AMSCO 5.10 Reconstruction

Overview

AMSCO Topic 5.10, Reconstruction, covers how the United States tried to rebuild the South and define freedom for 4 million formerly enslaved people from 1865 to 1877. The chapter walks through the competing Reconstruction plans of Lincoln, Johnson, and Congress, the three Reconstruction Amendments (13th, 14th, 15th), Johnson's impeachment, Republican governments in the South, and the corruption that defined the Grant years. This is the heart of late Period 5, and you need to know who controlled Reconstruction at each stage and what each amendment actually did.

The big question driving the chapter: should the Confederate states be treated as if they never left the Union (Lincoln's view) or as conquered territory under military occupation? And who gets to decide, the president or Congress?

Postwar Conditions in the South

The South came out of the war shattered. It lost about one-third of its horses, cattle, and hogs, and its roads, bridges, railroads, and fencing were destroyed. Chronic food shortages, especially for African Americans, left many vulnerable to disease.

Freedpeople started their free lives with no money, no land, and no formal education. Key facts to know:

• Enslaved people in Texas were the last to learn they were free. The date the news arrived, June 19th, became the celebration known as Juneteenth.
• Some freedpeople in South Carolina and Georgia received "40 acres and a mule" under an order from Union General William Sherman, but President Andrew Johnson cancelled the order and the land was taken back.
• Beliefs in limited government and states' rights kept the federal government from giving much economic help to anyone, Black or White. Physical rebuilding was left to states and individuals while Washington focused on political questions.

The prewar conflicts didn't disappear. Northern Republicans wanted continued economic progress, Southern aristocrats wanted cheap plantation labor, and freedpeople wanted independence and equal rights.

Presidential Reconstruction: Lincoln and Johnson

Lincoln believed the Southern states never constitutionally left the Union, so reconstruction should be quick and lenient. Johnson tried to continue that approach after Lincoln's assassination, but his White supremacist views put him on a collision course with Congress.

Lincoln's 10-Percent Plan

Lincoln's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction (1863) offered full pardons to most Confederates who took a loyalty oath and accepted emancipation. Once 10 percent of a state's voters took the oath, that state could form a new government and be recognized by the president. In practice, each state had to rewrite its constitution to abolish slavery. The leniency was designed to shorten the war and reinforce the Emancipation Proclamation.

Congressional Republicans pushed back with the Wade-Davis Bill (1864), which required 50 percent of voters to take the loyalty oath and let only non-Confederates vote on new state constitutions. Lincoln pocket-vetoed it. That veto previewed the president-versus-Congress fight that defines this whole chapter.

The Freedmen's Bureau

In March 1865, Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. It acted as a welfare agency, providing food, shelter, and medical aid to both Black and White Southerners left destitute by the war. Its plan to resettle freedpeople on confiscated farmland collapsed when Johnson pardoned the former Confederate owners and courts restored the land.

Education was its biggest win. Under General Oliver O. Howard, the bureau established nearly 3,000 schools (including several colleges) and taught an estimated 200,000 African Americans to read before federal funding stopped in 1870.

Johnson's Plan and His Vetoes

Johnson, a self-taught tailor from Tennessee, was the only senator from a Confederate state to stay loyal to the Union. Republicans put him on the 1864 ticket to attract pro-Union Democrats. His May 1865 plan added disenfranchisement of former Confederate leaders and Confederates with over $20,000 in taxable property, but it included an escape clause: the president could grant individual pardons. Johnson used it freely, and by fall 1865 many ex-Confederate leaders were back in office.

Johnson vetoed 29 bills in one term (the three presidents before him vetoed 23 total). His 1866 vetoes of a Freedmen's Bureau expansion and a civil rights bill nullifying the Black Codes alienated even moderate Republicans and ended the first round of Reconstruction.

Congressional Reconstruction and the Amendments

By spring 1866, Congress took over Reconstruction with policies harsher on Southern Whites and more protective of freedpeople. Radical Republicans, led by Charles Sumner in the Senate and Thaddeus Stevens in the House, wanted to remake Southern society through military rule, federal schools, and land redistribution. Many Radicals also backed women's suffrage, labor union rights, and civil rights for Northern African Americans.

The Reconstruction Amendments

These three amendments are some of the most-tested content in APUSH. Know exactly what each one does:

The 14th Amendment also disqualified former Confederate leaders from office, repudiated Confederate debts, and reduced a state's representation in Congress and the Electoral College if it kept eligible men from voting. Its equal protection and due process clauses became the keystone of 20th-century civil rights law. The 15th Amendment banned open racial discrimination in voting but did not stop states from passing other restrictions that disproportionately hit African Americans (that loophole matters in AMSCO 5.11 on the failure of Reconstruction).

Key Laws and the Election of 1866

• The Civil Rights Act of 1866, passed over Johnson's veto, declared all African Americans US citizens (nullifying Dred Scott) and shielded them from the Black Codes. Republicans pushed the 14th Amendment partly because a law could be repealed; an amendment couldn't.
• In the 1866 midterms, Republicans "waved the bloody shirt" (reminding Northern voters of wartime suffering and branding Democrats the party of rebellion) and won more than a two-thirds majority in both houses, enough to override any Johnson veto.
• The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the former Confederacy into five military districts under Union army control. To rejoin the Union, a state had to ratify the 14th Amendment and guarantee the vote to all adult males regardless of race.
• The Civil Rights Act of 1875 guaranteed equal accommodations in public places and barred excluding African Americans from juries, but it was poorly enforced as Republican commitment faded.

Johnson's Impeachment

Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act (1867) over Johnson's veto, barring the president from removing federal officials without Senate approval. The real goal was protecting Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who ran the military governments in the South. Johnson tested the law by firing Stanton, and the House impeached him on 11 charges, making him the first president ever impeached. In 1868, the Senate fell one vote short of the two-thirds needed to remove him.

Reconstruction in the South

From 1867 on, Republican governments ran the former Confederate states under Army protection. Republican rule lasted anywhere from one year (Tennessee) to nine years (Florida), depending on how fast conservative Democrats regained control.

Who Ran the Reconstruction Governments

Whites held the majority in every Republican state legislature except South Carolina, where freedmen controlled the lower house in 1873. Democrats mocked the coalition with two famous insults:

• "Scalawags" were Southern White Republicans, often former Whigs interested in economic development and sectional peace.
• "Carpetbaggers" were Northern newcomers (named for cheap carpet-fabric luggage). Some were investors, some ministers and teachers with humanitarian goals, and some came to plunder.

African Americans won real political power for the first time. Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce served in the US Senate (Revels took the Mississippi seat once held by Jefferson Davis), and more than a dozen African Americans served in the House. Most Black officeholders were educated property holders who took moderate positions.

Building Black Communities

Freedom meant reuniting families, learning to read, and gaining independence from White control. Freedpeople founded hundreds of independent churches (Negro Baptist and African Methodist Episcopal), and Black ministers became community leaders. Black colleges like Howard, Atlanta, Fisk, and Morehouse were founded during Reconstruction to train ministers and teachers. Some freedpeople migrated to frontier states like Kansas to build new Black communities.

The North During Reconstruction: Grant and Corruption

While the South reorganized, the North focused on railroads, steel, and money, and the Grant years became notorious for corruption. Party leadership shifted from reformers like Stevens, Sumner, and Benjamin Wade to "spoilsmen" like Roscoe Conkling and James Blaine, masters of patronage (handing out jobs and favors to supporters).

The big scandals to know:

• Jay Gould and James Fisk used Grant's brother-in-law in an 1869 scheme to corner the gold market. The Treasury broke it up, but Gould still profited hugely.
• In the Crédit Mobilier affair, railroad insiders gave stock to members of Congress to dodge investigation of profits as high as 348 percent on transcontinental railroad subsidies.
• In the Whiskey Ring, federal revenue agents conspired with the liquor industry to defraud the government of millions in taxes.
• In New York City, Democratic boss William "Boss" Tweed stole $200 million from taxpayers before The New York Times and cartoonist Thomas Nast exposed him, leading to his 1871 arrest.

Grant didn't personally profit, but his loyalty to dishonest associates tarnished his presidency. In 1872, reform-minded Liberal Republicans broke from the party and nominated Horace Greeley, calling for civil-service reform, an end to railroad subsidies, and withdrawal of troops from the South. The fading Northern resolve you see here sets up Reconstruction's abandonment by 1877.

Key Terms to Know

Practice and Next Steps

Reinforce this chapter with the Topic 5.10 Reconstruction course study guide, which frames the same content the way the exam tests it. Then move on to AMSCO 5.11 on the failure of Reconstruction to see how Southern resistance and Northern fatigue ended the era by 1877. If you need to back up, AMSCO 5.9 on government policies during the Civil War covers the wartime context.

To test yourself, run through guided practice questions on Reconstruction, drill terms in the APUSH key terms glossary, and try FRQ practice with instant scoring. Reconstruction amendments and the Congress-versus-president fight show up constantly in SAQs and LEQs, so make sure you can explain what each amendment did and why presidential Reconstruction failed.