Learn AP® U.S. History - Johnson 1865 - 1869

In addition to Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan, Johnson proposed three further requirements for readmitted states:

1. Ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment

2. Repudiation of Confederate debts

3. Renunciation of secession

Much as Lincoln’s plan had, Johnson’s plan angered Radical Republicans in Congress, who felt it was too lenient on the former Confederate states.

In 1865, legislatures in the formerly Confederate states passed Black Codes, which were laws that prohibited blacks from:

• borrowing money to purchase land

• renting land

• testifying against whites in court

• serving on juries when a white defendant was on trial

The Black Codes also established a form of semi-bondage which deemed many freedman as vagrants and forced them to work.

Under sharecropping, a landowner provided land, seed, and needed farm implements to poor black and white farmers in exchange for a portion of the harvested crop (usually 50%).

Although sharecropping gave poor farmers access to land, it allowed for little upward mobility.

Congress, and especially the Radical Republicans, were furious, especially since none of the new state constitutions extended voting rights to blacks and had established Black Codes. Further, many of the elected Congressmen were former Confederate leaders, including Alexander Stephens, the Confederate Vice President.

Radical Republicans were swept into office, ensuring that a hard line would continue to be maintained against the former Confederate states.

This would end the period known as “Presidential Reconstruction”, and begin the period known as “Radical Reconstruction”.

Radical Reconstructionists, aka Radical Republicans, supported harsh measures against the “traitors” who started a Civil War over slavery. They also supported voting rights for Blacks, as well as laws that would protect Blacks from white terrorism that plagued former Confederate states.

To accomplish this, those who led Radical Reconstruction expanded peace-time federal power to ensure that their goals were realized.

Civil Rights

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 deemed that blacks were citizens. As a result, President Johnson vetoed the bill. Congress, which was controlled by strong Republican majorities, overrode President Johnson’s veto, making this the first major law of the Radical Reconstruction period.

Adopted in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment:

• Defined citizenship to include all persons born or naturalized in the United States.

• States could no longer violate rights embodied in the Constitution.

• Made it illegal for State/federal government to pay for any Confederate debts.

• Prevented former Confederates from holding elective office.

Due to Southern opposition, the Fourteenth Amendment initially failed to be ratified by the requisite 2/3 of the states. After the 1866 election, Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Act, which designated 10 of the 11 former Confederate states as military districts under military control.

Johnson vetoed the Act, but Republicans in Congress overrode the veto. The Military Reconstruction Act held that to be readmitted, states must adopt the Fourteenth Amendment, and provide for black voting rights.

In 1867, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, which required the President to get Senate approval before removing a cabinet member. The Act was designed to protect Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a Radical Republican ally.

Johnson ignored the Act and fired Stanton. The House voted to impeach Johnson, but by a single vote the Senate voted against his removal from office.

William Seward arranged the purchase from the Russians, who were anxious to arrange the purchase, concerned that the British would take over the territory anyway. Congress approved the purchase in part due to gratitude for Russian support during the Civil War.

For years, Alaska was ridiculed as Seward’s Folly or Seward’s Icebox, until gold was found there in the late 1890s.

The Republicans backed Ulysses S. Grant, a popular war hero with no political record. The Republican platform endorsed many Radical Republican policies, including harsh treatment for the South.

Grant could never have won without the 500,000 votes provided by newly enfranchised freedmen. The importance of freedmen to their continued political dominance convinced even conservative Republicans to vigorously defend black voting rights.

To further protect black voters, Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment.

President Johnson arranged for a blockade of Mexico to prevent aid from France and provided weapons to Maximilian’s opponents. In 1867, Maximilian was shot by a firing squad.

A boomtown is a community that experiences exponential growth in population and wealth in a short period.

Boomtowns accompanied the discovery of mineral wealth in the West, such as the discovery of gold in California in 1849, silver in Nevada in the 1860s and 1870s, and the Black Hills of South Dakota in the 1870s and 1880s.

The sodbusters were those who took advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862 to acquire 160 acres on the Great Plains.

Many of these farmers were immigrants, with little experience in farming. The work was difficult; plagues of locusts destroyed growing crops, and the soil proved to be difficult to work and wore out easily.

The Central Pacific Railroad was one of the two railroads (the other being the Union Pacific) forming the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s. The Central Pacific was pushing from west to east, beginning in Sacramento, California.

At its peak, the Central Pacific Railroad employed some 12,000 Chinese laborers, and they made up over 90% of the total Central Pacific labor force.

Union Pacific

The Union Pacific’s task was much easier than that of the Central Pacific (which went west to east). Rather than having to go over numerous mountain ranges, the Union Pacific’s track extended over the vast flat stretches of the Great Plains.

Drawing on the urban cities of the East, the Union Pacific employed newly arrived Irish immigrants in large numbers. In addition, former Union and Confederate soldiers served on the project.

At Promontory Point, Utah on November 6, 1869, the tracks of the Central Pacific Railway were joined to those of the Union Pacific Railway, completing the first Transcontinental Railroad.

A land grant is a gift of real estate.

After the Civil War, land grants by the federal government were used to finance the building of railways in the western United States. Congress granted land to more than 80 railroads, which the railroads then sold to settlers, applying the proceeds to finance construction.

Land grants were used in other ways as well; for instance, several states created “land grant universities.”

The Burlingame Treaty allowed unrestricted Chinese immigration, and large numbers of Chinese immigrants arrived on the West Coast. Many of the new immigrants found work in mines or building the western half of the Transcontinental Railroad.

In response to the influx, California included articles in its 1878 state constitution which:

Disenfranchised the Chinese

Blocked their work on public projects

Disallowed their employment with any corporation licensed by the state

The federal courts struck down these measures as unconstitutional, but they signaled a growing hostility towards Chinese immigrants.

Horatio Alger

Alger's hugely popular books generally featured a hero who rises from poor surroundings to the middle class, via a bit of luck, clean living, and a large amount of hard work. In Alger's Ragged Dick for instance, a young bootblack rises to become a respectable middle-class businessman.

Before it collapsed as a result of the Depression of 1873, the National Labor Union advocated for an eight-hour work day, rights for black and female workers, and an end to child labor.

Members of the National Labor Union joined with the Grange supporters to found the Greenback Party.

An emphasis on women's education.

Prior to the founding of these all-female colleges and universities, higher education for women had focused mainly on the development of social graces. Schools such as Wellesley focused on a curriculum of intellectual rigor, and for the first time advanced education was available to women.