Congressional And Presidential Reconstruction

23 August 2022
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Presidential Reconstruction Plans
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After Confederate surrender in 1865 President Abraham Lincoln delivered his last public adress, his Reconstruction policy. He said that the Confederate states had never left the Union, which was in direct opposition to the views of Radical Republican Congressmen who felt the Confederate states had seceded from the Union and should be treated like "conquered provinces." Also in Lincoln's proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction in 1863 he said southerners could be pardoned and reinstated as US citizens if they took and oath of allegiance to the Constitution.Johnson issued his own reconstruction proclamation that was largely in agreement with Lincoln's plan.
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Congressional Reconstruction Plans
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A majority group of moderate Republicans in Congress supported Lincoln's position that the Confederate states should be reintegrated as quickly as possible. A minority group of Radical Republicans--led by Thaddeus Stevens in the House and Ben Wade and Charles Sumner in the Senate--sharply rejected Lincoln's plan, claiming it would result in restoration of the southern aristocracy and re-enslavement of blacks. They wanted to effect sweeping changes in the south and grant the freed slaves full citizenship before the states were restored. The influential group of Radicals also felt that Congress, not the president, should direct Reconstruction. In June of 1866, the Joint Committee on Reconstruction determined that, by seceding, the southern states had forfeited "all civil and political rights under the Constitution." The Committee rejected President Johnson's Reconstruction plan, denied seating of southern legislators, and maintained that only Congress could determine if, when, and how Reconstruction would take place. Part of the Reconstruction plan devised by the Joint Committee to replace Johnson's Reconstruction proclamation is demonstrated in the Fourteenth Amendment.867, Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Act, which became the final plan for Reconstruction and identified the new conditions under which the southern governments would be formed. Tennessee was exempt from the Act because it had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment.
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Lincoln's plan compared to Johnson's actions
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Lincoln issued the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction in 1863, his compassionate policy for dealing with the South. The Proclamation stated that all Southerners could be pardoned and reinstated as U.S. citizens if they took an oath of allegiance to the Constitution and the Union and pledged to abide by emancipation. High Confederate officials, Army and Navy officers, and U.S. judges and congressmen who left their posts to aid the southern rebellion were excluded from this pardon. Lincoln's Proclamation was called the "10 percent plan": Once 10 percent of the voting population in any state had taken the oath, a state government could be put in place and the state could be reintegrated into the Union. Johnson, like Lincoln, held that the southern states had never legally left the Union, and he retained most of Lincoln's 10 percent plan. Johnson's plan went further than Lincoln's and excluded those Confederates who owned taxable property in excess of $20,000 from the pardon. These wealthy Southerners were the ones Johnson believed led the South into secession. These pardons allowed many of the planter aristocrats the power to exercise control over Reconstruction of their states. Johnson also called for special state conventions to repeal the ordinances of secession, abolish slavery, repudiate all debts incurred to aid the Confederacy, and ratify the Thirteenth Amendment.
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13th Amendment
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"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the U.S. or any place subject to their jurisdiction," Congress completely and finally abolished slavery. The Amendment was approved in December of 1865 with a two-thirds vote in Congress, and went in effect fully when three-fourths of the states ratified it.
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14th Amendment
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All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
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15th Amendment
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granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that 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." Although ratified on February 3, 1870, the promise of the 15th Amendment would not be fully realized for almost a century. Through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other means, Southern states were able to effectively disenfranchise African Americans. It would take the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 before the majority of African Americans in the South were registered to vote.
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impeachment
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The political equivalent of an indictment in criminal law, prescribed by the Constitution. The House of Representatives may impeach the president by a majority vote for "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Andrew Johnson in 1868 was impeached. by Radical republicans because he replaced Edwin Stanton, the secretary of war.
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Black Codes
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laws passed in the South just after the Civil War aimed at controlling freedmen and enabling plantation owners to exploit African American workers. Thousands of freedmen became sharecropper farmers, which led them to becoming indentured servants, indebted to the plantation owner and resulting in generations of people working the same plot of land.
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KKK
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first organized in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1866. Members of the KKK, called "Klansmen," rode around the south, hiding under white masks and robes, terrorizing Republicans and intimidating black voters. They went so far as to flog, mutilate, and even lynch blacks. Congress, outraged by the brutality of the vigilantes and the lack of local efforts to protect blacks and persecute their tormentors, struck back with three Enforcement Acts (1870-1871) designed to stop the terrorism and protect black voters. The Acts allowed the federal government to intervene when state authorities failed to protect citizens from the vigilantes. Aided by the military, the program of federal enforcement eventually undercut the power of the Ku Klux Klan. However, the Klan's actions had already weakened black and Republican morale throughout the south.
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Sharecropping
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Freedmen also encountered the difficulties of sharecropping. With little land available to purchase and few skills other than knowing how to work in the fields, former slaves participated in the sharecropping system that provided a share of the crop for the worker's service. A similar practice was known as crop liens, in which the owner of the land—usually a freedman or a poor white man—would offer a lien on his crop to a merchant in exchange for cash or supplies. Sharecropping and crop liens were idealistic plans used by crooked bookkeepers and white land owners who kept black men in perpetual debt.
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Election of 1876: Compromise of 1877
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The results of the election remain among the most disputed ever, although there is no question that Samuel J. Tilden of New York outpolled Ohio's Rutherford B. Hayes in the popular vote. After a first count of votes, it was clear that Tilden had won 184 electoral votes to Hayes's 165, with 20 votes unresolved. These 20 electoral votes were in dispute in four states: in the case of Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, each party reported its candidate had won the state, while in Oregon one elector was declared illegal (as an "elected or appointed official") and replaced. The question of who should have been awarded these electoral votes is the source of the continued controversy concerning the results of this election. An informal deal was struck to resolve the dispute: the Compromise of 1877, which awarded all 20 electoral votes to Hayes. In return for the Democrats' acquiescence in Hayes's election, the Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction. The Compromise effectively ceded power in the Southern states to the Democratic Redeemers.This was the first presidential election in 20 years in which the Democratic candidate won a majority of the popular vote. This is also the only election in which a candidate for president received more than 50 percent of the popular vote but was not elected president by the Electoral College, and one of four elections in which the person receiving the largest proportion of the popular vote lost the electoral vote.