HIUS 222 - Midterm 1 Study Set Exam Guide 2024

"presidential reconstruction" - - short lived: allowed southern states to return, but without slavery - timid: almost all confederates were pardoned and let back into politics - gave very little thought to the former slaves: Johnson did not see African Americans as equals, did not believe they deserved citizenship or the right to vote *Pushed white northerners to ask more of Johnson Thaddeus Stevens (PA. rep ) - pledge his political energy to marginalize Johnson (impeached Johnson) - overtime, was successful with alliances - turned Johnson into a "lame duck" president "radical reconstruction" - 1. much longer and much more punitive than presidential reconstruction - lasted a decade and sent union troops to occupy the South 2. Attempted to grant full citizenship to former slaves - Radical republicans pass 3 constitutional amendments over the course of Radical Reconstruction (13,14,15th amendments) which banned slavery in the US, granted citizenship & equal legal protection to all people born in the US, and allowed for black men the right to vote that was equal to a white man's Hiram Revels - First black senator from Mississippi () - deemed one of the successes from these newly acquired freedoms as free African Americans following the 13,14,15th amendments - Following this, there were extremely fast switches where there were black people serving in the capitol building - this was not perpetual however, soon after this there were no other African Americans representatives until the 1970's The 14th Amendment - (1868) Guaranteed citizenship & equal legal protection to all people born in the US - Considered a bold move - changes what dictates being "American" - part of the Radial Reconstruction legacy - gave African Americans a new sense of freedom, as they were now legally seen as citizens rather than property of their white counterparts - this lead to a surge for African Americans to pursue education and literacy in order to fit into these new roles as "citizens" - wanted autonomy & independence: they did not want anyone to make their decisions for them, and wanted to get away from cotton plantations and farming altogether - the right to vote & land ownership, which are how they wanted to achieve independence and how they viewed freedom Henry Grady - Journalist from Atlanta, editor of the "Atlantic Constitution", coined the phrase "The South has been reborn" - many people listened to him and followed his writings - claimed the "South was living in racial harmony", although that was not the case Sharecropping - A compromise between free african americans and white plantation owners - families rented land from land owners & paid rent with their harvest at the end of the season - Free people refused to go back to the plantations for "waged labor", which means they wanted to monitor their workers closely and did not have to pay them during large chunks of the year - Compromise born from the power of free African Americans - Preferred this because they were distant from the slave master's quarters *issues caused by this* 1. black farmers were forced to return to planting cotton - only product planter's could cash in on 2. Difficult for free men to overcome poverty due to the fact that they were illiterate - they would do math incorrectly to make the farmer's debt roll over to the next year Plessy v. Ferguson - 1896 - court ruled segregation was legal as long as the state provided means that were "separate but equal" - institution maintained until the 1960's Segregation: set of laws that forced blacks to occupy separate public spaces than whites, also known as "Jim Crow" laws - public spaces: railroad cars, movie theaters - The "colored spaces" were always inferior to the white's (dilapidated, poor conditions) - 1890: imposes segregation laws on new street cars in New Orleans, blacks were told to sit in the last cars, Homer Plessy opposed and got arrested, once out of jail he files a lawsuit under the terms of the 14th amendment, goes all the way to the supreme court lynching - An extra legal killing performed by a mob "The murder of black men by white mobs" - no whites were ever prosecuted - an act of terrorism meant to terrify African Americans into accepting they were subordinate to whites - public hangings, burning at the stake Frederick Jackson Turner - Wealth-born from Wisconsin who came to age during the "Rush to the West" - "Significance of the Frontier in American History" argued that the Western frontier and its settlement is what made America democratic & egalitarian