Download - Lecture 1: Civil War and Reconstruction
The Civil War and
Reconstruction
What Caused the Civil War?
Abolitionism?
Economic Differences?
Free Soil?
Lincoln’s Election?
Possible Causes of the Civil War
Abolitionism Economic differences Free Soil Lincoln’s election Each comes back to slavery
The Aftermath
Over 600,000 Dead Widows & Pensions Bereavement & Religion The Economy
The South: Devastation The North: Booming
Freed Slaves
ReconstructionWhat was “Reconstruction”?
What challenges did the federal government face at the end of the Civil War?
Create your own plan for solving these challenges.
Reconstruction Presidential Reconstruction, 1865-1867 Congressional Reconstruction, 1867-
1870 Counter-Reconstruction, 1870-1874 “Redemption,” 1874-1877 The Election of 1876 and the
Compromise of 1877
Presidential Reconstruction, 1865-1867
President Andrew Johnson Southern elections “Black codes” The New Orleans and Memphis Riots of 1866 The Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th
Amendment
Congressional Reconstruction, 1867-1870
The Radical Republicans Military Reconstruction Acts The impeachment (but not removal) of Johnson The 15th amendment guarantees the right to
vote New, progressive, Republican state
governments
Counter-Reconstruction, 1870-1874
Race-baiting and white Southern violence The Ku Klux Klan The fall of the Republican regimes The failure of the Northern will “Scientific” racism
“Redemption,” 1874-1877 The Democratic party Democrats swept the 1874 election
across the south Louisiana and the White League South Carolina and the election of 1876 The Civil Rights Act of 1875
The Election of 1876 and the Compromise of 1877 Samuel J. Tilden v. Rutherford B. Hayes The “Corrupt Bargain” The End of Reconstruction
Evaluating Reconstruction How well do you think things went? Could things have gone differently?
Discussion
SharecroppingWhat is sharecropping?
Sharecropping Former slaveholders wanted labor
contracts and gang labor Former slaves wanted land
redistribution and independence Sharecropping was a compromise
Sharecropping Contracts What do these documents say about the
obligations of the sharecropper? What do they say about the obligations of the landowner?
What other information can you glean from these documents?
Is there anything that surprises you?
Think Like a HistorianHow do historians know what they know?
Black American Representatives and Senators Based on this document, when did
Reconstruction end? What else can you learn from this
document? Does anything surprise you? http://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-
Publications/BAIC/Historical-Data/Black-American-Representatives-and-Senators-by-Congress/
Memory and Commemoration:What Did the Civil War Mean?How did different groups create their distinct “memories” of the Civil War?
Commemoration & Memory“The Emancipationist Vision” “The White Supremacist Vision”“The Reconciliationist Vision”
DiscussionCompare and contrast “What the Centennial Ought to Accomplish”
and “Life on the Color Line”
The Birth of a Nation, 1915 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4v
_yRFf4-Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t-7SVbLjBw
The New South
The New South
Disenfranchisement Intimidation Fraud Poll taxes Literacy tests Restrictive or arbitrary registration
practices The white primary
Jim Crow
Jim Crow laws Plessy v.
Ferguson (1896)
Lynching“During six weeks of the months of March and April just past, twelve colored men were lynched in Georgia, the reign of outlawry culminating in the torture and hanging of the colored preacher, Elijah Strickland, and the burning alive of Samuel Wilkes, alias Hose, Sunday, April 23, 1899.“The real purpose of these savage demonstrations is to teach the Negro that in the South he has no rights that the law will enforce. Samuel Hose was burned to teach the Negroes that no matter what a white man does to them, they must not resist.”~ Ida B. Wells
The Lives of Freed Blacks
Were blacks better off under Reconstruction and Jim Crow than they had been under slavery?
Some left the South for the West and North Churches and schools became the center of
black community Black newspapers, organizations Booker T. Washington v. W. E. B. Du Bois Anti-lynching crusade
End