When was reconstruction in the south

The 15th Amendment, which sought to protect the voting rights of African American men after the Civil War, was adopted into the U. Constitution in Despite the amendment, by the late s discriminatory practices were used to prevent Black citizens from exercising their In September , a dispute over a column published in an Opelousas, Louisiana partisan newspaper provoked one of the bloodiest incidents of racial violence in the Reconstruction era.

The attackers' goal: to reverse dramatic political gains made by Black citizens after the When slavery ended in the United States, freedom still eluded African Americans who were contending with the repressive set of laws known as the black codes. Widely enacted throughout the South following the Civil War—a period called Reconstruction—these laws both limited the Segregation is the practice of requiring separate housing, education and other services for people of color.

Segregation was made law several times in 18th and 19th-century America as some believed that Black and white people were incapable of coexisting. In the lead-up to the In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, the United States found itself in uncharted territory. Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault.

Within the United States, by the time of the start of the civil war slavery had become extinct in the northern states, defined largely as north of the Mason-Dixon line that forms the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland. Slavery continued to exist in the south until put down by the Union Army and abolished officially by the 13th amendment to the Constitution in The international slave trade was ended by the British Navy in the early 19th century.

Carpetbagger by Thomas Nast. Carpetbaggers was the term used to refere to Northerners who moved to the south during Reconstruction to profit from the situation in the territory. The name was a referece to the carpet bag luggage that many of the Northerners used. Scalawags were Southern whites who supported the Republicans and the various policies of Reconstruction in the south.

The name was originally a reference to low-grade farm animals. It has had three different manifestations in three different eras. The first era, when the group was founded, was in the aftermath of the Civil War, particularly during Reconstruction. The Klan operated as a vigilante group that targeted newly freed black populations and Republican politicians in the Reconstruction governments of the former Confederacy.

Though it was officially disbanded in , it continued to function well into the the early s. The Federal government passed a variety of laws and acts to dismantle the Klan in that period which had some success.

The KKK did not resurface again until the beginning of the 20th century. Nathan Bedford Forrest July 13 - October 29 Nathan Bedford Forrest was a Confederate cavalry leader. After the war he served in the Ku Klux Klan but distanced himself from them by denying any formal connection. He was responsible for officially dissolving the first incarnation of the Klan in though they continued to operate afterwards for many years. Andrew Johnson December 29, — July 31, Andrew Johnson was Lincoln's last Vice-President and succeeded to office as the 17th President following Lincoln's assassination.

He was the first President to be impeached and avoided removal from office by a single vote. Lincoln does not sign the Wade-Davis Bill; his pocket veto means the bill does not pass into law. January Marching the Union Army through the South with an ever-growing number of freed slaves in its wake, General William Tecumseh Sherman issues Special Field Order 15, setting aside part of coastal South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida by settlement exclusively by black people.

The settlers are to receive "possessory title" to forty-acre plots. January The Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery throughout the Union, wins Congressional approval and is sent to the states for ratification. By the end of February, 18 states will ratify the amendment; after significant delay in the South, ratification will be completed by December. The Freedman's Bureau works to smooth the transition from slavery, providing former slaves with immediate shelter and medical services, help in negotiating labor contracts with landowners, and more.

The bureau is initially authorized for just one year, but will remain in operation until April: In Lincoln's last speech, he mentions black suffrage for soldiers and some others.

Lee surrenders to Union general Ulysses S. Six days later, President Lincoln is assassinated, and his vice president, Southern Democrat Andrew Johnson, becomes president. May: President Johnson announces his plan of Presidential Reconstruction. It calls for general amnesty and restoration of property -- except for slaves -- to all Southerners who will swear loyalty to the Union. No friend to the South's large landowners, Johnson declares that they and the Confederate leadership will be required to petition him individually for pardons.

This Reconstruction strategy also requires states to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, ending slavery. The president's plan is implemented during the summer. Freedmen are especially reluctant to leave the land they have started farming in South Carolina and Georgia. The president starts aligning himself with the Southern elite, declaring, "white men alone must manage the South.

Fall: Southern states elect former Confederates to public office at the state and national levels, drag their feet in ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment, and refuse to extend the vote to black men. Southern legislatures begin drafting "Black Codes" to re-establish white supremacy.

The laws impose restrictions on black citizens, especially in attempts to conrol labor: freedmen are prohibited from work except as field hands, blacks refusing to sign labor contracts can be punished, unemployed black men can be seized and auctioned to planters as laborers, black children can be taken from their families and made to work. The new laws amount to slavery without the chain. Grant tours the South, and is greeted with surprising friendliness.

His report recommends a lenient Reconstruction policy. December: President Johnson declares the reconstruction process complete. Outraged, Radical Republicans in Congress refuse to recognize new governments in Southern states.

More than sixty former Confederates arrive to take their seats in Congress, including four generals, four colonels and six Confederate cabinet officers -- even Alexander H. Stephens, the former vice president of the Confederacy. The Clerk of the House refuses to include the Southern representatives in his roll call, and they are denied their elected seats. Schoolteachers and religious missionaries arrived in the South, some sponsored by Northern churches.

The bureau established schools in rural areas of the South for the purpose of educating the mostly illiterate black population. Other Northerners who moved to the South participated in rebuilding railroads that had been previously destroyed during the war.

During the time blacks were enslaved, they were prohibited from being educated and attaining literacy. Southern states had no public school systems, and white Southerners either sent their children to private schools or employed private tutors. After the war, hundreds of Northern white women moved South, many to teach newly freed African-American children. While some Northerners went South with reformist impulses, many others went South merely to exploit the chaotic environment for personal gain.

Many carpetbaggers were businessmen who purchased or leased plantations and became wealthy landowners, hiring freedmen to do the labor. Most were former Union soldiers eager to invest their savings in this promising new frontier, and civilians lured South by press reports of easy money on cotton plantations. Following the Civil War, carpetbaggers often bought plantations at fire-sale prices.

Because of this and other behavior, they were generally considered to be taking advantage of those living in the South.

Typically, it was used by conservative, pro-federation Southerners to derogate individuals whom they viewed as betraying Southern values by supporting Northern policies such as desegregation.

The fate of the carpetbagger and scalawag : A cartoon threatening that the Ku Klux Klan would lynch carpetbaggers, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Independent Monitor, During Reconstruction, scalawags formed coalitions with black freedmen and Northern newcomers to take control of state and local governments. Despite being a minority, these groups gained power by taking advantage of the Reconstruction laws of These laws disenfranchised individuals who could not take the Ironclad Oath. Any individual who had served in the Confederate Army, or who had held office in a state or Confederate government, was not allowed to take this oath.

Because they were unable to take this oath, these individuals were disenfranchised. The coalition controlled every former Confederate state except Virginia, as well as Kentucky and Missouri which were claimed by the North and the South for varying lengths of time between and Brown, who had been the wartime governor of Georgia.

Scalawags were denounced as corrupt by Democrats. The Democrats alleged that the scalawags were financially and politically corrupt, and willing to support bad government because they profited personally.

Scalawags, along with carpetbaggers, were also targets of violence, mainly by the Ku Klux Klan. The American South remained heavily rural for decades after the Civil War; sharecropping was widespread as a response to economic upheaval. There were only a few scattered cities; small courthouse towns serviced the farm populations.

Local politics revolved around the politicians and lawyers based at the courthouse. Mill towns, narrowly focused on textile production or cigarette manufacturing, began opening in the Piedmont region, especially in the Carolinas. Racial segregation and outward signs of inequality were everywhere and rarely were challenged. Blacks who violated the color line were susceptible to expulsion or lynching. Cotton became even more important than before, even though prices were much lower.

White Southerners showed a reluctance to move North, or to move to cities, so the number of small farms proliferated, and they became smaller and smaller as the population grew. Sharecropping became widespread as a response to economic upheaval caused by the emancipation of slaves and disenfranchisement of poor whites in the agricultural South during Reconstruction.

When slavery ended, the large slave-based plantations were mostly subdivided into tenant or sharecropper farms of 20 to 40 acres. Many white farmers and some blacks owned their land. However, sharecropping, along with tenant farming, became a dominant form in the cotton South from the s to the s, among both blacks and whites. By the s both had largely disappeared.

Sharecropping was a way for very poor farmers, both white and black, to earn a living from land owned by someone else. The landowner provided land, housing, tools, and seed and perhaps a mule , and a local merchant provided food and supplies on credit. At harvest time, the sharecropper received a share of the crop from one-third to one-half, with the landowner taking the rest.

The sharecropper used his share to pay off his debt to the merchant. The system started with blacks when large plantations were subdivided. By the s, white farmers also became sharecroppers. Plantations had first relied on slaves for cheap labor.

Prior to emancipation, sharecropping was limited to poor landless whites, usually working marginal lands for absentee landlords. Following emancipation, sharecropping came to be an economic arrangement that largely maintained the status quo between blacks and whites through legal means. In the Reconstruction-era United States, sharecropping was one of few options for penniless freedmen to conduct subsistence farming and support themselves and their families.

Other solutions included the crop-lien system in which the farmer was extended credit for seed and other supplies by the merchant , the rent-labor system in which former slaves rented land but kept the entire crop , and the wage system in which the worker earned a fixed wage, but kept none of his crop. Sharecropping was by far the most economically efficient, as it provided incentives for workers to produce a bigger harvest.

It was a stage beyond simple hired labor, because the sharecropper had an annual contract. Though the arrangement protected sharecroppers from the negative effects of a bad crop, many sharecroppers both black and white were economically confined to serf-like conditions of poverty.

Sharecroppers : Sharecroppers on the roadside after eviction Former slave, : A former slave, from an Alabama cotton plantation.