2. Radical Republicans
• Support declined
People focused more on their own lives
Grant’s Scandals
• Poor public office appointments
Corruption of appointees
• Grant
Claimed no part in scandals, but reputation was hurt
Won reelection in 1872, but Northerners lost faith in
Republicans & their policies
3. Amnesty for Confederates?
• Northerners & Southerners both wanted the
withdrawal of federal troops & amnesty for
Confederates
1869
• Republican opponents: began taking back the
south one state at a time
• Chipped away at African Americans rights
4. End of Reconstruction resulted from this election
Choice of President decided by Congress
• Due to election returns
• Deal made between Republicans & Democrats
Republicans: Rutherford B. Hayes; would continue reconstruction
Democrats: Tilden; would end reconstruction
Won popular vote; 20 electoral votes disputed; one vote short of 185 needed
to win electoral college
Special Commissions
• 15 members appointed by Congress
• Most were Republicans
• 20 electoral votes given to Hayes
Democrats did not fight decision because Hayes told them privately he
would end reconstruction
Once in office Hayes removed federal troops from the South
5. End of Reconstruction
• African Americans lost political & civil rights
• Several techniques used to stop blacks from voting
Poll tax: must pay a tax before voting; kept poor whites &
freedmen from voting
Literacy test: required to read & explain section of Constitution
Grandfather clause allowed illiterate white males to vote; test avoided if
father or grandfather had been eligible to vote on Jan. 1, 1867
Segregation: enforced separation of races; barred mixing of
races in almost every aspect of life, know as Jim Crow laws
(born in separate hospitals, buried in separate cemeteries,
separate playgrounds, restaurants, & schools, travel on specific
seats on streetcars or take black streetcars); Laws were upheld
in local courts
6. 1896
• Supreme Court upheld segregation laws
Plessy v. Ferguson
Homer Plessy arrested for sitting in a coach marked for whites
only
Court upheld Louisiana law of segregated streetcars
Ok if they were equal
• Separate but equal rule was in effect until the
1950s
Facilities were rarely equal
7. Poverty forced freedmen & poor whites to
become sharecroppers
• Work the land for the farmer in return for a share in the
value of the crop
Landlord
• Supplied living quarters, tools, seed, & food on credit
• Crops were harvested & sold and amount given to
sharecroppers was figured out
In times of bad harvests or low crop prices sharecroppers
often earned enough money to pay what they owned
landlords
Locked into a cycle of debt
8. South’s economy began to recover
1880s
• New industries
• Agriculture in the South recovered, especially cotton
production
• Tobacco production also increased
Southern investors started or expanded industries
Textile industry became important part of economy
South began to develop their natural resources
• New mills to use South’s iron, timber, & oil
• South no longer dependent on cotton