CHAPTER 17

I. Reconstruction Begins

A. Reconstruction is the process of readmitting the former Confederate states to the Union.

B. Reconstruction time period is from 1865 to 1877.

II. Damaged South

A. The South was in ruins. Cities, towns and farms had been ruined. High prices of food and crop failure caused many southerners to face starvation.

B. The Confederate money was worthless.

III. Lincoln’s Plan

A. President Lincoln had a plan to reunite the southern states. It was called the Ten Percent Plan.

B. The Ten Percent Plan offered southerners amnesty or official pardon for all illegal acts supporting the rebellion.

III. Lincoln’s Plan (cont.)

C. What two things did the southerners have to do in order to receive amnesty?

1. Swear an oath of loyalty to the United States

2. Agree that slavery was illegal

D. Once 10 percent of voters in a state made the pledges they could form a new government and be readmitted.

IV. Wade-Davis Bill

A. Some politicians thought that Congress, not the president, should control the state coming back to the Union. They also didn’t think the Ten Percent plan was enough.

B. Two Republicans—Senator Benjamin Wade and Representative Henry Davis had an alternative plan to Lincoln’s.

IV. Wade-Davis Bill

C. The Wade-Davis bill stated these two conditions before a state could rejoin the Union

1. It had to ban slavery. 2. A majority of adult males in the state

had to take the loyalty oath.

D. The bill was much stricter than the Ten Percent Plan.

E. President Lincoln refused to sign the bill.

V. Freedom for African Americans

A. The thirteenth Amendment made slavery illegal throughout the United States.

B. The amendment was ratified and took effect on December 18, 1865.

C. Frederick Douglass insisted that “slavery was not abolished until the black man has the ballot.”

V. Freedom for African Americans (cont.)

D. What were a few important changes that came to the newly freed slaves? List a few.

1. Many couples had ceremonies to legalize their marriages.

2. Searched for relatives who had been sold

3. Many women worked at home instead of in the fields.

VI. Forty Acres to Farm?

A. Union General Sherman issued an order to break up plantations in coastal South Carolina and Georgia. He wanted to divide the land into 40 acre plots and give them to slaves as compensation.

B. Many white plantation owners refused to surrender their land.

VI. Forty Acres to Farm? (cont.)

C. In the end, the US government returned the land to its original owners.

D. Many freed people were unsure about where they would live, what kind of work they would do and what rights they had.

VII. Freedmen’s Bureau

A. The Freedmen’s Bureau is an agency providing relief for freed people and certain poor people in the South.

B. About 900 agents distributed food to the poor and provided education and legal help for freed people.

C. The Bureau also helped African American war veterans.

VII. Freedmen’s Bureau (cont.)

D. The Bureau played an important role in setting up more schools in the South.

E. African Americans hoped that education would help them to understand and protect their rights and to enable them to find better jobs.

F. Both black and white southerners benefited from the efforts to provide greater education in the South.

VIII. President Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan

A. A tragic event ended Lincoln’s dream of peacefully reuniting the country.

B. On the evening of April 14, 1865, President Lincoln attended a play in Ford’s theater.

C. John Wilkes Booth, a southerner who opposed Lincoln’s policies, snuck into the president’s theater box and shot him.

VIII. President Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan

D. He died the next morning.

E. Vice President Andrew Johnson was sworn into office quickly.

F. Johnson’s plan for bringing southern states back into the Union was similar to Lincoln’s plan.

IX. New State Governments

A. Johnson was a Democrat who Republicans had put on the ticket in 1864 to appeal to the border states.

B. He was a former slaveholder and was stubborn.

C. He appointed a temporary governor for each state.

IX. New State Government (cont.)

D. Then he required the states to revise their constitutions.

E. Next, voters elected state and federal representatives.

F. The new state government had to declare that secession was illegal.

IX. New State Government (cont.)

G. It also had to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment and refuse to pay Confederate debts.

H. By the end of 1865, all southern states except Texas had created new governments.

I. However, Republicans complained that many new representatives had been Confederate leaders.

J. Congress refused to readmit the southern states into the Union.