Ordeal Of Reconstruction

Chapter 22 Outline

The Ordeal of Reconstruction (1865-1877)

Now that the war was over,, the nation faced many questions concerning the rebuilding of the South, the freed slaved,Southern reintegration, and reconstruction itself

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with furnaces in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations” -Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural, March 4,1865

The Problems of Peace

After the Civil War, the nation did not know what to do with the Confederacy’s leaders

Cities like Charleston and Richmond were gone and economic life had come to a halt

White Southerners were defiant and believed that secession was correct

Freedom Define Freedom

There was confusion as to what “freedom” meant for the emancipated slaves

Many blacks were re-enslaved

Planters resisted emancipation and said it was lawful until Supreme Court said otherwise

Some slaves were still loyal to their owners while others joined the Union force

All masters were eventually forced to free their slaves and announce their liberty

Black people began demanding to be called upon formerly, wore nicer clothes (not cotton), and looked for their long-lost family members

“Slave marriages” began: formalized matrimony between freed slaves

Black churches grew immensely (Black Baptist Church (2.5x) and Black African Methodist Episcopal Church (4x))

Emancipated slaves gained access to education

Had a shortage of educated blacks to be teachers, so some Northern white men came to assist and they also turned to the federal government

Some whole communities moved together for opportunity while others left their masters to find work where there was protection and

Ex. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony who worked wholeheartedly for freedom of the slaves

The 14th amendment included the word male for the first time and the 15th amendment granted suffrage to any “race, color, or previous condition” but not sex

The Realities of Radical Reconstruction in the South

Many Northern states withheld the ballot from black people

Southern blacks man with suffrage organized politically into the Union League (Northern and pro-Union originally)

Black women could not vote, but they were in the parades and rallies

Black men who had been elected as delegates to the state’s constitutional conventions were the backbone of black politics

Their former masters lashed out with fury

The Ku Klux Klan

Southern whites responded against this “savage” rule of blacks in politics

Formed the Invisible Empire of the South in Tennessee in 1866

They would ride horseback around the towns and demand a bucket of water to then declare that it was the first drink since they died at Shiloh