CHAPTER 22 PAGEANT
QUESTIONS
1. Describe the South following the Civil War.
The structure of the Southern civilization was demolished. The economic life stopped as the banks and businesses closed their doors because of inflation. Factories weren't running and transportation systems broke down because of wartime where the soldiers twisted and corkscrewed the rails. The agriculture-backbone of Southern economy-was severely crippled. The land was full of weeds, the cotton was not being produced in amounts like before, there were no cattle, and very little seeds to plant. Only until 1870 did they once again begin to crop like they had previously in 1860. Resentment against the Northern Yankees grew amongst the Southerners.
2. In the decade following the war how did African-American respond to emancipation?
Some former slaves still stayed loyal to their masters and stayed to help patch up the plantation, while many slaves demonstrated violent retaliation against their former masters. Emancipated slaves also took to the road to reunite and find their family members that had been separated from them, which also led to a majority of the slaves moving westward in search of new opportunities. There were some slaves who sharecropped with their former masters and would be bound to the land for generations to come. They also began to make social changes in that they demanded to be called "Mr" and "Mrs" and began to formalize "slave marriages."
3. Assess the effectiveness of the Freedman's Bureau.
Although the Freedmen's Bureau was able to educate some freedman and white refugees by opening elementary class schools that could sit up to four generations of family in some areas such as North Carolina, many areas were more meager. The bureau was authorized to settle former slave on 40 acres of land confiscated from the Confederates, but in actuality little land actually was given to the freedmen. Local administrations along with planters worked to chase out the African Americans from the towns or persuaded them to work with contracts for their former master under terrible conditions. Only a few years after it was established, it was finally destroyed and only managed to make a few changes, therefore making it successful to a certain degree.
4. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Andrew Johnson.
Andrew Johnson was intelligent, able, forceful, and gifted with homespun honesty. He was devoted to duty and to the people and was a champion of states' rights and the Constitution. However, he was hotheaded, contentious, and stubborn. Johnson was a Southerner who did not understand the North, a Tennessean who had earned the distrust of the South, a Democrat who had never been accepted by the Republicans, and a president who had never been elected to office. He was the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. Johnson had many weaknesses that outweighed his strengths, making him a weak president.
5. How did the President's' plan for reconstruction differ from the Radical Republicans' plan?
At this time Lincoln was president and he thought that for the Southern states to be readmitted they needed 10% of their people to pledge an oath of allegiance to the Union. The radicals did not agree with his plan. Instead they believed it would encourage enslavement and so they came up with the Wade-Davis bill, which required 50% of the state's voters to take the oath and demanded stronger safeguards for the emancipation. Despite their differences, the two things they agreed on was the requirement of taking an oath of allegiance to the Union and to follow through with the emancipation.
6. What were the Black Codes? How did they keep they hinder the freedmen?
Black Codes were laws that intended to regulate the affairs of the emancipated blacks which were aimed to ensure the labor force of the Southern states without the slave system. Labor contracts were made by the freedmen and an employer that subjected freedmen to work for usually more than a year and at pittance wages, Capture freedmen could be fined then hired out to repay the fines. These oppressive laws stated that blacks could not serve in jury, lease or rent land, and could be punished for "idleness" where they would work on chain gang. Because of these conditions, many freedmen were forced to be sharecropper farmers where some remained on the land for generations.
