood
  • Frances Harper: voting not sufficient to solve intersecting issues of race, gender and poverty

what were the purpose of Reconstruction-era vagrancy laws?

      A. they prevented violence between unemployed whites and blacks as in the draft riots
      B. they prevented white plantation owners from forcing former enslaved people to work for them
      C. they required former enslaved people to provide proof of employment in order to preserve the pre-war economic order
      D. they prevented former enslaved people from working in order to keep them from competing with poor whites for jobs

Black Codes, Jim and Jane Crow

  • restriction of movement, business and property ownership, apprenticeship of black children
  • vagrancy laws and convict leasing: "slavery by another name"
  • black women punished as men, kept out of feminine housework
  • sharecropping: inheritable debt, economic entrapment of families

increasing racial violence 1866-1870

  • increasing black political power
  • individual: police and employer violence
  • political: mob violence and rejection of black political authority
  • terrorist: lynching, rise of the KKK

Enforcement Acts 1870-1871

  • states' rights vs federal powers
  • majority rule vs minority rights
  • broad vs strict construction of federal powers
  • a government of the people or by the people?

why was Northern Republican Rutherford B. Hayes elected President during a time of increasing Southern Democratic resistance to Republican reconstruction policies?

(more than one right answer)

      A. Hayes and the national Republican party focused on economic and not racial issues, winning national support
      B. the national Republican party offered to end federal reconstruction if Democrats recognized Hayes' election
      C. black Southern Democrats boycotted the election of 1876, handing the election to Hayes by default
      D. white Southern Democrats boycotted the election of 1876, handing the election to Hayes by default

Election of 1876

  • widespread corruption under Pres. Grant turns many Republicans away from Reconstruction
  • Compromise of 1877 - one more compromise?
  • federal troops withdrawn from South
  • Enforcement Acts no longer enforced

states' rights vs civil rights

  • what is the role of the federal government?
  • who protects individual rights from states?
  • do individual rights take precedence over states' rights?
  • pre-1865: what is the relationship between the state and the federal govt
  • post-1865: what is the relationship between the individual and the state