Although Congress eventually overrode the vetoes and the bills became law, by June 1866 Republicans decided bolder action was necessary. On June 13, 1866, moderate and Radical Republicans passed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment represented a radical redefining of the role of the federal government as the guarantor of individual civil rights.
Directions. Summarize the Congressional plan for Reconstruction on this chart, and then use your VoiceThread account to compare their plan to your own.
Johnson greeted the unprecedented amendment with an unprecedented response: he went on the campaign trail to urge its defeat. He embarked on a “swing around the circle” tour in which he tried to gain support for his mild Reconstruction policies and for his preferred candidates in the upcoming midterm Congressional election. The tour was a complete failure as he exchanged hot-tempered insults with the critics in the crowd.
To counter Johnson’s rhetoric, Congressional Republicans took to “waving the bloody shirt”—appealing to voters by reminding them of the sacrifices the Union made during the Civil War. When the Congressional election was complete, the Republicans won more than the two-thirds majority in the House and the Senate that they needed to override any presidential vetoes.
Emboldened by their legislative and electoral success, Congressional Republicans moved to take complete control of Reconstruction policy. In March 1867 Congress passed the first of four Reconstruction Acts. These acts outlined a process for admitting Southern states back into the Union. The South was to be divided into five districts, each controlled by federal troops. Election boards in each state would register male voters—both black and white—who were loyal to the Union. Southerners who had actively supported the Confederacy would not be allowed to vote. The voters would elect conventions to write new state constitutions. The constitutions had to grant African Americans the right to vote. The voters would then elect state legislatures, which were required to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment.
In addition, Congress enacted two laws designed to keep Johnson from interfering with its Reconstruction plan. The Command of the Army Act limited the president’s power as commander in chief of the army. The Tenure of Office Act barred the president from firing certain federal officials without the “advice and consent” of the Senate.
The Impeachment of Johnson
President Johnson blasted laws such as the Tenure of Office Act as unconstitutional restrictions on his power. To prove his point, he fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a Radical Republican appointed to office by President Lincoln. Two days later, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Johnson. The House further charged that “Andrew Johnson had brought the high office of the President of the United States into contempt, ridicule, and disgrace, to the great scandal of all good citizens.” Johnson then faced trial in the Senate. If two thirds of the senators found him guilty of any charge, he would be removed from office. During his Senate trial, the president’s lawyers argued that Johnson’s only “crime” had been to oppose Congress. Were he to be removed for that reason, “no future President will be safe who happens to differ with a majority of the House and …Senate.” They also quietly spread the word that if acquitted, Johnson would no longer oppose Congressional Reconstruction. When the votes were cast, Johnson escaped removal by a vote of 36 to 25, just one vote short of the two-thirds majority required.
Directions. Read more about President Johnson's Impeachment Trial, and then create a Blabberize image to answer the following question:
Summarize the arguments to both acquit and convict President Johnson, and then explain how you would have voted in 1868. The Reconstructed South
White Southerners were shocked by the return of federal troops to the South under the Reconstruction Acts. Having complied with Johnson’s plan, they believed that Reconstruction was over. Black Southerners, however, were elated. For months, freedmen had been organizing to fight discrimination. “We simply ask,” one group declared in a petition to Congress, “that the same laws that govern white men shall govern black men.” As election boards began registering voters across the South in 1867, it seemed their pleas had been heard. With former Confederates barred from registering, the right to vote was limited to three groups. The largest was freedmen, who had never voted before. Most of them joined the Republican Party, which they saw as the party of Lincoln and emancipation.
The next largest group consisted of white Southerners who had opposed secession. Many were poor farmers who also had never voted before. Because they viewed the Democratic Party as the party of secession, they, too, registered as Republicans. Southern Democrats, who viewed these new Republicans as traitors to the South, scorned them as “scalawags,” or worthless scoundrels. The last group of voters was made up of Northerners, most of them former soldiers, who were attracted to the South after the war. Southerners called them “carpetbaggers,” a term for a piece of luggage travelers often carried. They despised carpetbaggers as fortune hunters who invaded the South to profit from their misfortunes.
Directions. Use ToonDoo to create a cartoon that defines the terms "scalawag" and "carpetbagger," and then explain why Southerners resented both groups.
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The newly registered voters cast their first ballots in the 1868 presidential election. The Republican candidate for president was the Union war hero Ulysses S. Grant. He supported Congressional Reconstruction and promised to protect the rights of freedmen in the South. His democratic opponent, Horatio Seymour, promised to end Reconstruction and return the South to its traditional leaders—white Democrats. Nationwide, Seymour won a majority of white votes. Grant, however, won the popular vote with the help of half a million black voters. For Republicans, the lesson of the election was clear: Their party needed the black vote in order to remain in power. As a result, Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment protecting the voting rights of former slaves.
Across the South, voters chose delegates—about one fourth of them African Americans—to state constitutional conventions. These delegates wrote constitutions that not only banned racial discrimination, but also guaranteed blacks the right to vote and to hold public office. Elections were then held to form governments. To the dismay of white Democrats, a majority of those elected were Republicans and about a fifth of them freedmen. The new governments quickly ratified the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments, the last step of the Reconstruction process. By 1870, every Southern state had been readmitted to the Union.
The most enduring accomplishment of these Reconstruction governments was the creation of the South’s first public, tax-supported school systems. At first, whites stayed away rather than mix with blacks. To attract white students, most states segregated their schools by race, even where doing so was prohibited by law. Segregation—the forced separation of races in public places—was not the rule in other areas of life. In fact, several of the Reconstruction governments outlawed segregation in transportation, places of entertainment, and other businesses. But these laws were hard to enforce.
Directions. Use Quizlet to add flashcards for the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to your Unit 3 Study Deck.
Reconstruction Ends
At the time of Ulysses S. Grant’s election to the presidency, white supremacists were conducting a reign of terror throughout the South. In outright defiance of the Republican-led federal government, Southern Democrats formed organizations that violently intimidated blacks and Republicans who tried to win political power. The most prominent of these was the Ku Klux Klan. The organization singled out local Republican leaders, including white officeholders and teachers. Most victims, however, were freedmen, including political organizers as well as former slaves who had acquired land or engaged in contract disputes with employers. Institutions like black churches and schools also frequently became targets. The Klan's aim was to restore white supremacy in all areas of Southern life -- in government, race relations, and on the plantations.
Congress, outraged by the brutality of the vigilantes and the lack of local efforts to protect blacks and persecute their tormentors, struck back with three Enforcement Acts (1870-1871) designed to stop the terrorism and protect black voters. The Acts allowed the federal government to intervene when state authorities failed to protect citizens from the vigilantes.
Despite the Grant administration's effective response to Klan terrorism, the North's commitment to Reconstruction waned during the 1870s. Many Radical leaders passed from the scene, their place taken by politicians less committed to the ideal of equal rights for black citizens. Many Northerners felt the South should be able to solve its own problems without constant interference from the North. And when an economic depression began in 1873, economic issues moved to the forefront of politics instead of sectional ones.
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