1. Reconstruction and the
Dismantling of Reconstruction
Background for the Marrow of
Tradition.

2. Key Questions after Civil War
 How will African Americans be
incorporated politically and socially into
the nation?
 How should the former Confederate
States be treated?
 Get revenge?
 Accommodate and welcome back?

3. Constitutional Amendments
 Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in
states controlled by the Confederacy 1863
 13th amendment abolished slavery 1865
 14th amendment—citizenship and equal
protection to all born or naturalized in US 1868
—No compensation for loss of slaves, no
office holding if you participated in rebellion
 15th amendment- no denying right to vote on
account of race. 1870

4. Black civic participation
 Since Congress did not allow those who
supported confederacy to hold office,
this left room for blacks to enter politics.
 Participated in revision of state constitutions
 Got elected to state legislatures
 Rewrote laws to be more fair to blacks
 Provided for educational opportunities
 Taking place in late 1860’s and early
1870’s

5. Republican dominated Congress
 Congress was responsible for passing
these amendments and some civil right
enforcement acts.
 Johnson did not support this. Wanted
rapprochement with South.
 White southerners resented loss of
power to blacks and also to lower class
whites and to carpet-baggers. Backlash
began early.

6. Institutions that helped blacks
 Colleges formed to educate African
Americans
 Hampton institute, Fisk, Tuskegee, Howard
University
 Freedman’s Bureau set up in 1865 to
provide relief to former slaves.
(Education, health care, employment,
assistance in reuniting families). Tried to
ensure fair labor contracts and treatment
of blacks in legal cases.

7. What worked against blacks
 Lack of education and other employment
opportunities led to unfavorable sharecropping
arrangements
 Prison labor substituted for slave labor and
blacks disproportionately imprisoned.
 Local instances of violence and intimidation
 Jim Crow laws established to maintain social
distinctions
 Martial law needed to enforce Reconstruction

8. Dismantling of Reconstruction
 Ku Klux Klan formed to terrorize African Americans and
Republicans but Congress authorize acts to suppress it.
 Election of 1872 Republican party divided into factions.
 Amnesty for most in South in 1872
 Panic of 1873 weakened commitment of some to support
opportunities for blacks
 Riot in Colfax Louisiana 1873 kills 60 blacks but leads to
prosecution of white leaders. Later overturned by Supreme Court
in US versus Cruikshank (1876)
 Hayes ran for office on a “Let-alone policy”
 After Hayes won federal troops were removed meaning no effort
to enforce laws protecting suffrage and civil rights.