Collapse of Reconstruction Timeline

By emoretz05

  • Ku Klux Klan

    KLAN Founded as a social club for Confederate
    veterans, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) started in Tennessee
    in 1866. As membership in the group spread rapidly
    through the South, many of the new chapters turned into
    violent terrorist organizations. By 1868, the Klan existed in
    nearly every Southern state. Its overarching goal was to
    restore white supremacy. Its method was to prevent African
    Americans from exercising their political rights.

  • Enforcement Acts

    To curtail Klan violence and Democratic intimidation, Congress passed a series of Enforcement Acts in 1870 and 1871. One act provided for the federal supervision of elections in Southern states. Another act gave the president the power to use federal troops in areas where the Klan was active. However, President Grant was not aggressive in his use of the power given to him by the Enforcement Acts, and in 1882, the Supreme Court ruled that the 1871 Enforcement Act was unconstitutional.

  • Shifts in Political Power

    By passing the Enforcement Acts, Congress seemed to shore up Republican power. But shortly after these acts went into effect, Congress passed legislation that severely weakened the Republican Party in the South.

  • Anti-Black Violence

    Abram Colby, who organized a
    branch of Georgia’s Equal Rights Association and later
    served as a Republican member of the Georgia legislature,
    testified before Congress about Klan atrocities.

  • Amnesty Act

    With the Amnesty Act, passed in May 1872, Congress returned the right to vote and the right to hold federal and state offices—revoked by the Fourteenth Amendment—to about 150,000 former Confederates, who would almost certainly vote Democratic. In the same year Congress allowed the Freedmen’s Bureau to expire, believing that it had fulfilled its purpose. As a result of these actions, Southern Democrats had an opportunity to shift the balance of political power in their favor.

  • Fraud and Bribery

    Beginning in 1872, a series of long-simmering scandals
    associated with President Grant’s administration boiled over. First, the New York Sun exposed the Crédit Mobilier affair, in
    which a construction company had skimmed off large
    profits from a government railroad contract. This scandal
    involved several leading Republicans, including Grant’s
    first vice-president, Schuyler Colfax.

  • The Panic of 1873

    In September 1873, Cooke’s banking firm, the nation’s largest dealer in government securities, went bankrupt, setting off a series of financial failures known as the panic of 1873. Smaller banks closed, and the stock market temporarily collapsed. Within a year, 89 railroads went broke.

  • Election of 1876

    In 1876, the Republicans decided not to run the scandal-plagued Grant for a third term. Instead, they chose the stodgy governor of Ohio, Rutherford B. Hayes. Smelling victory, the Democrats put up one of their ablest leaders, Governor Samuel J. Tilden of New York. Tilden had helped clean up the graft that had flourished in New York City under the corrupt Tweed Ring.