HIST 2620 1st Edition Lecture 1 Outline of Last Lecture I Reconstruction Learning Objectives II Reconstruction 1865 1877 III What was the most important political question facing the nation in 1865 IV Thirteenth Amendment V Lincolns 10 percent plan VI Wade Davis Bill VII Andrew Johnson 17th president VIII Presidential reconstruction 1865 1867 IX Freedman s Bureau X Education XI Economics XII Southerners Reacted XIII Congressional Election of 1866 XIV Reconstruction Acts of 1867 XV Congressional reconstruction 1867 1870 XVI Senator Charles Sumner XVII Impeachment XVIII The fourteenth Amendment XIX Foreign Policy XX General Sheridan and Mexico XXI Southern republican governments 1867 1870 Outline of Current Lecture I Fifteenth amendment II The uses of violence III Weakening support in north IV Panic of 1873 V 1876 Election VI Impact of Reconstruction Current Lecture 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 I Fifteenth amendment Along with the right to vote it tried to prevent lawyers from putting undue burden on these freed slaves As time goes by judges and lawyers cut this apart This is what ends up happening when this amendment becomes law Gender is missing in this amendment In 1870 only anywhere Utah and Wyoming allowed women to vote at this time At the time the nation is found suffrage was limited It becomes increasingly broad with the decrease in property limitations The 15th amendment didn t say they could vote but there was at this time a wave of universal suffrage sweeping from the west to the east coast Up until this point the omen s suffrage movement and the abolition movement worked together to get this common goal of civil rights After 15th amendment they diverge from joint lobbying due to women feeling this exclusion from voting rights as a slight Increased opportunity for freed black and those that had been free BEFORE the civil war They were able to be elected into Senate and state level positions Southern racists try to say that these freed black were uneducated but this is a wrong assumption II The uses of violence Racial violence was widespread before republican rule The Klu Klux Klan unleashed a wave of terror throughout the south and often had political objectives The federal government fought to combat violence by passing the 15th amendment and the enforcement act of 1870 and the Klu Klux Klan act of 1871 They are trying to attack those groups from intimidating and stopping peaceful elections They are NOT successful As a result the Democratic Party in 1870s begins to assert control in the south They were threatening carpetbaggers and freed black In states at this time the legislature would choose the senators The counties are 90 black at this period how do you keep them from voting for black representatives The KKK groups would just shut them down with violence and threatening activities At this time it s a terrorist organization that is trying to assert southern democratic power and what was good about the south before the war The violence between 1874 1876 was directly and openly connected to the Democratic Party It aimed to get their view back instated III Weakening support in north The country moves on and interest in the North about slavery and civil rights has waned 1872 they don t continue the Freedman s bureau Even though it didn t work perfectly it was helping to get former slaves back into society They pass an amnesty bill for Confederate officers this limits that to only 500 of the worst cases Liberal republicans advocated civil service reform to reduce abuses of patronage They also supported tariff reduction and an end to federal land grants to railroads The democrats forged an alliance with the liberal republicans nominating Horace Greeley for president in 1872 A political party is formed to handle this government corruption It even leads to assassination of a president These big issues of corruption are overshadowing the civil rights issue which goes on the back burner There is a shift of electoral votes back to democrats IV Panic of 1873 Collapse of the financial system worldwide that includes banks and businesses failing Set off by the end of the Franco Prussian war and the completion of the Suez Canal This sets the groundwork o The Suez Canal is tied to the shifting to a more quick and connected world On one hand this is great for shipping but it causes economic dislocation due to old trading becoming obsolete etc With the economic challenges at hand they raise the tariffs on imported goods They think this will increase internal trading but this is a world of empires This makes trading very difficult New countries like Germany and Italy need to get colonies to have products to trade with due to lockdown on trading This is the second rise of great imperialism which you can seethe carving up of the world that leads to WWI This is a moving on from Reconstruction with the Democrats back in power The last civil rights act they could pass was the Civil Rights Act of 1875 until Eisenhower based the Civil Rights Act of 1957 Democratic party reasserts control in southern states and they remain in control for 100 years From the perspective of these people they have achieved redemption V 1876 Election Both parties platforms are based on reform and economic issues that the country faces Election occurs and there is NO winner Need 185 to win Rutherford 185 Tilden 184 They had to have a president So congress forms a commission of 8 republicans and 7 democrats to allocate those missing votes There was deal swapping o Democrats want republicans out of the south They are still controlled by military districts asserted during the reconstruction The Democrats agree to allocate the votes to Rutherford if they pull out of the south th The 14 and 15th amendments are among the few bright spots in reconstructions otherwise dismal legacy The next 100 years is trying to solve those issues There were some modest gains Slave life was increasingly better We think that reconstruction ends and we go straight to a segregated south NOT the way it works It s like a giant funnel Lot of opportunity and potential at the beginning but as the Supreme Court cases chip away at the laws This slowly decreases the rights and opportunities of these freed slaves The rise of the Jim Crow Laws is at the end of this funnel See through this period the power given to the Supreme