Congressional Reconstruction

• Black Codes

  Restricted right of AA to compete for work with white people

  Gave states the right to punish vagrants and unemployed former slaves

  Allowed those who attacked AA to go unpunished

  Andrew Johnson allowed the southern states to pass this law because he only cared about the Union
• Radical Republicans

  In Congress who had been active opponents of slavery

  Saw southern slaveowners as evil exploiters and wanted radical changes to help freed slaves

  Limited support in North
• Freedman's Bureau

  Set up by Congress in 1865 to care for former slaves

  Provided food, shelter, hospitals and education

  Set up universities

  They were subject to intimidation and violence
• First Reconstruction Act 1867

  11 Confederate southern states were divided into 5 military districts

  New state constitutions made by elected delegates chosen by all male citizens over the age of 21 of whatever race, colour, previous status
• Fourteenth Amendment 1868

  Passed in in 1866 but ratified 2 years later

  Declared that no state could deny any person full rights as an American citizen

  Entitlement to due process of law to ensure the equal protection of the law
• Fifteenth Amendment 1870

  Ensured that rights of citizens shall not be delivered or abridged by state on account of race
• Andrew Johnson

  Succeeded as president

  Southerner

  Opposed abolition of slavery

  Passionately for the Union

  Opposed measures to help former slaves

  Clashed with Congress over Reconstruction and unsuccessfully impeached
• Ulysses S Grant

  Worked more closely with Congress and used federal troops to support the legislation
• Challenges of AA

  Memphis -> 1866, 46 AA killed in race riots

  New Orleans -> 35 killed

  State officials often participated in attacking them
• AA political life in former Confederate states around 1877

  South Carolina = 412,000 blacks , 291,000 white

  Virginia = 548,000 blacks , 1 million whites
• Decline in promotion of AA civil rights after 1877

  Congress didn't defend the changes it had made

  Presidents didn't fully support civil rights

  Supreme Court and state governments worked in opposite directions
• The Compromise of 1877

  Ended period of congressional Reconstruction

  Troops were withdrawn and southern states would be able to ignore the Reconstruction legislation
• Jim Crow Laws

  Discriminatory laws
• Prevent AA from voting in the South

  Grandfather clauses

  Literacy tests - intended to exclude AA

  Mississippi = began process of setting voter registration 1890
• 13th Amendment

  Southerners swore an oath of loyalty to Union

  Black Codes were passed