III. The South During Reconstruction
Chapter 17 Section 3
A. New Groups Take Charge
The Republican Party consisted of three main groups that dominated Southern politics:
a. African Americans.
b. white Southerners who supported Republican policies,
c. white settlers from the North who moved to the South.
1. African Americans in Government
a. African Americans held important positions but did not control the government
of any state.
b. sixteen African Americans served in the House and two in the Senate.
c. Hiram Revels was elected to the Senate from Mississippi in 1870 and served
one year. He was an ordained Minister, recruited African Americans for the
Union army, and started a school for freed slaves.
d. Blancke K. Bruce, a former runaway slave, was a senator from Mississippi,
elected in 1874 and served six years. He was also the Superintendent of
Schools.
2. Scalawags and Carpetbaggers
a. Some whites supported Republican reconstruction.
b. Many were nonslaveholding farmers or business leaders.
c. Former Confederates hated them for siding with the Republicans and called
them scalawags or scoundrels
d. Northern whites who moved to the South and supported the Republicans
were called carpetbaggers by their critics. They got the name because they
carried suitcases made of carpet fabric with all their belongings.
e. Others were reformers who wanted to help reshape Southern society.
3. Resistance to Reconstruction
a. Most white Southerners opposed efforts to expand the rights of African
Americans.
b. Plantation owners still tried to keep control of the freed people. They kept them
on the plantations and refused to rent land to them.
c. Storeowners refused them credit.
d. employers refused them work.
4. The Ku Klux Klan
a. During Reconstruction secret societies committed violence against African
Americans and white supporters of African Americans.
b. The Ku Klux Klan, formed in 1866, killed them and burned their homes, churches, and schools.
i. The Klan’s supporters were Southerners, especially planters and
Democrats who wanted to reestablish white supremacy and saw violence
as a way to attack Republicans.
ii. Wore white hoods and sheets
iii. launched “midnight rides” to terrorize its opponents.
iv. tried to scare voters
v. had the support of many Southerners (planters and Democrats)
5. Taking Action Against Violence
a. Southerners opposed to violence and terrorism appealed to the federal
government.
b. Congress passed several laws without too much success.
c. Some arrests were made, but most white Southerners would not testify.
d. Order was restored for the 1872 presidential election.
B. Some Improvements
a. Reconstruction brought important changes in education.
i. African Americans created their own schools in some regions.
ii. The Freedmen’s Bureau and private charities spread the value of
education.
iii. Free African Americans from the North and Northern women taught in
the schools.
iv. By 1870 about 4,000 schools existed and more than half the teachers
were African Americans.
1. Public Schools
a. Public school systems for both races were created in the 1870s.
i. whites and African Americans attended different schools.
ii. More than 50 percent of white children and about 40 percent of African
Americans went to public schools within a few years.
2. Farming the Land
a. major change occurred in farming.
i. Most African Americans were not able to buy their own land.
ii. they rented a plot of land from a landowner along with a shack, some
seed, and tools. They became sharecroppers.
iii. in return for the use of the land, the sharecroppers had to pay the
landowner by giving him a share of the crops they grew.
iv. Barely anything was left for their families, and they rarely had enough
to sell and to make any money.
Copyright © by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
|
