CWR - Presidential Reconstruction Lesson

Presidential Reconstruction

22 JOHN WILKES BOOTH shot and killed Lincoln in a Washington theater in April 1865. Booth was a rabid Confederate sympathizer who believed slavery was “one of the greatest blessings … God ever bestowed upon a favoured nation.”The Reconstruction plans begun by President Abraham Lincoln and carried out by President Andrew Johnson echoed the words of Lincoln's second Inaugural Address, which urged no revenge on former Confederate supporters. The purpose of Presidential Reconstruction was to readmit the southern states to the Union as quickly as possible. Republicans in Congress, however, were outraged by the fact that the new southern state governments were passing laws that deprived the newly freed slaves of their rights.

Radical Republican Reconstruction

To remedy the Radical Republican's outrage, Congress forced the southern states to reapply for admission to the Union and to take steps to secure the rights of the newly freed slaves. This resulted in the creation of southern state governments that included African Americans. The key feature of the effort to protect the rights of the newly freed slaves was the passage of three constitutional amendments during and after the Civil War. Southern states were required to ratify all these amendments before they could rejoin the Union.

 

13th Amendment: Abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States. 14th Amendment: Defined US citizenship as including all persons born in the United States, including African Americans; guaranteed that no citizen could be deprived of his/her rights without due process. 15th Amendment: Removed restrictions on voting based on race, color or ever having been a slave; granted the right to vote to all male US citizens over the age of 21.

During the Reconstruction period, African Americans made progress in many areas. Some of these gains lasted, but others did not. Many African American children were able to attend free schools for the first time. African Americans started newspapers, served in public office, and attended new colleges and universities established for them. One of these institutions, Morehouse College, was founded in Atlanta in 1867 as the Augusta Institute. A former slave and two ministers founded it for the education of African American men in the fields of ministry and education.

Illustration of a school room as part of the Freedmen's BureauCongress also created the Freedmen's Bureau to help African Americans to make the transition to freedom. The Freedmen's Bureau helped former slaves solve everyday problems by providing food, clothing, jobs, medicine, and medical-care facilities. While the Freedmen's Bureau did help some former slaves acquire land unclaimed by its pre-war owners, Congress did not grant land or the absolute right to own land to all freed slaves. Such land grants would have provided African Americans with some level of economic independence. Without it, and with few skills outside of farming, the newly freed slaves had few options other than entering the sharecropping, crop lien, or tenant farming system, where they often ended up working for former slaveholders in conditions little different from slavery.

Northerners who came to the South to help the former slaves and to make money were called carpetbaggers. Southerners who cooperated with the African Americans and carpetbaggers were called scalawags. These two groups also played a role in Reconstruction.

 

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