-
Lincoln's Reconstruction Plan
Also known as the 10% plan. The plan stated that a southern state could re-enter the union once 10% of it’s voters swore an oath of allegiance to the union. It was critical to Lincoln that genuine southerners become involved in their own reconstruction. -
1st Reconstruction Phase
-
Period: to
Reconstruction Phases
-
Wade Davis Bill
Required that 50 percent of a state's white males take a loyalty oath to be readmitted to the Union. In addition, states were required to give blacks the right to vote. -
Freedmen's Bureau
Congress created the Freedmen's Bureau to economically and politically empower freed people after the Civil War. Most of the people that ended up receiving the help were African Americans and poor whites in the south. -
Special Field Orders #15
Military orders issued during the American Civil War, on January 16, 1865, by General William Tecumseh Sherman. They provided for the confiscation of 400,000 acres (1,600 km2) of land along the Atlantic coast of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida and the dividing of it into parcels of not more than 40 acres (0.16 km2),[2] on which were to be settled approximately 18,000 formerly enslaved families and other Blacks then living in the area. -
President Lincoln's Death
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865. Andrew Johnson then proceeded to take the presidency position, veering away from Lincoln’s plan for reconstruction. -
13th Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. In Congress, it was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House on January 31, 1865. The amendment was first proposed by Abraham Lincoln. -
Period: to
Scalawags
Scalawags were white Southerners who cooperated politically with black freedmen and Northern newcomers. Scalawags” and “carpetbaggers” (Northerners accused of exploiting the situation for personal gain) cooperated to gain political control of the city and state, with the support of black voters. By 1872 amnesty had been granted to the ex-Confederates, and the municipal government returned to traditional white control. -
2nd Phase; Johnson's Presidential Plan
-
Civil Rights Bill of 1866
Was passed by Congress on 9th April 1866 over the veto of President Andrew Johnson. The act declared that all persons born in the United States were now citizens, without regard to race, color, or previous condition. -
Black Codes
Black codes were restrictive laws designed to limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure their availability as a cheap labor force after slavery was abolished during the Civil War. They were in full effect around 1865 and 1866. They helped undermine President Johnson’s policies. -
Klu Klux Klan
From 1868 through the early 1870s the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) functioned as a loosely organized group of political and social terrorists. The Klan's goals included the political defeat of the Republican Party and the maintenance of absolute white supremacy in response to newly gained civil and political rights by southern blacks after the Civil War (1861-65). They were more successful in achieving their political goals than they were with their social goals during the Reconstruction era. -
Impeachment of President Johnson
The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson occurred in 1868. During the years immediately following the Civil War, President Andrew Johnson clashed repeatedly with the Republican-controlled Congress over reconstruction of the defeated South. 35 senators voted to convict the president of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” while 19 senators voted to acquit. A clear majority voted against the president. -
3rd Phase: Military/Congress Reconstruction
-
Reconstruction Acts
The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 laid out the process for readmitting Southern states into the Union. The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) provided former slaves with national citizenship, and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) granted black men the right to vote The reconstruction acts also divided the south into five military sections, which was eventually the beginning of military reconstruction. -
14th Amendment
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. ... The 14th amendment is a very important amendment that defines what it means to be a US citizen and protects certain rights of the people.The amendment was vetoed by Johnson until Congress struck down the veto and passed it. It was a major loss for white supremacists at the time. -
15th Amendment
Passed by Congress February 26, 1869, and ratified February 3, 1870, the 15th amendment granted African American men the right to vote. -
Sharecropping
Sharecropping is a form of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on their portion of land. It was essentially a way for southern plantation owners to keep African Americans on their land, basically as slaves. All in all sharecropping back in the civil war ages was just another name for slavery. It was prominent in the 1870’s. -
Enforcement Acts
The Enforcement Acts were three bills passed by the United States Congress between 1870 and 1871. They were criminal codes which protected African-Americans' right to vote, to hold office, to serve on juries, and receive equal protection of laws. They were made to combat attacks on the suffrage rights of African Americans from state officials or violent groups like the Ku Klux Klan. -
Slaughterhouse Cases
The Slaughterhouse Cases, resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1873, ruled that a citizen's "privileges and immunities," as protected by the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment against the states, were limited to those spelled out in the Constitution and did not include many rights given by the individual states. -
Civil Rights Act of 1875
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 (18 Stat. 335–337), sometimes called Enforcement Act or Force Act, was a United States federal law enacted during the Reconstruction Era in response to civil rights violations to African Americans, "to protect all citizens in their civil and legal rights. Radical Republican senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts introduced the Civil Rights Act in 1870 as an amendment to a general amnesty bill -
The Bargain of 1877
The Compromise of 1877 was an informal, unwritten deal that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election. It resulted in the United States federal government pulling the last troops out of the South, and formally ended the Reconstruction Era.
