mmediately following the war, all-white Southern legislatures
passed black codes which denied blacks the right to purchase
or rent land. These efforts to force former slaves to
work on plantations led Congressional Republicans to seize
control of Reconstruction from President Andrew Johnson,
deny representatives from the former Confederate states
their Congressional seats, and pass the Civil Rights Act
of 1866 and draft the 14th Amendment, extending citizenship
rights to African Americans and guaranteeing equal protection
of the laws. In 1870, the country went further by ratifying
the 15th Amendment, which gave voting rights to black
men. The most radical proposal advanced during Reconstruction
to confiscate plantations and redistribute portions of
the land to the freedmen was defeated.
The freedmen, in alliance with carpetbaggers (Northerners
who had migrated to the South after the Civil War) and
southern white Republicans known as scalawags, temporarily
gained power in every former Confederate state except
Virginia. The Reconstruction governments drew up democratic
state constitutions, expanded women's rights, provided
debt relief, and established the South's first state-funded
schools. But internal divisions within the Southern Republican
party, white terror, and Northern apathy allowed white
Southern Democrats known as Redeemers to return to power.
During Reconstruction former slaves and many small white
farmers became trapped in a new system of economic exploitation
known as sharecropping. In exchange for land, a cabin,
and supplies sharecroppers agreed to raise a cash crop
and give half the crop to their landlord. High interests
rates charged for goods bought on credit transformed sharecropping
into a system of economic dependency and poverty.
Background
The twelve years following the Civil War carried vast
consequences for the nation's future. They helped set
the pattern for future race relations and defined the
federal government's role in promoting racial equality.
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