CHAPTER 15 “What is Freedom?”: Reconstruction,
1865–1877
This chapter concentrates on the history of Reconstruction. Opening with an explanation of the origins of General
William T. Sherman’s Special Field Order 15, which set aside forty-acre plots for former slave families, the chapter
explores what freedom meant to newly free African-Americans and how white American society responded to
emancipation. There were many meanings of freedom for blacks, and they relished various opportunities to express
their liberation from slavery. Land ownership became a contentious issue, and blacks were ultimately denied free
access to land. The devastation of the Civil War also caused many white farmers to face poverty as tenant farmers
and sharecroppers. The chapter also discusses the national political developments that led to the transition from
President Johnson’s lenient plan to the Radical Reconstruction designed by congressional Republicans. In response
was abolished through the efforts of President Ulysses Grant, white Democrats continued efforts to “redeem” the
South from perceived corruption, misgovernment, and northern and black control. Reconstruction ended in 1877
after a compromise was made between the Republicans and Democrats over the disputed 1876 presidential election.
Primary source documents in this chapter include part of “The Composite Nation,” a speech delivered by Frederick
Douglass in Boston in 1869 that defined equal rights for all Americans regardless of race and national origin. The
chapter also includes a portion of a sharecropping contract (1866) and a petition by black freedmen asking President
Johnson for land grants (1865).
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: Sherman’s Special Field Order and Black Definitions of Freedom
A. African-Americans had expansive ideas about freedom as the federal government reconstructed the South
with new land policies after the Civil War.
II. The Meaning of Freedom
A. Blacks and the Meaning of Freedom
1. The destruction of slavery made freedom the central question on the nation’s agenda.
B. Families in Freedom
2. Freedom subtly altered relationships within the family.
a. Emancipation increased the power of black men within the family.
b. Black women withdrew from work as field laborers and house servants to the domestic sphere.
i. Eventually, many black women would go to work because of dire poverty.
C. Church and School
1. The rise of the independent black church, with Methodists and Baptists commanding the largest
2. Blacks of all ages flocked to the schools established by northern missionary societies, the Freedmen’s
Bureau, and groups of ex-slaves.
a. Education also took place outside the classroom.
b. Black colleges such as Fisk, Hampton, and Howard were started.
D. Political Freedom
1. The right to vote became central to the former slaves’ desire for empowerment and equality.
a. Being denied suffrage meant “the stigma of inferiority.”
2. .Who Is an American? (Primary Source document feature)
Americans regardless of race and national origin
E. Land, Labor, and Freedom
1. Former slaves’ ideas of freedom were directly related to land ownership.
a. Many former slaves insisted that through their unpaid labor, they had acquired a right to the land.
2. Ex-slaves’ definition of freedom resembled that of whites.
d. Political participation
e. Economic autonomy
F. Masters without Slaves
1. The South’s defeat was complete and demoralizing.
G. The Free Labor Vision
1. The victorious Republican North tried to implement its own vision of freedom.
a. Free labor would result in the ex-slaves being more productive.
2. The Freedmen’s Bureau began to establish a working free labor system.
H. The Freedmen’s Bureau
1. The task of the bureau—establishing schools, providing aid to the poor and aged, settling disputes, and
so forth—was daunting, especially because the bureau had fewer than 1,000 agents.
2. The bureau’s achievements in some areas, notably education and health care, were striking.
a. Nearly 3,000 schools reported to the bureau.
I. The Failure of Land Reform
1. Blacks wanted land of their own, not jobs on plantations.
2. President Andrew Johnson ordered nearly all land in federal hands returned to its former owners.
J. Toward a New South
1. Sharecropping came to dominate the cotton South and much of the tobacco belt.
2. Sharecropping initially arose as a compromise between blacks’ desire for land and planters’ desire for
3. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature)
a. From a Sharecropping Contract (1866)
i. A sharecropping contract, representative of thousands of such documents, signed with an X by
former slaves in Tennessee.
K. The White Farmer
1. The aftermath of the war hurt small white farmers.
2. Both black and white farmers found themselves caught in the sharecropping and crop-lien systems.
a. A far higher percentage of black farmers than white farmers rented land.
b. Every census from 1880 to 1940 counted more white than black sharecroppers.
L. The Urban South
1. Southern cities experienced remarkable growth after the Civil War.
a. Rise of a new middle class
M. Aftermaths of Slavery
1. The Reconstruction-era debates over transitioning from slavery to freedom had parallels in other
Western Hemisphere countries where emancipation occurred in the nineteenth century.
2. Only in the United States did former slaves gain political rights quickly.
a. Right to vote
III. The Making of Radical Reconstruction
A. Andrew Johnson
2. Johnson lacked Lincoln’s political skills and keen sense of public opinion.
3. Johnson believed that African-Americans had no role to play in Reconstruction.
B. The Failure of Presidential Reconstruction
1. Johnson’s plan for Reconstruction offered pardons to the white southern elite.
3. At first, many northerners were willing to give Johnson’s plan a chance.
a. The conduct of white southerners turned the Republican North against the plan.
C. The Black Codes
1. Southern governments began passing new laws that restricted the freedom of blacks.
2. These new laws violated free labor principles and called forth a vigorous response from the Republican
North.
a. Few groups of rebels in history have been treated more leniently than the defeated Confederates.
b. The North was motivated by a desire not to “punish” but to ensure emancipation of slaves.
D. The Radical Republicans
2. The Radicals fully embraced the expanded powers of the federal government born of the Civil War.
3. Thaddeus Stevens’s most cherished aim was to confiscate the land of disloyal planters and divide it
among former slaves and northern migrants to the South.
a. His plan was too radical for most others in Congress.
E. The Origins of Civil Rights
1. Most Republicans were moderates, not radicals.
2. Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois proposed two bills to modify Johnson’s policy.
3. Johnson vetoed both bills.
4. Congress passed the Civil Rights Bill over Johnson’s veto and later extended the life of the Freedmen’s
Bureau.
F. The Fourteenth Amendment
1. The Fourteenth Amendment placed in the Constitution the principle of citizenship for all persons born
2. The Fourteenth Amendment produced an intense division between the parties (Democrats unanimously
opposed it; most Republicans were for it).
G. The Reconstruction Act
2. All southern states except Tennessee refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment.
3. In March 1867, over Johnson’s veto, Congress adopted the Reconstruction Act.
4. The Reconstruction Act thus began Radical Reconstruction, which lasted until 1877.
H. Impeachment and the Election of Grant
1. To demonstrate his dislike for the Tenure of Office Act, Johnson removed the secretary of war from
office in 1868.
Republican policies.
I. The Fifteenth Amendment
a. It had many loopholes (states could discriminate on bases other than race: illiteracy, inability to pay a
tax, etc.).
b. It did not extend suffrage to women.
J. The Second Founding
1. The laws and amendments of Reconstruction reflected the intersection of two products of the Civil War
2. The laws and amendments of Reconstruction repudiated the idea that citizenship was an entitlement of
whites alone.
b. The Dred Scott decision of 1857 had denied blacks U.S. citizenship.
a. The amendments created a new era of individual rights consciousness among Americans of all races.
b. The amendments are seen as a second founding, establishing a new definition of the status of blacks
and the rights of all Americans.
K. Boundaries of Freedom
2. Reconstruction Republicans’ belief in universal rights also had its limits.
a. Asian immigrants were still excluded from the naturalization process.
L. The Rights of Women
1. The destruction of slavery led feminists to search for ways to make the promise of free labor real for
women.
2. Other feminists debated how to achieve “liberty for married women.”
M. Feminists and Radicals
1. Partly as an attempt to attract female settlers, in 1890 Wyoming became the first state since New Jersey
in the late eighteenth century to allow women to vote.
4. The divisions among feminists led to the creation of two opposing women’s rights organizations that
5. Reconstruction left the gender boundary largely intact.
IV. Radical Reconstruction in the South
A. The Tocsin of Freedom
1. The passage of the Reconstruction Act inspired an outburst of political organization among the former
slaves.
3. The Union League aided blacks in the public sphere.
4. By 1870, the Union had been restored and southern states had Republican majorities.
B. The Black Officeholder
1. Two thousand African-Americans occupied public offices during Reconstruction.
2. The presence of black officeholders and their white allies made a real difference in southern life.
3. The majority of state and local black officeholders were former slaves.
C. Carpetbaggers and Scalawags
1. Carpetbaggers were northern-born white Republicans who often held political office in the South.
2. Scalawags were southern-born white Republicans.
3. A small group of scalawags helped swing some state and local elections for Republicans.
D. Southern Republicans in Power
1. Southern Republican governments established the South’s first state-supported public schools.
E. The Quest for Prosperity
1. During Reconstruction, every state helped to finance railroad construction.
2. Northern investors were more inclined to pursue opportunities in the West than they were in the South,
and economic development remained weak in the southern states.
3. More success was found with local biracial governing.
V. The Overthrow of Reconstruction
A. Reconstruction’s Opponents
1. Corruption did exist during Reconstruction, but it was not confined to a race, region, or party.
2. Opponents could not accept the idea of former slaves voting, holding office, and enjoying equality
before the law.
B. “A Reign of Terror”
1. The Republican presence in the South led to more organized opposition and violence by 1868.
2. Secret societies sprang up in the South with the aim of preventing blacks from voting and destroying
the organization of the Republican Party.
4. Congress and President Grant, with the passage of three Enforcement Acts in 1870 and 1871, put an end
to the Ku Klux Klan by 1872.
C. The Liberal Republicans
1. The North’s commitment to Reconstruction waned during the 1870s.
2. Some Republicans, alienated from Grant by corruption in his administration, formed the Liberal
3. Liberal Republicans believed that power in the South should be returned to the region’s “natural
leaders.”
in 1872.
D. The North’s Retreat
2. The 1873 depression also distracted the North from Reconstruction.
3. The Civil Rights Act of 1875, which outlawed racial discrimination in places of public
4. The Supreme Court whittled away at Congress’s guarantees of black rights.
a. Slaughterhouse Cases (1873)
b. United States v. Cruikshank (1876)
E. The Triumph of the Redeemers
1. Redeemers claimed to have “redeemed” the white South from corruption, misgovernment, and northern
and black control.
b. Grant refused to provide federal help to stop the violence.
F. The Disputed Election and Bargain of 1877
1. The election between Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican) and Samuel Tilden (Democrat) was very close,
with disputed electoral votes from Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina.
2. Congress set up a special electoral commission to determine the winner of disputed votes.
G. The End of Reconstruction
2. Even while it lasted, however, Reconstruction revealed some tensions inherent in the nineteenth-century
discussions of freedom.
SUGGESTED DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• How did black and white southerners respond to the end of slavery?
• Describe the various plans for land reform, why they did not work, and the consequences of their failure.
Discuss these considerations in relation to the “Petition of Committee in Behalf of the Freedmen to Andrew
Johnson” (1865), found in the Voices of Freedom feature of the textbook.
• What course did Presidential Reconstruction take? How did the South respond?
“the custodian of freedom.”
• Discuss why the Fifteenth Amendment did not include a reference to sex or race.
• Why did Reconstruction come to an end in 1877?
• Was Reconstruction a failure? Explain.
SUPPLEMENTAL WEB AND VISUAL RESOURCES
Andrew Johnson
www.millercenter.virginia.edu/academic/americanpresident/johnson
The Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia has an extensive site about Johnson and his administration.
Freedmen’s Bureau
http://freedmensbureau.com
This extensive website provides much useful information and helpful links. It details the bureau’s records and contains articles
and genealogical information.
Reconstruction
www.pbs.org/weta/reconstruction/
Reconstruction: American after the Civil War (2018, documentary, Henry Louis Gates Jr., PBS, 4 hrs.)
This recent documentary on Reconstruction provides some of the best coverage to date on the subject. An accompanying website
provides further information such as a timeline, episode guide, and links to the two-part, two-hour episodes.
SUPPLEMENTAL PRINT RESOURCES
Abbott, Richard H. For Free Press and Equal Rights: Republican Newspapers in the Reconstruction South. Athens: University of
Georgia Press, 2004.
2015.
Foner, Eric. Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983.
Hahn, Steve, A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830–1910. New York: Penguin
Books, 2016.
1861–1873.” Journal of Southern History 64 (1998): 649–676.
Stewart David O. Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2009.
INTERACTIVE INSTRUCTOR ACTIVITIES
1. Plans for Reconstruction
Give a short lecture setting the stage: It is early 1866, and congressional Republicans are already strongly criticizing
2. Group Film Analysis
A. Preparation for Discussion
Have students watch scenes from the film The Birth of a Nation that portray African-Americans during Reconstruction in
an inaccurate and racist way.
One of the scenes that best exemplifies historical distortion and racism is the segment from the South Carolina
statehouse. Other good examples include scenes with the Ku Klux Klan, whose members the film portrays as heroes.
• South Carolina statehouse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?vR4v_yRFf4-Y
• The Birth of a Nation, scene with the Ku Klux Klan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?vkX9nLttjVTA
1. Describe the actions of the African-American politicians in the South Carolina statehouse scene. How does this
portrayal of black officeholders compare to the information about these officeholders in Chapter 15 of the textbook?
2. Discuss the actions and portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan in the film. How does this portrayal differ from the research
provided in the textbook?
3. In the film clips, what seem to be the fears that white southerners have about the former slaves? Which of these fears most
seems to drive their actions?
4. According to the film, what is the legacy of Reconstruction? What is the textbook’s assessment of this legacy?
5. Why do you think many people tend to get their history from Hollywood films rather than from a history book? What
are your thoughts on the value of a textbook and similar works of scholarly research?
6. After the film’s release in 1915, the NAACP and others tried to have it banned or censored. Discuss the First
Amendment issues that arose following the film’s release. Should The Birth of a Nation be shown in public today? Why
or why not?