The Era of Reconstruction,1865–1877
The Era of Reconstruction,18651877
Instruction:
For this homework, answer ONE of the provided questions. You are also required to answer question base on the attached document. 350-400 words excluding references, APA format and a minimum of 3 references.
1. What was radical Reconstruction? Was it radical?
2. Did Reconstruction address the problems of race? Explain.
3. What the most important historical legacy of Reconstruction?
4. Did Reconstruction fail? Why or why not?
See attached document for reading.
CHAPTER 16
The Era of Reconstruction,
18651877
Figure 16.1 In this political cartoon by Thomas Nast, which appeared in Harpers Weekly in October 1874, the
White League shakes hands with the Ku Klux Klan over a shield that shows a couple weeping over a baby. In the
background, a schoolhouse burns, and a lynched freedman is shown hanging from a tree. Above the shield, which is
labeled Worse than Slavery, the text reads, The Union as It Was: This Is a White Mans Government.
Chapter Outline
16.1 Restoring the Union
16.2 Congress and the Remaking of the South, 18651866
16.3 Radical Reconstruction, 18671872
16.4 The Collapse of Reconstruction
Introduction
Few times in U.S. history have been as turbulent and transformative as the Civil War and the twelve
years that followed. Between 1865 and 1877, one president was murdered and another impeached. The
Constitution underwent major revision with the addition of three amendments. The effort to impose Union
control and create equality in the defeated South ignited a fierce backlash as various terrorist and vigilante
organizations, most notably the Ku Klux Klan, battled to maintain a preCivil War society in which whites
held complete power. These groups unleashed a wave of violence, including lynching and arson, aimed
at freed blacks and their white supporters. Historians refer to this era as Reconstruction, when an effort to
remake the South faltered and ultimately failed.
The above political cartoon (Figure 16.1) expresses the anguish many Americans felt in the decade after
the Civil War. The South, which had experienced catastrophic losses during the conflict, was reduced
to political dependence and economic destitution. This humiliating condition led many southern whites
to vigorously contest Union efforts to transform the Souths racial, economic, and social landscape.
Supporters of equality grew increasingly dismayed at Reconstructions failure to undo the old system,
which further compounded the staggering regional and racial inequalities in the United States.
Chapter 16 | The Era of Reconstruction, 18651877 451
16.1 Restoring the Union
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
Describe Lincolns plan to restore the Union at the end of the Civil War
Discuss the tenets of Radical Republicanism
Analyze the success or failure of the Thirteenth Amendment
The end of the Civil War saw the beginning of the Reconstruction era, when former rebel Southern
states were integrated back into the Union. President Lincoln moved quickly to achieve the wars ultimate
goal: reunification of the country. He proposed a generous and non-punitive plan to return the former
Confederate states speedily to the United States, but some Republicans in Congress protested, considering
the presidents plan too lenient to the rebel states that had torn the country apart. The greatest flaw of
Lincolns plan, according to this view, was that it appeared to forgive traitors instead of guaranteeing civil
rights to former slaves. President Lincoln oversaw the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing
slavery, but he did not live to see its ratification.
THE PRESIDENTS PLAN
From the outset of the rebellion in 1861, Lincolns overriding goal had been to bring the Southern states
quickly back into the fold in order to restore the Union (Figure 16.3). In early December 1863, the president
began the process of reunification by unveiling a three-part proposal known as the ten percent plan that
outlined how the states would return. The ten percent plan gave a general pardon to all Southerners
except high-ranking Confederate government and military leaders; required 10 percent of the 1860 voting
population in the former rebel states to take a binding oath of future allegiance to the United States and
the emancipation of slaves; and declared that once those voters took those oaths, the restored Confederate
states would draft new state constitutions.
Figure 16.2
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Figure 16.3 Thomas Le Mere took this albumen silver print (a) of Abraham Lincoln in April 1863. Le Mere thought a
standing pose of Lincoln would be popular. In this political cartoon from 1865 (b), Lincoln and his vice president,
Andrew Johnson, endeavor to sew together the torn pieces of the Union.
Lincoln hoped that the leniency of the plan90 percent of the 1860 voters did not have to swear allegiance
to the Union or to emancipationwould bring about a quick and long-anticipated resolution and make
emancipation more acceptable everywhere. This approach appealed to some in the moderate wing of the
Republican Party, which wanted to put the nation on a speedy course toward reconciliation. However,
the proposal instantly drew fire from a larger faction of Republicans in Congress who did not want to
deal moderately with the South. These members of Congress, known as Radical Republicans, wanted
to remake the South and punish the rebels. Radical Republicans insisted on harsh terms for the defeated
Confederacy and protection for former slaves, going far beyond what the president proposed.
In February 1864, two of the Radical Republicans, Ohio senator Benjamin Wade and Maryland
representative Henry Winter Davis, answered Lincoln with a proposal of their own. Among other
stipulations, the Wade-Davis Bill called for a majority of voters and government officials in Confederate
states to take an oath, called the Ironclad Oath, swearing that they had never supported the Confederacy
or made war against the United States. Those who could not or would not take the oath would be unable
to take part in the future political life of the South. Congress assented to the Wade-Davis Bill, and it went
to Lincoln for his signature. The president refused to sign, using the pocket veto (that is, taking no action)
to kill the bill. Lincoln understood that no Southern state would have met the criteria of the Wade-Davis
Bill, and its passage would simply have delayed the reconstruction of the South.
THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT
Despite the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, the legal status of slaves and the institution of slavery
remained unresolved. To deal with the remaining uncertainties, the Republican Party made the abolition
of slavery a top priority by including the issue in its 1864 party platform. The platform read: That as
slavery was the cause, and now constitutes the strength of this Rebellion, and as it must be, always and
everywhere, hostile to the principles of Republican Government, justice and the National safety demand
its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the Republic; and that, while we uphold and maintain
the acts and proclamations by which the Government, in its own defense, has aimed a deathblow at this
gigantic evil, we are in favor, furthermore, of such an amendment to the Constitution, to be made by the
Chapter 16 | The Era of Reconstruction, 18651877 453
people in conformity with its provisions, as shall terminate and forever prohibit the existence of Slavery
within the limits of the jurisdiction of the United States. The platform left no doubt about the intention to
abolish slavery.
The president, along with the Radical Republicans, made good on this campaign promise in 1864 and 1865.
A proposed constitutional amendment passed the Senate in April 1864, and the House of Representatives
concurred in January 1865. The amendment then made its way to the states, where it swiftly gained the
necessary support, including in the South. In December 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was officially
ratified and added to the Constitution. The first amendment added to the Constitution since 1804, it
overturned a centuries-old practice by permanently abolishing slavery.
Explore a comprehensive collection of documents, images, and ephemera related to
Abraham Lincoln (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/15Lincoln) on the Library of
Congress website.
President Lincoln never saw the final ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. On April 14, 1865, the
Confederate supporter and well-known actor John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln while he was attending a
play, Our American Cousin, at Fords Theater in Washington. The president died the next day (Figure 16.4).
Booth had steadfastly defended the Confederacy and white supremacy, and his act was part of a larger
conspiracy to eliminate the heads of the Union government and keep the Confederate fight going. One of
Booths associates stabbed and wounded Secretary of State William Seward the night of the assassination.
Another associate abandoned the planned assassination of Vice President Andrew Johnson at the last
moment. Although Booth initially escaped capture, Union troops shot and killed him on April 26, 1865,
in a Maryland barn. Eight other conspirators were convicted by a military tribunal for participating in the
conspiracy, and four were hanged. Lincolns death earned him immediate martyrdom, and hysteria spread
throughout the North. To many Northerners, the assassination suggested an even greater conspiracy
than what was revealed, masterminded by the unrepentant leaders of the defeated Confederacy. Militant
Republicans would use and exploit this fear relentlessly in the ensuing months.
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http://openstaxcollege.org/l/15Lincoln
Figure 16.4 In The Assassination of President Lincoln (1865), by Currier and Ives, John Wilkes Booth shoots
Lincoln in the back of the head as he sits in the theater box with his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, and their guests, Major
Henry R. Rathbone and Clara Harris.
ANDREW JOHNSON AND THE BATTLE OVER RECONSTRUCTION
Lincolns assassination elevated Vice President Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, to the presidency. Johnson
had come from very humble origins. Born into extreme poverty in North Carolina and having never
attended school, Johnson was the picture of a self-made man. His wife had taught him how to read and
he had worked as a tailor, a trade he had been apprenticed to as a child. In Tennessee, where he had
moved as a young man, he gradually rose up the political ladder, earning a reputation for being a skillful
stump speaker and a staunch defender of poor southerners. He was elected to serve in the House of
Representatives in the 1840s, became governor of Tennessee the following decade, and then was elected
a U.S. senator just a few years before the country descended into war. When Tennessee seceded, Johnson
remained loyal to the Union and stayed in the Senate. As Union troops marched on his home state of
North Carolina, Lincoln appointed him governor of the then-occupied state of Tennessee, where he served
until being nominated by the Republicans to run for vice president on a Lincoln ticket. The nomination
of Johnson, a Democrat and a slaveholding southerner, was a pragmatic decision made by concerned
Republicans. It was important for them to show that the party supported all loyal men, regardless of their
origin or political persuasion. Johnson appeared an ideal choice, because his nomination would bring with
it the support of both pro-Southern elements and the War Democrats who rejected the conciliatory stance
of the Copperheads, the northern Democrats who opposed the Civil War.
Unexpectedly elevated to the presidency in 1865, this formerly impoverished tailors apprentice and
unwavering antagonist of the wealthy southern planter class now found himself tasked with
administering the restoration of a destroyed South. Lincolns position as president had been that the
secession of the Southern states was never legal; that is, they had not succeeded in leaving the Union,
therefore they still had certain rights to self-government as states. In keeping with Lincolns plan, Johnson
desired to quickly reincorporate the South back into the Union on lenient terms and heal the wounds
of the nation. This position angered many in his own party. The northern Radical Republican plan for
Reconstruction looked to overturn southern society and specifically aimed at ending the plantation system.
President Johnson quickly disappointed Radical Republicans when he rejected their idea that the federal
government could provide voting rights for freed slaves. The initial disagreements between the president
and the Radical Republicans over how best to deal with the defeated South set the stage for further conflict.
In fact, President Johnsons Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction in May 1865 provided sweeping
amnesty and pardon to rebellious Southerners. It returned to them their property, with the notable
exception of their former slaves, and it asked only that they affirm their support for the Constitution
Chapter 16 | The Era of Reconstruction, 18651877 455
of the United States. Those Southerners excepted from this amnesty included the Confederate political
leadership, high-ranking military officers, and persons with taxable property worth more than $20,000.
The inclusion of this last category was specifically designed to make it clear to the southern planter class
that they had a unique responsibility for the outbreak of hostilities. But it also satisfied Johnsons desire to
exact vengeance on a class of people he had fought politically for much of his life. For this class of wealthy
Southerners to regain their rights, they would have to swallow their pride and request a personal pardon
from Johnson himself.
For the Southern states, the requirements for readmission to the Union were also fairly straightforward.
States were required to hold individual state conventions where they would repeal the ordinances of
secession and ratify the Thirteenth Amendment. By the end of 1865, a number of former Confederate
leaders were in the Union capital looking to claim their seats in Congress. Among them was Alexander
Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy, who had spent several months in a Boston jail after the
war. Despite the outcries of Republicans in Congress, by early 1866 Johnson announced that all former
Confederate states had satisfied the necessary requirements. According to him, nothing more needed to be
done; the Union had been restored.
Understandably, Radical Republicans in Congress did not agree with Johnsons position. They, and
their northern constituents, greatly resented his lenient treatment of the former Confederate states, and
especially the return of former Confederate leaders like Alexander Stephens to Congress. They refused to
acknowledge the southern state governments he allowed. As a result, they would not permit senators and
representatives from the former Confederate states to take their places in Congress.
Instead, the Radical Republicans created a joint committee of representatives and senators to oversee
Reconstruction. In the 1866 congressional elections, they gained control of the House, and in the ensuing
years they pushed for the dismantling of the old southern order and the complete reconstruction of
the South. This effort put them squarely at odds with President Johnson, who remained unwilling to
compromise with Congress, setting the stage for a series of clashes.
16.2 Congress and the Remaking of the South, 18651866
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
Describe the efforts made by Congress in 1865 and 1866 to bring to life its vision of
Reconstruction
Explain how the Fourteenth Amendment transformed the Constitution
President Johnson and Congresss views on Reconstruction grew even further apart as Johnsons
presidency progressed. Congress repeatedly pushed for greater rights for freed people and a far more
thorough reconstruction of the South, while Johnson pushed for leniency and a swifter reintegration.
President Johnson lacked Lincolns political skills and instead exhibited a stubbornness and
confrontational approach that aggravated an already difficult situation.
THE FREEDMENS BUREAU
Freed people everywhere celebrated the end of slavery and immediately began to take steps to improve
their own condition by seeking what had long been denied to them: land, financial security, education, and
the ability to participate in the political process. They wanted to be reunited with family members, grasp
the opportunity to make their own independent living, and exercise their right to have a say in their own
government.
However, they faced the wrath of defeated but un-reconciled southerners who were determined to
keep blacks an impoverished and despised underclass. Recognizing the widespread devastation in the
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South and the dire situation of freed people, Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and
Abandoned Lands in March 1865, popularly known as the Freedmens Bureau. Lincoln had approved of
the bureau, giving it a charter for one year.
The Freedmens Bureau engaged in many initiatives to ease the transition from slavery to freedom. It
delivered food to blacks and whites alike in the South. It helped freed people gain labor contracts, a
significant step in the creation of wage labor in place of slavery. It helped reunite families of freedmen,
and it also devoted much energy to education, establishing scores of public schools where freed people
and poor whites could receive both elementary and higher education. Respected institutions such as Fisk
University, Hampton University, and Dillard University are part of the legacy of the Freedmens Bureau.
In this endeavor, the Freedmens Bureau received support from Christian organizations that had long
advocated for abolition, such as the American Missionary Association (AMA). The AMA used the
knowledge and skill it had acquired while working in missions in Africa and with American Indian groups
to establish and run schools for freed slaves in the postwar South. While men and women, white and black,
taught in these schools, the opportunity was crucially important for participating women (Figure 16.5). At
the time, many opportunities, including admission to most institutes of higher learning, remained closed
to women. Participating in these schools afforded these women the opportunities they otherwise may have
been denied. Additionally, the fact they often risked life and limb to work in these schools in the South
demonstrated to the nation that women could play a vital role in American civic life.
Figure 16.5 The Freedmens Bureau, as shown in this 1866 illustration from Frank Leslies Illustrated Newspaper,
created many schools for black elementary school students. Many of the teachers who provided instruction in these
southern schools, though by no means all, came from northern states.
The schools that the Freedmens Bureau and the AMA established inspired great dismay and resentment
among the white populations in the South and were sometimes targets of violence. Indeed, the Freedmens
Bureaus programs and its very existence were sources of controversy. Racists and others who resisted this
type of federal government activism denounced it as both a waste of federal money and a foolish effort
that encouraged laziness among blacks. Congress renewed the bureaus charter in 1866, but President
Johnson, who steadfastly believed that the work of restoring the Union had been completed, vetoed the re-
chartering. Radical Republicans continued to support the bureau, igniting a contest between Congress and
the president that intensified during the next several years. Part of this dispute involved conflicting visions
of the proper role of the federal government. Radical Republicans believed in the constructive power of
the federal government to ensure a better day for freed people. Others, including Johnson, denied that the
government had any such role to play.
Chapter 16 | The Era of Reconstruction, 18651877 457
AMERICANA
The Freedmens Bureau
The image below (Figure 16.6) shows a campaign poster for Hiester Clymer, who ran for governor of
Pennsylvania in 1866 on a platform of white supremacy.
Figure 16.6 The caption of this image reads, The Freedmans Bureau! An agency to keep the Negro
in idleness at the expense of the white man. Twice vetoed by the President, and made a law by
Congress. Support Congress & you support the Negro. Sustain the President & you protect the white
man.
The image in the foreground shows an indolent black man wondering, Whar is de use for me to work as
long as dey make dese appropriations. White men toil in the background, chopping wood and plowing a
field. The text above them reads, In the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread. . . . The white man must
work to keep his children and pay his taxes. In the middle background, the Freedmens Bureau looks
like the Capitol, and the pillars are inscribed with racist assumptions of things blacks value, like rum,
idleness, and white women. On the right are estimates of the costs of the Freedmens Bureau and the
bounties (fees for enlistment) given to both white and black Union soldiers.
What does this poster indicate about the political climate of the Reconstruction era? How might different
people have received this image?
BLACK CODES
In 1865 and 1866, as Johnson announced the end of Reconstruction, southern states began to pass a series
of discriminatory state laws collectively known as black codes. While the laws varied in both content and
severity from state to state, the goal of the laws remained largely consistent. In effect, these codes were
designed to maintain the social and economic structure of racial slavery in the absence of slavery itself. The
laws codified white supremacy by restricting the civic participation of freed slavesdepriving them of the
right to vote, the right to serve on juries, the right to own or carry weapons, and, in some cases, even the
right to rent or lease land.
A chief component of the black codes was designed to fulfill an important economic need in the postwar
South. Slavery had been a pillar of economic stability in the region before the war. To maintain agricultural
production, the South had relied on slaves to work the land. Now the region was faced with the daunting
prospect of making the transition from a slave economy to one where labor was purchased on the open
market. Not surprisingly, planters in the southern states were reluctant to make such a transition. Instead,
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they drafted black laws that would re-create the antebellum economic structure with the faade of a free-
labor system.
Black codes used a variety of tactics to tie freed slaves to the land. To work, the freed slaves were forced
to sign contracts with their employer. These contracts prevented blacks from working for more than one
employer. This meant that, unlike in a free labor market, blacks could not positively influence wages and
conditions by choosing to work for the employer who gave them the best terms. The predictable outcome
was that freed slaves were forced to work for very low wages. With such low wages, and no ability to
supplement income with additional work, workers were reduced to relying on loans from their employers.
The debt that these workers incurred ensured that they could never escape from their condition. Those
former slaves who attempt to violate these contracts could be fined or beaten. Those who refused to sign
contracts at all could be arrested for vagrancy and then made to work for no wages, essentially being
reduced to the very definition of a slave.
The black codes left no doubt that the former breakaway Confederate states intended to maintain white
supremacy at all costs. These draconian state laws helped spur the congressional Joint Committee on
Reconstruction into action. Its members felt that ending slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment did not
go far enough. Congress extended the life of the Freedmens Bureau to combat the black codes and in April
1866 passed the first Civil Rights Act, which established the citizenship of African Americans. This was a
significant step that contradicted the Supreme Courts 1857 Dred Scott decision, which declared that blacks
could never be citizens. The law also gave the federal government the right to intervene in state affairs to
protect the rights of citizens, and thus, of African Americans. President Johnson, who continued to insist
that restoration of the United States had already been accomplished, vetoed the 1866 Civil Rights Act.
However, Congress mustered the necessary votes to override his veto. Despite the Civil Rights Act, the
black codes endured, forming the foundation of the racially discriminatory Jim Crow segregation policies
that impoverished generations of African Americans.
THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
Questions swirled about the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The Supreme Court, in its
1857 decision forbidding black citizenship, had interpreted the Constitution in a certain way; many argued
that the 1866 statute, alone, could not alter that interpretation. Seeking to overcome all legal questions,
Radical Republicans drafted another constitutional amendment with provisions that followed those of the
1866 Civil Rights Act. In July 1866, the Fourteenth Amendment went to state legislatures for ratification.
The Fourteenth Amendment stated, All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the
jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. It gave citizens
equal protection under both the state and federal law, overturning the Dred Scott decision. It eliminated
the three-fifths compromise of the 1787 Constitution, whereby slaves had been counted as three-fifths of a
free white person, and it reduced the number of House representatives and Electoral College electors for
any state that denied suffrage to any adult male inhabitant, black or white. As Radical Republicans had
proposed in the Wade-Davis bill, individuals who had engaged in insurrection or rebellion [against] . . .
or given aid or comfort to the enemies [of] the United States were barred from holding political (state or
federal) or military office unless pardoned by two-thirds of Congress.
The amendment also answered the question of debts arising from the Civil War by specifying that all
debts incurred by fighting to defeat the Confederacy would be honored. Confederate debts, however,
would not: [N]either the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred
in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation
of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void. Thus, claims by
former slaveholders requesting compensation for slave property had no standing. Any state that ratified
the Fourteenth Amendment would automatically be readmitted. Yet, all former Confederate states refused
to ratify the amendment in 1866.
Chapter 16 | The Era of Reconstruction, 18651877 459
President Johnson called openly for the rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment, a move that drove a
further wedge between him and congressional Republicans. In late summer of 1866, he gave a series of
speeches, known as the swing around the circle, designed to gather support for his mild version of
Reconstruction. Johnson felt that ending slavery went far enough; extending the rights and protections
of citizenship to freed people, he believed, went much too far. He continued to believe that blacks were
inferior to whites. The presidents swing around the circle speeches to gain support for his program and
derail the Radical Republicans proved to be a disaster, as hecklers provoked Johnson to make damaging
statements. Radical Republicans charged that Johnson had been drunk when he made his speeches. As a
result, Johnsons reputation plummeted.
Read the text of the Fourteenth Amendment (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/
15Fourteena) and then view the original document (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/
15Fourteenb) at Our Documents.
16.3 Radical Reconstruction, 18671872
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
Explain the purpose of the second phase of Reconstruction and some of the key
legislation put forward by Congress
Describe the impeachment of President Johnson
Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of the Fifteenth Amendment
During the Congressional election in the fall of 1866, Republicans gained even greater victories. This was
due in large measure to the northern voter opposition that had developed toward President Johnson
because of the inflexible and overbearing attitude he had exhibited in the White House, as well as his
missteps during his 1866 speaking tour. Leading Radical Republicans in Congress included Massachusetts
senator Charles Sumner (the same senator whom proslavery South Carolina representative Preston Brooks
had thrashed with his cane in 1856 during the Bleeding Kansas crisis) and Pennsylvania representative
Thaddeus Stevens. These men and their supporters envisioned a much more expansive change in the
South. Sumner advocated integrating schools and giving black men the right to vote while
disenfranchising many southern voters. For his part, Stevens considered that the southern states had
forfeited their rights as states when they seceded, and were no more than conquered territory that the
federal government could organize as it wished. He envisioned the redistribution of plantation lands and
U.S. military control over the former Confederacy.
Their goals included the transformation of the South from an area built on slave labor to a free-labor
society. They also wanted to ensure that freed people were protected and given the opportunity for a better
life. Violent race riots in Memphis, Tennessee, and New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1866 gave greater urgency
to the second phase of Reconstruction, begun in 1867.
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http://openstaxcollege.org/l/15Fourteena
http://openstaxcollege.org/l/15Fourteena
http://openstaxcollege.org/l/15Fourteenb
http://openstaxcollege.org/l/15Fourteenb
THE RECONSTRUCTION ACTS
The 1867 Military Reconstruction Act, which encompassed the vision of Radical Republicans, set a new
direction for Reconstruction in the South. Republicans saw this law, and three supplementary laws passed
by Congress that year, called the Reconstruction Acts, as a way to deal with the disorder in the South. The
1867 act divided the ten southern states that had yet to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment into five military
districts (Tennessee had already been readmitted to the Union by this time and so was excluded from
these acts). Martial law was imposed, and a Union general commanded each district. These generals and
twenty thousand federal troops stationed in the districts were charged with protecting freed people. When
a supplementary act extended the right to vote to all freed men of voting age (21 years old), the military
in each district oversaw the elections and the registration of voters. Only after new state constitutions
had been written and states had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment could these states rejoin the Union.
Predictably, President Johnson vetoed the Reconstruction Acts, viewing them as both unnecessary and
unconstitutional. Once again, Congress overrode Johnsons vetoes, and by the end of 1870, all the southern
states under military rule had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and been restored to the Union (Figure
16.7).
Figure 16.7 The map above shows the five military districts established by the 1867 Military Reconstruction Act and
the date each state rejoined the Union. Tennessee was not included in the Reconstruction Acts as it had already
been readmitted to the Union at the time of their passage.
THE IMPEACHME
