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.”

·       

 

 

·      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.