29. Reconstruction

By alexandramurphy

  • Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction

    a process set up by Lincoln for reconstructing the state governments in the South so that Unionists were in charge rather than the sectionists. it gave full presidential pardons to most southernors who were alleged to the Union and accepted the emancipation of slaves.it also said that state governments could be changed if at least 10 percent of the voters in that state took the loyalty oath.

  • Wade-Davis Bill

    this bill went against the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction by requiring 50 percent of the voters to take a loyalty oath and permitted only non-Confederates to vote for a new state constitution. Lincoln refused to sign the bill.

  • Special Field Order 15

    this was issued by General T. Sherman and set aside the Sea Islands and a large area along the South Carolina and Georgia coasts for the settlement of black families on forty acre plots of land. These black families would also be given a mule that the army could no longer use.

  • Presidential Reconstruction

    a series of proclamations made by President Johnson started this period. He offered a pardon that restored political and property rights to white southerners who took an oath of allegiance, except Confederate leaders and wealthy planters. Johnson appointed provisional governors and made them call state conventions that would establish loyal governments in the South. These things turned the Republican North against Johnson and white voters returned important Confederates to power.

  • Freedmen's Bureau established

    this was a Reconstruction agency established to protect the legal rights of former slaves and to assist with their education, jobs, health care, and landowning.

  • Civil Rights Bill

    this defined all persons born in the Untied States as citizens and spelled out rights they were to enjoy without regard to race.

  • Ku Klux Klan established

    organized in Tennessee to terrorize former slaves who voted and held political offices during Reconstruction. It spread throughout the South and committed some of the most brutal crimes in American History. Their victims included white Republicans, but African Americans received the most violence from the Klan.

  • Reconstruction Act

    established temporary military governments in all Confederate states except Tennessee and required that the states ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and permit freedmen to vote

  • Tenure of Office Act

    required the President to obtain Senate approval to remove any official who appointment had also required Senate approval

  • Radical Reconstruction

    radical Republicans gained almost complete control over policymaking in Congress and over the House of Representatives and the Senate. They had power to override any potential vetoes by President Johnson. The Radical Reconstruction included Congress passing the First and Second Reconstruction Acts and the Tenure of Office Act, the impeachment of President Johnson, the ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment, and the election of Ulysses S. Grant for President.

  • Impeachment of President Johnson

    President Johnson’s violation of the Tenure of Office Act by firing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton led to Johnson’s impeachment

  • Fourteenth Amendment ratified

    this amendment guaranteed the rights of citizenship to former slaves

  • Women's feminist organization splits into two groups

    the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments produced a split between feminists. Some feminists, such as Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, opposed the Fifteenth Amendment while others, like Abby Kelly and Lucy Stone, supported the steps of the Reconstruction. The split formed two groups: the National Woman Suffrage Association, led by Stanton, and the American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Lucy Stone.

  • Inauguration of Ulysses S. Grant

    Republicans nominated him as their candidate for president after the impeachment of Johnson.

  • Hiram Revels

    he represented Mississippi and was the first black Senator in America.

  • Fifteenth Amendment ratified

    amendment which prohibited states from discriminating in voting privileges on the basis of race

  • Liberal Republicans established

    an influential group of Republicans, alienated by corruption within the Grant administration and believing that the growth of federal power during and after the war needed to be curtailed formed this party.

  • The Amnesty Act of 1872

    this act removed the last of the restrictions on ex-Confederates, except for the top leaders. it allowed southern conservatives to vote for Democrats to retake control of state governments.

  • Reelection of Grant

    despite the scandals of his last presidency Grant was reelected for President, winning over Horace Greely

  • National economic depression begins

    this depression weakened the prospect that Republicans could revitalize the region’s economy

  • "Slaughterhouse Cases"

    butcher excluded from a state-sponsored monopoly in Louisiana went to court, claiming that their right to equality before the law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment had been violated. The justices rejected their claim

  • Panic of 1873

    overspeculation by financiers and overbuilding by industry and railroads led to widespread business failures and depression

  • Civil RIghts Act of 1875

    this outlawed racial discrimination in places of public accommodation like hotels and theaters.

  • "United States v. Cruikshank"

    in this case, the Court destroyed the Enforcement Acts by throwing out the convictions of some of the responsible for the Colfax Massacre of 1873.

  • Bargain of 1877

    representatives of Republican presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes agreed to recognize Democratic control of the entire South and to stay out of local affairs. They said that hayes would put a southerner in the cabinet position of postmaster general and that he would work for federal aid to the Texas and Pacific Railroad. Democrats promised not to dispute Hayes’s right to office and to respect the cicivl and political rights of blacks.

  • Inauguration of Rutherford B. Hayes

    in the election he ran against Samuel J Tilden. The election was very close so Congress appointed a fifteen-member Electoral Commission, made up of senators, representatives, and Supreme Court justices. Hayes won the election.