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The Reconstruction Era is the period in American history from 1865-1877. It deals with the legacy of the American Civil War, especially in the defeated southern Confederate states. The Reconstruction Era saw attempts by US Congress to reform southern states, in particular dealing with the effects of the Emancipation of slaves and the civil rights of freed black slaves.

The Reconstruction Era saw a nation recover from the Civil War, but seeds of the conflict remained with the vision of offering full political freedom to former slaves coming against the reality of continued attempts to intimidate African-Americans and ensure segregation and white supremacy.

Timeline of reconstruction era

1865 - Jan - Thirteenth Amendment approved in January. Abolished slavery in the United States.

1865 - April - Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

1865 - Formation of Klu Klux Klan in Tennessee.

1865 - Nov. Mississippi 'Black Code' passed limiting right for freedmen to own property, serve on juries and forced them into labor contracts with white landowners

1866 - Fourteenth Amendment on equal civil rights passed in the Senate.

1867 - President Johnson vetoes three Reconstruction Acts

1868 - Fourth Reconstruction Act passed by President Johnson

1869 - President Ulysees S.Grant (Rep) elected president

1870 - Fifteenth Amendment on equal voting rights for men passed.

1870 - First black members of Congress elected

1875 - Civil Rights Act of 1 March passed. States equal treatment in public places between white and coloured people.

1875 - Blanche Kelso first black senator elected as Senator of Mississippi.

1877 - Rutherford B. Hayes inaugurated President of the United States.

1877 - Last Federal troops leave the south.

Famous people of the Reconstruction Era

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) 16th President of the US from 1861-1865. Lincoln laid the foundations of the Reconstruction Era by moving the country towards accepting the idea of abolishing slavery. First with the Emancipation Proclamation and then the 134th Amendment to abolish slavery. Towards the end of the Civil War, Lincoln was leanding towards being forgiving to the defeated south, but also pushing for greater political freedoms for the emancipated blacks. His assassination in 1865 was a set back for the emancipationist vision of ensuring greater equality and fairness.

Andrew J. Johnson (1808 - 1875) A Senator from Tennessee, Lincoln chose Johnson as Vice-President for his 1864 election. After Lincoln's assassination, Johnson became President (1865 - 1869) and changed the direction of Reconstruction Era. He opposed the implementation of federal voting rights to Black Americans and enabled southern states to rejoin the Union while denying voting rights to former black slaves. Johnson vetoed the civil rights Act of 1866. His conservatism enraged Congress dominated by radical Republicans who wished to see greater rights for freed slaves, and they overode his veto to pass the rights bill as the 14th Amendment. His presidency was overshadowed by efforts to have him impeached - something he only narrowly avoided.

Ulysses S. Grant (1822 - 1885) Grant was commander of the Union forces for the final year of the Civil War. From 1869-1877, Grant served as President. He proved more willing to support civil rights in the south. He was disillusioned with Johnson's stand-offish approach. In 1870/71 he signed three Enforcement Acts and spoke out against voter intimidation. Grant was successful in severely reducing the power of the Klu Klux Klan who were behind many murders of black leaders. However, despite his efforts, it was often insufficent to make political enfranchisement in reality in Confederate strongholds. Grant was weakened by the corruption of 'carpetbaggers' in the south and political aides.

Jefferson Davis (1808 - 1889) President of the Southern Confederate States during the Civil War. He was imprisoned after the end of charges of treason. He was released in 1868 after Johnson's presidential pardon for treasonour behaviour. Davis resented Federal rule in the south and expressed his belief in white supremacy and denying the freedman the vote. Although much diminished as a political figure, his words still carried weight in a south which shared his sentiments.

William Pitt Kellogg (1830 - 1918) Leading Republican senator from Louisiana who served 1868-72 and governor of Louisian 1872-1876. Kellogg was one of the most successful Republican politicians in the south, who held on to power during the Reconstruction Era. He won the disputed election of 1872. Tensions were so strong, that in April 1873, 150 black men were killed in an outbreak of violence against reconstruction and civil rights.

Horace Greeley (1811 - 1872) Founder and editor of the influential New York Tribune. Greeley supported the radical Republicans in promoting equal voting rights. He became disillusioned with Johnson for his acquiesence to the return of white rule in the south and disillusioned with Grant for the corruption of his administration. He breifly served as a senator and was candidate for the liberal Republican party for the 1872 election - shortly before his death.

Fictional characters

Jim Crow - Jim Crow was not a real person. Jim Crow laws referred to discriminatory laws passed in the south which prevented blacks from voting and have equal access to education. The white actor Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice created a fictional black minsteral character 'Jim Crow' a derogatory 'black' character. This term was then used to refer to a series of laws designed to promote white supremacy in the south

Significant political groups

Klu Klux Klan The Klu Klux Klan was founded by former Confederate army officers. The group evolved to be a violent and reactionary opposition to Republican involvement in southern states. The Klan terrorised local black leaders and blacks who tried to exercise their new found freedoms. In response to its violence, Grant passed Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871 which significantly weakened the Klan, though hostility and violence to blacks continued in other guises.

Carpetbaggers. Carpetbagger is a term of derision used to describe any northener who came to the south and was perceived to be profiting from the misfortune of the south. After the civil war, federal funds were allocated to rebuild the south. But, those in charge of reconstruction, often misused funds for personal gain. Combined with resentment at Federal efforts to enforce the 14th Amendment (equal voting rights), carpetbaggers became a source of resentment from southeners - especially those sympathetic to white supremacy. Milton Smith Littlefield was known as the 'prince of the carpetbaggers'. He served in the union army and was accused of appropriating funds for personal benefit.

Scalawags. Scalawags were white southerners who supported the principles of Reconstruction and black political voting rights. It was used as a term of derision by other southerners who saw 'sacalawags' as betraying the principles of white supremacy and the Confederacy. A prominent 'scalawag' was General James Longstreet, - the top general of Robert E. Lee. James L. Alcorn of Mississippi was elected to the senate in 1865. He supported suffrage for freedmen and the 14th Amendement (civil rights for blacks)

Famous people of that period

Although not closely connected to the politics of the Reconstruction era, these writers were prominent figures of the period.

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892) American poet. During the Reconstruction Era, Whitman published his most significant works such as "Leaves of Grass." He also wrote on political topics, expressing an idealised view of harmony and end to racial discrimination. He was also pessimistic about American democracy without a move to greater personal integrity, e.g. Democratic Vistas. (1871)

Frederick Douglass (1818 - 1895) A former slave, Douglass became a leading figurehead in the anti-slavery movement. He was one of the most prominent African American leaders and noted for his stirring oratory. After the civil war, he continued to campaign for civil rights legislation.

Sojourner Truth (1797 - 1883) African-American abolitionist and women's rights campaigner. A former slave who gave powerful speeches on the inhumanity of slavery and the justification for equal rights.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882) American Transcendentalist poet, philosopher and writer. Emerson was opposed to slavery and called for its abolition. In 1862, he gave a lecture in Washington at the Smithsonian calling for the emancipation of slaves. In the same year, he met Lincoln at the White House.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815 - 1902 ) - Stanton was a vocal critic of slavery, campaigning for the NY Anti-slavery society. She also helped the underground railroad, a movement helping black people to escape slavery. After the civil war, she became more concerned with gaining women the vote.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) One of America's greatest poets, Emily Dickinson lived most of her life in Amherst, Massachusetts in seclusion. Her poems were published posthumously and received widespread literary praise for their bold and unconventional style.

Mark Twain (1835 - 1910) American writer and humorist, considered the 'father of American literature'. Famous works include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). During the civil war, Twain, a southener briefly enlisted with the Confederate Army, before leaving. Twain became a leading abolitionist and supported the end of slavery.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan. "Famous People of the Reconstruction Era", Oxford, www.biographyonline.net, 23 July 2018.

The Battle Cry of Freedom - The American Civil War
The Era of Reconstruction
by Kenneth M. Stampp (Author)
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People of The American Civil War (1861-65) A list of over 20 famous and influential figures in the American Civil War (1861 - 1865) Includes politicians, generals, soldiers, spies and social activists. Including; Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant.

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People of the Progressive Era (1890-1920) A period of increased federal intervention to tackle abuse of monopoly power and inequality. The Progressive Era also saw women gain the vote, and increased efforts to tackle corruption.

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Famous people of the Reconstruction Era |

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The Reconstruction Era is the period in American history from 1865-1877. It deals with the legacy of the American Civil War, especially in the defeated southern Confederate states. The Reconstruction Era saw attempts by US Congress to reform southern states, in particular dealing with the effects of the Emancipation of slaves and the civil rights ...

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The Freed Slaves

Southern states undermined efforts at equality with laws designed to disfranchise blacks, despite of a series of federal equal-rights laws.

Learning Objectives

Describe the Southern freedman experience after the Civil War

Key Takeaways

Key Points

African-American freed slaves in the South faced a number of struggles after the Civil War.

General William Tecumseh Sherman passed an ordinance guaranteeing recently freed slaves land after his March to the Sea, but his orders had no force of law and were overturned.

In the 1870s, Democrats gradually returned to power in the Southern states, sometimes as a result of elections in which paramilitary groups intimidated opponents, attacking blacks or preventing them from voting.

Blacks were still elected to local offices in the 1880s, but the establishment Democrats were passing laws to make voter registration and electoral rules more restrictive. As a result, political participation by most blacks and many poor whites began to decrease.

Those who could not vote were not eligible to serve on juries and could not run for local offices. They effectively disappeared from political life, as they could not influence the state legislatures, and their interests were overlooked.

Key Terms

Ku Klux Klan: A racist vigilante group who violently suppressed black civil rights after the end of the Civil War.

Jim Crow laws: State and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965 that mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy.

forty acres and a mule: A short-lived policy of providing arable land and an army mule to black former slaves, enacted by Major General William Tecumseh Sherman.

During the Reconstruction period of 1865-1877, federal law provided civil rights protection in the U.S. South for freedmen, the African Americans who had formerly been slaves. In the 1870s, Democrats gradually returned to power in the Southern states, sometimes as a result of elections in which paramilitary groups intimidated opponents, attacking blacks or preventing them from voting. Gubernatorial elections were close and disputed in Louisiana for years, with extreme violence being unleashed during the campaigns. In 1877, a national compromise to gain Southern support in the presidential election resulted in the last of the federal troops being withdrawn from the South. White Democrats had regained political power in every Southern state. These conservative, white, Democratic Redeemer governments legislated Jim Crow laws, which segregated black people from the white population, and upheld them constitutionally as "separate but equal" rights.

Federal Aid

The federal government adopted a policy of providing arable land to former black slaves during the last stages of the American Civil War in 1865. They were freed as a result of the advance of the Union armies into the territory previously controlled by the Confederacy, particularly after Major General William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea. General Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 15, issued on January 16, 1865, provided for the land, while some of its beneficiaries also received mules from the army for plowing. The policy became known as "forty acres and a mule."

The Special Field Orders issued by Sherman were never intended to represent an official policy of the U.S. government with regard to all former slaves. Andrew Johnson, who succeeded President Lincoln after the assassination, revoked Sherman's orders and returned the land to its previous white owners. Because of this, the phrase "forty acres and a mule" has come to represent the failure of Reconstruction policies in restoring to African Americans the fruits of their labor.

During this time, the federal government also attempted to provide aid to black Southerners through the Freedmen's Bureau. The bureau was created through the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, which was initiated by President Abraham Lincoln, and was intended to last for one year after the end of the Civil War. On March 3, 1865, Congress passed the bill to aid former slaves through legal food and housing, oversight, education, health care, and employment contracts with private landowners.

At the end of the war, the Freemen's Bureau's main role was providing emergency food, housing, and medical aid to refugees; it also helped reunite families. Later, it focused its work on helping the freedmen adjust to their condition of freedom by setting up work opportunities and supervising labor contracts. It soon became, in effect, a military court that handled legal issues. The bureau distributed 15 million rations of food to African Americans, and set up a system in which planters could borrow rations in order to feed freedmen they employed.

The most widely recognized of the Freedmen's Bureau's achievements is its accomplishments in the field of education. Prior to the Civil War, no Southern state had a system of universal state-supported public education. Freedmen had a strong desire to learn to read and write. They had worked hard to establish schools in their communities prior to the advent of the Freedmen's Bureau. By 1866, missionary and aid societies worked in conjunction with the Freedmen's Bureau to provide education for former slaves.

The bureau faced many challenges despite its good intentions, efforts, and limited successes. By 1866, it was attacked by Southern whites for organizing blacks against their former masters. That same year President Andrew Johnson, supported by Radical Republicans, vetoed a bill for an increase of power for the bureau. Many local bureau agents were hindered in carrying out their duties by the opposition of former Confederates, and lacked a military presence to enforce their authority.

Black Disfranchisement

Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Many of these laws were focused on legally disfranchising the freedmen, especially with regard to voting, thereby blocking their participation in political life. Blacks were still elected to local offices in the 1880s, but the establishment Democrats were passing laws to make voter registration and electoral rules more restrictive. As a result, political participation by most blacks and many poor whites began to decrease. Between 1890 and 1910, 10 of the 11 former Confederate states, starting with Mississippi, passed new constitutions or amendments that effectively disfranchised most blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites through a combination of poll taxes, literacy and comprehension tests, and residency and record-keeping requirements. Grandfather clauses temporarily permitted some illiterate whites to vote.

Those who could not vote were not eligible to serve on juries and could not run for local offices. They effectively disappeared from political life, as they could not influence the state legislatures, and their interests were overlooked. Public schools had been established by Reconstruction legislatures for the first time in most Southern states. The schools for black children were consistently underfunded compared to schools for white children, even when considered within the strained finances of the postwar South. The decreasing price of cotton kept the agricultural economy at a low.

White supremacist paramilitary organizations, allied with Southern Democrats, used intimidation, violence, and assassinations to repress blacks and prevent them from exercising their civil rights in elections from 1868 until the mid-1870s. The insurgent Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was formed in 1865 in Tennessee (as a backlash to defeat in the war) and quickly became a powerful secret vigilante group, with chapters across the South. The Klan initiated a campaign of intimidation directed against blacks and sympathetic whites. Their violence included vandalism and destruction of property, physical attacks and assassinations, and lynchings. Teachers who came from the North to teach freedmen were sometimes attacked or intimidated as well.

African Americans in Southern Politics

After the Civil War, many African Americans and former slaves became Republicans and officeholders.

Learning Objectives

Examine African-American involvement in Southern politics

Key Takeaways

Key Points

Most African Americans served in local offices, with very few serving in national offices.

Hiram Rhodes Revels was the first African American to serve in Congress as a senator.

Joseph Hayne Rainey was the first African American to serve as a congressman.

At the beginning of 1867, no African American in the South held political office, but within three or four years, a significant minority of officeholders in the South were black.

The Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed African-American men the right to vote, but it did not guarantee that the vote would be counted or that the districts would be apportioned equally.

Key Terms

Reconstruction: A period of U.S. history, from 1865 to 1877, during which the nation tried to resolve the status of the ex-Confederate states, the ex-Confederate leaders, and freedmen (ex-slaves) after the American Civil War.

Fifteenth Amendment: Prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's, "race, color, or previous condition of servitude" (for example, slavery). It was ratified on February 3, 1870.

After the Civil War, Republicans took control of all Southern state governorships and state legislatures except Virginia's. The Republican coalition elected numerous African Americans to local, state, and national offices. Although they did not dominate any electoral offices, black representatives voting in state and federal legislatures marked a drastic social shift.

At the beginning of 1867, no African American in the South held political office, but within three or four years, a significant minority of officeholders in the South were black. About 137 black officeholders had lived outside of the South before the Civil War. Some had escaped from slavery to the North, become educated, and returned to help the South advance in the postwar era. Others were free blacks before the war, who had achieved education and positions of leadership elsewhere. Other African-American men who served were already leaders in their communities, including a number of preachers. As happened in white communities, not all leadership depended upon wealth and literacy.

A few African Americans were elected or appointed to national office. African Americans voted for white candidates and for blacks. The Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed the right to vote, but did not guarantee that the vote would be counted or the districts would be apportioned equally.

In addition, establishment Democrats passed laws to make voter registration and electoral rules more restrictive, with the result that political participation by most blacks was stifled. As a result, states with a majority African-American population often elected only one or two African-American representatives in Congress. Exceptions included South Carolina; at the end of Reconstruction, four of its five congressmen were African American.

Hiram Rhodes Revels (September 27, 1827-January 16, 1901) was the first African American to serve in the U.S. Senate. Because he preceded any African American in the House, he was the first African American in the U.S. Congress as well. He represented Mississippi in 1870 and 1871.

As a senator, Revels advocated compromise and moderation. He vigorously supported racial equality and worked to reassure his fellow senators about the capability of African Americans. In his maiden speech to the Senate on March 16, 1870, he argued for the reinstatement of the black legislators of the Georgia General Assembly, who had been illegally ousted by white Democratic Party representatives.

Joseph Hayne Rainey (June 21, 1832-August 1, 1887) was the first African American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, the second black person to serve in the U.S. Congress, the first African American to be directly elected to Congress (Revels had been appointed), and the first black presiding officer of the U.S. House of Representatives.

During his term in Congress, Rainey supported legislation to protect the civil rights of Southern blacks, working for two years to gain passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1875. He also worked to promote the Southern economy. In May 1874, Rainey became the first African American to preside over the House of Representatives as Speaker pro tempore. Rainey was born into slavery, and was freed in the 1840s when his father purchased his and his family's freedom.

Carpetbaggers and Scalawags

"Carpetbaggers" and "scalawags" are pejorative terms that were used by Southerners during the Reconstruction period.

Learning Objectives

Define the terms "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags"

Key Takeaways

Key Points

The term "carpetbaggers" refers to Northerners who moved to the South after the Civil War, during Reconstruction.

Many carpetbaggers were said to have moved South for their own financial and political gains.

Scalawags were white Southerners who cooperated politically with black freedmen and Northern newcomers. Scalawags typically supported the Republican Party.

Key Terms

scalawag: Any white Southerner who supported the federal plan of Reconstruction after the Civil War, or who joined with the black freedmen and the carpetbaggers in support of Republican Party policies.

Reconstruction: A period of U.S. history, from 1865 to 1877, during which the nation tried to resolve the status of the ex-Confederate states, the ex-Confederate leaders, and freedmen (ex-slaves) after the American Civil War.

carpetbagger: A pejorative term for a Northerner who moved to the South after the American Civil War, especially one who went South to gain political influence or personal wealth. This term also can refer to someone perceived as intervening in the politics of an area without actually having a connection to that area.

Three groups comprised the Republican Party in the South after the Civil War. "Scalawags" were white Southerners who supported the party, "carpetbaggers" were recent arrivals from the North, and freedmen were freed slaves. Although "carpetbagger" and "scalawag" were originally terms of opprobrium, they are now commonly used in scholarly literature. Politically, the carpetbaggers were usually dominant; they comprised the majority of Republican governors and congressmen. However, the Republican Party inside each state was increasingly torn between the more conservative scalawags on one side and the more Radical carpetbaggers with their black allies on the other. In most cases, the carpetbaggers won out, and many scalawags moved into the conservative or Democratic opposition.

Carpetbaggers

In the context of U.S. history, the term "carpetbagger" is used to describe Northerners who moved to the South after the Civil War, during Reconstruction (1865 to 1877). The term referred to the observation that many of these newcomers carried their belongings in "carpet bags." This was a sturdy, common form of luggage at the time, and was made from pieces of used carpet. The term "carpetbagger" was used in a derogatory fashion, and communicated the fear, among Southerners, that opportunistic outsiders were conspiring to exploit Southern resources.

Together with Republicans, carpetbaggers were viewed as politically manipulating formerly Confederate states for their own financial and political gains. Carpetbaggers were seen as insidious Northern outsiders with questionable objectives, who attempted to meddle with, and control, Southern politics. In fact, carpetbaggers became a powerful political force during Reconstruction. Sixty carpetbaggers were elected to Congress, and they included a majority of Republican governors in the South during Reconstruction.

Many carpetbaggers moved to the South as social reformers. Beginning in 1862, Northern abolitionists moved to areas in the South that had fallen under Union control. Schoolteachers and religious missionaries arrived in the South, some sponsored by Northern churches. Some were abolitionists who sought to continue the struggle for racial equality; they often became agents of the federal Freedmen's Bureau, which started operations in 1865 to assist the vast numbers of recently emancipated slaves. 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. A carpetbagger should not be confused with a "copperhead," a term given to Northerners who sympathized with the cause of Southern secession.

Scalawags

In U.S. history, "scalawag" was a term used for white Southerners who supported Reconstruction and the Republican Party after the Civil War. Like "carpetbagger," the term "scalawag" has a long history of use as a slur. 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. In historical studies, the term is commonly used as a neutral descriptor for Southern white Republicans, but some historians have discontinued this habit because of the term's pejorative origin.

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 1867. 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 1866 and 1877. Two of the most prominent scalawags were General James Longstreet, one of Robert E. Lee's top generals, and Joseph E. 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. In an 1868 newspaper interview, Nathan Forrest, the Grand Wizard of the KKK, stated that the Klan's primary opposition was to the Loyal Leagues, Republican state governments, people such as Tennessee governor William Gannaway Brownlow, and other "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags." During the 1870s, many scalawags left the Republican Party and joined the conservative-Democrat coalition.

Agriculture, Tenancy, and the Environment

The American South remained heavily rural for decades after the Civil War; sharecropping was widespread as a response to economic upheaval.

Learning Objectives

Explain the social and economic organization of the rural South in the late nineteenth century

Key Takeaways

Key Points

Many former slaves became sharecroppers, working under a system in which they farmed an owner's land in exchange for sharing the yield of the crop.

Farmers who owned their own equipment were tenant farmers and paid a smaller fee for use of the owner's land. They enjoyed more freedom than the sharecroppers.

Sharecroppers included both black and poor white farmers and had little, if any, chance for advancement or profit.

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.

Key Terms

tenant farmer: A person who farms land rented from a landlord. The renter provides his or her own farming tools and resources.

sharecropper: A person who enters an agreement with a landowner to farm the land and then pays a portion (share) of the produce as rent. Landowners provide most or all of the resources needed to farm.

The South remained heavily rural after the Civil War, up until World War II. 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

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 1870s to the 1950s, among both blacks and whites. By the 1960s 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 1880s, 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. During Reconstruction, the Freedmen's Bureau wrote and enforced the contracts.

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. To work the land, sharecroppers had to buy seed and implements, sometimes from the plantation owner who often charged exorbitant prices against the sharecropper's next season.

Rural Tenancy

"Rural tenancy" refers to a type of tenant-farming arrangement that a landowner can use to make full use of property he may not otherwise be able to develop properly. A "tenant" or non-landowner will take residency on the property of the landowner and work the land in exchange for giving the landowner a percentage of the profits from the eventual crop.

This system was distinct from the sharecropper. Unlike sharecroppers, who were given all resources by the landowner, tenant farmers rented the land, provided their own tools and mule, and received half the crop. Landowners provided more supervision to sharecroppers, and less or none to tenant farmers. Tenant farming was historically a step up on the "agricultural ladder" from hired hand or sharecropper taken by young farmers as they accumulated enough experience and capital to buy land. The term "rural tenancy" usually describes the situation of previously enslaved people who were then tenants on the landowner's property. The landowner would extend to the farmer shelter, food, and necessary items on credit to be repaid out of the tenant's share of the crop. The farmer could, if he desired, charge the tenant extremely high interest on the advanced pay because there were no lending laws applicable to migrant or tenant workers at the time. This could ultimately result in the tenant owing the landlord more money than his share of the crop at harvest, forcing the farmer to be further indentured to the landowner.

Landowners in the South frequently used this practice after slavery was abolished. Modern day tenancy is much more highly regulated, and these practices are more rare.

The Radical Record

Radical Republicans in Congress, led by Stevens and Sumner, opened the way to suffrage and legal equality for freedmen.

Learning Objectives

Evaluate how the Radical Republican Congress worked to change the post-Civil War political landscape

Key Takeaways

Key Points

The Radical Republicans aimed to undermine the power of ex-Confederates and provide civil rights, such as suffrage, for the recently freed slaves.

Senator Lyman Trumbull proposed the first Civil Rights Law, which stated that African Americans were to be granted equal rights as citizens in all aspects.

The Radical Republicans also passed the Reconstruction Amendments, which were directed at ending slavery and providing full citizenship to freedmen. Northern Congressmen believed that providing black men with suffrage would be the most rapid means of political education and training.

Many of the political and legal advances made by African Americans during the Reconstruction period were undermined by laws passed by individual states and the Supreme Court.

Key Terms

Reconstruction Amendments: The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, adopted between 1865 and 1870, the five years immediately following the Civil War.

Freedmen's Bureau: A U.S. federal government agency that aided distressed freedmen (freed slaves) in 1865-1869, during the Reconstruction era of the United States; also known as "The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands."

Charles Sumner: A Radical Republican senator from Massachusetts who led efforts in Congress to provide civil rights to freedmen.

Radical Republicans: A loose faction of American politicians within the Republican Party from about 1854 (before the American Civil War) until the end of Reconstruction in 1877. Radicals strongly opposed slavery during the war and after the war distrusted ex-Confederates, demanding harsh policies for the former rebels, and emphasizing civil rights and voting rights for freedmen (recently freed slaves).

Radical Republicans

The Radical Republicans were a faction of American politicians within the Republican Party of the United States from about 1854 until the end of Reconstruction in 1877. They called themselves "Radicals" and were opposed during the Civil War by moderate Republicans (led by Abraham Lincoln), conservative Republicans, and the largely proslavery (and later anti-Reconstruction) Democratic Party. Radical Republicans strongly opposed slavery during the war and after the war distrusted ex-Confederates, demanding harsh policies for punishing the former rebels, and emphasizing equality, civil rights, and voting rights for the freedmen. By 1866, the Radical Republicans supported federal civil rights for freedmen, which President Johnson opposed. By 1867, they defined terms for suffrage for freed slaves and limited early suffrage for many ex-Confederates. While Johnson opposed the Radical Republicans on some issues, the decisive congressional elections of 1866 gave the Radicals enough votes to enact their legislation over Johnson's vetoes. Through elections in the South, ex-Confederate officeholders were gradually replaced with a coalition of freedmen, Southern whites (scalawags), and Northerners who had resettled in the South (carpetbaggers).

Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens

Concerned that President Johnson was attempting to subvert congressional authority, Republicans in Congress took control of Reconstruction policies after the election of 1866. Radical Republicans, led by Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, opened the way to suffrage for male freedmen. As the chief Radical leader in the Senate during Reconstruction, Sumner fought hard to provide equal civil and voting rights for the freedmen on the grounds that "consent of the governed" was a basic principle of American republicanism, and to block ex-Confederates from power so they would not reverse the gains made from the Union's victory in the Civil War.

Sumner, teaming with House leader Thaddeus Stevens, battled Andrew Johnson 's Reconstruction plans and sought to impose a Radical program on the South. The Radical Republicans were generally in control of policy, although they had to compromise with the moderate Republicans. The Democrats in Congress had almost no power. Historians generally refer to this period as " Radical Reconstruction."

Battles over Reconstruction Policy

During fall 1865, as a response to the Black Codes and worrisome signs of Southern recalcitrance, the Radical Republicans blocked the readmission of the former rebellious states to the Congress. Johnson, however, was content with allowing former Confederate states into the Union as long as their state governments adopted the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. By December 6, 1865, the amendment was ratified, and Johnson considered Reconstruction over. Radical Republicans in Congress disagreed. They rejected Johnson's moderate Reconstruction efforts, and organized the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, a 15-member panel to devise more stringent Reconstruction requirements for the Southern states to be restored to the Union.

In January 1866, Congress renewed the Freedmen's Bureau, which Johnson vetoed in February. Although Johnson sympathized with the plights of the freedmen, he was against federal assistance. An attempt to override the veto failed on February 20, 1866. This veto shocked the congressional Radicals. In response, both the Senate and House passed a joint resolution not to allow any senator or representative seat admittance until Congress decided when Reconstruction was finished.

Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, leader of the moderate Republicans, took the Black Codes as an affront. He proposed the first Civil Rights Law, because the abolition of slavery was empty if laws were to be enacted and enforced depriving persons of African descent of privileges which were essential to free citizens. The law stated that African Americans were to be granted equal rights as citizens. Congress later passed the Civil Rights Bill. Although strongly urged by moderates in Congress to sign the Civil Rights Bill, Johnson broke decisively with them by vetoing it on March 27, 1866. His veto message objected to the measure because it conferred citizenship on the freedmen at a time when 11 out of 36 states were unrepresented and attempted to fix by Federal law, "a perfect equality of the white and black races in every State of the Union." Johnson said it was an invasion by federal authority of the rights of the United States. It had no warrant in the Constitution and was contrary to all precedents. The Democratic Party, proclaiming itself the party of white men, North and South, supported Johnson. However, the Republicans in Congress overrode his veto. The Senate overrode the veto by the close vote of 33:15, the House by 122:41. Then, the Civil Rights Bill became law. Congress also passed another version of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, which Johnson again vetoed. This time, however, Radical Republicans mustered enough congressional support to override Johnson's veto.

The Radical Republicans also passed the Reconstruction Amendments, which were directed at ending slavery and providing full citizenship to freedmen. Northern Congressmen believed that providing black men with suffrage would be the most rapid means of political education and training. For instance, the Fourteenth Amendment, whose principal drafter was John Bingham, was designed to put the key provisions of the Civil Rights Act into the Constitution. It extended citizenship to everyone born in the United States (except visitors and Indians on reservations), penalized states that did not give the vote to freedmen, and most importantly, created new federal civil rights that could be protected by federal courts. Johnson used his influence to block the amendment in the states.

While many blacks took an active part in voting and political life, and rapidly continued to build churches and community organizations, white Democrats and insurgent groups used force to regain power in the state legislatures, passing laws that effectively disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites in the South.

The End of Radical Reconstruction

The end of Reconstruction was a staggered process, and the period of Republican control ended at different times in different states. With the Compromise of 1877, army intervention in the South ceased and Republican control collapsed in the last three state governments in the South. This was followed by a period that white Southerners labeled "Redemption," during which white-dominated state legislatures enacted Jim Crow laws and, beginning in 1890, disenfranchised most blacks and many poor whites through a combination of constitutional amendments and electoral laws. The white Democrat Southerners' memory of Reconstruction played a major role in imposing the system of white supremacy and second-class citizenship for blacks, known as "The Age of Jim Crow."

Many of the ambitions of the Radical Republicans were, in the end, undermined and unfulfilled. Early Supreme Court rulings around the turn of the century upheld many of these new Southern constitutions and laws, and most blacks were prevented from voting in the South until the 1960s. Full federal enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments did not occur until passage of legislation in the mid-1960s as a result of the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968).

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Southern states undermined efforts at equality with laws designed to disfranchise blacks, despite of a series of federal equal-rights laws. Describe the Southern freedman experience after the Civil War Key Points African-American freed slaves in the South faced a number of struggles after the Civil War.

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Key Facts & Summary

Persons travelling from the north to the south after the civil war, to help the blacks and profit from the reconstruction were called Carpetbaggers.

The white southerners working with the northern republicans during the reconstruction were called scalawags.

The two terms were used in criticism by white southerners opposing the reconstruction.

Introduction

Carpetbaggers arrived at the south during and after the civil war. The move was based on speculative and commercial opportunities as a result of the reconstruction but also, a desire to help the south, particularly blacks, during the reconstruction.

Other southerners supported the Republican government, convinced that the simplest way to bring the reconstruction to an end, is through the proper implementation of the Reconstruction Acts. They were called scalawags. Both the scalawags and the carpetbaggers were criticised by southerners for their stance during the period.

The reconstruction

Following the assassination of Lincoln at the end of the Civil War in 1865, Lincoln successor Andrew Johnson proposed reconstruction policies. The policies offered by Johnson affirmed his belief in the principle of unionism, citing that the war did not relinquish the right of southern states to govern themselves. The southern states were given a free hand over their affairs, and as a result, many passed the black codes from 1865 to 1866 that undermined the liberty of the freed blacks.

The southerners were required to pay off the war debts, observe the thirteenth amendment and swear loyalty to the union. The oppressive black codes angered a lot of the northerners and especially Congress. In early 1866 Congress passed the Freedmen's Bureau and the Civil Rights bill for Johnson's assent. The Freedmen bill was meant to extend the tenure of the bureau that had been established as a temporary organ, through earlier legislation. The Civil Right bill sought to provide for equality among all persons born in the United States including African Americans. Johnson vetoed the bills, causing a permanent rift between himself and Congress.

Congress took firm control over the reconstruction by passing the Reconstruction Act of 1867 against Johnson position over the issue. The Act divided the south into districts under military rule. The law also provided for the reestablishment of southern governments on the principle of universal male suffrage. The states were also required to ratify the fourteenth amendment which granted equal protection of former slaves. Congress also ratified the 15 amendments in 1870 that provide constitutional protection of the right to vote for former slaves.

The southern governments established by the south during the reconstruction entailed African Americans, the so-called carpetbaggers and the scalawags, who took control of the region.

The Carpetbaggers

The carpetbaggers were northerners who arrived in the south with their belongings packed in carpetbags. Majority of the carpetbaggers were initially union soldiers or employees of the Freedmen bureau while others were teachers, merchants and journalists. They took part in the reconstruction of the south, together with the African Americans and the scalawags.

They purchased land, or took out leases or entered into partnerships with the struggling plantation owners in bids to profit from cotton. At first, they were welcomed, as southerners appreciated the northern capital and investment in their region. Later, they were the object of ridicule and scorn as many southerners began to see them as low-class opportunistic newcomers who attempt to benefit from the misfortune of the war.

Other carpetbaggers saw themselves as reformers and wanted to influence the south to become like the north, which the majority perceived to be more progressive. However, some carpetbaggers were corrupt opportunists seek to benefit from the war as claimed by the southerners.

The Scalawags

Scalawag was a demeaning reference to the Republican-supporting white southerners. Originally, the term was used in reference to livestock with little value but later came to refer to persons thought of as worthless. They attended a radical reconstruction era legislatures as delegates. There were established plantation owners in the south, who stood against the Confederacy and were vocal in support of the civil rights of African Americans.

A majority were former Whigs conservatives who saw the Republican party as succeeding from the Whig party. They were non-slave (but still racists) owning farmers, merchants and artisans and maintained the loyalty to the Union during the Civil War. In the antebellum years, many were Congressmen, judges and local officials.

The scalawags were thought to be traitors and therefore were held in much more disdain than the carpetbaggers. They had diverse backgrounds and motives, but all agreed that the reconstruction Acts were progressive and beneficial to the south. They were keen on ensuring that the rebels of the south did not control the regional politics and united with the carpetbaggers and African Americans for political expediency.

Image sources:

[1.] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Atlanta_roundhouse_ruin3.jpg

[2.] http://www.thomaslegion.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/civilwarcityburnedreconstruction.jpg

[3.] https://64parishes.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/the-man-with-the-carpet-bags-836.jpg

[4.] http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mWLu2hkcHcY/VZMO_8h0IWI/AAAAAAAALmQ/R43d6MHd4C4/s640/Scalawag%2Band%2Bstooge.jpg

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Carpetbaggers & Scalawags in the Reconstruction | Facts & Summary

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Persons travelling from the north to the south after the civil war, to help the blacks and profit from the reconstruction were called Carpetbaggers. The white southerners working with the northern republicans during the reconstruction were called scalawags. The two terms were used in criticism by white southerners opposing the reconstruction.

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Contrary to legend, however, most carpetbaggers were not impoverished opportunists seeking easy money in the South. Rather they were former soldiers who migrated to the South to seek a livelihood. They generated hostility because they supported the Republican Party and defended the civil and political rights of freedmen.

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The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America's libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world.

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Creation of the Freedmen's Bureau

The Freedmen's Bureau was established by an act of Congress on March 3, 1865, two months before Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to the Union's Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the Civil War.

Intended as a temporary agency to last the duration of the war and one year afterward, the bureau was placed under the authority of the War Department and the majority of its original employees were Civil War soldiers.

Did you know? Howard University, a historically all-Black school in Washington, D.C., was established in 1867 and named for Oliver Howard, one of its founders and the head of the Freedmen's Bureau. He served as the university's president from 1869 to 1874.

Oliver Otis Howard, a Union general, was appointed commissioner of the bureau in May 1865. Howard, a Maine native who attended Bowdoin College and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, reportedly had been planning to become a minister when the Civil War broke out.

During the war, Howard, nicknamed the "Christian General," fought in major battles, including Antietam and Gettysburg, and lost an arm in the Battle of Fair Oaks in 1862.

Reconstruction

America's Reconstruction era was a turbulent time, as the nation struggled with how to rebuild the South and transition the 4 million newly freed Blacks from slavery to a free-labor society.

"There was no tradition of government responsibility for a huge refugee population and no bureaucracy to administer a large welfare, employment and land reform program," according to The Freedmen's Bureau and Reconstruction, edited by Paul Cimbala and Randall Miller. "Congress and the army and the Freedmen's Bureau were groping in the dark. They created the precedents."

From the start, the Bureau faced resistance from a variety of sources, including many white Southerners. Another leading opponent was President Andrew Johnson, who assumed office in April 1865 following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

When Congress introduced a bill in February 1866 to extend the bureau's tenure and give it new legal powers, Johnson vetoed the proposed legislation on the grounds that it interfered with states' rights, gave preference to one group of citizens over another and would impose a huge financial burden on the federal government, among other issues.

In July of that same year, Congress overrode the president's veto and passed a revised version of the bill. However, Johnson became embroiled in a bitter fight with the Radical Republicans in Congress, who viewed the president's Reconstruction policies as too lenient, and the Freedmen's Bureau suffered as a result.

Johnson's actions, which included pardoning many former Confederates and restoring their land, as well as removing bureau employees he thought were too sympathetic to Black people, served to undermine the bureau's authority.

The bureau's mission was further muddled by the fact that even among the agency's supporters in Congress and its own personnel, there was disagreement over what type of assistance the government should provide and for how long.

Freedmen's Bureau's Successes and Failures

The Freedmen's Bureau was organized into districts covering the 11 former rebel states, the border states of Maryland, Kentucky and West Virginia and Washington, D.C. Each district was headed by an assistant commissioner.

The bureau's achievements varied from one location to another and from one agent to the next. Over its course of existence, the bureau was underfunded and understaffed, with just 900 agents at its peak.

Bureau agents, who acted essentially as social workers and were frequently the only federal representatives in Southern communities, were subjected to ridicule and violence from whites (including terrorist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan), who viewed the agents as interfering in local affairs by trying to assist Blacks. While some agents were corrupt or incompetent, others were hardworking and brave people who made significant contributions.

During its years of operation, the Freedmen's Bureau fed millions of people, built hospitals and provided medical aid, negotiated labor contracts for ex-slaves and settled labor disputes. It also helped former slaves legalize marriages and locate lost relatives, and assisted Black veterans.

The bureau also was instrumental in building thousands of schools for Blacks, and helped to found such colleges as Howard University in Washington, D.C., Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia. The bureau frequently worked in conjunction with the American Missionary Association and other private charity organizations.

Additionally, the bureau tried, with little success, to promote land redistribution. However, most of the confiscated or abandoned Confederate land was eventually restored to the original owners, so there was little opportunity for Black land ownership, which was seen as a means to success in society.

Freedmen's Bureau's Demise

In the summer of 1872, Congress, responding in part to pressure from white Southerners, dismantled the Freedmen's Bureau.

Since that time, historians have debated the agency's effectiveness. A lack of funding, coupled with the politics of race and Reconstruction, meant that the bureau was not able to carry out all of its initiatives, and it failed to provide long-term protection for Blacks or ensure any real measure of racial equality.

However, the bureau's efforts did signal the introduction of the federal government into issues of social welfare and labor relations. As noted in The Freedmen's Bureau and Reconstruction, "The Bureau helped awaken Americans to the promise of freedom, and for a time, the Bureau's physical presence in the South made palpable to many citizens the abstract principles of equal access to the law and free labor."

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The Freedmen's Bureau was established by an act of Congress on March 3, 1865, two months before Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to the Union's Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the Civil War.

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The Freedmen's Bureau was established in March of 1865 to help freed people achieve economic stability and secure political freedoms.

Many white Southerners, as well as President Andrew Johnson, challenged the Bureau's legitimacy, sparking racial violence in the South and the ultimate failure of the Bureau.

The Bureau presented questions about the role of the federal government in establishing and maintaining racial and economic equality in the United States.

The promising goals of the Freedmen's Bureau

As the Civil War wound to a close in 1865, African Americans in the South celebrated the end of slavery. They immediately began to take steps to improve their own condition by seeking what had long been denied to them: land, financial security, education, and the ability to participate in the political process. However, they faced the wrath of defeated white Southerners who were determined to keep blacks an impoverished and despised underclass. Recognizing the widespread devastation in the South, Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands in March 1865, popularly known as the Freedmen's Bureau. Lincoln approved of the Bureau, giving it a charter for one year.

The Freedmen's Bureau was intended to act as a primitive welfare agency, aiming to ease the transition from slavery to freedom. While some Bureau agents were corrupt or incompetent, others worked hard to secure significant freedoms for blacks. Under control of Union war hero Oliver O. Howard, the Bureau delivered food to freedmen and poor whites in the South, and it helped freed people gain labor contracts.

The Bureau also took up the fight for African American education, establishing scores of public schools where freed people and poor whites could receive both elementary and higher education. Respected institutions such as Fisk University, Hampton University, and Dillard University are part of the legacy of the Freedmen's Bureau. General Howard later opened and became president of the historically black college, Howard University. In this endeavor, the Freedmen's Bureau received support from Christian organizations that had long advocated for abolition, such as the American Missionary Association (AMA).

Prolonging racial tensions post Civil War

The schools that the Freedmen's Bureau and the AMA established inspired resentment among the white population in the South. Indeed, the Freedmen's Bureau's programs and its very existence were sources of controversy. Those who resisted this type of federal government activism denounced it as a foolish effort and a waste of federal money.

Congress renewed the Bureau's charter in 1866, but President Johnson, who steadfastly believed that the work of restoring the Union had been completed, vetoed the rechartering on the grounds that it interfered with states' rights. Congress, in turn, overrode the president's veto.

Johnson pardoned many former Confederates and restored their land, as well as removed Bureau employees he thought were too sympathetic to African Americans. Radical Republicans continued to support the Bureau, igniting a contest between Congress and the president that intensified during the next several years.

This dispute involved conflicting visions of the proper role of the federal government. Radical Republicans believed in the constructive power of the federal government to ensure a better day for freed people. Others, including Johnson, denied that the government had any such role to play.

Due to pressure from white Southerners, Congress dismantled the Freedmen's Bureau in 1872. The Bureau failed to make a real stride towards racial equality mostly due to the fight between Congress and the President, as well as subpar funding.

What do you think?

Did the Freedmen's Bureau succeed or fail? Why?

How did the Freedmen's Bureau expand the reach of the federal government?

How did the Freedmen's Bureau compare to later federal programs for education and public welfare, like the New Deal or the Civil Rights Act?

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The Freedmen's Bureau (article) | Khan Academy

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The Freedmen's Bureau was established in March of 1865 to help freed people achieve economic stability and secure political freedoms. Many white Southerners, as well as President Andrew Johnson, challenged the Bureau's legitimacy, sparking racial violence in the South and the ultimate failure of the Bureau.

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Freedmen's Bureau | Celebrate Black History

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WATCH: Nicodemus, KS | The Black Experience Moving West

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When Reconstruction ended in 1877, southern whites used violence, economic exploitation, discriminatory laws called Black Codes, and political disenfranchisement to subjugate African Americans and undo their gains during Reconstruction. Kansas and other destinations on the Great Plains represented a chance to start a new life. Kansas had fought to be a free state and, with the Homestead Act of 1862, the region offered lots of land at low cost. As a result, between the late 1870s and early 1880s, more than 20,000 African Americans left the South for Kansas, the Oklahoma Territory, and elsewhere on the Great Plains in a migration known as the "Great Exodus."

These African American migrants, or Exodusters, came primarily from Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Tennessee. Some participated in organized recruitment efforts to establish black colonies in Kansas. Others just picked up and left, often traveling by steamboat to St. Louis, where they received help to get the rest of the way. One prominent promoter of the Exodus was Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, who organized several colonies in Kansas and recruited African Americans from Tennessee to move there. The peak of the Exodus occurred in the spring of 1879 when 6,000 migrants arrived in Kansas in only a few months.

For many Exodusters, the "promised land" of Kansas proved more punishing than they had hoped; the land was difficult to cultivate, and building homes and businesses with few resources proved challenging. The Exodus slowed in the 1880s and, by 1900, the population of many of the rural Exoduster towns and settlements began to decline.

The Exodus demonstrated that formerly enslaved people were claiming their freedom of movement-the power to decide where they would travel and live that slavery had denied them. In doing so, they sought better lives for themselves and rejected the violent white supremacist regime that was taking hold in the post-Reconstruction South. The predominantly black communities the Exodusters created provided important models of black self-government and community building in the West at the end of the nineteenth century.

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Exodusters: African American Migration to the Great Plains

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When Reconstruction ended in 1877, southern whites used violence, economic exploitation, discriminatory laws called Black Codes, and political disenfranchisement to subjugate African Americans and undo their gains during Reconstruction. Kansas and other destinations on the Great Plains represented a chance to start a new life.

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Exodusters - Kansapedia - Kansas Historical Society

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The Homestead Act and the exodusters (article) | Khan Academy

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The Homestead Act of 1862 gave free land to Americans willing to improve it, regardless of race, sex, or nation of origin.

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Click "Ulysses S. Grant and Buffalo Soldiers"

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Click "Ulysses S. Grant and Buffalo Soldiers"

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Click the "Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights Act"

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Click the "Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights Act"

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AND you can go to the "Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands"

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Click "Exodusters the thirteenth amendment..." for information

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Click "Black Officeholding from Reconstruction Onward" to read the section.

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Hiram Revels, the first Black Congressman in the United States

Hiram R. (Rhodes) Revels was born on this date in 1822. He was a Black educator, minister, and politician, and the first African American to serve in the United States Senate.

He was born in Fayetteville, N.C. he was born free, but even though he was born free, all Blacks in the South, free or slaves, were forbidden to learn to read and write. Revels was secretly taught these basics by a free Black woman. When he was 15, his family moved to Lincointon, N.C., where Revels worked as a barber. In 1844, he moved to Indiana (a free state) and began studying at Beech Grove Seminary, a Quaker school.

At this time Revels became involved with the teachings of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, a significant religious and educational force in the Black community. In 1845, Revels began studying for the ministry in Drake County, Ohio. Later that year, he was ordained as a minister of the AME Church, and made an elder in 1849.

Revels, an itinerant preacher, was imprisoned in Missouri in 1854, for preaching the gospel to Negroes. In the early 1850s, Revels married Phoeba A. Bass, and together they raised six daughters. He attended Knox College in Galesburg, IL, and in 1857, he became a minister became principal of an African American high school in Baltimore, Maryland.

When the Civil War started, Revels helped organize Union regiments and recruit soldiers of the first colored regiment in Maryland. He established a school for freedmen in St. Louis, in 1863, and worked with the U.S. Provost Marshall to handle the affairs of ex-slaves.

In 1865, Revels joined the Methodist Episcopal (ME) Church, which offered more opportunities for his work in the South. After the Civil War, the Reconstruction Act of 1867 required the Southern states to write new constitutions permitting African Americans to vote and hold public office. This was the Fourteenth Amendment, and on July 28, 1868, African Americans were officially recognized as citizens of the United States.

Later that year, Revels was appointed for a term on the Natchez city board of aldermen. During the first session of the Mississippi legislature in January 1868, Revels was asked to open the session with a prayer. According to John R. Lynch, "That prayer--one of the most impressive and eloquent prayers that had ever been delivered in the [Mississippi] Senate Chamber-made Revels a United States Senator. He made a profound impression upon all who heard him. It impressed those who heard it that Revels was not only a man of great natural ability but that he was also a man of superior attainments."

In 1869, Lynch, a Black political figure from Natchez, encouraged him to enter as a candidate for state senator, representing Adams County. Revels accepted the nomination at the Republican caucus in December 1869.

In January 1870, Mississippi elected Hiram Revels as a U.S. senator. Mississippi was readmitted to the Union, but the New York Herald predicted that Revels would never be allowed to take his Senate seat. But finally he was seated on February 25, 1870, and held the office until March 3, 1871, becoming the first African American member of Congress. During Revels' short tenure, he introduced several bills, presented a number of petitions, and served on the Committee on the District of Columbia and the Committee on Education. After his term in the senate, Revels became president of Alcorn College from 1871 to 1873.

He then reentered the ministry as the pastor of the Holly Springs, Mississippi, ME church. In 1876, he came back to Alcorn College until 1882, then taught theology at Rust University in Holly Springs. On January 16, 1901, Revels died of a stroke.

Reference:
Black Americans In Congress, 1870-1989.
Bruce A. Ragsdale & Joel D. Treese
U.S. Government Printing Office
Raymond W. Smock, historian and director 1990
E185.96.R25
To Become a Political Scientist

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Hiram Revels, the first Black Congressman in the United States - African American Registry

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Hiram R. (Rhodes) Revels was born on this date in 1822. He was a Black educator, minister, and politician, and the first African American to serve in the United States Senate. He was born in Fayetteville, N.C.

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Since 1870, when Senator Hiram Revels of Mississippi and Representative Joseph Rainey of South Carolina became the first African Americans to serve in Congress, a total of 162 African Americans have served as U.S. Representatives, Delegates, or Senators. This Web site, based on the publication Black Americans in Congress, contains biographical profiles of former African-American Members of Congress, links to information about current black Members, essays on institutional and national events that shaped successive generations of African Americans in Congress, and images of each individual Member, supplemented by other historical photos.

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Black Americans in Congress | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives

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Since 1870, when Senator Hiram Revels of Mississippi and Representative Joseph Rainey of South Carolina became the first African Americans to serve in Congress, a total of #BAIC#Total# African Americans have served as U.S. Representatives, Delegates, or Senators.

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THE FIRST BLACKS TO SERVE IN THE U.S. CONGRESS - An Introduction

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Buffalo Soldiers - Service on the Frontier

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Definition

In 1866 and 1867, Congress organized four African-American regiments in the U.S. Calvary, known as the Ninth, Tenth, Twenty-Fourth, and Twenty-Fifth Infantry Regiments. These regiments saw duty against the Indian Nations. The Native Americans had such great respect for the fighting abilities of black soldiers, they called them Buffalo Soldiers. The brave nature of the soldiers reminded the Native Americans of the way buffalo fought.

History of the Buffalo Soldiers

During the Westward Movement, which lasted from 1807-1912, Buffalo Soldiers of the U.S. Army were prominent among those blazing trails of the Wild West. These African-Americans were charged with and responsible for escorting settlers, cattle herds, and railroad crews. The Ninth and Tenth Cavalry Regiments also conducted campaigns against American Indian tribes on a western frontier that extended from Montana in the Northwest to Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona in the Southwest.

Throughout the era of the Indian Wars, approximately 20% of the U.S. Cavalry troopers were black, and they fought in over 177 engagements. The combat prowess, bravery, and tenacity inspired the Indians to call them Buffalo Soldiers. Buffalo Soldiers, down through the years, have worn the name with pride.

Buffalo Soldiers participated in many other military campaigns, including the Civil War, Indian Wars, and the Spanish-American War.

Civil War

The Civil War officially began in 1861, when the Confederate Army attacked Fort Sumter. Though they were initially barred from fighting for either Union or Confederate forces, the Buffalo Soldiers ended up playing a pivotal role in the conflict. Due to military setbacks and fear that the North could lose the war, black soldiers were eventually allowed to fight for the Union army when Congress passed the Militia Act of 1862.

During the Civil War, black soldiers did so well they were used more by the Union Army. In total, some 180,000 black soldiers served in the Union army during the Civil War.

Indian Wars

The Buffalo Soldiers also served in the Indian Wars, which occurred intermittently between 1622 and 1924. Buffalo Soldiers fought on the Plains (Wyoming) and in the Southwest (Oklahoma, Arizona, Texas, and Arkansas). They often distinguished themselves in spite of old horses, meager ammunition, and faulty equipment. As prospectors and settlers moved into the Southwest, the black regiments were right beside them. They had to fight against outlaws and Apaches.

In 1886, during the Apache Wars, the Tenth Regiment pursued Geronimo into the Pinito Mountains of Mexico. In addition to controlling the Indians of the Plains and Southwest, the soldiers built roads and policed cattle rustlers.

Spanish-American War

The Spanish-American War lasted for three months in the summer of 1898. It ended up being one of the last wars the Buffalo Soldiers would participate in, and the war that would finally bestow them with much of the recognition they deserved.

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buffalo soldiers: history & facts | study.com

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Buffalo Soldiers: History & Facts | Study.com

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In 1866 and 1867, Congress organized four African-American regiments in the U.S. Calvary, known as the Ninth, Tenth, Twenty-Fourth, and Twenty-Fifth Infantry Regiments. These regiments saw duty against the Indian Nations. The Native Americans had such great respect for the fighting abilities of black soldiers, they called them Buffalo Soldiers.

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After the Civil War, when the massive Union Army was disbanded, Congress could not ignore the contributions of about 200,000 black volunteers to the Union victory. Congress designated six post-Civil War regiments for black enlisted men in the reorganization act of July 28, 1866-the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 38th, 39th, 40th, and 41st Infantry regiments (consolidated in 1869 into two infantry regiments, the 24th and 25th). The act marked the first inclusion of black men in the regular army. Soldiers of these regiments between the Civil War and World War I have come to be called "Buffalo Soldiers." Their officers were white, except for five men, West Point graduates Henry Flipper (1877), John Alexander (1887) and Charles Young (1889), and two former enlisted men, Benjamin O. Davis and John E. Green, commissioned at the turn of the twentieth century. Davis became the first black general officer.

Buffalo Soldiers participated in central episodes of the American experience. They made essential contributions to western settlement, making maps, blazing trails, and improving roads; guarding settlements, roads, and stagecoach stations; and providing the reassuring military presence that helped encourage development. They fought in some major wars against Indians, against Spain in the summer of 1898, and in the harsh guerilla struggle against a native Filipino independence movement during 1899-1902. Twenty-three received the Medal of Honor.

It is generally supposed that the Comanche or Cheyenne first called them "buffalo soldiers," and the best guesses are that the name reflected a perceived resemblance between the brown skins and nappy hair of some of the men and the color and texture of the fur of the bison. The earliest known user of the phrase was Frances Roe, the wife of an officer who served with the 10th Cavalry in Indian Territory during 1872-1873. Her letters were dated 1872 but not published until 1909. William Leckie, in his path-breaking book, The Buffalo Soldiers: a Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the West, claimed that because the buffalo was so important to these tribes the term was probably a sign of respect and that the soldiers so comprehended it. The assumption that the term was somehow honorific and that the Indians considered the black troopers exceptional has sometimes led to another, that the Buffalo Soldiers and the Indians viewed each other with empathy and respect. This cannot be proved, and the origins, significance, and prevalence of the phrase are not clear. Evidence that the soldiers themselves used or even referred to this title-in pension affidavits, newspaper articles, or other venues-has not turned up, so claims concerning their views of the usage remain unproved. The 10th Cavalry adopted the buffalo as a central element of its unit crest in 1911.

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After the Civil War, when the massive Union Army was disbanded, Congress could not ignore the contributions of about 200,000 black volunteers to the Union victory. Congress designated six post-Civil War regiments for black enlisted men in the reorganization act of July 28, 1866-the 9th ... Read MoreBuffalo Soldiers

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These segregated regiments offered black soldiers a chance to fight for their rights

smithsonian.com

The Buffalo Soldiers' relationship with the American government changed over time
Today is Buffalo Soldiers Day- proclaimed by President George Bush in 1992 to celebrate the all-black Army regiments' "outstanding legacy of service." The Buffalo Soldiers, as Bush acknowledged, are a historically important group best remembered for fighting on American's western frontier. But "their achievements were not limited to the western United States," Bush said: Members of the Buffalo Soldiers served in other parts of America and "in places as far-flung as Cuba, Mexico, and the Philippines." The Buffalo Soldiers fought through both world wars and a number of other conflicts. Throughout all of this, as Bush acknowledged, because of racism "they often received the worst food and equipment and labored without the respect and recognition that were their due."

Here are three things to know about these regiments:

As the National Museum of African American History and Culture records, an 1866 Act of Congress created six peacetime regiments of exclusively black soldiers. Later, these regiments were melded into four-two infantry and two cavalry-colloquially referred to as the Buffalo Soldiers. (There are a few competing theories as to how they got this name, but as the museum notes, the soldiers "considered the name high praise.") Throughout their history, the soldiers had a rocky relationship with the American government they served.

The regiments faced extreme and sometimes deadly racism. They were first commanded by whites, and the rank and file "often faced extreme racial prejudice from the Army establishment," writes the museum. "Many officers, including George Armstrong Custer, refused to command black regiments, even though it cost them promotions in rank."
Their involvement in westward expansion was complicated
"He said they wouldn't fight, that they were afraid and that they'd run," said John Smith, a descendant of Buffalo Soldier Sgt. Charles Smith, in 1996.

To the contrary, the Buffalo Soldiers became known for their courage and fortitude. Among the white U.S. officers commanding them were three black West Point graduates: Henry O. Flipper, John Hanks Alexander and Charles Young. The regiments served from 1866 until the army was desegregated in 1951.

The Buffalo Soldiers found themselves working on the western frontier. Why? Writes the museum, "African Americans could only serve west of the Mississippi River, because many whites didn't want to see armed black soldiers in or near their communities."
They had rich lives outside of service, that were tainted by racism
They built roads, acted as park rangers and fought in battles to defend American westward expansion, the NMAAHC writes: "Black soldiers used military service as a strategy to obtain equal rights as citizens. Paradoxically, they sought to achieve this by engaging in government-led wars meant to overtake the Southwest and Great Plains from Native Americans."

It was the Native Americans they fought who gave the Buffalo Soldiers their nickname-although several different stories exist about what "Buffalo Soldier" refers to.

Henry O. Flipper, for instance, was the first black man to attend West Point, becoming an officer of the Buffalo Soldiers after graduating in 1877. He had been born into slavery in 1856.

However, he was court-martialed out of the army due to charges that a military review later concluded were "dubious," David Stout wrote for T he New York Times, and had been laid because Flipper was black. President Bill Clinton posthumously pardoned Flipper in 1999.

The collections held by the NMAAHC contain tantalizing hints about the civilian lives of the Buffalo Soldiers. Take Samuel Bridgwater of the 24th Infantry Regiment, who joined in the 1880s, fought in the Philippines and served as a cook after being wounded. He made a home back in America with his wife Mamie Anderson in Helena, Montana.

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Three Things to Know About the Buffalo Soldiers

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smithsonian.com The Buffalo Soldiers' relationship with the American government changed over time Today is Buffalo Soldiers Day- proclaimed by President George Bush in 1992 to celebrate the all-black Army regiments' "outstanding legacy of service." The Buffalo Soldiers, as Bush acknowledged, are a historically important group best remembered for fighting on American's western frontier.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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As subjects of both historical study and popular legend, the African American servicemen known as “Buffalo Soldiers” continue to provoke conversations.

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Sharecropping is a term for when one person farms another person's land, and then the two share what is produced. Sharecroppers are almost always poor, and are often in debt to landowners or other people. Sharecropping was very common in the Southern United States after the Civil War and the end of slavery. At that time, many African-Americans sharecropped on the land that they had once farmed as slaves. Sharecropping was part of the system of " Jim Crow", which kept blacks poor and not really citizens.

Sharecropping became more common in the Southern United States when slavery was abolished. During the 20th century it became rare there.

Images for kids

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Sharecropping is a term for when one person farms another person's land, and then the two share what is produced. Sharecroppers are almost always poor, and are often in debt to landowners or other people. Sharecropping was very common in the Southern United States after the Civil War and the end of slavery.

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Video: Sharecropping | Aftermath | TN Civil War 150 | Watch Tennessee Civil War 150 Online | PBS Video

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Nevertheless, the sharecropping system did allow freedmen a degree of freedom and autonomy far greater than they experienced under slavery. As a symbol of their newly won independence, freedmen had teams of mules drag their former slave cabins away from the slave quarters into their own fields.

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After the Civil War, former slaves sought jobs, and planters sought laborers. The absence of cash or an independent credit system led to the creation of sharecropping.

Sharecropping is a system where the landlord/planter allows a tenant to use the land in exchange for a share of the crop. This encouraged tenants to work to produce the biggest harvest that they could, and ensured they would remain tied to the land and unlikely to leave for other opportunities. In the South, after the Civil War, many black families rented land from white owners and raised cash crops such as cotton, tobacco, and rice. In many cases, the landlords or nearby merchants would lease equipment to the renters, and offer seed, fertilizer, food, and other items on credit until the harvest season. At that time, the tenant and landlord or merchant would settle up, figuring out who owed whom and how much

High interest rates, unpredictable harvests, and unscrupulous landlords and merchants often kept tenant farm families severely indebted, requiring the debt to be carried over until the next year or the next. Laws favoring landowners made it difficult or even illegal for sharecroppers to sell their crops to others besides their landlord, or prevented sharecroppers from moving if they were indebted to their landlord.

Approximately two-thirds of all sharecroppers were white, and one third were black. Though both groups were at the bottom of the social ladder, sharecroppers began to organize for better working rights, and the integrated Southern Tenant Farmers Union began to gain power in the 1930s. The Great Depression, mechanization, and other factors lead sharecropping to fade away in the 1940s.

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Sharecropping | Themes | Slavery by Another Name | PBS

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After the Civil War, former slaves sought jobs, and planters sought laborers. The absence of cash or an independent credit system led to the creation of sharecropping. Sharecropping is a system where the landlord/planter allows a tenant to use the land in exchange for a share of the crop.

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If you're seeing this message, it means we're having trouble loading external resources on our website.

If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked.

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The First KKK (article) | Reconstruction | Khan Academy

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Learn for free about math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, finance, history, and more. Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

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This report on the history of the Ku Klux Klan, America's first terrorist organization, was prepared by the Klanwatch Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Klanwatch was formed in 1981 to help curb Klan and racist violence through litigation, education and monitoring.
Click here for PDF.

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This report on the history of the Ku Klux Klan, America's first terrorist organization, was prepared by the Klanwatch Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Klanwatch was formed in 1981 to help curb Klan and racist violence through litigation, education and monitoring.

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The Ku Klux Klan was and is undeniably a terrorist organization-but what made the Klan an especially insidious terrorist organization, and a threat to civil liberties, was that it functioned as the unofficial paramilitary arm of Southern segregationist governments. This allowed its members to kill with impunity and allowed Southern segregationists to eliminate activists by force without alerting federal authorities. Although the Klan is much less active today, it will be remembered as an instrument of cowardly Southern politicians who hid their faces behind hoods, and their ideology behind an unconvincing facade of patriotism.

The Ku Klux Klan is founded.

The Ku Klux Klan publishes its "Organization and Principles." Although early supporters of the Klan claimed that it was philosophically a Christian, patriotic organization rather than a white supremacist group, a cursory glance at the Klan's catechism reveals otherwise:

Are you opposed to Negro equality both social and political?

Are you in favor of a white man's government in this country?

Are you in favor of constitutional liberty, and a government of equitable laws instead of a government of violence and oppression?

Are you in favor of maintaining the constitutional rights of the South?

Are you in favor of the reenfranchisement and emancipation of the white men of the South, and the restitution of the Southern people to all their rights, alike proprietary, civil, and political?

Do you believe in the inalienable right of self-preservation of the people against the exercise of arbitrary and unlicensed power?

The "inalienable right to self-preservation" is a clear reference to the Klan's violent activities-and its emphasis, even at this early stage, is clearly white supremacy.

Thomas Dixon Jr. adapts his second Ku Klux Klan novel, "The Clansman," into a play. Although fictional, the novel introduces the burning cross as a symbol for the Ku Klux Klan:

"In olden times when the Chieftain of our people summoned the clan on an errand of life and death, the Fiery Cross, extinguished in sacrificial blood, was sent by swift courier from village to village. This call was never made in vain, nor will it be to-night in the new world."

Although Dixon implies that the Klan had always used the burning cross, it was, in fact, his invention. Dixon's fawning adoration for the Klan, presented less than a half-century after the American Civil War, begins to revive the long-dormant organization.

D.W. Griffith's wildly popular film "Birth of a Nation," an adaptation of Dixon's "The Clansman," revives national interest in the Klan. A Georgia lynch mob led by William J. Simmons-and including numerous prominent (but anonymous) members of the community, such as former Georgia Gov. Joe Brown-murders Jewish factory superintendent Leo Frank, then burns a cross on a hilltop and dubs itself the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

The Klan becomes a more public organization and expands its platform to include Prohibition, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, anti-Communism, and anti-Catholicism. Spurred on by the romanticized white supremacist history portrayed in "Birth of a Nation," bitter White people throughout the country begin to form local Klan groups.

Indiana Klan Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson is convicted of murder. Members subsequently begin to realize that they may actually face criminal charges for their behavior, and the Klan largely disappears-except in the South, where local groups continue to operate.

Members of the Ku Klux Klan bomb the predominantly Black 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four little girls.

Edgar Ray Killen, the architect of the 1964 Chaney-Goodman-Schwerner murders, is convicted on manslaughter charges and sentenced to 60 years in prison.

Sources and Further Information

Chalmers, David Mark. "Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan." 3rd ed. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1987.

Lay, Shawn, ed. "The Invisible Empire in the West: Toward a New Historical Appraisal of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s." Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.

MacLean, Nancy. "Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan." New York NY: Oxford University Press, 1994.

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A History of Terrorist White Supremacist Group, the Ku Klux Klan

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A timeline history of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a white supremacist terrorist group that worked in collusion with Southern segregationist governments.

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Table of Contents

Founding of the Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan Violence in the South

The Ku Klux Klan and the End of Reconstruction

Revival of the Ku Klux Klan

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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Black Codes: Restricting Freedom of ex-slaves ***

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Discover facts about the Black Codes for kids. Reconstruction Era and the Black Codes. Information about the Black Codes for kids, children, homework and schools.

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When slavery was abolished at the end of the Civil War, southern states created black codes, laws which aimed to keep white supremacy in place.

Black codes attempted to economically disable freed slaves, forcing African Americans to continue to work on plantations and to remain subject to racial hierarchy within the southern society.

Black codes gave rise to a new wave of radical Republicanism in Congress, and the eventual move towards enshrining racial equality into the Constitution. However, black codes also set precedent for Jim Crow laws.

Black codes

As the Civil War came to a close, southern states began to pass a series of discriminatory state laws collectively known as black codes. While the laws varied in both content and severity from state to state-some laws actually granted freed people the right to marry or testify in court- these codes were designed to maintain the social and economic structure of racial slavery in the absence of the "peculiar institution." The laws codified white supremacy by restricting the civic participation of freed people; the codes deprived them of the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, the right to own or carry weapons, and, in some cases, even the right to rent or lease land.

Slavery had been a pillar of economic stability in the region before the war; now, black codes ensured the same stability by recreating the antebellum economic structure under the façade of a free-labor system. Adhering to new "apprenticeship" laws determined within the black codes, judges bound many young African American orphans to white plantation owners who would then force them to work. Adult freedmen were forced to sign contracts with their employers-who were oftentimes their previous owners. These contracts prevented African Americans from working for more than one employer, and therefore, from positively influencing the very low wages or poor working conditions they received.

Any former slaves that attempted to violate or evade these contracts were fined, beaten, or arrested for vagrancy. Upon arrest, many "free" African Americans were made to work for no wages, essentially being reduced to the very definition of a slave. Although slavery had been outlawed by the Thirteenth Amendment, it effectively continued in many southern states.

The rise of radical Republicanism

These draconian state laws helped spur the congressional Joint Committee on Reconstruction into action. Its members felt that ending slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment did not go far enough. Northern outrage over the black codes helped to undermine support for Johnson's policies, and by late 1866 control over Reconstruction had shifted to the radical wing of the Republican Party in Congress.

At that point, Congress extended the life of the Freedmen's Bureau to combat the growing prevalence of black codes and in April 1866 passed the first Civil Rights Act, which established the citizenship of African Americans. This contradicted the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision, which declared that black people could never be citizens. President Johnson, who continued to insist that restoration of the United States had already been accomplished, vetoed the 1866 Civil Rights Act. However, Congress overrode his veto. Congress would soon thereafter pass the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which aimed to protect African Americans from substandard treatment and enshrine their equal citizenship in the Constitution.

Despite the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and Civil War Amendments and the fact black codes were formally outlawed, their sentiment endured and morphed into a new ruling racial order. Support for Reconstruction policies waned after the early 1870s, undermined by the violence of white supremacist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan. When Reconstruction ended in 1877, freed people had seen little improvement in their economic and social status. This set the foundation for the racially discriminatory Jim Crow segregation policies that impoverished generations of African Americans.

What do you think?

How did black codes maintain a social order similar to slavery?

Did the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Civil War Amendments adequately address racial inequality after the Civil War? Why or why not?

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Black Codes (article) | Reconstruction | Khan Academy

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When slavery was abolished at the end of the Civil War, southern states created black codes, laws which aimed to keep white supremacy in place. Black codes attempted to economically disable freed slaves, forcing African Americans to continue to work on plantations and to remain subject to racial hierarchy within the southern society.

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Black Codes and Pig Laws | Slavery By Another Name Bento | PBS

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Black Codes and Pig Laws | Slavery By Another Name Bento | PBS

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Throughout the 1800s, black codes and pig laws were some of the efforts enacted to oppress and disenfranchise blacks in the South.

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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.