Chapter 15: Reconstruction, 1865-1877 Expanded Timeline

Chapter 15: Reconstruction, 1865-1877 Expanded Timeline

Lincoln indicated his views on postwar policy by offering secessionist states a chance to return to the Union if 10 percent of the voters who accepted amnesty took an oath of allegiance. Many Republicans thought the plan was too lenient.

When the radical wing of the Republican Party passed a strict plan outlining the conditions under which the southern states could return to the Union, Lincoln, wanting to steer a more flexible and moderate course, pocket-vetoed the measure. In so doing, he again demonstrated his strong political judgment in not committing himself to a plan of action until he felt it was necessary.

As part of their radical program, Republicans established a government bureau that would provide emergency aid to former slaves during the transition to freedom. The Bureau offered freedmen food and clothing, legal assistance in acquiring land or signing labor contracts, and even some schooling and help in relocating family members. Lincoln assassinated; Andrew Johnson succeeds as president Soon after the creation of the Freedmen's Bureau, on April 14, Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. He died the next morning, leaving the question of what he might have done to implement Reconstruction unanswered. Lincoln's vice-president, Andrew Johnson, a former Democrat and southerner with limited judgment, became president. Johnson implements his restoration plan While Congress was out of session for most of 1865, Johnson implemented a moderate program to allow southern states back into the Union. But support for the program among Republicans eroded when Johnson allowed too many ex-Confederates to regain power. Joint Committee on Reconstruction formed In late 1865, as Republicans became aware that Johnson's program was too lenient, they refused to allow southern delegations to take their seats in Congress and formed a committee to begin public hearings on conditions in the South. Republicans hoped that they could still cooperate with Johnson to formulate a strategy for readmittance of southern states.

When Johnson vetoed a new Freedmen's Bureau Act in early 1866, Radical Republicans put together the Civil Rights Act and passed it over his veto. This was the first time Congress had ever overridden a presidential veto. On the strength of their action, Radical Republicans passed and sent out for ratification the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing all citizens civil rights and due process.

The urgency to act to protect the rights and lives of southern blacks intensified as southern whites violently struck out to control freedmen. Massive riots in Memphis against blacks, resulting in forty-seven deaths, convinced Congress that it had to do more. Johnson makes disastrous "swing around the circle"

Johnson, sensing the rising radical tide, opposed the Fourteenth Amendment and, by campaigning in the congressional elections on that issue, essentially stood as a Democrat against the Republicans. When he made the unprecedented move of actively campaigning on a railroad tour from Washington to Chicago and St. Louis, he was openly heckled and engaged in shouting matches with his listeners. Johnson was humiliated in the congressional elections of 1866, when the Republicans won a three-to-one majority in Congress, which enabled them to proceed with a more radical Reconstruction without him.

Buoyed by a major Republican victory, the Radicals launched radical Reconstruction with the Reconstruction Act of 1867. The act divided the South into five military districts and established stricter requirements for readmission. The Radical Republicans also sought to control the president by limiting his ability to hire and fire officials in the cabinet, through the Tenure of Office Act.

When Johnson violated the new law (which was later declared unconstitutional), the Radical Republican Congress impeached him and the Senate trial came within a single vote of removing him from office in May 1868.

This amendment, which guarantees every citizen's civil rights and due process, would become the foundation for the civil rights movement in the mid-twentieth century.

On the strength of his opposition to Johnson and the rising tide of support for Reconstruction, Grant was elected by a strong margin and the Republicans maintained control of both houses of Congress. The Republicans now had a mandate to implement Reconstruction in the South.

Radical Reconstruction enabled Republicans, including many African Americans, to gain power in southern government. With support from the North, these new governments instituted significant political, economic, and social reform. In response, white racists in Tennessee formed a social club called the Ku Klux Klan, which spread across the South. The KKK was a paramilitary force whose members served the interests of the Democratic Party by launching a terrorist counterrevolution to push back gains made by blacks.

The Fifteenth Amendment, guaranteeing all male citizens the right to vote regardless of race, gained the required ratification of three-fourths of the states when the unreconstructed states of Virginia, Mississippi, Texas, and Georgia were required to ratify it before they were readmitted to the Union.

Congress tried to halt the rising power and impact of the Ku Klux Klan, but there was decreasing support in the North for Reconstruction and the act was poorly enforced.

In spite of a continuing activist government, cynicism, corruption, and growing interest in other issues weakened support for Reconstruction. The reform liberal wing of the Republican Party formed a separate faction and advocated civil-service reform, smaller government, and limited suffrage, and opposed, therefore, continuing radical Reconstruction. In response, Grant ran for reelection and won on promises of reconciliation with the South. For most Republicans, the terms of political debate had shifted away from Reconstruction.

Support for Reconstruction was further undermined by economic depression, which deepened Americans' concerns about governmental corruption and increased tensions between the working class and the middle class and industrial leaders. The issue of Reconstruction was being pushed off center stage.

When Democrats took up the liberal Republican call for reform, limited government, and reconciliation with the South, the party shook off its treasonous connotations and reemerged as an active force in national politics. The Democrats essentially ended political debate about the South and the Republicans' ability to formulate any southern policy when they took a majority in Congress for the first time since the secession crisis.

When Grant's secretary of the Treasury uncovered a tax-fraud scheme involving various government officials, scandal rocked the White House. Grant was left powerless and was soon abandoned by the Republican Party in the 1876 election.

By 1876, voters had lost interest in Reconstruction. When the presidential candidates tied in the electoral college, the election was thrown into Congress. A filibuster prevented any resolution from being reached in Congress, which appointed an electoral commission, resulting in a constitutional crisis that lasted for months.

Though it is unclear whether any deal was actually made, after meeting with Hayes, the Democrats ended their filibuster and allowed Hayes to be inaugurated. Soon after becoming president, Hayes ended Reconstruction by ordering federal troops in Louisiana and South Carolina to withdraw.

1849 California gold rush

in California. The territory's population grew explosively, as San Francisco became the

commercial center of an expanding mining empire in the Far West. Trans- continental travel

increased rapidly, generating pressure on the environment of the Great Plains, the traditional

life of native Americans, and on the federal government, which financed a transcontinental

railroad.

Chinese migration begins
Driven by poverty at home, the Chinese migrated throughout the Pacific Ocean area,

thousands of them coming to America. First employed in the gold fields and on the railroads,

they made up nearly 10 percent of California's population by 1880. The Chinese were regarded

as good workers by business leaders but were the targets of vicious racism and discrimination.

1862 Homestead Act
This act provided 160 acres of public land virtually free to settlers who were willing to live on it

for five years and "improve" (build a small dwelling) on it. An enormous inducement to

agricultural settlement, the act hastened the dispossession of native Americans and the

environmental transformation of the Great Plains.

1864 Yosemite Valley reserved as public park
Congress granted the valley to the state of California as an area set aside for public pleasure

and recreation in response to the destruction caused by early economic development. As the

earliest foundation of the national parks system, the establishment of this park was a milestone

environment.

1865 Long Drive of Texas longhorns begins
The longhorns were the wild descendants of Spanish cattle that had been brought to the New

World centuries earlier. Creating a makeshift bridge over gaps in the developing railroad system,

ranchers and cowboys drove large herds a thousand miles from Texas to Kansas railheads,

where they could be loaded on to trains bound for Chicago slaughterhouses.

1867 Patrons of Husbandry (the Grange) founded
Farmers first organized the Grange to create an opportunity for social and educational

activities. But the organization also gave them opportunities to discuss their agricultural

businesses and became a vehicle for cooperative economic enterprises and political activity.

U.S. government adopts reservation policy for Plains Indians

population. After warfare with the Plains tribes began, the government dealt with the issue by

forcing Indians onto designated lands, restricting them to those areas, and treating them as

dependent wards of the state.

1868 Indian treaty confirms Sioux rights to Powder River hunting grounds
According to the terms of this treaty, the western Sioux ceded to the whites all lands outside

the Dakota reservation; in return, the Sioux would retain their traditional rights to hunt along

the Powder River in modern Wyoming and Montana.

1869 Union Pacific-Central Pacific transcontinental railroad completed

the vast territory of the West. It also contributed to the dispossession of native Americans and

the environmental transformation of the region.

1874 Barbed wire invented

pointed wire around ordinary fence wire. Because the sharp points prevented cattle from

knocking down the fencing, it was possible for farmers to protect their crops from an invasion

of cattle from the range.

1875 Sioux ordered to vacate Powder River hunting grounds; war breaks out
The Indian Office of the United States government gave an order that violated the 1868

treaty, and western tribes began to organize in an attempt to preserve some freedom of

movement on the plains. This resistance, spearheaded by the Sioux Sitting Bull, led to the

Battle of the Little Big Horn and other struggles.

1876 Battle of Little Big Horn
Popularly known as "Custer's last stand," this Sioux and Cheyenne victory against the U.S.

Army's Seventh Cavalry shocked Americans and convinced the government that it had to carry

out a coherent policy that would settle, once and for all, "the Indian problem." The policy

adopted further restricted the size of reservations and encouraged educational efforts to make

Indians live as whites lived.

1877 San Francisco anti-Chinese riots

disembarked. Both Republicans and Democrats in California sought and ultimately obtained

federal legislation that barred Chinese laborers from entering the United States.

1879 Exoduster migration to Kansas

from Mississippi and Louisiana migrated to Kansas. By 1880, there were 40,000 Exodusters in

the state.

1882 Chinese Exclusion Act

law, which prevented the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States.

1884 Helen Hunt Jackson's novel Ramona
This novel, intended to plead the case for the Indians, unintentionally led to a series of

sentimental works romanticizing the culture of old California and contributing to the

incorporation of this sentimentalized heritage into popular thinking about the state.

1886 Dry cycle begins on the Great Plains

the barely adequate rainfall of the previous decade did not prepare them for the drought years.

Farmers who had gone into debt in order to enlarge their holdings found it more difficult than

ever to bring a crop to market.

Wabash v. Illinois:This Supreme Court decision declared that states had exceeded their power when they regulated railroad rates in response to Grange pressure, because the railroads were engaged in interstate commerce.

1887 Dawes Severalty Act

reservations into individually owned farms, with each head of household receiving 160 acres of

land, the same acreage allowance of the 1862 Homestead Act. But since the Indians were not

farmers, and since the land left over was declared to be "surplus" and sold off to whites, the

system eventually led to sharp reductions of Indian land ownership.

Interstate Commerce Act

made it possible for the federal government to regulate rates in interstate commerce and

created the Interstate Commerce Commission, the first federal regulatory agency.

1889 Oklahoma opened to white settlement

Act, which allowed whites to claim the land. On April 22, the entire district was staked out and

two large tent cities were constructed within a matter of hours.

1890 Indian massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota

killing more than 146 men, women, and children. It was the last episode in the pacification of

the Plains Indians.

U.S. Census declares end of the frontier

the West were now so widespread that there was no longer a recognizable frontier line

separating settled and unsettled parts of the continent.

Chapter 17: Capital and Labor in the Age of Enterprise Expanded Timeline

1869 Knights of Labor founded in Philadelphia

egalitarian "cooperative commonwealth" in which capitalists and workers would join together in

a productive society.

1872 Montgomery Ward, first U.S. mail-order house, founded

national market for the growing retail industry and making a new variety of products available

to farm and small-town families. Andrew Carnegie starts construction of Edgar Thomson

steelworks near Pittsburgh This mill, using the revolutionary Bessemer converter, operated in

the new, integrated fashion, incorporating all the stages of production in one continuous

operation that began with iron ore and ended with steel rails.

1873 Panic of 1873 ushers in economic depression
The panic that followed the failure of a major financial institution led to a sharp rise in

unemployment (up to 25 percent) and the collapse of thousands of busi- nesses. It brought

about a renewed effort on the part of working people to assert themselves against the power

of big business.

1875 John Wanamaker establishes first department store, in Philadelphia

1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition showcases Corliss steam engine

1877 Baltimore and Ohio workers initiate nationwide railroad strike

1878 Gustavus Swift introduces refrigerator car

customers throughout the United States. Swift's technological innovation also led to the creation of new forms of corporate management (vertical integration) and new advertising techniques to serve the national marketplace.

1879 Jay Gould begins to build Missouri Pacific railway system
The New York financier used unorthodox, sometimes unscrupulous methods of stock speculation to gain control of struggling local rail lines and to make them profitable by linking them into integrated systems connecting major centers.

1883 Railroads establish national time zones

in the management of a national marketplace.

1886 Haymarket Square bombing in Chicago
While a group of anarchists was staging a rally in Haymarket Square to protest the killing of strikers, the police sought to disperse the meeting. A bomb was thrown, and several police officers were killed or injured. In the absence of concrete evidence, several anarchists were charged with criminal conspiracy, arrested, and convicted. Four were executed. American Federation of Labor (AFL) founded Several trade unions joined together to form this confederation. Rejecting social activism, the AFL sought gradual changes in the workplace. Since the members of trade unions were skilled workers, they were able to wield more power than most industrial workers.

1892 Homestead steel strike crushed

arrested the leaders of the strike.

1893 Panic of 1893 leads to national depression
Freewheeling competition and unrestrained growth led to a stock-market crash and the most severe depression the country had seen up to that time. For example, a third of the railroad industry went bankrupt. The unemployment and social unrest seen after the Panic of 1873 recurred. Wave of railroad bankruptcies; reorganization by investment bankers begins Battered by falling profits and depression, national bankers like J. P. Morgan sought to stabilize their railroad investments by consolidating competitors into a small number of regional monopoly systems. Control of railroads shifted to Wall Street.

1894 President Cleveland sends troops to break Pullman boycott

1895 Southeastern European immigration exceeds northern European immigration for the first

time
The shifting needs of American industry called for an expansion of the pool of unskilled labor.

Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe better filled this need than did those from northern

Europe. This shift in the pattern of immigration also had a significant cultural impact on the United States because most of the new immigrants differed from the old ones in religion, among other things.

1901 Eugene V. Debs helps found Socialist Party of America

1905 Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) launched

aggressive direct action against the power of big business was necessary. They founded the IWW in the hope of significantly transforming industrial society by destroying the power of the industrial and political bosses.

1869
Corcoran Gallery of Art, the nation's first major art museum, opens in Washington, D.C.

Preceding New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, which opened two years later, this gallery was the first of many such cultural institutions to be supported by elite groups in cities across the country.

1871 Chicago fire

formerly constructed of wood, was quickly rebuilt of brick and stone, and the city rapidly

recovered. Wooden buildings were later banned throughout the city.

1873 Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner publish The Gilded Age

1875 Dwight L. Moody launches urban revivalist movement

1876 Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone

organize baseball to that end.

1878 Electric arc-light system installed in Philadelphia
Previously gaslit city streets became safer with this development. Practical applications of electricity transformed many aspects of urban life.

1879 Thomas Edison creates a practical incandescent lightbulb

Salvation Army arrives from Britain

1881 Andrew Carnegie offers to build a library for every American city that will maintain it

1883 New York City's Metropolitan Opera founded

Brooklyn Bridge opens

Joseph Pulitzer purchases the New York World

1885 William Jenney builds first steel-frame structure, Chicago's Home Insurance Building

1887 First electric trolley line constructed, in Richmond, Virginia

dominant means of urban mass transit.

1892 John D. Rockefeller founds University of Chicago
Philanthropists in this period endowed several universities, including Vanderbilt, Tulane, and Johns Hopkins. John D. Rockefeller's gift was unusual in that, unlike the aforementioned, the university he founded was not named after him.

1893 Chicago World's Fair

"City Beautiful" movement

1895 William Randolph Hearst enters New York journalism

The comic strip "The Yellow Kid" appears

1897 Boston builds first American subway

1901 New York Tenement House Law

safeguards, but enforcement of the law was lax and nothing was done to improve existing

housing stock.

1904 New York subway system opens

1906 San Francisco earthquake

1913 Fifty-five-floor Woolworth Building opens in New York City