HIST 151 Lecture 3 Chapter 16 Reconstruction cont Outline of Last Lecture I Black Codes II Freedmen s Bureau III Constitutional Amendments 13 14 and 15 IV Radical Republicans and Waving the bloody shirt Outline of Current Lecture I Ku Klux Klan II Tenure of Office Act Impeachment III Spoils System IV Carpetbaggers and Scalawags V Election of 1876 and Compromise of 1877 Current Lecture Ku Klux Clan The clan was started in 1866 by a decent southern general with a good army Nathan Bedford Forest It starts out as a social brotherhood between old confederate soldiers They meet up and hang out essentially Eventually they end up writing a manual and becoming an official organization which is the militant arm of the southern Democrats at this point They are the first American terrorist organization They conducted lynchings and were very successful in silencing the black people there They wanted to gain the support of white supporters racists and intimidate other whites by putting burned crosses in their yards The government hears of this and deploys troops right back down to the south to defend the rights of free men Tenure of Office Act Impeachment The Tenure of Office Act states that a president can t remove anybody from their cabinet without congressional approval This act was valid from 1867 to 1887 Andrew Johnson didn t have much power at all over what happened to the southern states as they were being re integrated into the Union Being a southern sympathizer he 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 was unhappy with how the Republicans were handling things His secretary of war was a radical Republican and seeing as Johnson s role as commander in chief was his only real power he obviously wanted his secretary out Johnson initially signed the law without fully understanding that it was unconstitutional Congress made it to break so they could get him out of the White House When he fired his secretary the House of Representatives charged him with acts of impeachment and the Senate held the trial as jurors o There was one vote that was against impeachment by a Republican because he knew nobody was in line to follow Johnson if he was removed from office So he did not get removed Spoils System In 1868 General Ulysses S Grant became president but only because he wasn t necessarily a part of any party and nobody was going to vote for a Democrat He automatically gets elected because he s a 4 star general and a war hero in the north Grant was a high functioning alcoholic and all his friends were low functioning alcoholics 15 minutes after his inauguration in 1969 there was an assassination attempt because of his use of the spoils system The spoils system says that the winner gets to choose who they want in office and Grant picked all his drunk friends This made for one of the most corrupt and irresponsible administrations in American history IT GETS WORSE BEFORE IT GETS BETTER Carpetbaggers and Scalawags Carpetbaggers are northerners that went south with carpet bag luggage to plunder the south after the war Some went to help but these are overshadowed by the bad Scalawags are southerners who supported the north These people were hated even more by the south Election of 1876 and Compromise of 1877 In 1877 Congress ends Reconstruction In the Election of 1876 Grant decides he doesn t want another term in office The Republicans pick Rutherford B Hays and the Democrats pick Samual Tilden Tilden wins the election but Congress had to approve the election results They didn t Congress made a compromise with the south and offered to take all northern troops out of the area if they were allowed to put Hays in office The south agreed to this