Reconstruction

24 September 2004 (Lecture #13)

• Reconstruction – effort to knit the country back together
• Slavery – very bad; no leave, church overseen, brutal punishment, no reading or writing, etc.

• President Johnson – broad amnesty (leaves many Confederate leaders in power)

o Tries to gain support of whites

o White supremacy – prevent blacks from having a good standard of living, buying lands or weapons, having large meetings, or becoming educated

§ Debt Peonage – sharecropping and tenet farming emerges

· Sharecropping – pay in crops; never get enough money to improve their lives or more

· Tenet Farming – high rent charged which gets blacks in debt and prevents them from leaving

§ Vagrancy laws

§ Black codes

• Congressional Reconstruction – harsher readmission policies; 14^th Amendment; Civil Rights Act of 1866

o Somewhat fails due to redemption

§ Republican party very corrupt at the core

§ Depression of 1873

§ Contested 1876 election led republicans to seek whites approval

o White Southern Democrats think reconstruction is meant to put northern carpetbaggers into office

• Conclusions

o Reconstruction is successful for the economy