APUSH Ch. 22 NOTES
The Problems of Peace
- What to do with freed blacks
- How to reunite the South into the Union
- Who would control Reconstruction - executive or legislature
- Southern way of life was abolished although Southerners remained very resistant - really defiant
Freedmen Define Freedom
- Slaves’ freedom came gradually
- Slaves took the roads, changed their names, wanted to be addressed with respect which angered whites
- Church became important in blacks’ lives and created their own denomination(s) – attendance was very high
- Reading and writing became highly important - teachers were scarce until the gov’t provided some teachers
Freedmen’s Bureau
- Created by Congress – March 1865
- Meaning of agency was intended to be a primitive welfare agency (food, clothes, med. Care and education) – not just for freedmen but for white refugees too
- Oliver O Howard – head of the bureau (founder Howard University)
- Greatest success was in education
- Its accomplishments were meager - even corrupt - land was not distributed to freed blacks and many were tricked into signing labor contracts to work for former masters
- Southerners cried federal oppression
- President Johnson shared white supremacist views and tried to kill the agency – it expired in 1872
Johnson: The Tailor President
- Johnson became president by the assassin’s bullet
- Humble beginnings from Tennessee
- He left the South once it seceded – yet didn’t understand or agree with the North and distrusted by South
- Described a man with out a true place in his own country
- Champion of states’ rights and the Constitution
Presidential Reconstruction
- Lincoln favored a smooth transition of the South back into the Union and favored a 10% plan - (10% of voters of the 1860 election had to pledge allegiance to the Union)
- This upset Congress and so Congress passes the Wade-Davis Bill - required 50% of voters had to pledge allegiance to the Union before re-entering the Union
- Lincoln would not sign – veto the bill – AFTER Congress adjourned (pocket veto)
- Moderate Repubs agreed with Lincoln – more Radical Repubs wanted stauncher punishment
- AJ supported the Radical Repub – later agreed with Lincoln and passed his own Reconstruction proclamation - which said – states had to hold state conventions to repeal ordinances of the secession , pay off Confed. Debt and Ratify the 13th Amendment – BEFORE reentering the Union
- AJ pardoned many southern aristocrats and further upset Repubs