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Topic #1: Constitutional Change as a
Result of the Civil War and
Reconstruction
#1
Reconstruction Amendments
Background to the Amendment/
Information About the Creation
of the Amendment
What the Amendment
says
Image
13th
14th
15th
#2
Section 1. Neither
slavery nor involuntary
servitude, except as a
punishment for crime
whereof the party shall
have been duly
convicted, shall exist
within the United
States, or any place
subject to their
jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress
shall have power to
enforce this article by
appropriate legislation.
The 13th amendment, which formally abolished slavery
in the United States, passed the Senate on April 8, 1864, and the
House on January 31, 1865. On February 1, 1865, President
Abraham Lincoln approved the Joint Resolution of Congress
submitting the proposed amendment to the state legislatures. The
necessary number of states ratified it by December 6, 1865.
In 1863 President Lincoln had issued the Emancipation
Proclamation declaring ―all persons held as slaves within any State,
or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in
rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward,
and forever free.‖ Nonetheless, the Emancipation Proclamation did
not end slavery in the nation. Lincoln recognized that the
Emancipation Proclamation would have to be followed by a
constitutional amendment in order to guarantee the abolishment of
slavery.
The 13th amendment was passed at the end of the Civil
War before the Southern states had been restored to the Union
and should have easily passed the Congress. Although the Senate
passed it in April 1864, the House did not. At that point, Lincoln
took an active role to ensure passage through congress. He insisted
that passage of the 13th amendment be added to the Republican
Party platform for the upcoming Presidential elections. His efforts
met with success when the House passed the bill in January 1865
with a vote of 119–56.
With the adoption of the 13th amendment, the United
States found a final constitutional solution to the issue of slavery. #3
Following the Civil War, Congress submitted to the states
three amendments as part of its Reconstruction program to
guarantee equal civil and legal rights to black citizens. The major
provision of the 14th amendment was to grant citizenship to ―All
persons born or naturalized in the United States,‖ thereby granting
citizenship to former slaves. Another equally important provision
was the statement that ―nor shall any state deprive any person of
life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to
any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.‖
The right to due process of law and equal protection of the law now
applied to both the Federal and state governments.
On July 28, 1868, the 14th amendment was declared, in a
certificate of the Secretary of State, ratified by the necessary 28 of
the 37 States, and became part of the supreme law of the land.
Congressman John A. Bingham of Ohio, the primary author of the
first section of the 14th amendment, intended that the amendment
also nationalize the Federal Bill of Rights by making it binding
upon the states. However, for many years, the Supreme Court ruled
that the Amendment did not extend the Bill of Rights to the states.
Not only did the 14th amendment fail to extend the Bill
of Rights to the states; it also failed to protect the rights of black
citizens. One legacy of Reconstruction was the determined struggle
of black and white citizens to make the promise of the 14th
amendment a reality.
Section 1. 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. No
State shall make or
enforce any law which
shall abridge the
privileges or
immunities of citizens
of the United States;
nor shall any State
deprive any person of
life, liberty, or property,
without due process of
law; nor deny to any
person within its
jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws.
#4
The 15th Amendment was the last of the ―Reconstruction
Amendments‖ to be adopted. It was designed to prohibit discrimination
against voters on the basis on race or previous condition of servitude.
Previously, the states had had full responsibility for determining voter
qualifications.
Reasons for supporting the amendment are not immediately
evident, but they went far beyond an idealistic desire to spread the fruits of
democracy to former slaves.
In the Election of 1868, Grant achieved a narrow majority of the
popular votes nationwide. His support from black voters in the South made
the difference. Without those votes, he would have lost. The largest state
Grant lost was New York (home state of Horatio Seymour, his opponent),
which was conceded by a narrow margin. Blacks could not vote in the North
- if they had had that right, Grant would have taken New York.
The main impetus behind the 15th Amendment was the
Republican desire to entrench its power in both the North and the South.
Black votes would help accomplish that end.
The measure was passed by Congress in 1869, and was quickly
ratified by the requisite three-fourths of the states in 1870. Republicans still
controlled the state governments in the South, so the expected opposition
lacked the means to block the amendment.
Was the 15th Amendment successful? Yes and no. It did provide
the vote to blacks living in northern states, and it did encourage voting by
blacks in the South for a period of time.
Opposition in the former Confederate states developed quickly
and took many forms—violent voter intimidation initially and later through
grandfather clauses and poll taxes. The full impact of the amendment would
not be felt in the South for nearly a century.
Section 1. The right
of citizens of the
United States to
vote shall not be
denied or abridged
by the United
States or by any
State on account of
race, color, or
previous condition
of servitude.
Section 2. The
Congress shall have
power to enforce
this article by
appropriate
legislation.
#5
The Freedmen’s Bureau
In the years following the Civil War, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen,
and Abandoned Lands (the Freedmen's Bureau) provided assistance to
tens of thousands of former slaves and impoverished whites in the
Southern States and the District of Columbia. The war had liberated
nearly four million slaves and destroyed the region's cities, towns, and
plantation-based economy. It left former slaves and many whites
dislocated from their homes, facing starvation, and owning only the
clothes they wore. The challenge of establishing a new social order,
founded on freedom and racial equality, was enormous.
The Bureau was established in the War Department in 1865 to undertake
the relief effort and the unprecedented social reconstruction that would
bring freed people to full citizenship.
#7
#8
Skilled freedmen worked at the army’s carpenter shops in Beaufort, SC, and at other assignments, earning from $8 to $12 per month.
#10
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Topic #3: Conditions in the
Postwar South
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#16
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Topic #4: Politics in the Postwar
South
#19
Scalawags• Native white Southerners who supported the federal government’s
Reconstruction Plan
• Cooperated with freed slaves in order to achieve success
Origins of the Term
The term was originally a derogatory epithet but is used by many historians as a useful
shorthand. The term originally meant rascal. Here is a quote by historian Ted Tunnell on
the origins of the term:
Reference works such as Joseph E. Worcester's 1860 Dictionary of the English Language
defined scalawag as "A low worthless fellow; a scapegrace." Scalawag was also a word for low-
grade farm animals. In early 1868 a Mississippi editor observed that scalawag "has been used
from time immemorial to designate inferior milch cows in the cattle markets of Virginia and
Kentucky." That June the Richmond Enquirer concurred; scalawag had heretofore "applied
to all of the mean, lean, mangy, hidebound skiny [sic], worthless cattle in every particular
drove." Only in recent months, the Richmond paper remarked, had the term taken on
political meaning.
During the 1868-69 session of Judge "Greasy" Sam Watts court in Haywood County, North
Carolina, Dr. William Closs, D.D. testified that a scalawag was "a Native born Southern
white man who says he is no better than a negro and tells the truth when he says it." Some
accounts record his testimony as "a native Southern white man, who says that a negro is as
good as he is, and tells the truth when he says so."
#20
CarpetbaggersReforming impulse
Beginning in 1862, thousands of Northern abolitionists and other reformers moved to areas in the South where secession by the
Confederates states had failed. Many schoolteachers and religious missionaries arrived in the South, some of them sponsored by northern
churches. Many were abolitionists who sought to continue the struggle for racial equality; they often became agents of the federal
Freedmen's Bureau, which started operations in 1865 to assist freedmen and also white refugees. The bureau established public schools
in rural areas of the South where public schools had not previously existed. Other Northerners who moved to the South participated in
establishing railroads where infrastructure was lacking.
Economic motives
Many carpetbaggers were businessmen who purchased or leased plantations and became wealthy landowners, hiring Freedmen to do the
labor. Most were former Union soldiers eager to invest their savings in this promising new frontier, and civilians lured south by press
reports of "the fabulous sums of money to be made in the South in raising cotton." The investors were warmly received. However, it is
also noted that "joined with the quest for profit, however, was a reforming spirit, a vision of themselves as agents of sectional reconciliation
and the South's "economic regeneration." Accustomed to viewing Southerners—black and white—as devoid of economic initiative and self-
discipline, they believed that only "Northern capital and energy" could bring "the blessings of a free labor system to the region.―
Carpetbaggers tended to be well educated and middle class in origin. Some had been lawyers, businessmen, newspaper editors, and other
pillars of Northern communities. The majority (including fifty-two of the sixty who served in Congress during Reconstruction) were
veterans of the Union Army. Leading "black carpetbaggers" believed the interests of capital and labor identical and the freedmen entitled
to little more than an "honest chance in the race of life.―
Many northern and southern Republicans shared a modernizing vision of upgrading the southern economy and society, one that would
replace the inefficient Southern plantation regime with railroads, factories, and more efficient farming. They actively promoted public
schooling and created numerous colleges and universities. The northerners were especially successful in taking control of southern
railroads, abetted by state legislatures. In 1870, northerners controlled 21% of the South's railroads (by mileage); 19% of the directors
were from the North. By 1890, they controlled 88% of the mileage and 47% of the directors were from the North.
Self-interest and exploitation
Some were representatives of the Freedmen's Bureau and other agencies of Reconstruction; some were humanitarians with the intent to
help black people; yet some were adventurers who hoped to benefit themselves by questionable methods. The characters of "the King"
and "the Duke" in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are fictional examples; these confidence men enter the novel on the run
from local authorities, and "both of them had big, fat, ratty-looking carpet bags."
#21
The term carpetbaggers was
used to describe the white
northern Republican
politicians who came South,
arriving with their travel
carpetbags. Southerners
considered them ready to loot
and plunder the defeated
South.
In modern usage in the
United States, the term is
sometimes used derisively to
refer to a politician who runs
for public office in an area in
which he or she is not
originally from and/or has
only lived for a very short
time.#22
THE
SOLID
SOUTH• Memories of the
war and
Reconstruction held
the segregated South
together as a
Democratic block—
the "Solid South"—in
national politics for
another century.
#23
Topic #5: Limitations on the 15th
Amendment
#24
The 15th Amendment
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall
not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on
account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Section
2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by
appropriate legislation.
#25
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The Grandfather Clause was enacted by seven southern states during and after the reconstruction
era to prevent freedmen from voting. The clause, designed to negate the 15th Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution which allowed black men to vote, significantly reduced African American
political participation well into the 20th Century. Starting in Louisiana in 1898 and working its way
into laws and constitutions in seven other states by 1910, the Grandfather Clause stated that all men
or lineal descendants of men who were voters before 1867 did not have to meet the educational,
property, or tax requirements for voting then in existence. This effectively allowed all white males
to vote while denying the franchise to black men and other men of color. The Grandfather Clause,
with its voting denial, became the centerpiece of a much larger system of discrimination and racial
segregation.
Freedmen Voting, South Carolina
(1868)
#29
Topic #6: Life for Blacks in the
Postwar South
#31
Ku Klux Klan (KKK), informally known as The Klan, is the name of several past and
present hate group organizations in the United States whose avowed purpose was to
protect the rights of and further the interests of white Americans by violence and
intimidation. The first such organizations originated in the Southern states and eventually
grew to national scope. They developed iconic white costumes consisting of robes,
masks, and conical hats. The KKK has a record of using terrorism, violence, and
lynching to murder and oppress African Americans, Jews and other minorities and to
intimidate and oppose Roman Catholics and labor unions.
The first Klan was founded in 1865 by Tennessee veterans of the Confederate Army.
Groups spread throughout the South. Its purpose was to restore white supremacy in the
aftermath of the American Civil War. The Klan resisted Reconstruction by assaulting,
murdering and intimidating freedmen and white Republicans. In 1870 and 1871 the
federal government passed the Force Acts, which were used to prosecute Klan crimes.
Prosecution and enforcement suppressed Klan activity. In 1874 and later, however, newly
organized and openly active paramilitary organizations such as the White League and the
Red Shirts started a fresh round of violence aimed at suppressing Republican voting and
running Republicans out of office. These contributed to white Democrats regaining
political power in the Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
#32
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• The Birth of a Nation, a silent film
directed by D. W. Griffith and released
in 1915, is one of the most influential
and controversial of American motion
pictures.
• Set during and after the American
Civil War, the film was based on
Thomas Dixon's The Clansman, a novel
and play.
• It is noted for its innovative technical
and narrative achievements, and its
status as the first Hollywood
"blockbuster."
• It has provoked great controversy for
its treatment of white supremacy and
sympathetic account of the rise of the
Ku Klux Klan. #36
Flora Cameron runs away from Gus, a
―murderous former slave with designs on
white women‖. Flora leaps to her death to
avoid being ―raped‖ by Gus.
Hooded Klansmen catch Gus, a black
man whom the filmmaker described as "a
renegade, a product of the vicious
doctrines spread by the carpetbaggers."
Gus was portrayed in blackface by white
actor Walter Long. #37
Woodrow Wilson's History of the American People is quoted in The Birth of a Nation.
#38
Jim Crow
• Laws enacted by Southern state and local
governments to segregate (separate white & black
people in public and private facilities). These laws
replaced the Black Codes that were outlawed in 1868
with the passage of the 14th Amendment.
#39
Jim Crow
• Areas:
–Schools
–Restaurants
–Hospitals
–Parks
–Transportation
#40
#41
An African-American youth at a drinking fountain in North Carolina, in 1938. #42
An African American man climbs stairs to a theater's "colored" entrance,
Mississippi, 1939. The door on the ground level is marked "white men only". #43
Topic #7: Sharecropping
#44
40 Acres & A Mule• Early promise made by General Sherman to provide freed
slaves land
• Gave early hope
• Soon was ended by President Johnson
#45
Sharecropping• A system in which landowners give farm workers land, seed,
and tools in return for part of the crops (usually cotton) they
raise
• Negative: exploitation - without land or capital ($) freed
slaves were forced to work for large landowners
• Created dependence and poverty
• Positive: freedom – more than under slavery
#46
Before Sharecropping
Before the Civil War slaves
lived in huts grouped
together behind the
plantation owner's house.
After Sharecropping
The former slaves lived in
slightly larger huts spread
our around the plantation.
There are also more roads
as well as a church and
school. #47
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Southern counties % of farms sharecropped#50
African Americans as percent of population, 2000. #51
Topic #8: The Geography of
Hate
#52
The Geography of
Hate • From the 1880s to the 1960s, at least
4,700 men and women were lynched in
this country.
• The noose remains a terrifying symbol,
and continues to be used by racists to
intimidate African-Americans (who made
up more than 70 percent of lynching
victims).
• In the past decade or so, only about a
dozen noose incidents a year came to the
attention of civil rights groups.
• The level of hate crimes in the United
States is astoundingly high — more than
190,000 incidents per year, according to a
2005 Department of Justice study
#53
• The number of hate groups, according to the annual count by the
Southern Poverty Law Center, has shot up 40 percent in recent years,
from 602 groups in 2000 to 844 in 2006.
• The graphic below shows some of the reported sightings of nooses in
the past two years.
The Geography of Hate
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