15th Amendment

 Background

• The 15^th Amendment was the last of the “Reconstruction Amendments” to be adopted. It was passed by Congress February 26, 1869, and ratified February 3, 1870 by 18^th President, Ulysses S. Grant. It was to prohibit any discrimination against voters since race, color, or previous condition of servitude. This new amendment sought to protect the rights of African Americans after the Civil War. This guaranteed African American men a right to vote.
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 Reads: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Pros of the Amendment:

• Black men began voting in local, state, and national elections, and ran for political office. 
• Senator Hiram Revels, born actually in Fayetteville, North Carolina became the first African American to serve in the US Senate (1870-71), representing Mississippi during Reconstruction. He was a member of the Republican Party. He supported legislation that would restore the power to vote and to hold office to disenfranchised members of the former Confederacy. During his term he advocated for desegregation in the schools and on the railroads. 
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• Representative Joseph Rainey was born enslaved but became the first African American to serve in the U.S House of Representative representing South Carolina, the first to preside over the House, and the longest- serving Black lawmaker in Congress during Reconstruction (1869-1879). During his legislation, Rainey worked to pass civil rights legislation, fund public schools, and guarantee equal protection under the law. He sought to use his position to advocate for the concerns of African American on the House Floor.

• Their votes and leadership helped create access to jobs, housing, and education for African Americans.

Cons for the Amendment: (W

hite and Black women) 

• Short lived victory 
• Despite the ratification being in 1870, discriminatory practices, known as black codes, were used to prevent Black citizens from exercising their right to vote performed in many Southern States  and exploited them as a labor source
• Disenfranchisement from state and local level 
• Poll taxes
• Made it nearly impossible for many poor black and white sharecroppers, who rarely dealt in cash. 
• Literacy tests

§  40-60% blacks were illiterate compared to 8-18% white. Poor, illiterate whites opposed the tests, realizing that they too would be disenfranchised. To placate them, Southern states adopted an "understanding clause" or a "grandfather clause.”

§  “Grandfather clause”- you could not vote unless your grandfather had voted -- an impossibility for most people whose ancestors were slaves.

• Fraud

§  Ballot box stuffing, throwing out non-Democratic votes, or counting them for the Democrats even when cast for the opposition, was the norm in the Southern states.

§  Intimidation and violence

§  Violence was a principal means of direct disenfranchisement in the South before Redemption. In 1873, a band of whites murdered over 100 blacks who were assembled to defend Republican officeholders against attack in Colfax, Louisiana. 

 

It wasn’t until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson, that made it illegal to deny African Americans their right to vote under the 15th amendment. This act immediately challenged the courts and changed the relationship between the Federal and state governments around voting since the Reconstruction period. By the end of 1965, a quarter of a million new black voters had been registered, one-third by Federal examiner. By the end of 1966, only 4 out of the 13 southern states had fewer than 50 percent of African Americans registered to vote. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was readopted and strengthened in 1970, 1975, and 1982.

 

 

 

Reconstruction: America After the Civil War

   

        

Before leaving for Fall Break, as a class we watched Part 1 of the four-part series called “Reconstruction: America After the Civil War.” A summary over the film would be that it was about the “united” States struggling as a nation to rebuild their economy without slavery and now incorporating about 4 million newly freed African Americans. 

 

These are some historical moments, both positive and negative that were talked about in the first part of the Reconstruction video. 

 

Pros:

 

·      Black people sat in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Poor whites and black people saw a common cause with one another. 

·      Freedmen’s Bureau: To protect blacks from violence, giving them access to education, rations, clothing, medicine, and land. It was supposed to make sure that local courts treated blacks fairly. It was not just to protect former slaves but to make sure that both blacks and whites were treated fair and equitable on both sides. 

 

 

·      “40 Acres and a Mule”: A short lived promise that gives freedmen plots of land of 40-acre plots. This phrase was picked up by African Americans. Many thinking it was a blueprint for Reconstruction. 

 

 

 

·      Thaddeus Stevens: Republican who fought for freedmen’s rights and did not like the Confederate generals being allowed back into Congress. He thought that African American men helps save the United States. We have a moral obligation to create a foundation of freedom and equality before the law, and without that, anything else is going to be a fraud. One of leading figures to overturn President Johnson’s plan for Reconstruction.

                                                     

 

·      Civil Rights Act of 1866: All persons born in the United States to be citizens, “without distinction of race or color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude.”

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·      14^th Amendment: Established privileges or immunities, due process, and equal protection to African Americans. 

                                      

 

 

Cons: 

 

·      Racial hostility leading to violence: Resistent white shooting and killing African American in the streets leading to “casual violence.” 

                                             

·      Black codes: Purpose was to recognize that slavery has been abolished, but to make sure that there is little change from slavery to freedom as possible. 

 

 

 

·      Vagrancy laws: Made it a crime for people, specifically African Americans, to be jobless or homeless if they didn’t sign a labor contract to work for a year for a white employer. They would either pay a fine or auctioned off. 

 

·      The Ku Klux Klan: An African American hate group created in Tennessee in 1866. It coincides with the creation of Black Codes.

  

 

·       Previous slave owners receiving presidential pardons: President Andrew Johnson gave pardons to all white Southerners that came to him and basically said “I’m Sorry”, giving them their land back that the lost after the war. 

 

                        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EOTO

 Although I did not do EOTO this week, I expanded my learning on some topics and learned something new on others. There were two groups, proslavery and antislavery. In an EOTO (each one teach one), each member is to research something about their topic and share with the class what he or she learned. 

Proslavery: 

 

·      Kansas- Nebraska Act: Allowed each territory to decide the issue of slavery based on popular sovereignty. Kansas wanted slaves but Nebraska did not. Because Kansas wanted slaves, this would violate the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

·      Bleeding Kansas: Spark of a civil war from 1854 to 1859. It was over the control of the new territory of the slave state of Kansas. A proslavery mob burned down an abolitionist newspaper in the town of Lawrence.

·      Fugitive Slave Act of 1850: Runaway slaves must be returned to their owners. Kept slavery alive forcing northerners to participate in slavery. Sometimes free men that fit the description of the propaganda (example listed below) were kidnapped and sold into slavery. 

o   The movie, “12 Years a Slave” is based on false enslavement of a free African American man in Washington, DC.

·      Dred Scott v. Sanford: Decision was that African Americans were not citizens and not allowed to sue. 

 

Antislavery: 

·      Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: A fictional book written on the injustices of slavery. This book made slavery more personable to the North since it gave realistic stories on slavery. It angered Southerners because they felt that is gave a dramatic, inaccurate representation on slavery. It was illegal to own book eventually.

·      John Brown’s raid: An attempt of a slave revolt in October 16-18, 1859, by taking control of various US arsenal at Harpers Ferry. The aftermath was that abolitionist felt inspired and John Brown was persecuted for treason. 

o   Fun fact: John Wilkes Booth joined the militia that captured and executed John Brown and later assassinated 16^th President Abraham Lincoln 6 years later.

·      Underground Railroad: Were networks of secret routes and safehouse that enslaved African Americans took to escape to free Northern states. Almost 100,000 enslaved people have escaped. Despite the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, the Underground Railroad remained successful

State v Mann Religious Arguments

 In class we reenacted the 1929 Supreme Court Case, State v Mann.

 

Facts on the Case: 

Defendant John Mann rented slave Lydia from fellow salve-owner Elizabeth Jones. After Mann chastised Lydia, Lydia ran off. Mann shot and wounded Lydia. The State of North Carolina charged John Mann with assault and battery and fined him five dollars. The defendant was found guilty since the trial judge believed that Mann’s punishment of shooting Lydia was unwarranted based on what she did. Mann appealed this conviction, taking this case to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court justice, Thomas Ruffin, overturned the previous decision on the grounds that “One who has a right to the labor of a slave, has also a right to all the means of controlling his conduct which the owner has.” Even though John did not own the slave Lydia, he had rented her, entitling him to the same authority as the owner. 

 

 

Before being broken into groups, we discussed the 7 Modes in which we base arguments from. Those modes are:

·      Religion/ Moral 

·      Science

·      History

·      Norms/ Customs/ Traditions

·      Social-Economics

·      Ethics

·      Law 

 

In these groups, we each picked a mode, listed above, to base our research upon and provide evidence on. I chose to base my argument on religion and morals of the time. 

 

North Carolina’s Protestantism was primarily evangelical. The evangelical faith emphasized biblical authority, commitment, and conversion. Since slavery was not only legally practiced in the North Carolina constitution but scriptural evidence was also found to support the institution of slavery. Christian masters provide religious instructions for their slaves, removing them from worshipping the devil.

 

Slavery has been a part of society and slaves were taught religious values. The Word of God has not changed; the doctrine of the Apostles has not changed; the Constitutional our country has not changed.

 

Slaveholding was not only justified but moral because it is recognized as such in the holy scripture. 

 

Scriptural Evidence on Slavery was okay:

There is no higher authority other than God himself as said in Romans 13:1.

 

Proverbs 3:5-6 states that God’s word will guide Christians to make the right decisions. He is just and wise in all his decisions. 

 

Leviticus 25:44-46: God speaking through Moses, authorities the chosen people of Israel to make slaves of strangers in their promised land. 

 

Joshua 9: 27: Joshua and the Israelites turn the Gibeonites into their slaves.

 

Genesis 21: 9-10: Abraham, the “father of faith,” and all the patriarchs held slaves without God’s disapproval

 

Genesis 9: 24-27: Canaan, Ham’s son, was made a slave to his brothers

 

Exodus 20: 10, 17: The Ten Commandments mention slavery twice, implying God’s acceptance of it

 

Ephesians 6: 5-8: The Apostle Paul specifically commanded slaves to obey their masters

 

Philemon 12: Paul returned a runaway slave, Philemon, to his master

 

Slavery is God’s means of protecting and providing for an inferior race; brought on by the “curse of Ham ” on Canaan in Genesis 9:25 or punishment of Cain in Genesis 4:12

 

In other to gain a further understanding if the times this decisions was made, I encourage the read of “ The Religious Defense of American Slavery Before 1830” by Larry R. Morrison. He did a great job of singling out key scriptures and furthering elaborating on some scriptures I briefly discussed above.