HIST 1312 1st Edition Lecture 9 Outline of Last Lecture I Topic 1 a Food b Drink II Topic 2 a Tobacco b Drugs Outline of Current Lecture III The Meaning of Freedom a Families in Freedom b Church and School c Political Freedom d Land Labor and Freedom e Masters without Slavery f The Free Labor Vision g The Freedman s Bureau h The Failure of the Land Reform i The White Farmer IV The Making of Radical Reconstruction These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute a Andrew Johnson b The Failure of Presidential Reconstruction c The Black Codes d The Radical Republicans e The Origins of Civil Rights f The Fourteenth Amendment g The Reconstruction Act h Impeachment and the Election of Grant i The Fifteenth Amendment j The Great Constitutional Revolution k The Rights of Women V Radical Reconstruction in the South a The Tocsin of Freedom b The Black Officeholder c Carpetbaggers and Scalawags Current Lecture The Meaning of Freedom During Reconstruction freedom became a terrain of conflict its substance open to different often contradictory interpretations African Americans understanding of freedom was shaped by their experiences as slaves and their observation of the free society around them To begin with freedom meant escaping the numerous injustices of slavery punishment by the lash the separation of families denial of access to education the sexual exploitation of black women by their owners and sharing in the rights and opportunities of American citizens Families in Freedom o With slavery dead institutions that had existed before the war like the black family free blacks churches and schools and the secret slave church were strengthened expanded and freed from white supervision o The family was central to the post emancipation black community o While freedom helped to stabilize family life it also subtly altered relationships within the family Church and School o At the same time blacks abandoned white controlled religious institutions to create churches of their own o Black ministers came to play a major role in politics o Another striking example of the freedpeople s quest for individual and community improvement was their desire for education o Blacks of all ages flocked to the schools established by northern missionary societies the Freedmen s Bureau and groups of ex slaves themselves o Reconstruction also witnessed the creation of the nation s first black colleges Fisk University in Tennessee Hampton Institute in Virginia Howard University in the nation s capital Political Freedom o The right to vote inevitably became central to the former slaves desire for empowerment and equality o Anything less than full citizenship black spokesmen insisted would betray the nation s democratic promise and the war s meaning Land Labor and Freedom o Like those of rural people throughout the world former slaves ideas of freedom were directly related to landownership o On the land they would develop independent communities free of white control o Many former slaves insisted that through their unpaid labor they had acquired a right to the land o In its individual elements and much of its language former slaves definition of freedom resembled that of white Americans self ownership family stability religious liberty political participation and economic autonomy o For whites freedom no matter how defined was a given a birthright to be defended o For African Americans it was an open ended process a transformation of every aspect of their lives and of the society and culture that had sustained slavery in the first place Masters without Slaves o Most white southerners reacted to military defeat and emancipation with dismay not only because of the widespread devastation but also because they must now submit to northern demands o The appalling loss of life a disaster without parallel in the American experience affected all classes of southerners o Nearly 260 000 men died for the Confederacy more than 1 5 of the South s adult male white population o The widespread destruction of work animals farm buildings and machinery ensured that economic revival would be slow and painful o Planter families faced profound changes in the war s aftermath Many not only lost their slaves but also their life savings which they invested in now worthless Confederacy bonds Some found themselves actually having to do physical labor for the first time The Freedom Labor Vision o Republican North tried to implement its own vision of freedom o Central to its definition was the antebellum principle of free labor now further strengthened as a definition of the good society by the Union s triumph o In the free labor vision of a reconstructed South emancipated blacks enjoying the same opportunities for advancement as northern workers would labor more productively than they had as slaves o With planters seeking to establish a labor system as close to slavery as possible and former slaves demanding economic autonomy and access to land a long period of conflict over the organization and control of labor followed on plantations throughout the South o It fell to the Freedmen s Bureau an agency established by Congress in March 1865 to attempt to establish a working free labor system The Freedmen s Bureau o Bureau agents were supposed to establish schools provide aid to the poor and aged settle disputes between whites and blacks and among the freedpeople and secure for former slaves and white Unionists equal treatment before the courts o It lasted from 1865 1870 o By 1869 nearly 3 000 schools serving more than 150 000 pupils in the South The Failure of Land Reform o One provision of the law establishing the bureau gave it the authority to divide abandoned and confiscated land into forty acre plots for rental and eventual sale to the former slaves o In the summer of 1865 however President Andrew Johnson ordered nearly all land in federal hands to be returned to its former owners o A series of confrontations evicted blacks who had settles on Sherman land o Because no land distribution took place the vast majority of rural freedpeople remained poor and without property during Reconstruction o They had no alternative but to work on white owned plantations often for their former owners o The failure of land reform produced a deep sense of betrayal that survived among the former slaves and their descendants long after the end of Reconstruction o