Presidential Reconstruction Essay, Research Paper

Chapter 12 and 13 Essays

Johnson?s plan for reconstruction was called Presidential Reconstruction. In this plan he made it that the seven remaining states could be readmitted to the Union if they did several things. The seven states were Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas. The guidelines that they must had to meet were to declare session illegal, swear allegiance to the union, and to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, which would end slavery. All of the states except Texas quickly accepted these terms and elected legislators. Congress did not believe that Johnson?s plan truly brought an end to reconstruction and were infuriated by the pardons of over 13,000 confederates, and when congress convened in December 1865 congress refused to admit the newly elected southern legislators. In 1866 the Civil Rights Act was passed which made African Americans citizens and said that states could not pass discriminatory laws called black codes. Johnson shocked everyone by vetoing both the Freedmen?s Bureau and the Civil Rights Act. After this the moderate and the radical republicans joined together to override the Presidents veto. They also passed the fourteenth amendment which gave the Civil Rights Act a constitutional basis. All of this brought about congressional Reconstruction. In 1867 the Reconstruction Act was passed which did not recognize state governments created under Lincoln and Johnson plans, except for Tennessee who had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. Johnson also vetoed this but Congress quickly overrode the veto. Congress then tried to impeach Johnson saying he had violated the Tenure of Office Act by firing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. His trial began in March 1868 and lasted 11 days, but in the end President Johnson was not found guilty.

The rise of the cattle industry can be attributed to many things. One of those things was the railways. The railroads gave cattlemen an easy way to get their animals across long distances. Another way was the Chisholm Trail, which was made by Joseph McCoy. He purchased the land around Abilene Kansas and built pens for the cattle to be held in before they were shipped. McCoy helped to survey the trail that would n from San Antonio, Texas through Oklahoma and to Kansas. Thirty five thousand cattle were shipped through Abilene the first year that it opened, business was nearly doubled by the next. Many people were hired as ?cowboys? to take cattle to Abilene. Though cattle ranching had become a big business it just as easily came to an end. First off the land was overgrazed by the cattle and also by sheep which brought about range wars between the sheepherders and cattle ranchers. Another factor in the end of cattle ranching was bad weather. There was a drought in 1883 and in 1886 which dried up the plains starting fires and killing everything. This was then followed by a blizzard in 1887 were snow fell at a rate of an inch an hour which trapped cattlemen and their herds. The last thing was the invention of barbed wire. Ranchers fenced in their land so they could raise hay for their herds and so they wouldn?t stray. This invention brought an end to the wide open spaces.

Assimilation is the expectation of Native Americans to give up their beliefs and way of life and become part of white culture. The Dawes Act was passed to try to Americanize Native Americans by giving them land from the reservations to farm. They also did not want the Indians to do their Ghost Dance, which was ritual. At the Battle of Wounded Knee Sitting Bull and 300 unarmed Native Americans were slaughtered. Assimilation could not work because the government was trying to force a way of life on to a group of people that believed in something totally different then what they were trying to teach them. The Native Americans men did not want to farm the land because they believed that it was the women?s job to do this. Also the government tried to bring an end to the ghost dance. This would be like telling someone that they were not able to have a funeral for someone who just died. Also the U.S. made too many promises that they did not keep, the Native Americans did not trust them and with the slaughter of many people such as Sitting Bull, they did not want to.

The Fourteenth and the Fifteenth Amendment were considered the greatest achievements of reconstruction because they were a huge step for African Americans. The Fourteenth Amendment gave constitutional basis for the Civil Rights act of 1866, which gave African Americans citizenship and forbade states from passing discriminatory laws, called black codes, which restricted African Americans lives. The Fifteenth amendment stated that no one can be kept from voting because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Many state excluded blacks from voting and this said that that was not aloud. This was also a huge political achievement, which said change was possible. Although this was a big change for the country and African Americans there was still a long way to go for their civil rights.