Lecture: Reconstruction
Lecture script · about 15–20 minutes spoken · Week 15
Opening
Picture a schoolroom where a grandmother and her grandson sit on the same bench, learning the same letters. Or picture a family going through old records, page by page, looking for a name they lost long ago. Or picture a law student reading the sentence that decides who is a citizen. All three of them are standing inside the question of this lecture. What did freedom and citizenship mean after slavery, and who decided?
You've built the tools for this. In Week 5 you read the Declaration's claim that all men are created equal. In Week 6 you read the Constitution and learned that an amendment takes effect only once it's ratified. In Week 12 you read Dred Scott, where the Court's majority wrote Black Americans out of citizenship. And in Week 14 you read the Emancipation Proclamation and followed the war to its end in 1865.
This is the last teaching week of the course. In this lecture I'll take you from 1865 to 1877. We'll read three amendments, we'll name the violence that tried to undo them, and we'll end by reading the whole roster again. Some of this is hard to hear. I'll say it plainly, and you can take it at your own pace.
1. Presidential Reconstruction
Imagine a club that broke its own rules and then asked to come back. One leader says, sign a card and walk in. That's the first plan the country tried.
Andrew Johnson became President when Lincoln was killed. Presidential Reconstruction was Johnson's policy of 1865 to 1866, which readmitted the Southern states on lenient terms, pardoned former Confederates, and gave freedpeople almost no protection. Freedpeople, the men, women, and children freed from slavery, had hoped for land of their own. Johnson ordered confiscated and abandoned land handed back to its former owners.
Then the new Southern legislatures passed Black Codes, laws that restricted the work, movement, and rights of freedpeople. And in 1866 Johnson vetoed the Freedmen's Bureau bill and broke with the Republicans in Congress.
Pause and try this. Under Presidential Reconstruction, what did the former Confederate states have to give up to return?
Think about the word lenient.
Here's the answer. Very little, because Johnson readmitted them on lenient terms and pardoned their leaders.
2. Congressional Reconstruction and the impeachment
Now imagine the club's members overruling that leader on every call. Sooner or later, someone tries to remove the leader.
The Republicans in Congress, led by the Radical Republicans, took over. Congressional Reconstruction was the policy Congress imposed from the Reconstruction Acts of 1867. Congress passed those acts over Johnson's veto. They divided the former Confederate states into military districts, and each state had to write a new constitution and let Black men vote before it could come back.
The fight ended in a trial. Impeachment is a formal charge of wrongdoing brought by the House, which sends the case to the Senate. The House impeached Johnson in 1868. The Senate's own record gives the tally: 35 for conviction and 19 against. That's 54 senators. Two-thirds of 54 is 36. So conviction fell one vote short, and Johnson was acquitted.
Pause and try this. Which policy came from Congress: lenient readmission with pardons, or the Reconstruction Acts of 1867?
Ask who wrote each one.
Here's the answer. The Reconstruction Acts of 1867, because lenient readmission was the President's policy, not Congress's.
3. The 13th Amendment
Picture a sign on a door that says no entry, with small print underneath that says except staff. The small print matters.
Every amendment takes two steps. Congress passes it and sends it to the states, and it's ratified when enough states approve it. The 13th Amendment is the constitutional amendment ratified in 1865 that abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States, except as a punishment for crime. The National Archives keeps it.
Its text says neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist in the United States, except as a punishment for crime after a conviction. That's the small print. A close reader notices it.
Here's the link to last week. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 applied to areas in rebellion. The 13th Amendment of 1865 ended slavery everywhere. That's 2 years apart.
Pause and try this. A classmate says the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery in every state. Which document actually did?
Match each document to its reach.
Here's the answer. The 13th Amendment of 1865, because the proclamation of 1863 applied only to areas in rebellion.
4. The 14th Amendment
Think about a birth certificate. It's a small paper, but it can decide whether you count as a citizen. Now imagine your country's highest court had said a whole group of people born here could never be citizens. That was the law after Dred Scott.
The 14th Amendment is the constitutional amendment ratified in 1868 that made all persons born or naturalized in the United States citizens and barred states from denying due process or the equal protection of the laws. It's this week's Primary Source Workshop document, and the National Archives keeps it.
Let's source it. Congress passed it in 1866, and it was ratified in 1868. The archive's citation carries a third date in 1866, the day the resolution went out to the states. And the archive says a certificate from the Secretary of State later declared it ratified by 28 of the 37 states. So when you date it, say which step you mean.
Now read it closely. It says that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens. And it says no state may deny any person the equal protection of the laws. That reverses what the Court held in Dred Scott, 11 years earlier. Notice what the first section leaves out, though. It doesn't mention the vote at all.
Pause and try this. Did the 14th Amendment give Black men the right to vote?
Read for the word vote.
Here's the answer. No, because the 14th defined citizenship and equal protection, and its first section says nothing about voting.
5. The 15th Amendment
Picture a club rule that says no one may be turned away because of their hometown. That protects people from one kind of exclusion, and from nothing else.
The 15th Amendment is the constitutional amendment ratified in 1870 that barred the United States or any state from denying the vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Congress passed it in 1869.
Dating it takes care. The archive's transcript opens with the day a session of Congress began, back in 1868. That isn't the day Congress passed the amendment. And a Library of Congress exhibit gives a different day in 1870 for its ratification than the National Archives does. The two agree on the year, and this course uses the National Archives' record.
Now look at the list in its text: race, color, and previous condition of servitude. Sex isn't on that list.
Pause and try this. Did the 15th Amendment give women a constitutional right to vote?
Read only the list.
Here's the answer. No, because its list names race, color, and previous condition of servitude, and it does not name sex.
6. Keeping the three amendments apart
Picture three keys on one ring that look almost alike. Each one opens a different door.
The Reconstruction amendments are the 13th, 14th, and 15th, and here's the memory line: freedom, citizenship, vote. The 13th abolished slavery, except as a punishment for crime. The 14th made citizens and promised equal protection. The 15th barred denying the vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. They were ratified in 1865, 1868, and 1870.
Mixing them up is the most common slip in this week, and it's an easy one to make. They came close together, and they all concern Black freedom. So say the memory line before you answer.
Pause and try this. Which amendment is about citizenship?
Say the memory line.
Here's the answer. The 14th, because the order is freedom, citizenship, vote.
7. What freedpeople built
Think about the first thing you'd do if a lifetime of being owned ended. A lot of people say the same thing: find my family.
That's what freedpeople did. Slavery and sale had torn families apart, and they searched for husbands, wives, children, and parents. The Freedmen's Bureau, the federal agency Congress created in 1865, helped build schools and oversaw labor contracts, and its records hold the names of hundreds of thousands of people.
They founded churches of their own. They founded schools, and grandparents sat beside grandchildren to learn to read. On St. Helena Island, a brick church that enslaved people had built in 1855 held one of the first schools. They sought land and fair wages. Black men voted and held office, and in South Carolina Black legislators outnumbered white ones. Robert Smalls, born enslaved in Beaufort, helped write South Carolina's constitution of 1868 and later served five terms in Congress.
Pause and try this. Name two things freedpeople built for themselves.
Think beyond the laws.
Here's the answer. Families reunited, churches, schools, and votes are all fair picks, because freedpeople did these things themselves.
8. The violence
I'm going to describe murder and terror now, plainly.
Picture an election morning. Armed men on horseback ride past a polling place. Some voters turn back.
White Southerners who wouldn't accept Black citizenship turned to terror. The Ku Klux Klan was a white-supremacist terrorist organization formed in Tennessee after the Civil War. Klansmen burned Black schools and churches. They attacked Black families. They threatened and murdered Republican leaders, and they surrounded polling places with armed men. In Memphis in 1866, a white mob murdered Black residents.
Congress passed the Enforcement Acts, and federal courts convicted Klansmen. But the violence went on, and in the North, support for protecting freedpeople faded. Remember the rule from Week 1. Contextualization explains a source. It never excuses what the source describes.
Pause and try this. Was this violence random crime, or did it have targets?
Ask who was attacked.
Here's the answer. It had targets, because it struck voters, officeholders, schools, and churches, the very things freedpeople were building.
9. The end of Reconstruction
Picture a referee walking off in the middle of a fight. The fight doesn't stop. One side wins it.
The presidential election of 1876 was disputed. Its settlement brought a new administration that withdrew the last federal troops protecting Southern statehouses. Reconstruction ended in 1877.
Let's put the years in order: 1865, 1868, 1870, and 1877. The gaps are 3 years, then 2, then 7. The whole span is 12 years, and 3 plus 2 plus 7 comes back to 12.
Pause and try this. Did Reconstruction end because its goals were met?
Ask what was still unprotected.
Here's the answer. No, because it ended amid violence and Northern retreat, with freedpeople's rights left unprotected.
10. How far did Reconstruction fail?
Think about a building project that stops halfway. One neighbor says it failed. Another says the foundation's still there, and people built on it later.
Historians still debate this, and this course won't hand you a verdict. One side argues it failed: by 1877 the national government had abandoned freedpeople's protection, few received land, and violence drove many Black voters from the polls. The other side argues it achieved lasting change: the three amendments stayed in the Constitution, and the families, churches, and schools freedpeople built endured. Some historians add that failed is the wrong word, because Reconstruction was overthrown by violence.
Here's the line I want you to hold. The debate is about how to weigh the record. It isn't about whether the violence happened, or what the amendments say.
Pause and try this. Is it a matter of debate whether the Klan attacked Black voters?
Separate the record from its weighing.
Here's the answer. No, because that's a documented fact, and the debate is only over how to weigh Reconstruction's results.
11. The course synthesis
Picture 36 index cards spread on a table, one for every dated document you've read. The first is a royal grant of 1492. The last is the 15th Amendment of 1870. The course runs to 1877, so that's 385 years.
The course synthesis is one claim about the whole period, argued from three dated documents and ending in one plain sentence. Here's one. In 1776, the Declaration said all men are created equal. In 1857, Dred Scott held that Black Americans were not citizens under the Constitution. In 1868, the 14th Amendment made all persons born or naturalized in the United States citizens. That's 92 years. The claim: who counted as a citizen under the nation's founding law was fought over and changed, and the 14th reversed the Court 11 years later.
And here's the other reading a fair argument has to admit. A promise written in the Constitution isn't the same as a promise kept.
Pause and try this. Which of the three documents reversed Dred Scott?
Look for the word citizens.
Here's the answer. The 14th Amendment, because it made all persons born or naturalized in the United States citizens.
Closing
Let me pull it together. Presidential Reconstruction was Johnson's lenient readmission, and the Black Codes followed. Congressional Reconstruction began with the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, and Johnson was impeached and acquitted by one vote. The 13th Amendment ended slavery, the 14th made citizens and promised equal protection, and the 15th barred racial bars to the vote. Freedpeople built families, churches, schools, and votes, and white-supremacist violence attacked all of it. Reconstruction ended in 1877, and how far it failed is a real debate. And the course synthesis asks you to argue one claim from three documents.
Next in this module come the slide deck, the Readings and Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz. After this module, the cumulative final asks you to use every move from the course, the four moves and the one plain sentence, on every unit.
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