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Use these links to return to the page you got here from or to investigate other issues related to this topic. If the Civil Rights Movement is new to you, you can visit our dictionary page from any page in the entire web site by clicking here.
The time after the Civil War was called Reconstruction. It lasted from 1865-1877. It started near the end of the Civil War when President Abraham Lincoln proposed a plan for Reconstruction. This plan was to rebuild the South and bring states back into the Union. Lincoln's Plan Under Lincoln's plan, Southerners who took an oath saying they would Congress wanted people to take an oath of loyalty. They thought at least one half of all voters in a state should take this oath before Reconstruction could take place. This brought about the question of who should make Reconstruction policies, Congress or the President of the United States? Johnson's Plan On April 9, 1865 the Civil War ended. Lincoln was assassinated a few days
later and Vice President Andrew Johnson became the new president. Johnson The South eventually rejoined the North in 1870. The first of the 11 southern defeated states to be readmitted into the Union was Tennessee. Political Power Won and Lost During Reconstruction, Blacks earned the right to vote in the Reconstruction
Acts of 1867 and 1868. Blacks had joined a political organization near the end
of 1867. Even though voting was restricted to men, children and women
participated at almost all of the political events. The Reconstruction Acts also
required all people who were at the right age to vote, no matter if you The first black to be elected to the United States Senate was Hiram R. Revals, in 1870. Blanche K. Bruce was sent to Washington in 1874 and was the last black American to serve in the Senate until Edward Brooke was elected by Massachusetts in 1966. When Reconstruction ended, the political power Blacks had won ended, too. The Union Army stopped Southerners from not allowing Blacks to vote. After the Union Army left and Reconstruction was over, Blacks were again not allowed to vote by racist Southerners who thought Blacks shouldn’t be treated as equals. Reconstruction governments needed help from the North to survive. By the 1870's most of the northerners began losing interest in Reconstruction. Slowly the United States soldiers were removed from areas where Reconstruction was in place. In 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes was elected President of the United States. He agreed to remove the rest of the federal troops in Reconstruction governments. This was the end of Reconstruction. Eventually all of the rights that Blacks had won during Reconstruction were taken away by southern Whites who regained control of their state governments. |
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the Union would be granted a pardon. The terms of the Reconstruction plan
allowed southern states to form new governments and constitutions, as long as
10% of their voters supported the Union. The 1860 presidential election would be
the basis of the 10% of voters. Also, the new state constitutions could not
allow slavery. Almost all Northerners thought that Lincoln's plan wasn't harsh
enough, because they thought that Southerners should get more punishment for
trying to secede from the Union.
came
up with his own Reconstruction plan in May 1865. His plan offered pardons to
every single southern white, not including the main Confederate leaders and rich
Confederate supporters. The southern states that were defeated were to hold
conventions and start new state governments. These new state governments had to
abolish slavery and agree to be loyal to the country if they wanted to rejoin
the Union. New state governments were started in the summer and fall of 1865.
were
black or white, to have the chance to be elected delegates to state conventions
that would write the new state constitutions. In 1867 and 1868 at the
constitutional conventions, out of all the delegates, one-third of them were
black. At the South Carolina convention, the majority were black. Blacks were
even elected sheriff, mayor, and prosecuting attorney. They also filled many
local posts and held many other jobs such as justice of the peace and
superintendent of education.