The Reconstruction Era Part 2

The Reconstruction Era

The Radicals Take Control

Protecting African Americans’ Rights

HOW DID THE NORTH ATTEMPT TO ASSIST AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE
SOUTH?
• In 1865, former Confederate states began creating new governments based

on President Johnson’s plan.
• These states elected leaders to again represent them in the Congress.

• When the new senators and representatives arrived in Washington D.C., Congress

would not seat them.

• The Radical Republicans were not willing to readmit the Southern states on

Johnson’s easy terms.

• The Radicals were determined to make the former Confederacy’s return to the Union

difficult for the white South.

• Black Codes and Civil Rights

• Events in the South strengthened the Radicals’ determination.

• By early 1866, legislatures in the Southern states had passed laws called the black

codes, which were laws passed in the South after the Civil War that were aimed at
controlling freed men and women, and allowing plantation owners to take advantage
of African American workers.

Protecting African Americans’ Rights

• Black Codes and Civil Rights cont.

• Some black codes made it illegal for African Americans to own or rent farms.
• The laws also made it easy for white employers to take advantage of African

American workers.

• Some black codes allowed officials to fine or even arrest African Americans who did

not have jobs.
• To freed men and women, and their supporters, life under the black codes was little better

than slavery.

• At the same time, Congress tried to protect the rights of the South’s African

Americans.

• In 1866, it passed a bill that gave the Freedmen’s Bureau new powers.

• The bureau could now set up special courts to try persons charged with violating African

American rights.
•African Americans could sit on the juries in these courts and judge accused white Southerners.

• To combat the black codes, Radical Republicans pushed the Civil Rights Act of

1866 through Congress.

Protecting African Americans’ Rights

• Black Codes and Civil Rights cont.

• Under the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the federal government had the power to get

involved in state affairs to protect African American rights.

• This act was meant to counter the Supreme Court decision in the 1857 case Dred

Scott v. Sandford, which ruled that African Americans were not citizens.

• President Johnson vetoed both bills.

• He claimed that the federal government was exceeding its authority.

• He reasoned that they had been passed that they had been passed by a Congress that did

not include representatives from all the states.
•By raising this issue, he was warming that he would veto any law passed by a Congress in which the
South was not represented.

• Republicans in Congress were able to override, which means to reject or defeat

something that has been decided, both vetoes, and the bills became law.

• Radical Republicans began to see that Congress and Johnson would not be able to

work together on Reconstruction.
• They gave up hope of compromising with the president and began to create their own plan

for dealing with the South.

Protecting African Americans’ Rights

• The Fourteenth Amendment

• Congress did worry that the courts might overturn the Civil Rights Act.

• It proposed another amendment to the Constitution, which the states ratified in

1868.

• The Thirteenth Amendment had ended slavery, however, the Fourteenth

Amendment took the next step by stating that:
• “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.”

• This language protected the citizenship extended to African Americans by the

Civil Rights Act of 1866.

• It guaranteed that citizenship could not be taken away by passing another law.

• The amendment made it clear that if a state barred any adult male citizen from voting, that

state could lose some representation in Congress.

• Another part of the Fourteenth Amendment said that no state cold take a

person’s life, liberty, or property “without due process of law.”

• It stated that every person was entitled to “equal protection of the laws.”

• It also excluded former Confederate leaders from holding any national or state office unless

Congress had pardoned them.

Protecting African Americans’ Rights

• The Fourteenth Amendment cont.

• Some people considered amending the Constitution to protect African

Americans to be an extreme measure.

• Increasing violence toward African Americans across the South convinced moderate

Republicans that an amendment was necessary.
• Congress required that the Southern states ratify the Fourteenth Amendment as another

condition of rejoining the Union.

• Because most refused to do so at first, this delayed the amendment's ratification until 1868.

Radical Republicans in Charge

WHAT ELEMENTS WERE INCLUDED IN THE RADICAL REPUBLICAN IDEA OF
RECONSTRUCTION?
• President Johnson campaigned against the Radical Republicans in the

congressional elections of 1866.
• He attacked the Fourteenth Amendment and made it a major issue in the

campaign.

• Many Northerners disliked Johnson’s tone.

• Some feared the clashes between whites and African Americans that were taking place in the

South.

• Voters rejected Johnson’s views, and Republicans won an overwhelming majority in

Congress.
• This meant that Johnson could no longer prevent them from overriding his vetoes.

• This started a period known as the Radical Reconstruction.

Radical Republicans in Charge

• The Reconstruction Acts

• By 1867, ten of the former Confederate states had not ratified the Fourteenth

Amendment.

• In response, Congress passed the First Reconstruction Act.

• This law required that those states form new governments.

•Only Tennessee, which had ratified the amendment, kept its government and rejoined the Union.

• The act divided the ten defiant states into five military districts.

• Each district would be governed by an army general until new state governments

were formed.
• Former Confederate leaders were banned from serving in these new governments.

• Each state had to submit a new state constitution to Congress for approval.
• Lastly, it guaranteed African American men the right to vote in state elections.

• A Second Reconstruction Act empowered the army to register voters in each

district and to help organize state constitutional conventions.

Five Military Zones

Radical Republicans in Charge

• The Reconstruction Acts cont.

• Many white Southerners refused to take part in the elections for constitutional

conventions and new state governments.

• Thousands of newly registered African Americans did cast ballots.

• These votes favored the Republicans, who took control of Southern state governments.

• By 1868, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and South

Carolina had set up new governments, ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, and
rejoined the Union.

• By 1870, the remaining three states (Mississippi, Virginia, and Texas) had also been

readmitted.

• Impeaching the President

• The Constitution makes the President the commander and chief of the military.

• This gave President Johnson control over the military governors created by the First

Reconstruction Act.

• Because Johnson opposed the Reconstruction Acts, Congress passed a series of

laws to limit his power.

Radical Republicans in Charge

• Impeaching the President cont.

• One of these laws was the Tenure of Office Act.

• This law stated that the president could not remove government officials, including

members of his own cabinet, without the Senate’s approval.
• Congress wanted to protect Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

•He was the cabinet official in charge of the military and a supporter of Radical Reconstruction.

• Tensions between Johnson and the Radical Republicans continued to grow.

• In August 1867, while Congress was not in session, Johnson suspended Stanton

without Senate approval.
• When the Senate met again, it refused to accept the suspension.

•Johnson then fired Stanton.

• This action deliberately violated the Tenure of Office Act.

• The House of Representatives voted to impeach, which is to formally charge a

public official with misconduct in office, President Johnson.

• In 1868, the case went to the Senate for trial.

Radical Republicans in Charge

• Impeaching the President cont.

• The trial lasted almost three months.

• Johnson’s defenders claimed that the president had exercised his right to challenge

laws he considered unconstitutional.
• They argued that the House had impeached Johnson for political reasons.
• Johnson’s critics said that Congress had supreme power to make the laws and that Johnson’s

use of the veto interfered with that power.

• The Senate did not get the two-thirds majority it needed to convict President

Johnson.

• Some moderate Republicans supported the president, arguing that he should not be

removed from office for political reasons.
• As a result, Johnson remained president until Lincoln’s second term ended in 1869.

• During that time, President Johnson did little to interfere with Congress’s

Reconstruction plans.

• The Fifteenth Amendment

• Most Southern states had rejoined the Union by the time the presidential

election on 1868 drew near.

Radical Republicans in Charge

• The Fifteenth Amendment cont.

• Most Americans hoped that the turbulent period of Reconstruction was over.

• The Republican Party rejected Johnson and instead nominated Civil War hero

Ulysses S. Grant.
• The Democrats chose New York governor Horatio Seymour as their candidate.
• Most African American voters supported Grant, and he won the presidency.

•The election results also showed that voters continued to support Radical Reconstruction.

• Congress took one more major step in Reconstruction in 1869 when it proposed

the Fifteenth Amendment.

• This amendment guaranteed that state and federal governments could not deny the

right to vote to any male citizen because of “race, color, or pervious condition of
servitude.”

• When the states ratified the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, Republicans

thought their job was largely done.

• They believed that they had succeeded in giving Africa American men the right to

vote.
• They also thought the power of the vote would allow African Americans to better protect

themselves against unfair treatment by white people
•Both beliefs would prove to be too optimistic.