The Surrender Of The Confederate Army Brought An End To

Congress comes in to play in December 1865. The Congress was made up mostly of Republicans and they refused to let past Confederates to take their seats in Congress at this time. This marked the beginning of Radical Reconstruction or sometimes known as Congressional Reconstruction. The president and the congress did not agree on many issues. Congress overrode President Johnson on the Civil Rights Act of 1866, The Fourteenth Amendment, and the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill. The Fourteenth Amendment spelled out rights of both black and white citizens as equal. It prolonged Federal powers for the enforcement of civil rights. States that approved the Fourteenth Amendment were considered reconstructed, and Tennessee did so. President Johnson advised other southern states to oppose doing this. Congress passed many laws to limit President Johnson’s powers. They passed the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 which set new

During reconstruction, blacks were no longer forced to work as slaves however they still needed to work to support themselves and their families. Not many blacks had skills outside of farming so most worked the lands of the wealthy white landowners but not as slaves. They had the right to do whatever they wanted and the landowners could do nothing about it. Wealthy landowners still needed work hands and blacks needed an income so former slaveholders established the sharecropping system. Land owned by a white person would be farmed by black families and they shared the crop yield. This often resulted in the white person taking more than their share and the black families struggled to support themselves. Sharecropping did little to help economic advancement for blacks and was a way the white man could prevent blacks from making enough money

Reconstruction produced enormous tensions among the political parties, and between the president and Congress. After the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his vice president, Andrew Johnson, became the following president after the Civil War. Andrew Johnson wanted the South back to full pledged membership in the union as rapidly as possible. Johnson quickly set his plans in motion while congress was not in session which then became known as the Presidential Reconstruction. It seemed that he wanted a rapid lenient restoration of the union. His aim was to bring the white south and white north back together. African Americans do not play a role in Johnson's vision of the postwar South other than to go back to work, be landless, and rightless plantation

The main economic hurdle the country faced was centered in the south. After the war many Southerners were dependant on federal aid subsistence and the emancipation proclamation cost the South $2 billion of it’s capital (Farmer). Furthermore, agriculture had been what maintained southern economy but post-war most farms and plantations were desolate and many of the few railroad tracks that were there before had been destroyed. Historian Charles Beard looks at the war as, “the triumph of the forces of industrialism over plantation agriculture.” However this is not entirely true. While there was some movement towards industry, the south was still primarily agriculturally based and had adopted a system of sharecropping to do so. It took until 1867 for

After the end of the civil war Congress ratified the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the constitution, which prohibited slavery, guaranteed all citizens equal protection under the law, and gruaranted equal rights to all men. During this period of reconstruction, which was enforced by the Federal government, men of color took advantage of voting rights, educational and economic opportunities, to gain political office, economic power and basically restructuring of the society of the South. Obviously this was unacceptable to the disenfranchised southern democrats.

The Civil War ended on April 9, 1865. Less than one-week later President Lincoln was assassinated. After President Lincoln was assassinated his Vice President Andrew Johnson became president. President Johnson

Southern plantations changed greatly after the Civil War. Farmers did not want any change, and before the war, tried to prove to the Northerners that slaves were not mistreated. The southern plantations were full of slaves before the war. After the war, southern plantations were not legally allowed to have slaves. In response to this change, the land owners started a system called sharecropping. After the war many small farmers got run out of the farming business.

The provisions of the Reconstruction Act that congress passed were that America was divided into 5 military districts that were led by union military officers, military courts can try cases involving civil and property rights violations and criminal trials, states had to grant voting rights to black men, and states had to ratify the 14th amendment in order to be represented in congress. President Johnson had tried to veto the reconstruction act, but congress was powerful enough to override the veto, though the southern states decided not to follow this amendment, with the exception of Tennessee. President Johnson decided it was right for him to take to the streets and bad talk the 14th amendment, taking his title as President down with

The thirteenth amendment was important to the slaves. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction(“loc.gov13th”)." Formally abolishing slavery in the United States the 13th Amendment was passed by the Congress on January 31 1865 and ratified by the states on December 6 1865(“loc.gov13th”). This amendment is important because it ended slavery for everyone that was a slave in America. On June 13 1866 Thaddeus Stevens the Republican floor leader in the House of Representatives and the nation’s most Radical Republican rose to address his Congressional colleagues on the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution(“CivilWar.org”). Stevens had always fought for the struggle against slavery and for equal rights for black Americans(“CivilWar.org”). In 1837 as a delegate to Pennsylvania’s constitutional convention he had refused to sign it because it didn't give African Americans the right to vote(“CivilWar.org”). During the Civil War he

Directly following the Civil War, many ex slaves established crop frame on land that had been neglected from them fleeing the white Southerners. President Johnson, a former slave owner, gave this land to the original white owners and many free slaves had to depend on the South’s old planter system. The freedman wanted independence and refused to sign the contracts that required task labor, and sharecropping came out as a compromise.

In the north there was an overwhelming sense of loss among the population. The man that had led them victory against the South and held the Union together was taken away from them by an assassin’s bullet. In the South, the reaction to Lincoln’s death was not as prosperous as John Wilkes Booth would have liked. According to an article published in the Charleston Courier on April 20, 1865 the president’s death was just as important to the population of the South as in the North. Booth was hailed as a hero by some, but not by the entire population. The response to Lincoln’s death among southerners caused no spark in the south, which was even more tired than the North from the fighting. Booth’s killing of Lincoln is very prominent to history because Lincoln was the first president assassinated in office. Even with his killing Booth failed in achieving his goal, the South was finished with

Gunshots rang throughout American soil in the year 1861. The seven southern states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America. The remaining northern states were known as the Union. The central issue between the Union and the Confederacy was slavery which led to America’s bloodiest war, lasting four years and leaving roughly six hundred-thousand people dead. The North was victorious and the South’s infrastructure was severely crippled. All slaves were set free and a month before the official end to the war, Lincoln was assassinated, leaving Vice- President Andrew Johnson to take over the Presidency. The next task for America to tackle was the South’s reconstruction which would continue until 1877. Although reconstruction made the South go through many changes leading to lots of progress, it also had some fallbacks from the resentment present in the South.

Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election on November 6, 1860 with Hannibal Hamlin of Maine as vice president. It was partly because of this election that the Civil War started, but feeling it as his responsibility, Abe Lincoln stuck through it and became our sixteenth president of America. He was killed right after the Civil war ended when John Wilkes Booth assassinated him thinking that it would help the South, but it absolutely did not help the Souths’

Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer who became the 16th President of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln was a leader, a great military strategist, and his Emancipation Proclamation paved the way to abolishing slavery. After he was elected President, seven southern states seceded from the union and became the Confederate states. The confederate states attacked ships and fleets beginning the Civil War. (History.Com)

When Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860, seven slave states left the Union to form the Confederate States of America, and four more joined when hostilities began between the North and South. A bloody civil war then engulfed the nation as Lincoln vowed to preserve the Union, enforce the laws of the United States, and end the secession. The war lasted for more than four years with a staggering loss of more than 600,000 Americans dead. Midway through the war, He was known for his skill in wielding an ax and early on made a living splitting wood for fire and rail fencing.Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves within the Confederacy and changed the war from a battle to preserve the Union into a battle for freedom. He was the first Republican President, and Union victory ended forever the claim that state sovereignty superseded federal authority. Killed by an assassin's bullet less than a week after the surrender of Confederate forces, Lincoln left the nation a more perfect Union and thereby earned the admiration of most Americans as the country's greatest President. “Abraham Lincoln is regarded as one of America's greatest heroes due to both his incredible impact on the nation and his unique appeal.”