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March 3, 1865 - Freedmen’s Bureau created

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March 3, 1865 - Freedmen’s Bureau created

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-Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 but this did not make slaves free
- The Freedmen's Bureau in 1865 gave newly freed slaves food, shelter, medical aid, and land
-Created labor contracts and helped meet the basic needs of displaced people

Sources:

https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/FreedmensBureau.htm
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/freedmens-bureau

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April 15, 1865 Abraham Lincoln is assassinated 

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April 15, 1865 Abraham Lincoln is assassinated 

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-President Lincoln's plan for Reconstruction was to get others to join the union using the 10 Percent Plan
-In his last speech he talked about black suffrage
-He believed in states' rights to exercise their "authority"
-He was shot at 7:22 am and became the first assassinated president

Sources:
https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-22-4-b-slavery-civil-war-and-democracy-what-did-lincoln-believe.html#:~:text=Lincoln%20believed%20that%20American%20democracy,who%20should%20exercise%20these%20rights.
https://www.sparknotes.com/history/american/reconstruction/section1/#:~:text=Lincoln's%20blueprint%20for%20Reconstruction%20included,of%20allegiance%20to%20the%20Union.

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April 15, 1865 Andrew Johnson becomes president 

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April 15, 1865 Andrew Johnson becomes president 

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-Johnson supported the white South
-He was not very helpful in the transition of black Southerners from slaves to freedom
-The union army eventually is demobilized because people are enraged when Johnson claims the Reconstruction process is complete after being lenient with slaves

Sources:
https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/exhibits/reconstruction/section4/section4_presrecon.html#:~:text=section4&text=In%201865%20President%20Andrew%20Johnson,the%20politics%20of%20the%20South.

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In 1865 President Andrew Johnson implemented a plan of Reconstruction that gave the white South a free hand in regulating the transition from slavery to freedom and offered no role to blacks in the politics of the South. The conduct of the governments he established turned many Northerners against the president's policies.

The end of the Civil War found the nation without a settled Reconstruction policy.

In May 1865, President Andrew Johnson offered a pardon to all white Southerners except Confederate leaders and wealthy planters (although most of these later received individual pardons), and authorized them to create new governments.

Read the Johnson's Pardon of 1865

See the Pardon document

Blacks were denied any role in the process. Johnson also ordered nearly all the land in the hands of the government returned to its prewar owners -- dashing black hope for economic autonomy.

At the outset, most Northerners believed Johnson's plan deserved a chance to succeed. The course followed by Southern state governments under Presidential Reconstruction, however, turned most of the North against Johnson's policy. Members of the old Southern elite, including many who had served in the Confederate government and army, returned to power.

The new legislatures passed the Black Codes, severely limiting the former slaves' legal rights and economic options so as to force them to return to the plantations as dependent laborers. Some states limited the occupations open to blacks. None allowed any blacks to vote, or provided public funds for their education.

Read the Mississippi Black Code (1865)

Read the Louisiana Black Code (1865)

The apparent inability of the South's white leaders to accept the reality of emancipation undermined Northern support for Johnson's policies.

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In 1865 President Andrew Johnson implemented a plan of Reconstruction that gave the white South a free hand in regulating the transition from slavery to freedom and offered no role to blacks in the politics of the South. The conduct of the governments he established turned many Northerners against the president's policies.

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-Designed to limit Black people's freedom
-Made freed people still "enslaved" because they could never build status
- Targeted/discriminated against POC to further support the Republican/Johnson political parties which favored white southerners

Sources:
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/black-codes

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Black codes were restrictive laws designed to limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure their availability as a cheap labor force after slavery was abolished during the Civil War. Though the Union victory had given some 4 million enslaved people their freedom, the question of freed Black people's status in the postwar South was still very much unresolved. Under black codes, many states required Black people to sign yearly labor contracts; if they refused, they risked being arrested, fined and forced into unpaid labor. Outrage over black codes helped undermine support for President Andrew Johnson and the Republican Party.

Reconstruction Begins

When President Abraham Lincoln announced the impending passage of the Emancipation Proclamation in early 1863, the stakes of the Civil War shifted dramatically. A Union victory would mean no less than revolution in the South, where the "peculiar institution" of slavery had dominated economic, political and social life in the antebellum years.

In April 1865, as the war drew to a close, Lincoln shocked many by proposing limited suffrage for African Americans in the South. He was assassinated days later, however, and his successor Andrew Johnson would be the one to preside over the beginning of Reconstruction.

Did you know? In the years following Reconstruction, the South reestablished many of the provisions of the black codes in the form of the so-called "Jim Crow laws." These remained firmly in place for almost a century, but were finally abolished with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Johnson, a former senator from Tennessee who had remained loyal to the Union during the war, was a firm supporter of states' rights and believed the federal government had no say in issues such as voting requirements at the state level.

Under his Reconstruction policies, which began in May 1865, the former Confederate states were required to uphold the abolition of slavery (made official by the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution), swear loyalty to the Union and pay off their war debt. Beyond those limitations, the states and their ruling class-traditionally dominated by white planters-were given a relatively free hand in rebuilding their own governments.

Passage of the Black Codes

Even as former enslaved people fought to assert their independence and gain economic autonomy during the earliest years of Reconstruction, white landowners acted to control the labor force through a system similar to the one that had existed during slavery.

To that end, in late 1865, Mississippi and South Carolina enacted the first black codes. Mississippi's law required Black people to have written evidence of employment for the coming year each January; if they left before the end of the contract, they would be forced to forfeit earlier wages and were subject to arrest.

In South Carolina, a law prohibited Black people from holding any occupation other than farmer or servant unless they paid an annual tax of $10 to $100. This provision hit free Black people already living in Charleston and former slave artisans especially hard. In both states, Black people were given heavy penalties for vagrancy, including forced plantation labor in some cases.

Limits on Black Freedom

Under Johnson's Reconstruction policies, nearly all the southern states would enact their own black codes in 1865 and 1866. While the codes granted certain freedoms to African Americans-including the right to buy and own property, marry, make contracts and testify in court (only in cases involving people of their own race)-their primary purpose was to restrict Black peoples' labor and activity.

Some states limited the type of property that Black people could own, while virtually all the former Confederate states passed strict vagrancy and labor contract laws, as well as so-called "anti-enticement" measures designed to punish anyone who offered higher wages to a Black laborer already under contract.

Black people who broke labor contracts were subject to arrest, beating and forced labor, and apprenticeship laws forced many minors (either orphans or those whose parents were deemed unable to support them by a judge) into unpaid labor for white planters.

Passed by a political system in which Black people effectively had no voice, the black codes were enforced by all-white police and state militia forces-often made up of Confederate veterans of the Civil War-across the South.

Impact of the Black Codes

The restrictive nature of the codes and widespread Black resistance to their enforcement enraged many in the North, who argued that the codes violated the fundamental principles of free labor ideology.

After passing the Civil Rights Act (over Johnson's veto), Republicans in Congress effectively took control of Reconstruction. The Reconstruction Act of 1867 required southern states to ratify the 14th Amendment-which granted "equal protection" of the Constitution to former enslaved people-and enact universal male suffrage before they could rejoin the Union.

The 15th Amendment, adopted in 1870, guaranteed that a citizen's right to vote would not be denied "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." During this period of Radical Reconstruction (1867-1877), Black men won election to southern state governments and even to the U.S. Congress.

As indicated by the passage of the black codes, however, white southerners showed a steadfast commitment to ensuring their supremacy and the survival of plantation agriculture in the postwar years. Support for Reconstruction policies waned after the early 1870s, undermined by the violence of white supremacist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan.

By 1877, when the last federal soldiers left the South and Reconstruction drew to a close, Black people had seen little improvement in their economic and social status, and the vigorous efforts of white supremacist forces throughout the region had undone the political gains they had made. Discrimination would continue in America with the rise of Jim Crow laws, but would inspire the civil rights movement to come.

HISTORY Vault: Black History

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Black Codes - Definition, Dates & Jim Crow Laws

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Black codes were restrictive laws designed to limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure their availability as a cheap labor force after slavery was abolished during the Civil War.

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"'Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th amendment abolished slavery in the United States and provides that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.'"

This...
-Abolished slavery in all U.S territories
-Outlawed involuntary servitude

Sources:
https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/13th-amendment#:~:text=Passed%20by%20Congress%20on%20January,within%20the%20United%20States%2C%20or

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/13th-amendment-united-states-constitution/#:~:text=The%2013th%20Amendment%20forever%20abolished,order%20to%20pay%20off%20debts.

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-Angry white people (more commonly Southerners) who used violence and intimidation to put black people down
-Aimed to instill fear in people of color
-Terrorized newly freed slaves

Sources:
https://www.history.com/topics/reconstruction/ku-klux-klan

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Table of Contents

1. Founding of the Ku Klux Klan

2. Ku Klux Klan Violence in the South

3. The Ku Klux Klan and the End of Reconstruction

4. Revival of the Ku Klux Klan

5. Great Depression Shrinks Klan

Founded in 1865, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) extended into almost every southern state by 1870 and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party's Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for Black Americans. Its members waged an underground campaign of intimidation and violence directed at white and Black Republican leaders. Though Congress passed legislation designed to curb Klan terrorism, the organization saw its primary goal-the reestablishment of white supremacy-fulfilled through Democratic victories in state legislatures across the South in the 1870s.

After a period of decline, white Protestant nativist groups revived the Klan in the early 20th century, burning crosses and staging rallies, parades and marches denouncing immigrants, Catholics, Jews, African Americans and organized labor. The civil rights movement of the 1960s also saw a surge of Ku Klux Klan activity, including bombings of Black schools and churches and violence against Black and white activists in the South.

Founding of the Ku Klux Klan

A group including many former Confederate veterans founded the first branch of the Ku Klux Klan as a social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1865. The first two words of the organization's name supposedly derived from the Greek word "kyklos," meaning circle. In the summer of 1867, local branches of the Klan met in a general organizing convention and established what they called an "Invisible Empire of the South." Leading Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest was chosen as the first leader, or "grand wizard," of the Klan; he presided over a hierarchy of grand dragons, grand titans and grand cyclopses.

The organization of the Ku Klux Klan coincided with the beginning of the second phase of post- Civil War Reconstruction, put into place by the more radical members of the Republican Party in Congress. After rejecting President Andrew Johnson's relatively lenient Reconstruction policies, in place from 1865 to 1866, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act over the presidential veto. Under its provisions, the South was divided into five military districts, and each state was required to approve the 14th Amendment, which granted "equal protection" of the Constitution to former enslaved people and enacted universal male suffrage.

Did you know? At its peak in the 1920s, Klan membership exceeded 4 million people nationwide.

Ku Klux Klan Violence in the South

From 1867 onward, Black participation in public life in the South became one of the most radical aspects of Reconstruction, as Black people won election to southern state governments and even to the U.S. Congress. For its part, the Ku Klux Klan dedicated itself to an underground campaign of violence against Republican leaders and voters (both Black and white) in an effort to reverse the policies of Radical Reconstruction and restore white supremacy in the South. They were joined in this struggle by similar organizations such as the Knights of the White Camelia (launched in Louisiana in 1867) and the White Brotherhood.

At least 10 percent of the Black legislators elected during the 1867-1868 constitutional conventions became victims of violence during Reconstruction, including seven who were killed. White Republicans (derided as "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags") and Black institutions such as schools and churches-symbols of Black autonomy-were also targets for Klan attacks.

By 1870, the Ku Klux Klan had branches in nearly every southern state. Even at its height, the Klan did not boast a well-organized structure or clear leadership. Local Klan members-often wearing masks and dressed in the organization's signature long white robes and hoods-usually carried out their attacks at night, acting on their own but in support of the common goals of defeating Radical Reconstruction and restoring white supremacy in the South. Klan activity flourished particularly in the regions of the South where Black people were a minority or a small majority of the population, and was relatively limited in others. Among the most notorious zones of Klan activity was South Carolina, where in January 1871 500 masked men attacked the Union county jail and lynched eight Black prisoners.

The Ku Klux Klan and the End of Reconstruction

Though Democratic leaders would later attribute Ku Klux Klan violence to poorer southern white people, the organization's membership crossed class lines, from small farmers and laborers to planters, lawyers, merchants, physicians and ministers. In the regions where most Klan activity took place, local law enforcement officials either belonged to the Klan or declined to take action against it, and even those who arrested accused Klansmen found it difficult to find witnesses willing to testify against them.

Other leading white citizens in the South declined to speak out against the group's actions, giving them tacit approval. After 1870, Republican state governments in the South turned to Congress for help, resulting in the passage of three Enforcement Acts, the strongest of which was the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.

For the first time, the Ku Klux Klan Act designated certain crimes committed by individuals as federal offenses, including conspiracies to deprive citizens of the right to hold office, serve on juries and enjoy the equal protection of the law. The act authorized the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and arrest accused individuals without charge, and to send federal forces to suppress Klan violence.

This expansion of federal authority-which Ulysses S. Grant promptly used in 1871 to crush Klan activity in South Carolina and other areas of the South-outraged Democrats and even alarmed many Republicans. From the early 1870s onward, white supremacy gradually reasserted its hold on the South as support for Reconstruction waned; by the end of 1876, the entire South was under Democratic control once again.

Revival of the Ku Klux Klan

In 1915, white Protestant nativists organized a revival of the Ku Klux Klan near Atlanta, Georgia, inspired by their romantic view of the Old South as well as Thomas Dixon's 1905 book "The Clansman" and D.W. Griffith's 1915 film "Birth of a Nation."

This second generation of the Klan was not only anti-Black but also took a stand against Roman Catholics, Jews, foreigners and organized labor. It was fueled by growing hostility to the surge in immigration that America experienced in the early 20th century along with fears of communist revolution akin to the Bolshevik triumph in Russia in 1917. The organization took as its symbol a burning cross and held rallies, parades and marches around the country. At its peak in the 1920s, Klan membership exceeded 4 million people nationwide.

Great Depression Shrinks Klan

The Great Depression in the 1930s depleted the Klan's membership ranks, and the organization temporarily disbanded in 1944. The civil rights movement of the 1960s saw a surge of local Klan activity across the South, including the bombings, beatings and shootings of Black and white activists. These actions, carried out in secret but apparently the work of local Klansmen, outraged the nation and helped win support for the civil rights cause.

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson delivered a speech publicly condemning the Klan and announcing the arrest of four Klansmen in connection with the murder of a white female civil rights worker in Alabama. The cases of Klan-related violence became more isolated in the decades to come, though fragmented groups became aligned with neo-Nazi or other right-wing extremist organizations from the 1970s onward.

As of 2016, the Anti-Defamation League estimated Klan membership to be around 3,000, while the Southern Poverty Law Center said there were 6,000 members total.

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The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is an American white supremacist terrorist hate group founded in 1865. It became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party's Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for Black Americans.

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-Defined Citizenship
-Ensured equal protection
-President Johnson veto was overturned by 39th U.S Congress

Sources:
https://ballotpedia.org/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1866

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What is CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1866? What does CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1886 mean?

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-White officer attempted to wrongly arrest a black ex-soldier and black people gathered to stop the jailing
-Riot showed white peoples lack of acceptance of the civil rights of freed slaves

Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/event/Memphis-Race-Riot
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/memphis-riot-1866/

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March 2, 1867 - March 11, 1868 Reconstruction Acts of 1867

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March 2, 1867 - March 11, 1868 Reconstruction Acts of 1867

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-Outlined the guidelines for Southern states to re-enter the union
-Slaves got national citizenship

Sources:
https://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/recon/jb_recon_subj.html

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June 1870 Treaty of Annexation of Santo Domingo 

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June 1870 Treaty of Annexation of Santo Domingo 

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-Attempt of Ulysses Grant to find land for freed slaves
-Relocation plan that failed

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July 28, 1868 14th Amendment is ratified

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July 28, 1868 14th Amendment is ratified

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-Defined Citizenship
-Enforced equal civil and legal rights for black people

Source:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fourteenth-Amendment

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

Fourteenth Amendment, amendment (1868) to the Constitution of the United States that granted citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to African Americans and slaves who had been emancipated after the American Civil War, including them under the umbrella phrase "all persons born or naturalized in the United States." In all, the amendment comprises five sections, four of which began in 1866 as separate proposals that stalled in legislative process and were later amalgamated, along with a fifth enforcement section, into a single amendment.

This so-called Reconstruction Amendment prohibited the states from depriving any person of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" and from denying anyone within a state's jurisdiction equal protection under the law. Nullified by the Thirteenth Amendment, the section of the Constitution apportioning representation in the House of Representatives based on a formula that counted each slave as three-fifths of a person was replaced by a clause in the Fourteenth Amendment specifying that representatives be "apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed." The amendment also prohibited former civil and military office holders who had supported the Confederacy from again holding any state or federal office-with the proviso that this prohibition could be removed from individuals by a two-thirds vote in both Houses of Congress. Moreover, the amendment upheld the national debt while exempting the federal government and state governments from any responsibility for the debts incurred by the rebellious Confederate States of America. Finally, the last section, mirroring the approach of the Thirteenth Amendment, provided for enforcement.

The full text of the amendment is:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Among those legislators responsible for introducing the amendment's provisions were Rep. John A. Bingham of Ohio, Sen. Jacob Howard of Michigan, Rep. Henry Deming of Connecticut, Sen. Benjamin G. Brown of Missouri, and Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania. The Congressional Joint Resolution proposing the amendment was submitted to the states for ratification on June 16, 1866. On July 28, 1868, having been ratified by the requisite number of states, it entered into force. However, its attempt to guarantee civil rights was circumvented for many decades by the post-Reconstruction-era black codes, Jim Crow laws, and the U.S. Supreme Court's "separate but equal" ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Adam Augustyn.

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Fourteenth Amendment | Definition, Summary, Rights, Significance, & Facts

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Fourteenth Amendment, amendment (1868) to the Constitution of the United States that granted citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to African Americans and slaves who had been emancipated after the Civil War, including them under the umbrella phrase 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States.'

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-Wanted to build on the 14th and 15th amendment
-Fought to protect POC rights
-Protected black men's voting rights and prevented a civil war

Sources:
https://daily.jstor.org/why-ulysses-s-grant-was-more-important-than-you-think/#:~:text=In%201875%2C%20Grant%20signed%20the,a%20central%20initiative%20of%20Reconstruction.

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President Andrew Johnson barely escaped being convicted by the Senate during his impeachment trial of 1868. The Tennessean had been selected as Abraham Lincoln's running mate in 1864 in a gesture of unity between North and South, with an eye toward reconciliation after the war. But Johnson was unsuited to the tasks of Reconstruction, particularly leading the Republic in accepting formerly enslaved people into public life. He left office and eventually faded from public view.

The country, wracked by divisions, looked for a unifying savior, and in 1868 overwhelmingly elected Ulysses S. Grant, the Civil War general and the most prominent American of his time. Grant's presidency is often overlooked, but his accomplishments around civil rights are getting more consideration from historians.

While other Union generals dithered, Grant took aggressive action against the rebellious states of the Confederacy.

According to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, African Americans looked on Grant with favor: "Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, but it was Grant who actually freed the slaves."

What's the evidence for this? First, there was Grant's record on the battlefield. While other Union generals dithered, Grant took aggressive action against the rebellious states of the Confederacy. African Americans credited his leadership with the liberation of huge slices of the South as his Union Army pressed from the west.

Second, Grant also backed enlisting formerly enslaved people to the cause before many others did, and supported the Fifteenth Amendment, which provided suffrage for African American men. And as president, in 1871 Grant created the U.S. Department of Justice to enforce basic rights for African Americans, then under siege by Ku Klux Klan terrorism.

In 1875, Grant signed the landmark Civil Rights Act, ending separation in public accommodations and more. (This legislation was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.) He also signed the Enforcement Acts, which protected the voting rights of Blacks in the old Confederacy, a central initiative of Reconstruction.

"Grant oversaw a social revolution that was unprecedented," notes scholar Joann Waugh, as, for a fleeting moment, Blacks in the South exercised political power and seemed on the cusp of transforming an entrenched racist culture.

Yet it was not to last. And much of that, note some Reconstruction scholars, was the reluctance of Grant to fully exercise federal authority to enforce the civil rights of African Americans. Had he more strongly asserted his own views on civil rights, a new South might well have emerged. By the end of his second term, the North had exhausted its interest in Reconstruction, and the oppression of African Americans asserted itself once again.

Grant, as general of the Union Army, himself offered generous terms to the vanquished foes, opposing proposals to indict the Confederacy's leadership for treason. He was, as president, reluctant to press too hard on his former military enemy.

Grant left office at the end of his two terms in 1877. His administration was plagued by corruption, although Grant himself has largely been seen as not personally involved with the crimes of his underlings. Always a bad businessman, Grant invested in speculative ventures that toward the end of his life rendered him nearly penniless, until he wrote a best-selling memoir.

He died in New York in 1885 at the age of sixty-three. Over a million people lined the street for his funeral procession. Grant's Tomb, now a quiet refuge on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, was the most popular tourist attraction in New York City for more than forty years, a testament to the impact the eighteenth president retained in nineteenth-century life.
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Why Ulysses S. Grant Was More Important Than You Think - JSTOR Daily

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President Andrew Johnson barely escaped being convicted by the Senate during his impeachment trial of 1868. The Tennessean had been selected as Abraham Lincoln's running mate in 1864 in a gesture of unity between North and South, with an eye toward reconciliation after the war.

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Winter 1868: Southern Constitutional Conventions including freedman

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Winter 1868: Southern Constitutional Conventions including freedman

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-Remodeled the U.S Constitution
-Had democratic principles that had never been seen before
-Black delegates

Sources:
https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/South-Carolina-Constitutional-Convention

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On January 14, 1868, the South Carolina constitutional convention met in Charleston with a majority of Black delegates.

As described by the Digital South Carolina Encyclopedia,

The 1868 constitution was revolutionary because it embodied many democratic principles absent from previous constitutions.

The new document provided for population alone, rather than wealth or the combination of wealth and population, as the basis for House representation. It also continued popular election of the governor.

Additionally, the 1868 constitution abolished debtors' prison, provided for public education, abolished property ownership as a qualification for office holding, granted some rights to women, and created counties. Provisions [in schools] for the deaf and blind were also ordered. Race was abolished as a limit on male suffrage. The Black Codes that had flourished under the constitution of 1865 were overturned. There was no provision against interracial marriage, and all the public schools were open to all races.

This was one of the Reconstruction era constitutional conventions. Adam Sanchez writes in The Other '68: Black Power During Reconstruction,

In South Carolina, the only state where Blacks made up a majority of the delegates, the convention passed a resolution asking Congress to lend the state $1 million to buy land for poor whites and Blacks. When Congress rejected the proposal, the first South Carolina legislature under the new constitution passed a homestead law to aid poor farmers and shifted the tax burden to large plantation owners.

At a time when even most Northern states restricted the franchise to white men, every convention extended suffrage to Black men and a few delegates, like W. J. Whipper in South Carolina and Thomas Bayne in Virginia, pushed to extend the franchise to women as well. Several conventions expanded women's property rights and in South Carolina legalized divorce.

Learn more in the Zinn Education Project national report, " Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle: How State Standards Fail to Teach the Truth About Reconstruction, " and find teaching resources on Reconstruction below.

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Jan. 14, 1868: South Carolina Constitutional Convention - Zinn Education Project

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On January 14, 1868, the South Carolina constitutional convention met in Charleston with a majority of Black delegates. As described by the Digital South Carolina Encyclopedia, The 1868 constitution was revolutionary because it embodied many democratic principles absent from previous constitutions.

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February 3, 1870 15th Amendment is ratified

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February 3, 1870 15th Amendment is ratified

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-Gave black men the right to vote
-Some discriminatory voting practices made it hard for black people to use this right

Sources:
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/15th-amendment#:~:text=Passed%20by%20Congress%20February%2026,men%20the%20right%20to%20vote.

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-Fight between blacks and whites
-3 white and 150 black deaths
-Massacre reflects the racial tension buildup

Sources:
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/colfax-massacre-1873/

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The Colfax Massacre occurred on April 13, 1873. The battle-turned-massacre took place in the small town of Colfax, Louisiana as a clash between blacks and whites. Three whites and an estimated 150 blacks died in the conflict.

The massacre took place against the backdrop of racial tensions following the hotly contested Louisiana governor's race of 1872. While the Republicans narrowly won the contest and retained control of the state, white Democrats, angry over the defeat, vowed revenge. In Colfax Parish (county) as in other areas of the state, they organized a white militia to directly challenge the mostly black state militia under the control of the governor.

Colfax Parish reflected the political and racial divide in Louisiana. Its 4,600 voters in the 1872 election were split between approximately 2,400 hundred mostly black Republican voters and 2,200 white Democratic voters. One incident however, touched off the Colfax massacre. On March 28, local white Democratic leaders called for armed supporters to help them take the Colfax Parish Courthouse from the black and white GOP officeholders on April 1. The Republicans responded by urging their mostly black supporters to defend them. Although nothing happened on April 1, the next day fighting erupted between the two groups.

On April 13, Easter Sunday, more than 300 armed white men, including members of white supremacist organizations such as the Knights of White Camellia and the Ku Klux Klan, attacked the Courthouse building. When the militia maneuvered a cannon to fire on the Courthouse, some of the sixty black defenders fled while others surrendered. When the leader of the attackers, James Hadnot, was accidentally shot by one of his own men, the white militia responded by shooting the black prisoners. Those who were wounded in the earlier battle, particularly black militia members, were singled out for execution The indiscriminate killing spread to African Americans who had not been at the courthouse and continued into the night.

All told, approximately 150 African Americans were killed, including 48 who were murdered after the battle. Only three whites were killed, and few were injured in the largely one-sided battle of Colfax.

On April 14, the state militia under the control of Republican Governor William Kellogg arrived at the scene and recorded the carnage. New Orleans police and federal troops also arrived in the next few days to reestablish order. A total of 97 white militia men were arrested and charged with violation of the U.S. Enforcement Act of 1870 (also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act). A handful of them were convicted but were eventually released in 1875 when the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Cruikshank ruled the Enforcement Act was unconstitutional. No one was ever arrested by the state of Louisiana or by intimidated local officials.

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The Colfax Massacre occurred on April 13, 1873. The battle-turned-massacre took place in the small town of Colfax, Louisiana as a clash between blacks and whites. Three whites and an estimated 150 blacks died in the conflict. The massacre took place against the backdrop of racial tensions following the hotly contested Louisiana governor's race of 1872.

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1875 Mississippi Plan or “Shotgun Policy”

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1875 Mississippi Plan or “Shotgun Policy”

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-Used violence and intimidation to terrorize black people to limit black power and enforce white control
-It was the intimidation of voters

Sources:
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/black-and-tan-republicans/#:~:text=The%20violence%20and%20intimidation%20of,the%20Democrats%20or%20quit%20politics.

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After the 1876 election Compromise of 1877

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After the 1876 election Compromise of 1877

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-Unwritten
-Settled Presidential dispute
-Ended Reconstruction Era

Sources:
https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/compromise-of-1877

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Contents

1. Compromise of 1877: The 1876 Election

2. Compromise of 1877: Election Results

3. Compromise of 1877: Congress Steps In

4. Compromise of 1877: The End of Reconstruction

The Compromise of 1877 was an informal agreement between southern Democrats and allies of the Republican Rutherford Hayes to settle the result of the 1876 presidential election and marked the end of the Reconstruction era.

Immediately after the presidential election of 1876, it became clear that the outcome of the race hinged largely on disputed returns from Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina-the only three states in the South with Reconstruction-era Republican governments still in power. As a bipartisan congressional commission debated over the outcome early in 1877, allies of the Republican Party candidate Rutherford Hayes met in secret with moderate southern Democrats in order to negotiate acceptance of Hayes' election.

The Democrats agreed not to block Hayes' victory on the condition that Republicans withdraw all federal troops from the South, thus consolidating Democratic control over the region. As a result of the so-called Compromise of 1877 (or Compromise of 1876), Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina became Democratic once again, effectively bringing an end to the Reconstruction era.

Compromise of 1877: The 1876 Election

By the 1870s, support was waning for the racially egalitarian policies of Reconstruction, a series of laws put in place after the Civil War to protect the rights of African Americans, especially in the South. Many southern whites had resorted to intimidation and violence to keep blacks from voting and restore white supremacy in the region.

Beginning in 1873, a series of Supreme Court decisions limited the scope of Reconstruction-era laws and federal support for the so-called Reconstruction Amendments, particularly the 14th Amendment and 15 Amendment, which gave African Americans the status of citizenship and the protection of the Constitution, including the all-important right to vote.

Did you know? After the most disputed election in American history, the Compromise of 1877 put Rutherford Hayes into office as the nation's 19th president; outraged northern Democrats derided Hayes as "His Fraudulency."

In addition, accusations of corruption within the administration of Ulysses S. Grant and an economic depression had heightened discontent with the Republican Party, which had been in the White House since 1861. As the 1876 presidential election approached, the Democrats chose Governor Samuel B. Tilden of New York as their candidate, while the Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes, governor of Ohio. In his acceptance of the nomination, Hayes wrote that if elected, he would bring "the blessings of honest and capable local self-government" to the South-in other words, restrict federal enforcement of unpopular Reconstruction-era policies.

Compromise of 1877: Election Results

On Election Day that November, the Democrats appeared to come out on top, winning the swing states of Connecticut, Indiana, New York and New Jersey. By midnight, Tilden had 184 of the 185 electoral votes he needed to win and was leading the popular vote by 250,000. The Republicans refused to accept defeat, however, and accused Democratic supporters of intimidating and bribing African-American voters to prevent them from voting in three southern states- Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina. As of 1876, these were the only remaining states in the South with Republican governments.

In South Carolina, the election had been marred by bloodshed on both sides of the party line. Supporters of the Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wade Hampton, a former Confederate general, had used violence and intimidation to confront the African-American voting majority. A clash between black militia and armed whites in Hamburg in July ended in the death of five militiamen after their surrender, while at Camboy (near Charleston), six white men were killed when armed blacks opened fire in a political meeting.

With both sides accusing each other of electoral fraud, South Carolina, along with Florida and Louisiana, submitted two sets of election returns with different results. Meanwhile, in Oregon, the state's Democratic governor replaced a Republican elector with a Democrat (alleging that the Republican had been ineligible), thus throwing Hayes' victory in that state into question as well.

Compromise of 1877: Congress Steps In

To resolve the dispute, Congress set up an electoral commission in January 1877, consisting of five U.S. representatives, five senators and five Supreme Court justices. The commission's members included seven Democrats, seven Republicans and one independent, Justice David Davis. When Davis refused to serve, the moderate Republican Justice Joseph Bradley was chosen to replace him.

During the commission's deliberations, Hayes' Republican allies met in secret with moderate southern Democrats in hopes of convincing them not to block the official counting of votes through filibuster and effectively allow Hayes' election. In February, at a meeting held in Washington's Wormley Hotel, the Democrats agreed to accept a Hayes victory and to respect the civil and political rights of African Americans, on the condition that Republicans withdraw all federal troops from the South, thus consolidating Democratic control in the region.

Hayes would also have to agree to name a leading southerner to his cabinet and to support federal aid for the Texas and Pacific Railroad, a planned transcontinental line via a southern route. On March 2, the congressional commission voted 8-7 along party lines to award all the disputed electoral votes to Hayes, giving him 185 votes to Tilden's 184.

Compromise of 1877: The End of Reconstruction

Hayes appointed Tennessee's David Key as postmaster general but never followed through on the promised land grant for the Texas and Pacific. Within two months, however, Hayes had ordered federal troops from their posts guarding Louisiana and South Carolina statehouses, allowing Democrats to seize control in both those states. As Florida's Supreme Court had earlier declared a Democratic victory in the 1876 gubernatorial election, Democrats had been restored to power all across the South.

The Compromise of 1876 effectively ended the Reconstruction era. Southern Democrats' promises to protect the civil and political rights of Black people were not kept, and the end of federal interference in southern affairs led to widespread disenfranchisement of Black voters.

From the late 1870s onward, southern legislatures passed a series of laws requiring the separation of whites from "persons of color" on public transportation, in schools, parks, restaurants, theaters and other locations. Known as the " Jim Crow laws" (after a popular minstrel act developed in the antebellum years), these segregationist statutes governed life in the South through the middle of the next century, ending only after the hard-won successes of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

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The Compromise of 1877 was an agreement that resolved the disputed 1876 presidential election between Democratic candidate Samuel Tilden and Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes. As part of the compromise, Democrats agreed that Hayes would become president in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, effectively ending the Reconstruction era.