Reconstruction begins
After the war, the nation faced how to rejoin the South and what freedom would mean for four million formerly enslaved people.
Lincoln's plan and his death
Lincoln favoured a lenient Ten Percent Plan: a Southern state could rejoin when 10% of its 1860 voters swore loyalty and the state accepted emancipation. After his assassination in April 1865, Andrew Johnson, a Southern Democrat from Tennessee, became president.
Presidential Reconstruction
Johnson pardoned many former Confederates and allowed Southern states to form new governments with few conditions. These governments passed Black Codes, laws restricting the freedom of formerly enslaved people, such as limiting where they could work and live. Many Northerners concluded that Johnson's policies undermined the war's results.
The Freedmen's Bureau
Congress created the Freedmen's Bureau in 1865 to help formerly enslaved people and poor white Southerners with food, medical care, legal help, and education. It helped found schools and colleges, including several historically Black colleges and universities such as Howard University (1867).
Radical Reconstruction
Radical Republicans in Congress, such as Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, pushed for stronger protections. The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the South into military districts and required new state constitutions guaranteeing Black men's voting rights. Johnson's resistance led to his impeachment in 1868; the Senate acquitted him by one vote.
The Reconstruction Amendments
The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) abolished slavery. The Fourteenth (1868) granted citizenship to everyone born in the US and guaranteed equal protection of the laws and due process. The Fifteenth (1870) barred denying the vote on account of race. Together they reshaped the Constitution.
Black political participation
During Reconstruction, Black men voted in large numbers and held office. Hiram Revels of Mississippi became the first Black US senator in 1870, and hundreds of Black men served in state legislatures. Black communities built churches, schools, and mutual aid societies and sought land and family reunification.
Economic realities
Most formerly enslaved people received no land, despite hopes of 'forty acres and a mule'. Many became sharecroppers, farming land owned by others in exchange for a share of the crop, often trapped in debt by high costs and low cotton prices.
Worked example
A formerly enslaved family in Georgia in 1866 might reunite with relatives sold away years earlier, send children to a Freedmen's Bureau school, and join a new Black church. But without land, they might sign a sharecropping contract, borrow against the next crop from a landowner's store, and end the year in debt, showing both the promise and limits of freedom.
Key takeaways
Lincoln's lenient Ten Percent Plan died with him. Johnson's Presidential Reconstruction allowed Black Codes. The Freedmen's Bureau provided relief and education. Radical Republicans imposed military reconstruction and impeached Johnson. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments abolished slavery, defined citizenship and equal protection, and protected voting rights. Black Americans voted and held office, but most lacked land and became sharecroppers.
Flashcard
Lincoln's lenient reconstruction plan
Check your understanding
Which amendment guarantees citizenship to all people born in the United States and equal protection of the laws?