Reconstruction

USII.3b
Policies and Problems
Reconstruction attempted to create legal equality for free and formerly enslaved African Americans.
The Amendments to the Constitution during Reconstruction laid the legal foundation for the equality of
all Americans, which we continue to pursue.

• Southern military leaders could not hold office

• Southern states adopted Black Codes to limit the economic and physical freedom of former
slaves.
• After the adoption of the Reconstruction laws, former Confederate states could not be
readmitted to the United States until they held conventions to write new constitutions that
adopted the 14th amendment.
• African American men could vote for delegates to those conventions and serve as delegates.
Policies and Problems, cont.
Reconstruction attempted to create legal equality for free and formerly enslaved African
Americans. The Amendments to the Constitution during Reconstruction laid the legal foundation
for the equality of all Americans, which we continue to pursue.

• Federal troops supervised the South.

• The state governments under Reconstruction adopted laws to create public education and
new state institutions.
• Most white Southerners resisted the Reconstruction governments and worked to replace
them as soon as possible.
• One state after another came under the control of the Democrats in the early 1870s.
Freedmen’s
Bureau
The Freedmen’s Bureau
was established to aid
former enslaved African
Americans in the south.
Resentment in the South…
• Southerners resented Northern “carpetbaggers”
who took advantage of the South during
Reconstruction.
• The term “carpetbagger” refers to a traveler
who arrives in a new region with only a
satchel (or carpetbag) of possessions, and who
attempts to profit from or gain control over
his new surroundings. After 1865, a number of
northerners moved to the South to purchase
land, lease plantations or partner with down-
and-out planters in the hopes of making
money from cotton. At first, they were
welcomed, but they later became an object of
much scorn, as many southerners saw them as
low-class and opportunistic newcomers
seeking to get rich on their misfortune.
End and Impacts
of
Reconstruction
• Reconstruction ended in 1877 as a
result of a compromise over the
outcome of the election of 1876 and
troops were removed from the final
states still under Reconstruction
governments.
• Rights that African Americans had
gained were lost through “Jim Crow”
laws.
• Starting in 1890, every Southern state
wrote new constitutions that prevented
African American men from voting.