1. The End of Reconstruction

2.  Radical Republicans
• Support declined
 People focused more on their own lives
 Grant’s Scandals
• Poor public office appointments
 Corruption of appointees
• Grant
 Claimed no part in scandals, but reputation was hurt
 Won reelection in 1872, but Northerners lost faith in
Republicans & their policies

3.  Amnesty for Confederates?
• Northerners & Southerners both wanted the
withdrawal of federal troops & amnesty for
Confederates
 1869
• Republican opponents: began taking back the
south one state at a time
• Chipped away at African Americans rights

4.  End of Reconstruction resulted from this election
 Choice of President decided by Congress
• Due to election returns
• Deal made between Republicans & Democrats
 Republicans: Rutherford B. Hayes; would continue reconstruction
 Democrats: Tilden; would end reconstruction
 Won popular vote; 20 electoral votes disputed; one vote short of 185 needed
to win electoral college
 Special Commissions
• 15 members appointed by Congress
• Most were Republicans
• 20 electoral votes given to Hayes
 Democrats did not fight decision because Hayes told them privately he
would end reconstruction
 Once in office Hayes removed federal troops from the South

5.  End of Reconstruction
• African Americans lost political & civil rights
• Several techniques used to stop blacks from voting
 Poll tax: must pay a tax before voting; kept poor whites &
freedmen from voting
 Literacy test: required to read & explain section of Constitution
 Grandfather clause allowed illiterate white males to vote; test avoided if
father or grandfather had been eligible to vote on Jan. 1, 1867
 Segregation: enforced separation of races; barred mixing of
races in almost every aspect of life, know as Jim Crow laws
(born in separate hospitals, buried in separate cemeteries,
separate playgrounds, restaurants, & schools, travel on specific
seats on streetcars or take black streetcars); Laws were upheld
in local courts

6.  1896
• Supreme Court upheld segregation laws
 Plessy v. Ferguson
 Homer Plessy arrested for sitting in a coach marked for whites
only
 Court upheld Louisiana law of segregated streetcars
 Ok if they were equal
• Separate but equal rule was in effect until the
1950s
 Facilities were rarely equal

7.  Poverty
forced freedmen & poor whites to
become sharecroppers
• Work the land for the farmer in return for a share in the
value of the crop
 Landlord
• Supplied living quarters, tools, seed, & food on credit
• Crops were harvested & sold and amount given to
sharecroppers was figured out
 In times of bad harvests or low crop prices sharecroppers
often earned enough money to pay what they owned
landlords
 Locked into a cycle of debt

8.  South’s economy began to recover
 1880s
• New industries
• Agriculture in the South recovered, especially cotton
production
• Tobacco production also increased
 Southern investors started or expanded industries
 Textile industry became important part of economy
 South began to develop their natural resources
• New mills to use South’s iron, timber, & oil
• South no longer dependent on cotton