ss p 2 reconstruction - wpmu dev

Above: James Johnson, apro-Union Georgian, becameprovisional governor inJune 1865. He served untilDecember 1865.

Section2Section2Reconstructionin GeorgiaIn June 1865, President Johnson appointed James Johnson, an attorney fromColumbus, as provisional (temporary) governor of Georgia because the presi-dent remembered that Johnson had opposed succession as a state congress-man. Six months after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, the president directedGovernor Johnson to hold a constitutional convention in Milledgeville,Georgia’s capital.

The Constitutional Convention of 1865The convention repealed the ordinance of secession and voted to abolish

slavery. The delegates wrote a new constitution that, although quite similarto the constitution of 1861, was acceptable to the president.

In November, the state elected Charles Jenkins as governor. Jenkins, whowas the only candidate, was a Unionist judge from Augusta. In the follow-

ing months, the legislature met and formally ratified the Thir-teenth Amendment. In December 1865, after President Johnsonremoved the provisional governor, the state inaugurated Jenkins.

The Georgia General Assembly met in January 1866 andelected two U.S. senators—Alexander Stephens, former vice presi-dent of the Confederacy, and Herschel Johnson. The GeneralAssembly also voted to extend civil rights to the freedmen. How-ever, like other southern states, Georgia limited those rights us-ing, in part, a system of Black Codes.

Black CodesAlthough the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, it

did not abolish discrimination (unfair treatment of a person orgroup because of prejudice). By 1865, most of the southernstates, including Georgia, had passed a number of laws knownas Black Codes, which were designed to restrict the rights of thefreedmen. The codes in-cluded regulations thatcontrolled the types of

employment freedmen could have,permitted whipping as punishment,and established labor periods fromsunrise to sunset, six days a week.Because these codes permitted theimprisonment of jobless blacks,freedmen were forced to take what-ever jobs they could find regardless

As you read, look for:• the actions taken by thestate to rejoin the Union,• the impact of the BlackCodes,• the end of Reconstruction,• the economy during Recon-struction, and• vocabulary terms: provi-sional, discrimination, BlackCode, Fourteenth Amendment,carpetbagger, scalawag, KuKlux Klan, suffrage, GeorgiaAct, Fifteenth Amendment,impeach, sharecropping, credit,and tenant farming.

Section PreviewSection Preview

302 Chapter 9: Reconstruction and the New South

?Any days that a freedmandid not work were chargedagainst the worker, with

penalties ranging from $1for an illness to $5 for

political activity.

Did You Know?Did You Know?

Above: Liberty Hall inCrawfordville, the home ofAlexander Stephens, is nowa state park.

of low wages or other conditions. Although the Freedmen’s Bureau recom-mended wages of $144 a year, plus food and shelter, most workers were paidbetween $50 and $100 per year.

Other sections of the Black Codes did not allow freedmen to vote, to serveon juries, or to testify in court against whites. The codes also declared mar-riage between the races illegal.

Even with the codes, Georgia had done what President Johnson’s planrequired, and it was ready to re-enter the Union. But President Johnson nolonger had the influence he once had. The more radical groups in Congresswere now in charge of Reconstruction.

Congressional ReconstructionReaction to the Black Codes was fairly swift.

Congress, overriding a presidential veto,passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. This lawnot only extended citizenship to AfricanAmericans, it also gave the federal govern-ment the right and responsibility to interveneany time civil rights were taken away from thenewly freed men and women. To ensure this,Congress passed the Fourteenth Amend-ment, which granted citizenship to the freed-men and forbade any state from denyinganyone the “equal protection of the law.”

That same year, the radical Republicans gained control of both houses ofCongress. They maintained that the southern states were not “adequately

Figure 32 Excerpt from the FourteenthAmendment to the U.S. Constitution

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United Statesand subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the UnitedStates and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall makeor enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immuni-ties of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State depriveany person of life, liberty, or property, without due process oflaw; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal pro-tection of the laws.

Section 2: Reconstruction in Georgia 303

reconstructed” and must ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before they couldrejoin the Union. One radical, Thaddeus Stevens, wanted to punish the Southeven more by breaking up all of the plantations and providing every farmslave with “forty acres and a mule.” But the Republicans, who valued per-sonal property, refused to seriously consider his plan.

When all of the southern states except Tennessee refused to ratify theFourteenth Amendment, Congress acted quickly to invalidate the state gov-ernments and re-establish military rule in March 1867. Each state was as-signed to a region under the command of a federal general. Georgia, Alabama,and Florida were placed in the Third Military District, governed by General

John Pope. One of Pope’s first taskswas to register all eligible male vot-ers—black and white—who sworeallegiance to the United States.

States were directed to hold con-stitutional conventions whose del-egates were elected by adult males.Each convention was to draft a newconstitution that extended the rightto vote to African Americans. Stateswere also required to have their citi-zens ratify the new constitutions andthe Fourteenth Amendment. Untilthat was completed, the southernstates remained under military su-pervision.

The Constitutional Convention of 1867During the fall of 1867, Georgians held an election to determine if there

should be a constitutional convention and, if so, who should be selected asdelegates. For African American males, it was the first time they were allowedto vote in Georgia. Voters agreed to hold the convention, and they elected169 delegates. Twelve of the delegates were conservative whites, and ninewere carpetbaggers. Carpetbaggers were northerners who moved south af-ter the war. Southerners claimed that they came with all of their possessionsin a bag made of carpet material. Thirty-six of the delegates were AfricanAmericans. Most of the delegates were scalawags, a term used to describesoutherners who supported the Republicans.

The convention proved to be a fiery one from the outset. As delegatesgathered in Milledgeville, the African American delegates were refused roomsat the local hotels. General Pope then ordered that the convention be movedfrom Milledgeville to Atlanta, a move that led to the city becoming the state’spermanent capital.

Despite the conflicts of the convention, much was accomplished. Thedelegates wrote a new constitution that gave civil rights to all of the state’scitizens, approved free public education for all children, and allowed mar-ried women to control their own property (the first state to do so).

Map 41MilitaryReconstructionDistricts

Map Skill: Which two statesmade up the largest district?

LOUISIANA

AR

KS MO

IA

MN

WI

MI

IL INOH

KY

VA

PA

NY

NCTN

VT

NH

ME

MACT

NJ

RI

DEMD

SCGAAL

MS

FL

LATX

New MexicoTerritory

CA

ORDakota Territory

WV

IndianTerritory

ColoradoTerritory

UtahTerritory

NevadaTerritory

WashingtonTerritory

Nebraska Territory

Military District 1

Military District 2

Military District 3

Military District 4

Military District 5


?Did You Know?Did You Know?Scalawag is a term thatmeans “scoundrel” or“worthless rascal.”

Georgia voters approved the new constitu-tion in April 1868 and elected RepublicanRufus Bullock governor. For a second time,Georgia had met the requirements for re-ad-mission to the Union, and federal troops leftthe state. As you will see, however, they re-turned shortly.

African Americansin Politics

In 1867, African Americans voted for the firsttime in Georgia. In 1868, they helped elect aRepublican governor. They also helped electtwenty-nine African Americans to the Georgiahouse of representatives and three AfricanAmericans to the Georgia senate. Some of thoseelected were Tunis G. Campbell, Jr., HenryMcNeal Turner, and Aaron A. Bradley. However,all of these men were expelled in September1868 on the grounds that although the con-stitution had given them the right to vote, itdid not specifically give them the right to holdpolitical office.

During Reconstruction, African Americansformed the largest group of southern Repub-licans, and thousands voted in the new elec-tions to help keep Republicans in power. Bythe same token, Republican carpetbaggers, along with some agents andmany volunteers of the Freedmen’s Bureau, worked hard to make AfricanAmericans part of the political scene. Hiram Revels and Blanche Bruce ofMississippi were the first African Americans to serve as U.S. senators. Oth-ers served in the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures.

Realizing political empowerment (the ability to bring about change) forthe first time, thousands joined the Union League, which had become thefreedmen’s political organization. From church meetings to picnics and familygatherings, politics became “the” topic of discussion and debate.

Ku Klux KlanDuring this same time period, the Ku Klux Klan became a force in Geor-

gia. The Klan, as it was called, was one of several secret organizations thattried to keep freedmen from exercising their new civil rights. The group be-gan in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1865 as a social club for returning soldiers.However, it quickly changed into a force of terror. Its members dressed inrobes and hoods so no one would recognize them. They terrorized and in-timidated African Americans to keep them from voting and, by doing so, toreturn control of the state to the Democrats. There were numerous reportsof beatings, whippings, and murders.

Above: Reverend HenryMcNeal Turner was one ofthe first African Americanselected to the GeorgiaGeneral Assembly.


Freedmen who were not frightened awayfrom the polls were carefully watched. Thosevoting Republican lay awake at night listeningfor the sounds of horses indicating the Klan wasnearby. All knew that the price for suffrage (vot-ing rights) could be death. Hostilities betweenwhites and African Americans increased, andthere were many incidents of racial conflict.

The Georgia ActKu Klux Klan activities were increasing

throughout the state, and there was evidencethat the group had prevented many AfricanAmericans from voting in the 1868 presiden-tial election. Governor Bullock appealed tothe federal government for help. Congress re-sponded by passing the Georgia Act in De-cember 1869. This law returned Georgia tomilitary control for the third time. GeneralAlfred Terry became Georgia’s new militarycommander, and Rufus Bullock became theprovisional governor.

Earlier in the year, Congress had passed theFifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitu-tion, which gave all male citizens the right tovote. In addition to returning Georgia to fed-

eral military control, the Georgia Act required that the state ratify the Fif-teenth Amendment before it could return to the Union.

Reconstruction Ends in GeorgiaThe Georgia supreme court ruled that blacks were eligible to hold office.

When the General Assembly met in January 1870, it reseated the AfricanAmerican representatives who had been ex-pelled from the General Assembly in Septem-ber 1868. The legislature again approved theFourteenth Amendment and ratified the Fif-teenth Amendment.

Georgia was readmitted to the Union in July1870. Senators Joshua Hill and H. V. M. Miller,elected in 1868, were seated in Congress. ForGeorgia, Reconstruction was officially over.

There was one final political note to the endof Reconstruction. In the December 1870 election, the Democrats regainedcontrol of both houses of the Georgia General Assembly. Governor Bullock,a Republican, knew the General Assembly would impeach him (bring chargesagainst a public official while that person is still in office) when it met inNovember 1871. Rather than face impeachment, Bullock resigned. Secretly,

Figure 33 Fifteenth Amendment tothe U.S. Constitution

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shallnot be denied or abridged by the United States or by any stateon account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Above: Early members of theKu Klux Klan used robes andhoods as disguises and toappear more frightful to thosethey wanted to scare.


he swore in as governor BenjaminConley, who had been president ofthe senate during the last legislativesession. Conley served as governorfor only two months before the Gen-eral Assembly ordered a special elec-tion. In December, Democrat JamesM. Smith, former speaker of thehouse of representatives and a law-yer from Columbus, ran unopposedfor the office of governor. Smith wasinaugurated on January 12, 1872.

Economic ReconstructionGeorgia was still an agricultural region during Reconstruction. With the end

of the large plantation system came the beginning of a new way of farming.

Sharecropping and Tenant FarmingPlanters and farmers needed laborers to work

on their land. And there were many former slaves,as well as some landless whites, who needed jobs.Workers who had nothing but their labor to of-fer often resorted to sharecropping. Under thissystem, the landowners provided land, a house,farming tools and animals, seed, and fertilizer.The workers agreed to give the owner a share ofthe harvest. Until the workers sold their crop, theowners often let them have food, medicine, cloth-ing, and other supplies at high prices on credit.Credit is the ability to buy something now andpay for it later or over a period of time.

For many, this credit was their undoing. Af-ter selling the crop and paying the bills, the typi-cal sharecropper had little, if any, cash left.Because few sharecroppers could read or count,the planter or the store owner could easily cheatthem, and many did. Year after year, sharecrop-pers were in debt. They had little hope theycould ever save enough to buy their own landand equipment.

Tenant farming was similar to sharecrop-ping. The main difference was that tenants usu-ally owned some agricultural equipment andfarm animals, such as mules. They also boughttheir own seed and fertilizer. At the end of theyear, tenant farmers either paid the landownera set amount of cash or an agreed-upon share

Did You Know?Did You Know?

Below: The Georgia Agriramain Tifton is a living historycenter. This man demon-strates the work a farmer ofthe late 1800s would do.Here he is raking burned cornstubs. What tool is he using?


?From the election of JamesSmith in December 1871through 2002, Georgia’s

governors have beenmembers of the Democraticparty. It was not until 2003

that Georgia returned aRepublican to the statehouse.

Top and above: This is thefarmhouse of a subsistencefarmer on display at theGeorgia Agrirama. In the late1800s, the kitchen was in aseparate building because offire danger from the mud-and-stick chimneys.

of the crop. Because tenant farmers owned more than sharecroppers, theyusually made a small profit. However, the lives of both groups were very hard.The tenant farming and sharecropping systems allowed landowners to keeptheir farms in operation without having to spend money for labor.

On the surface, it would seem that landowners who used tenants andsharecroppers made a profit while taking few risks. However, many landown-ers who did not have the money to buy the needed seed, fertilizer, and toolsborrowed the money and used the crops to back up the loan. Interest onsuch loans was often more than the crops were worth. Because bankers ex-pected farmers to grow cotton or tobacco year after year, the soil was even-tually ruined. In time, many landowners in the South, like the sharecroppersand tenants who worked their land, became poorer each year.

At the end of Reconstruction, cotton was again the most important cropin most of Georgia. The coastal region, however, never regained its prewarposition in either cotton or rice production. Fortunately, that region turnedto other natural resources to reclaim its economic power.

Business, Industry, Railroads, and ShippingIncreasing cotton production brought industry to some parts of Georgia.

Northern investors put money into building textile mills. Slowly, banks be-gan to reopen and were able to loan money to merchants and businessmen.

By the late 1860s, dry goods stores, shops, and hotels were again in busi-ness. Atlanta, almost completely destroyed during the war, rebuilt and grewrapidly after it became the state capital.

Railroads, which were necessary to the success of Georgia’s economy,expanded during this time. At the end of the Civil War, only the state-ownedWestern and Atlantic Railroad was still in operation. Union soldiers had kept


Above: Railroads played animportant part in Atlanta’srebirth after the Civil War.This scene shows watermel-ons being loaded into box-cars for shipment north.

it up to transport troops and equipment. In the eight years immediately fol-lowing the war, rail companies laid 840 miles of track in Georgia. Rail linesbegan to compete with each other.

Shipping companies also took on new life. Savannah again became themajor port for exporting cotton, and Brunswick was a close second. Evenwith the growth of banks, rail lines, and shipping companies, economic re-construction was slow. There was a common saying of the period, “We’reeating the long corn now!” The saying meant that the family was financiallywell off. It would be another sixty-five years before many in the state couldclaim the long corn, but at least the seeds were planted for Georgia’s future.

It’s Your TurnIt’s Your Turn


t1. How did Black Codes restrict the freedmen?2. Why do you think the majority of southern states refused to

ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?3. Do you think the constitutional convention of 1867 was a

failure, a success, or both? Explain your answer.4. If you had been a freedmen in this period, would you have gone

to the polls to vote? Why or why not?5. Was Georgia, and the rest of the South, “adequately recon-

structed”? What would you have done differently if you hadbeen in charge of Reconstruction?

6. What was the difference between a sharecropper and a tenantfarmer?

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Of Special InterestOf Special Interest

At the beginning of Reconstruction, Atlanta literally hadto rebuild itself from the ashes. When Sherman’s troopsmoved out of Atlanta on their infamous March to the Sea,they left the city virtually destroyed. But the city had a proudpast and the heart to rebuild for a proud future.

Atlanta had begun in 1837 when a railroad engineer,Stephen Long, surveyed the best route for the Georgia StateRailroad. He wrote that a collection of shacks known asthe terminus (end) might be “a good location for one tav-ern, a blacksmith shops, a grocery store and nothing else.”

A City Rises From the AshesBy 1842, the railroad lines into Terminus had grown, and itwas home to almost thirty people. In that year, the com-munity was renamed Marthasville, in honor of GovernorLumpkin’s daughter.

Because freight shipped to the city was marked “At-lanta” (a feminine form of the word Atlantic in Atlantic andPacific Railroad), the town was called Atlanta by railroadofficials and crews. Soon the name Marthasville was dis-carded, and the state issued a municipal charter for thecity to be named Atlanta.

At the beginning of the Civil War, Atlanta was Georgia’sfourth largest city, with a population of over 9,500. OnlySavannah, Augusta, and Columbus were larger. During thewar, Atlanta grew even more in population and importanceas the South’s center for communications and supplies.

Below: By 1860, Atlanta had a population of 9,500 andwas Georgia’s fourth largest city, behind Savannah, Au-gusta, and Columbus. It was dubbed the “Gate City of theSouth” for its increasing importance as a rail center.

A City Rises From the Ashes


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About fifty families had re-mained in the city after its burn-ing. Joined by others, they workedthroughout the Reconstructionperiod to rebuild the city. It roseout of the ashes like a phoenix, amythical Arabian bird said toperiodically burn itself to deathand emerge from the ashes asa new phoenix. The phoenix be-came the center of the city’s sealand depicted a spirit born out ofnecessity.

The city grew rapidly duringReconstruction and the NewSouth era, both commercially andpolitically. When it became thecapital in 1868, its continued risewas assured and its role in theNew South gave it national promi-nence. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, Atlanta had a population of over 4 million,national recognition as a center of business and commerce,and a place among the world’s great cities. Quite an ac-complishment for a town that had to rebuild from ashes!

Above: This bird’s-eye view of Atlanta, prepared byAlbert Ruger, illustrates the rebuilding of the cityfollowing the Civil War. By 1868, Atlanta had replacedMilledgeville as the state’s capital.


ss p 2 reconstruction - wpmu dev

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