P5 APUSH Wiley Sources on Reconstruction, D___ Name

P5 | APUSH | Wiley | Sources on Reconstruction, D___ Name:

The Civil War (1861-’65) may have settled some significant national problems, but it also created many more. Slavery was abolished, the country was reunited, and the supremacy of the federal government was confirmed. However, the cost of the Union victory—lost lives, destroyed property, and sectional bitterness—was staggering and it created huge new problems and tasks. These challenges included determining the future status of the four million newly freed slaves, who did not have jobs, an education, places to live, or any guarantee of basic civil rights, and figuring out how to bring the former Confederacy back into the Union. Northerners and Southerners, who had just spent four years slaughtering each other by the thousands, bitterly resented one another and were now forced to share the country once again. Many Southern whites had their land or families destroyed during the Civil War, and had to rebuild their lives from scratch. Those who survived still held many of the same racist attitudes and resentments towards blacks, and did not want to include them in society.

After the death of President Lincoln (1865) and the failure of President Johnson, Congress took charge of the effort to “reconstruct” the divided nation. “Congressional Reconstruction” (1865-1877) was an effort to establish and protect the citizenship rights of freedmen while reintegrating the secessionist states.To achieve these goals, Congress, controlled by Republicans, divided the Confederacy into five military districts, each governed by a Union general. In order to rid themselves of these “military dictatorships,” Southern states were required to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, guaranteeing equal rights for all citizens, including former slaves, while excluding many ex-Confederates from serving in the U.S. government or military.By 1870, all of the former Confederate states had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and were readmitted to the Union. At first, freedmen were supported/protected by Union troops, the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the promises of the Fourteenth Amendment. But this did not last long. By 1877, attempts to reconstruct the South officially ended, leaving white-only governments in its wake, which rapidly eroded the citizenship rights of freedmen. African-American voting rates plummeted and former slaves fell into a “second class” citizenship characterized by sharecropping, state-enforced segregation, and terror.

What were the key questions, objectives, and challenges of Reconstruction?
Based on what you’ve read so far, was Reconstruction a success or a failure?

Source: Excerpt from PBS’s A History of US (2011) See video on teacher site or the YouTube clip at:

Take notes on key ideas from the video:

Source: Eric Foner’s Remarks on the Changing Views of Reconstruction (2009)See video on teacher site or the YouTube clip at:

Dr. Eric Foner is a history professor at Columbia University and president of the American Historical Association, the oldest society of historians and professors of history in the U.S. Dr. Foner is the leading contemporary historian of the Reconstruction period, having published and won awards for many of his books on the topic.

Take notes on key ideas from the video:

Source: Sharecropping Visual, PBS

What made the sharecropping system a “cycle of poverty”?

Source: Excerpt from Senate Report (1880)

Freed by the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, former slave Henry Adams testified before the U.S. Senate some fifteen years later about the early days of his freedom.

The white men read a paper to all of us colored people telling us that we were free and could go where we pleased and work for who we pleased. The man I belonged to told me it was best to stay with him. He said, “The bad white men was mad with the Negroes because they were free and they would kill you all for fun.” He said, stay where we are living and we could get protection from our old masters.

I told him I thought that every man, when he was free, could have his rights and protect themselves. He said, “The colored people could never protect themselves among the white people. So you had all better stay with the white people who raised you and make contracts with them to work by the year for one-fifth of all you make. And next year you can get one-third, and the next you maybe work for one-half you make. We have contracts for you all to sign, to work for one-twentieth you make from now until the crop is ended, and then next year you all can make another crop and get more of it.”

I told him I would not sign anything. I said, “I might sign to be killed. I believe the white people is trying to fool us.” But he said again, “Sign this contract so I can take it to the Yankees and have it recorded.” All our colored people signed it but myself and a boy named Samuel Jefferson. All who lived on the place was about sixty, young and old.

On the day after all had signed the contracts, we went to cutting oats. I asked the boss, “Could we get any of the oats?” He said, “No; the oats were made before you were free.” After that he told us to get timber to build a sugar-mill to make molasses. We did so. On the 13th day of July 1865 we started to pull fodder. I asked the boss would he make a bargain to give us half of all the fodder we would pull. He said we may pull two or three stacks and then we could have all the other. I told him we wanted half, so if we only pulled two or three stacks we would get half of that. He said, “All right.” We got that and part of the corn we made. We made five bales of cotton but we did not get a pound of that. We made two or three hundred gallons of molasses and only got what we could eat. We made about eight-hundred bushel of potatoes; we got a few to eat. We split rails three or four weeks and got not a cent for that.

What does Adams’ testimony convey about the difficulty in defining “freedom” for the new freedmen?
With no education, resources, or certainty about the future, what would you have done with newfound freedom, had you been in Adams’ shoes?

Source: Excerpt from Frederick Douglass’s Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881)

. . . History does not furnish an example of emancipation under conditions less friendly to the emancipated class than this American example. Liberty came to the freedmen of the United States not in mercy, but in wrath [anger], not by moral choice but by military necessity, not by the generous action of the people among whom they were to live, and whose good-will was essential to the success of the measure, but by strangers, foreigners, invaders, trespassers, aliens, and enemies. The very manner of their emancipation invited to the heads of the freedmen the bitterest hostility of race and class. They were hated because they had been slaves, hated because they were now free, and hated because of those who had freed them. Nothing was to have been expected other than what has happened, and he is a poor student of the human heart who does not see that the old master class would naturally employ every power and means in their reach to make the great measure of emancipation unsuccessful and utterly odious [hateful]. It was born in the tempest [storm, turmoil] and whirlwind of war, and has lived in a storm of violence and blood. When the Hebrews were emancipated, they were told to take spoil [goods or property] from the Egyptians. When the serfs of Russia were emancipated [in 1861], they were given three acres of ground upon which they could live and make a living. But not so when our slaves were emancipated.

What did Frederick Douglass identify as a problem with the way theUnited States government emancipated the slaves? Do you agree or disagree with him?

Source: Pennsylvania Congressman Benjamin Boyer’s Remarks (1866)

In January 1866, soon after the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery, radical Republicans in Congress began arguing that freedmen should be allowed to vote on equal terms with whites. A bill was introduced to give the vote to the freedmen of the District of Columbia. Most Democrats and many moderate Republicans opposed the bill, though most radical Republicans supported it (even though only five Northern states allowed African-American men to vote at this time). The following excerpts come from the speech of Pennsylvania Congressman Benjamin Boyer, a Democrat who opposed the bill to allow African Americans the right to vote in the District of Columbia.
It is common for the advocates of Negro suffrage to assume that the color of the Negro is the main obstacle to his admission to political equality. . . .But it is not the complexion of the Negro that degrades him[; . . . the Negro is] a race by nature inferior in mental caliber. . . . [T]he Negroes are not equals of white Americans, and are not entitled . . . to participate in the Government of this country. . . .

What justification is given by Congressman Boyer to defend his opposition to the bill?

Source: Harper’s Weekly Cartoon (1876)

First white man: “Of course he wants to vote for the democratic ticket!”Second white man: “You’re as free as air, ain’t you? Say you are, or I’ll blow your black head off!”
See question below.

Source: Abram Colby, Testimony to Congress (1872)

Colby was a former slave who was elected to the Georgia State legislature during Reconstruction.

Colby: On the 29th of October 1869, [the Klansmen] broke my door open, took me out of bed, took me to the woods and whipped me three hours or more and left me for dead. They said to me, "Do you think you will ever vote another damned Radical ticket?" I said, "If there was an election tomorrow, I would vote the Radical ticket." They set in and whipped me a thousand licks more, with sticks and straps that had buckles on the ends of them.

Question: What is the character of those men who were engaged in whipping you?

Colby: Some are first-class men in our town. One is a lawyer, one a doctor, and some are farmers. . . .They said I had voted for Grant and had carried the Negroes against them. About two days before they whipped me they offered me $5,000 to go with them and said they would pay me $2,500 in cash if I would let another man go to the legislature in my place. I told them that I would not do it if they would give me all the county was worth. . . .No man can make a free speech in my county. I do not believe it can be done anywhere in Georgia.

How does the cartoon and testimony above highlight how “freedom” and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) was undermined during Reconstruction? [15th Amendment: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged [reduced] by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous conditions of servitude. . . . ]

Source: Board of Education for Freedmen, Department of the Gulf (1865)

A month before the end of the war, Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau (1865-’72) to look after the former slave population, handling everything from issuing food and clothing to helping people find jobs, promoting education, adjudicating [resolving] legal disputes, and reuniting families. The bureau was never adequately funded or staffed, and many Southern whites viewed it with hostility.By 1869, the Bureau had lost most of its funding and was forced to cut much of its staff. By 1870, the Bureau had been considerably weakened due to the rise of Ku Klux Klan violence in the South. In 1872, Congress abruptly abandoned the program.

What follows is an account of the creation and sustaining of the first public schools for the children of freed slaves in and around New Orleans.

It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the difficulty of establishing these schools . . . . [T]he Board decided not to build school-houses at present, but to avail themselves of such accommodations as could be found. . . . Cabins, sheds, unused houses, were appropriated, roughly repaired, fitted with a cheap stove for the winter, a window or two for light and air, a teacher sent to the locality, the neighboring children gathered in, and the school started. . . .
[I]t frequently occurs, that in a desirable locality for a school, it is impossible to obtain boarding for the teachers. In such cases, a weather-proof shelter of some kind--very poor at best--is obtained, some simple furniture provided, and a teacher sent who is willing to undergo the privations--often hardships of boarding herself, in addition to the fatigues of her school.
Compelled to live on the coarsest diet of corn bread and bacon; often no tea, coffee, butter, eggs, or flour; separated by miles of bad roads from the nearest provision store; refused credit because she is a negro teacher, unable to pay cash because the Government is unavoidably in arrears [debts]; subjected to the jeers and hatred of her neighbors; cut off from society, with infrequent and irregular mails; swamped in mud--the school shed a drip, and her quarters little better; raided occasionally by rebels, her school broken up and herself insulted, banished, or run off . . . ; under all this, it is really surprising how some of these brave women manage to live, much more how they are able to render the service they do as teachers.
Despite all the efforts of our agents . . . and the devotion of the teachers, many of these schools would have to be abandoned but for the freedmen themselves. These, fully alive to all that is being done for them . . . mount guard against the enemy of the schools . . . .
In a parish [community], some distance from New Orleans, a building was procured, an energetic teacher sent, scholars gathered, and the work begun. The first week brought no report. It came subsequently, as follows: "Arrived. Found a place to live a mile and a half from the school-shed! Dreadful people, dirty and vulgar, but the best I can do. Went about gathering scholars, have forty. Did well enough till it rained, since then have walked three miles a day, ankle deep in thick black mud that pulls off my shoes. Nothing to eat but strong pork and sour bread. Insulted for being a `n----- teacher.' Can't buy anything on credit, and haven’t a cent of money. The school shed has no floor, and the rains sweep clean across it, through the places where the windows should be. I have to huddle the children first in one corner and then in another to keep them from drowning or swamping. The Provost Marshal [a title for the head of a military police force] won't help me. Says 'he don't believe in n----- teachers--didn’t 'list to help them.' The children come rain or shine, plunging through the mud—some of them as far as I do. Pretty pictures they are. What shall I do? If it will ever stop raining I can get along." Who ever has attempted to march through the adhesive mud of this delta, under a Louisiana rain-storm, will realize the accuracy of that report. It is one of a score.
In Thibodeaux the school-house has been broken open, on successive nights, for months past, the furniture defaced, the books destroyed and the house made untenable by nuisance. Bricks and missiles have been hurled through the windows, greatly risking limb and life, and making general commotion. . . .While the teachers in the city and towns are not subjected to the same sort of annoyance and outrage, they are still the objects of scorn and vituperation[attacks/condemnations], from many of their early friends, who refuse to recognize them on the street, and place them under the social ban for accepting the new order of things. . . .
A much larger percentage of absences is found in our schools during the winter than the summer months. This is owing to the very general want of warm and suitable clothing. At least one-fifth of the school children are suffering from this cause. . . . They come to school with singular diligence, week after week, bare-footed and bare-limbed, with garments ragged and thin, shivering over their lessons from cold and wet, but still persistent to learn. We have made our plea for bare feet and naked shoulders to Northern charitable societies. . . .
The pupils, as a class, are orderly, industrious, and easily governed. They are exceedingly grateful for any interest and kindness shown to them. It is the testimony of our teachers, who have taught in both white and colored schools, that these children do not suffer in comparison with the white in the activity of most of their faculties, and in the acquisition of knowledge. . . . Another habitude of these colored children is their care of books and school furniture. There is an absence of that Young America lawlessness so common on Caucasian play grounds. The walls and fences about the colored schools are not defaced, either by violence or vulgar scratching. They do not whittle or ply the jack-knife at the expense of desks and benches. It may also be said that the imagination of these juveniles is generally incorrupt and pure, and from the two most prevailing and disgusting vices of school children, profanity and obscenity, they are singularly free. . . .
Another . . . immediate and marked influence of these schools is seen upon the white people in the lessening prejudice, in the admission of the African's ability to learn, and his consequent fitness for places in the world, from which we have hitherto excluded him. . . .

What problems are identified by this school report?

To what extent do you think the federal/state government(s)should have made adequate schools available to former slaves?

Source: Black Codes, Opelousas, Louisiana (1865)and text of Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments

In the years following the Civil War, Southern states, cities, and localities passed laws to restrict the rights of free African-American men and women. These laws were often called “Black Codes.”