1. US history survey
May 22, 2012
final class
Reconstruction (continued)

2. announcements
• paper # 2 due today, Tuesday, May 22.
• late papers will be accepted until Tuesday,
May 29, but points will be deducted. No
emails!
• final exam: Tuesday, May 29, noon. Eat first,
or bring a snack with you.

3. Ulysses S. Grant
• former Union general.
• President 1869 – 1877.

4. enfranchisement – 15th Amendment
• women’s rights advocates, former abolitionists
(both men and women), disagreed about who
should be enfranchised.
• 14th Amendment introduced the word “male”
into Constitution for 1st time.
• split between those favoring Black men’s vote
first & those who wanted women’s suffrage at
same time.

5. “This is the Negro’s hour.”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton &
Susan B. Anthony opposed
15th Amendment w/o
women’s suffrage. “Lower
order of Chinese, Africans,
Germans, & Irish” would
make laws for women.
Frederick Douglass & Lucy
Stone.

6. women’s rights advocates
• split into 2 organizations, both working for
women’s suffrage.
• not reunited until 1890.
• women’s suffrage as a constitutional amendment
didn’t happen until 1920 (19th Amendment).
• women’s organizations also worked on marriage
& divorce laws, unequal pay, property rights.
• defeat of radical reconstruction & expanded
citizenship meant there was little support for
women’s suffrage.

7. freedom for former slaves
• ability to move. Some freedpeople moved
into cities & to Black Belt, in search of
community.
• family strengthened – searched for family
members; made decisions about whether/
when women & children worked.
• churches & family – central institutions of
Black communities.
• schools – thirst for education & knowledge.

9. Florida, 1870s or
1880s.

10. work
• white planters tried to retain African
Americans as permanent agricultural workers.
• Black people resisted working in gangs.
• desired to establish independent homesteads.
• compromise: sharecropping. By 1880, ¾
Black southerners were sharecroppers.
• white owners exploited system & illiteracy of
some Blacks to ensure indebtedness.

11. work in freedom

12. African American politics
• freedom celebrations, mass meetings, parades,
petitions, conventions – dominated by previously
free, preachers, artisans, veterans of Union Army.
• whites: “insolent,” “outrageous spectacles,”
“putting on airs.”
• Union League – Republican organization.
• Black majority existed only in South Carolina,
Mississippi, Louisiana – needed white Republican
voters as well.

13. Carpetbaggers
• white Northerners,
Union veterans,
businessmen, teachers,
Freedmen’s Bureau
agents.
• won many Reconstruc.
offices, especially in
areas w/ large Black
populations.

14. Scalawags
• white Southerners from
up-country, non-slave
areas. Loyalists in CW.
• wanted Republican
Party to help settle old
scores, get debt relief, &
help with wartime
devastation.
• mostly committed to
whites remaining in
power.

15. S desire for economic development
• “Yankees & Yankee notions are just what we
want. We want their capital to build factories
& workshops. We want their intelligence,
their energy, and enterprise.” (Thomas Settle,
North Carolina)
• Scalawag ideas.

16. what S states accomplished
• Republicans dominated 10 S constitutional
conventions, 1867 – 1869.
• 258/1027 constitutional delegates were AfAm.
• expanded democracy – improved situation of
poor whites as well as Blacks.
– guaranteed political & civil rights for Blacks.
– abolished property qualifcatns. for voting & juries.
– abolished imprisonment for debt.
• created 1st state-funded systems of education.
• more than 600 Black state legislators post-CW.

17. S white resistance
• KKK violence.
• Colfax, Louisiana, 1873 – almost 100 Blacks
murdered.

18. Black members of Congress
• largest number in
1870s = 16.
2 senators.
• declined to 0 in
1901.
• all Republicans.

19. “redemption”
• S Democrats “redeemed” S states.
• results: created obstacles to Black voting, put
more stringent controls on plantation labor,
cut social services.
• Supreme Court decisions curtailed protection
of Black civil rights.
• end of federal attempts to protect Black civil
rights until mid-20th century.

20. Reconstruction results for South
• unable to attract much investment from N or
Europe, so little industrialization.
• S declined into poorest agricultural region in
country.
• increased cotton dependency – King Cotton.
• changed from diversified local farming to
market-oriented production of cotton.
• cotton prices declined – competition from
Egypt & India.

21. Reconstruction results for North
• industrial boom of war years continued.
• 3 million immigrants, 1860 – 1880; all settled
in N & W.
• railroads continued to expand to more than all
the rest of the world’s RRs combined.
• RR companies were first big businesses.
• Republican Party increasingly identified with
interests of business.

24. election of 1876
• Democrats expected to win presidency.
• fraud, intimidation, disputed votes.
• an electoral commission created to resolve it
voted strictly on party lines.
• compromise: Rutherford Hayes (R) became
president.
– more money for S internal improvements.
– a Southerner in Hayes’ cabinet.
– non-interference in South – “home rule.”

25. Rutherford B. Hayes
Compromise of 1877
• Hayes ordered removal of
remaining federal troops.
• Republicans abandoned
freedpeople, carpetbaggers,
scalawags, & Radicals.
• “home rule” nullifed 14th & 15th Amendments &
Civil Rights Act of 1866.
• compromise repudiated idea of federal
government protecting rights of all citizens.

26. and at the same time….
• mining & oil refining, as well as RR, become
big businesses.
• Depression of 1873.
• Great RR strike of 1877.
• struggle between capital & labor replaced the
“southern question” as main political issue.

27. Great RR Strike of 1877

28. coming soon:
workers vs. robber barons

29. aftermath of Civil War
• Is political freedom meaningful without
economic freedom?
– propertied independence.
– self-ownership & right to compete in labor
market.
• Reconstruction solidified separation of
political & economic spheres.
• old idea of economy autonomy as essence of
freedom became idea of radicals only.

30. announcements
• paper # 2 due today, Tuesday, May 22.
• late papers will be accepted until Tuesday,
May 29, but points will be deducted. No
emails!
• final exam: Tuesday, May 29, noon. Eat first,
or bring a snack with you.

31. It’s been great! See you in the USA.