Name _________________________ Date_______________________
The period after the Civil War was called Reconstruction.
It changes our government and the Constitution. Three
amendments, or changes to the Constitution, gave some
Americans new civil rights.
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Reconstruction: rebuilding or healing of the country after the war.
 The MAIN goal of Reconstruction was to reunite the North and
South.
 President Lincoln came up with a plan
o Former Confederate states: 10% of the citizens must swear
loyalty to the United States
o Representatives from that state would then be sent to
Congress and the state would become a part of the U.S. again
o Congress did not agree with President Lincoln
 They wanted majority of the citizens to swear loyalty
 President Lincoln did not sign the plan into law
The Civil War destroyed the South
 White southerners were angry and resentful. They had no desire to
treat freedmen as equals.
Assassination
 On April 14, 1865, President Lincoln was shot by John Wilks Booth
as he watched a play at Ford’s Theater
 Andrew Johnson was quickly sworn into office after President
Lincoln died
Andrew Johnson
 Johnson believed the south was to blame for the Civil War. He felt
the war was caused by their dependence on slavery.
 Continued Lincoln’s easy plan and pardoned hundreds of former
Confederate Officers
 One GOOD thing Andrew Johnson did after he became president
was that he declared secession illegal.
 Did not support Freedman’s Bureau
 First President to be Impeached
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Black Codes
 Stated that escaped slaves must be returned to their owner, even if they were
in a free state.
Freedmen’s Bureau
 Many Southern states put laws in place that limited the new rights of African
Americans
 Many African Americans left the Southern plantations where they had worked,
but most no longer had a way to earn money.
 Congress created the Freedmen’s Bureau to help poor whites and newly freed
slaves.
o Gave out medical care, food, and clothing.
o Provided shelter in refugee camps.
o Helped reunite formerly enslaved families that had been separated
o Set up schools in the South.
 Put teachers from the North into the schools in the South.
 African Americans crowded schools to learn .
 Southern white people often tried to close the schools by using
violence.
o Created a new economy based on employers and employees, or on free
labor.
o African Americans could leave a job if they did not like it. It created
contracts, which are written, legal agreements between two parties.
o Former slaves now got paid to work.
Congress in Charge
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Supported the Freedman’s Bureau
Created schools, hospitals, and industries.
Supported Civil Rights which outlawed Black Codes
Passed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments
Supported equal rights for African Americans Called carpetbaggers (“Yankee
invaders”). Southerners who worked with carpetbaggers were called
“scalawags.”
(traitors)
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Constitutional Amendments
Thirteenth Amendment
 Added in 1865, ending slavery in the U.S.
 They still didn’t have the same rights as all Americans.
 For example, they still could NOT vote.
Fourteenth Amendment
 Added in 1868, granted citizenship to African
Americans and protected the rights of citizens.
 President Andrew Johnson did not like this
amendment because it took power away from the
states.
 Earlier he had vetoed, or said no, to the Civil Rights
Act of 1866 for this reason.
 A two-thirds majority of Congress passed the
amendment to override Johnson’s veto.
Fifteenth Amendment
 Added in 1870- stopped discrimination in voting for those
who were allowed to vote.
 African American men over 21 could now vote.
 African Americans could now run for office.
 Joseph H. Rainey from South Carolina was the first African
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American
member of the House of Representatives.
Sharecropping
Freed slaves could own land after the war.
 Most African Americans knew how to farm but could not
afford to buy land.
 Plantation owners had a lot of land but not the money to pay
people to work on it. This led to a system of farming called
sharecropping.
 This unfair agreement let the owner lend the sharecropper a
place to live, his seeds, farm equipment, and other tools
needed in farming.
 When the crop was harvested and sold, the landowner gave a
part of the profit to the sharecropper.
 Profit is the return on a business undertaking after expenses
have been met.
 The owner took money out of the sharecropper’s money to
repay the loan of seed, shelter and food equipment.
 Often the sharecropper had little or no money left over.
 Over time, some freedmen were able to buy their own land.
Most, however, could not.
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Jim Crow Laws
 Laws that punished African Americans, usually by
separating them from whites.
 Example: In South Carolina, one law said that African
American could only work on farms or as servants.
 Example: African Americans had to buy a special license
if they wanted to do anything else. Judges would make
the cost of the license more than an African American
person could afford.
 The Jim Crow law segregated, or separated, the lives of
African Americans and white people.
o They could not go to the same schools or be in
public together.
o They had separate drinking fountains, telephone
booths, restrooms, hospitals, hotels, and parks.
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Discussion Question:
Think about how the Reconstruction might have
been different if President Lincoln had not been
assassinated. List three things that might have
happened after the war under President Lincoln.
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Vocabulary – Words to Know
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Reconstruction: The rebuilding or healing of the country after the
war
Amendments: any change or addition made to the U.S.
Constitution
Freedman’s Bureau: agency formed by the U.S. government after
the Civil War to help freed slaves.
Free labor: the new economy created by the Freedman’s bureau,
after the Civil War, which was based on the economy in the North,
where there were employees and employers, not owners and
slaves.
Contracts: agreement between two people.
Thirteenth Amendment: the constitutional amendment that ended
slavery.
Fourteenth Amendment: granted citizenship to African Americans
and protected the rights of citizens.
Vetoed: rejected of legislation by the president of the U.S.
Override: reversing a presidential veto by a two-thirds vote of
Congress.
Fifteenth Amendment: forbade discrimination in voting for those
who were allowed to vote.
Sharecropping: system of farming where plantation owners would
lend previously enslaved people a place to live in return for farming
crops.
Profit: money made from a business after expenses have been
met.
Jim Crow Laws: laws that punished African Americans, usually by
separating them from whites.
Segregated: separate.
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