Reconstruction Notes

Presidential Reconstruction (1865–1867)

1. After Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, President Andrew Johnson implemented a lenient plan that allowed Southern states to rejoin the Union quickly if they ratified the 13th Amendment (abolishing slavery) and swore loyalty to the U.S. government.
2. Johnson offered pardons to most Confederate leaders and landowners, allowing prewar elites to regain political power and reestablish white-dominated state governments.
3. Many Southern legislatures then passed Black Codes, restrictive laws that limited the freedom and rights of freed African Americans, effectively reimposing slavery in all but name.

Congressional (Radical) Reconstruction (1867–1877)

1. Outraged by Johnson’s leniency, Radical Republicans in Congress took control of Reconstruction. Their goal was to reshape Southern society and guarantee civil rights for freedpeople.
2. The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the South into five military districts under federal control until new state constitutions were written and approved by Congress.
3. Congress passed the 14th Amendment (granting citizenship and equal protection) and the 15th Amendment (granting Black men the right to vote), extending constitutional rights to African Americans.
4. Under federal supervision, African Americans began voting and holding public office, with over 600 elected to state legislatures and 16 to Congress during Reconstruction.

Methods of Southern Resistance

1. Many white Southerners resisted these changes through violence and intimidation. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan (founded in 1866) used terror to suppress Black political participation and restore white supremacy.
2. Economic coercion, through sharecropping contracts and debt peonage, kept freed people tied to plantations, maintaining dependency on white landowners.
3. Political resistance included the rise of Redeemer governments in the South, which gradually regained control and rolled back Reconstruction policies by the mid-1870s.

Economic and Social Outcomes

1. The postwar Southern economy remained largely agricultural, dependent on sharecropping and tenant farming, systems that trapped Black and poor white farmers in cycles of debt.
2. Despite federal programs like the Freedmen’s Bureau (1865), which provided food, education, and legal aid to freedpeople, economic progress was limited by lack of land reform and ongoing discrimination.
3. Socially, Reconstruction brought major achievements in Black education and institution-building—thousands of schools, churches, and community organizations were established across the South.

Political Successes and Failures

1. Reconstruction marked the first experiment in interracial democracy in U.S. history, but its success was short-lived. By the Compromise of 1877, federal troops were withdrawn from the South, effectively ending Reconstruction.
2. Southern states quickly introduced Jim Crow laws and voting restrictions (poll taxes, literacy tests), dismantling the political gains of African Americans and enforcing racial segregation for nearly a century.
3. The period left a lasting legacy of constitutional reform (13th–15th Amendments) but also exposed the deep racial, regional, and political divides that would persist well into the 20th century.