Hey there and welcome back to Heimler's History. Now let's keep going through Unit 5 of the AP U.S. History curriculum, and in this video we're going to see exactly how the process of post-Civil War reconstruction failed. So if you're ready to get them brain cows milked, let's get to it. So in this video we're going to look at two historical realities.
First we're going to consider how the Southern society and economics didn't change all that much after the Civil War was over. And then second we're going to consider how and why Reconstruction officially came to an end. First, let's look at Southern society after the war.
So having recently been emancipated from slavery, the black population of the South had to adjust to their new reality of freedom. And in order to gain independence from white control, they established black schools for their children and even founded black colleges like Morehouse and Howard. Some black men did the unthinkable and got themselves elected to various representative offices. Additionally, Congress established the Freedmen's Bureau, which helped reunite families separated by slavery and arrange for their education and social welfare.
So with all of that going on, you might be tempted to think that everything was going great for black people in the South, but here's where I tell you not so much. Despite the gains I just mentioned, the white population in the South was busy creating societal conditions that were nigh unto a duplication of pre-Civil War slavery and segregation, and let me just give you two examples. First example, the system of sharecropping. Now let me tell you what the system of sharecropping replaced before I tell you just what sharecropping was. Just because slavery had been abolished by the 13th Amendment didn't mean that the South stopped being an agricultural powerhouse.
No, there were still fields and there were still crops as far as the eye could see, and someone needed to work them. And now that slavery was illegal, where would the Southerners find workers for their fields? Well the Southerners figured out a- plan that seemed pretty good to them and it went a little something like this.
Black workers would agree to work in the fields, but in order to have access to this gainful employment they had to sign a contract that bound them perpetually to the plantation and gave plantation owners the right to extract unlimited labor for them. Now that sounds like something I've heard of somewhere else. What was it?
Oh, slavery. Eventually, though, this system grew less extreme and gave way to sharecropping. In this system, landowners provided seed and farm supplies to a worker in exchange for a share of the harvest. In theory, this was a pretty decent opportunity for newly emancipated black folks to get on their feet since many of them had no capital to speak of.
However, in practice, sharecropping just turned into another form of coerced servitude that wasn't unlike slavery at all. And to be fair, poor whites were the victims of this system, too. So that was one way the South remained. basically the same before and after the war. The second way was the ongoing belief of white supremacy in Southern society.
Just because the Constitution now stated that former enslaved people were now citizens, that did not mean that Southerners had to accept them as equals, at least they didn't think so. And to this end we see the formation of a secret society organized to terrorize black people in the South, namely the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was founded in 1867 on the principle that the white race was superior to the black race, and in order for them to spread this message, members of the Klan burned buildings, controlled local politics through intimidation, and most notorious of all, perpetuated public and private lynchings of black folks who, in their estimation, had refused to accept their place in the world. So in these ways we can see the significant continuities between pre-war South and post-war South.
Now related to this was the effort to codify the notion of white supremacy into law, and to that end many southern legislatures adopted a series of laws known as Black Codes. Now, we don't have time to get into the many, many restrictions these codes placed on black people in the South, but let me just give you three examples so you can get a flavor of what these laws did. First, black codes prohibited black Americans from borrowing money to buy or rent land.
And since many of them couldn't hope to buy or rent land without borrowing, this meant that they were prime candidates for the sharecropping system. Second, black codes prohibited black people from testifying against white people in court, and that meant that violence and injustice against black people would never be heard in court. Third, black coats provided for the racial segregation of Southern society. Okay, those are some of the ways that the South basically maintained its character before and after the war. And all of this happened while federal troops were stationed in the South in order to make sure that Reconstruction policies were upheld.
And if it was that bad under federal occupation, What would happen when the federal troops were gone? Well, that brings us to the next part of the story, namely the end of Reconstruction in 1877. Now, the reason Reconstruction officially ended was because of a hotly contested presidential election, namely the election of 1876 between Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes. Now, this election wasn't the only reason that Reconstruction ended. Of course, like by the 1870s, many Northerners were more concerned with industrial development than with the race problem in the South, and they just sort of lost their zeal for reform. But we're going to focus on the election.
Now, Tilden won the majority of the popular vote in this election, but neither Tilden nor Hayes gained enough electoral votes to officially claim victory. The problem was basically confined to three states, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida. And in those states, both the Republicans and the Democrats claimed victory, which is hilarious because I'm recording this in 2020 and that's kind of the story we're living right now. So in order to rectify this argument, a special electoral commission was formed, and this commission just so happened to have a majority of Republicans. And wouldn't you know it, the commission declared these three states for Hayes the Republican.
Now the Democrats were outraged at this, understandably so, and they threatened to block Hayes'inauguration. And so in order to calm this tension down, an agreement was made, which became known as the Compromise of 1877. In this arrangement, the Democrats agreed to concede the election to Hayes. But they had a very significant condition. In exchange, all federal troops had to be removed from the South.
So all parties shook hands and agreed to the end of Reconstruction. As the federal troops left the South, the Democrats came to dominate once again and created an even bleaker reality for the Southern black population left behind.