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Procolamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction
Abraham Lincoln wanted a modernize policy that would reconcile the South with the Union instead of punishing it for treason. He offered a general amnesty or pardon to all southerners who took an oath of loyalty to the United States and accepted the Union's proclamations considering slavery. -
Lincoln's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction is issued
The proclamation talked about three main problems. First, it allowed for a full restoration of property to all fighting in the rebellion with the exception of the highest Confederate officials and military leaders. Second, it allowed for a new state government to be formed when 10 percent of the voters had taken an oath to the United States. Third, the Southern states admitted they were encouraged to make plans to deal with the freed slaves -
Wade-Davis Bill Proposed
the moderates and radicals had come up with a Reconstruction plan that could both support as an alternative to Lincoln's. This bill required the majority of the adult white men in a former confederate state to take an oath of allengiance to the Union. -
President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated,
This is the date on which Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor and Confederate sympathizer, at the Ford Theatre. -
Proclamation of Amnesty is issued.
Johnson offered to pardon all former citizens of the confederacy who took oath of loyalty to the union and to return their property. He excluded from the pardon former confederate officers and officals as well as former confederates who owned property worth more than $20,000. -
Freedmen's Bureau
Beginning in September, the Bureau issued nearly 30,000 rations a day for the next year. IT helped prevent mass starvation in the South. The Bureau also helped formerly enslaved people find work on plantations. -
The Fourteenth Amendment
In an effort to override the black codes, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The act granted citizenship to all persons born in the United States except Native Americans. It allowed African Americans to own property and stated that they were to be treated equally in court. -
Racism carries on.
White mobs killed 46 African Americans and burned hundreds of black homes,churches,and schools. Congress passed the amendment in June 1866 and sent it to the states for ratifcation. -
Rising of the Klu Klux Klan
Started in 1866 by former confederate soldiers in Pulaski,Tennessee, the Klan spread rapidly throughout the South. Its goal was to drive out the Union troops and carpetbaggers and regain control of the South for the Democratic Party. -
Military Reconstruction Act.
The Congressional Military Reconstruction Act of 1867 organized the south into 5 military districts, and the states had to have a military leader from the north. They also had to get rid of the black codes,and ratify the 14th amendment. This act also banned confederate leaders from voting, and anyone who didn't pledge their allegiance to the U.S. -
President Andrew Johnson's Impeachment
Johnson was impeached for his efforts to undermine Congressional policy; he was acquitted by one vote.
Johnson was impeached on February 24, 1868 in the U.S. House of Representatives -
A Desire to Learn
By 1870 some 4,000 schools and 9,000 teachers, half of them african americans, taught 200,000 formerly enslaved people of all ages, In the 1870s Reconstruction goverenments built a comprehensive public school system in the South. -
Fifteenth Amendment
It was designed to prohibit discrimination against voters on the basis on race or previous condition of servitude. Previously, the states had had full responsibility for determining voter qualifications. -
Republican Rule In The South
By late 1870 all of the former Confederate states had rejoined the Union under the congressional Reconstruction plan. Throughout the South, the Republican Party took power and introduced several major reforms. -
The Enforcements Act
The Klu Klux Klan activities outraged President Grant and congressional Republicans. In 1870 and 1871, congress passed three Enforcement Acts to combat the violence in the South. The first act made it a federal crime to interfere with a citizens right to vote. The second put federal elections under the supervision of marshalls. Lastly the third outlawed the activities of the Klu Klux Klan. -
Panic of 1873
a wave of fear quickly spread through the nation's financial community. The panic prompted scores of smaller banks to close and the stock market to plummet. Thousands of businesses shut down, and tens of thousands of americans were thrown out of work. -
Midterm Election
In the 1874 midterm elections, the Democrats won control of the House of Representatives and made gains in the Senate. These newly elected Democrats immediately launched investigations into the scandals,Grant's Secretary of War William Belknap accepted bribes from mercants. -
Whiskey Ring
On May 10, 1875 the Treasury Department, led by Secretary Benjamin Bristow, seized distilleries in St. Louis, Chicago, Evansville and Milwaukee. For many years distilleries had bribed low-salaried revenue agents into looking the other away as they evaded paying millions in federal taxes. -
African Americans embracing education
by 1876 about 40 percent of all African American children ( roughly 600,000 students ) attended school in the Southern region. Several African American academies offering advanced education also began operating in the South. These academies grew into an important network of African American colleges and universities. -
Democrats Rule the South
By 1876 the Democrats had taken control of all Southern state legislatures except those of Lousisiana, South Carolina, and Flordia. In those states the large number of African American voters protected by union trooops, were able to keep the Republican power. -
Reconstruction Ends
In the Compromise of 1877, Hayes promised that as President, he would remove federal troops from all southern states. Souther Democrats would regain complete control of the region. In return, Democrats would allow Hayes to claim a victory he had not clearly won. -
Speech on Reconstruction
In March of 1877 during his inaugural speech President Hayes expressed his desire to move the country beyond the quarrelsome years of Reconstruction, in part by putting an end to the nation's regional distinctions. He hoped to narrow the divisions of sectionalism that had long plagued the nation. -
Compromise of 1877
After much debate, several Southern Democraqts joined with republicans in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives and voted to accept the commission's findinds, giving the election to Hayes,the Republican. Hayes could not have won without the South's help -
New Industries
An alliance between powerful white Southerners and Northern financiers brought great economic changes to some parts of the South. By 1890 40,000 miles of railroad track crisscrossed the south nearly four times the amount in 1860. Southern industries also grew, iron and steel idustry developed in Birmingham,Alabama -
Working force
As late as 1900,only 6 percent of the Southern labor force worked in manufacturing. For many African Americans in particular the end of where they had little political power and were forced to labor under difficult and unfair conditions
