HIST 1320

Costs of the Civil War

 North: 365,000 dead
 South: 260,000 dead
 Southern lands trampled;
economy destroyed, cities
burned, railroad lines severed
 Almost 40,000 freedmen (ex-
slaves) died in war
 Federal Demands on the South
 Appomattox surrender ends war Apr. 9; Lincoln killed Apr. 14

 Reconstruction Demands:
 Pass 13th Amendment—abolishing slavery
 Dismantle slave-based society & economy
 Give land & civil rights to freedmen (Special Field Order 15)
 Acceptance of Freedman’s Bureau
 Loyalty oaths? Reparations?
 Land redistribution?
 Presidential Reconstruction,
1865-1867
 The Constitutional Question

 Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan (’63)

vs.

 Wade-Davis Bill (’64)

 Andrew Johnson’s background

President Johnson’s Program
 Requirements under Pres. Andrew Johnson:
 Pass 13th Amendment
 Declare secession illegal
 Repudiate Confederate debt
 Amnesty for Confederates taking loyalty oaths
 Little attention to freedmen
 Radical Unhappiness
 1st Southern elections, 1865, returned:
 6 Confederate generals
 6 Confederate Cabinet members
 The Vice-President of the Confederacy
 South refused to ratify 13th Amendment, no state gave
freedmen franchise
 1866: Black Codes appear across South
 1866: Johnson vetoes Freedman’s Bureau bill, Civil
Rights Act of 1866, opposes 14th Amendment
 Congressional elections of 1866: turning point
Radical Reconstruction, 1867-68
 Reconstruction Act of 1867:
 South put under martial law
 Iron-clad oath: barred Conf. office-
holders, those who’d sworn oath to
CSA, from office
 South ordered to pass 14th Amendment
 State governments had to write new
constitutions with full racial equality
 1868: attempt to impeach Johnson
Reconstruction Zones
 Anti-Slavery Amendments

 13th Amendment: ended slavery forever (proposed ’65)

 14th Amendment: freed slaves are citizens of U.S. with full civil
rights (’66)

 15th Amendment: right to vote shall not be abridged on account of

color (’69)
Plans for Reconstruction

 The Freedman’s Bureau

 Establishment of Black
Institutions
 “The Party of Lincoln”
 “Scalawags &
Carpetbaggers”
 The Ku Klux Klan
 Sharecropping and Tenancy
 Reconstruction in the South
 Freedman’s Bureau est. March
1865
 Civil Rights Act of 1866:
Citizenship to all born/
naturalized in U.S. (14th
Amendment)
 Black representation during
Reconstruction would not
reappear until mid-20th century
 Southern press tried to discredit the Reconstruction state govts.—
an effort that continued for decades
 By 1875, most Southern constitutions rewritten to get rid of any
trace of Reconstruction period
 The Ku Klux Klan
 Blacks could not be legally disenfranchised— so economic and
intimidation methods used
 Klan 1st appeared in 1866—quickly spread through South
 Attacked both blacks and federal agents
 Only 30,000 federal troops in South—to protect 4.5 million
former slaves
The Reconstruction States
Homicide Rates during Reconstruction

 Some historians
estimate that as much
as 1% of black males
aged 18 to 40 killed in
early years of
Reconstruction.

 Most deaths never

investigated or even Casualties in Brazoria County, TX. Chart
courtesy of War, Reconstruction and
reported. Recovery in Brazoria County website.
 The “Redeemer” Governments

 June 1868: 7 Conf. states readmitted

 July 1868: 14th Amendment passed.
Freedman’s Bureau ceases operations.
 Nov. 1868: Grant elected U.S. President
 1869-75: Election of “Redeemer” govts.
 South ignores 14th and 15th
Amendments—which guarantees Black
civil and voting rights
 1877: last federal troops leave South,
formally ending Reconstruction
 “Jim Crow Laws”

 System of legal segregation est. 1870s-

90s, persisted until 1950s
 Freedmen forced to chose an employer
and sign binding contracts
 Black children indentured until 21
 Blacks forbidden to
 “Insult” whites
 Marry whites
 Challenge the word of whites in
court
 Hold office, certain jobs
 Voting rights restricted through poll
taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses
Richmond Whig, Harper’s Weekly, 1870s
 The Compromise of 1877

 Democratic (anti-Reconstruction)
Party reviving (S. Tilden)
 Rep. choice Rutherford Hayes
 Closest election in U.S. history to
date
 Voting in South corrupted by Klan,
two sets of returns for four Southern
states
 Hayes chosen, agreed to end
Reconstruction
 End of Reconstruction

 Reconstruction officially ended state-by-state once new

constitutions accepted
 In reality, national government largely washed its hands of
South by 1875
 “Redeemer” govts.— racial segregation and economic &
political control of the Freedmen
 In North: “Gilded Age”: pro-business, capitalist, corrupt,
“Age of Robber Barons”
 South remained poorest region in country until mid-20th
century
The Centennial, 1876

 Centennial Exhibit in
Philadelphia

 Bell’s telephone introduced

 The Inventions
 Phonograph, 1877
 Cash register,
incandescent lamp, 1879
 Typewriter, 1880
 Coca-Cola, 1886
 Electric streetcar, 1887
 Kodak camera, 1888
 Sewing machine, 1889
 Radio, 1891
 Jell-O and condensed
soup, 1897
 1896: 1st commercial
movie shown
 1900: automobile
 1902: teddy bear
 1904: airplane, ice cream
cone
 Growth of the Railroads
 Massive expansion after the
Civil War

 Transcontinental, 1863-69:
 Union Pacific from East
(Irish)
 Central Pacific from West
(Chinese)

 1st big business, hard to

regulate
Mechanization & Standardization
 Railroads: 50,000 miles in 1850

 320,000 miles in 1900

 Refrigerated & sleeping cars by 1880s

 Required oil, steel, standardized

schedules—and immigrant workers
 Standardized Time

 “Railroad Time”
est. 1883

 Became official
time in 1914

 4 American time
zones
Industrialization & Big Business
 Growth of Industry,
1870-1900

 Before 1850, few Am.

businesses had more than
1000 employees

 By the early 1880s,

Pennsylvania Railroad
employed 50,000

 Biggest expansion
Cartoon attacking Standard railroads, iron & steel
Oil as monopolistic industries
Trusts & Monopolies
 Rockefeller & Standard Oil:
Horizontal Integration.
 Carnegie Steel: Vertical Integration
 Standardized parts
 “Trusts” and monopolies
 Interstate Commerce Act, 1887
 Sherman Antitrust Act, 1890
 Growing Urbanization

 1860: 1/6 pop. urban;

 By 1900: 1/3 urban
 By 1920: half urban
 Streetcars, elevators,
skyscrapers made modern
cities possible
 Suburban sprawl starts
courtesy of mass transit
 City centers often slums
 The New Immigrants

 South & Eastern Europe,

China

 Predominately Roman
Catholic, Orthodox
Christian, or Non-
Christian (Jewish &
Buddhist)

 Often lived in crowded

urban enclaves divided by
ethnicity
 Immigrant Culture

 1877-1890: 6.3 million

immigrated, most through Ellis
Island
 1880-1910, 8.4 million
 2/3 male, most unskilled
 Most ended up in northern &
eastern cities
 Formed immigrant social
organizations to help cope
 Surge in Anti-Catholicism &
Anti-Semitism
The Tenements

 Dumbbell floor plan,

est. late 1870s
 Meant for four
families—but often
families in each room
 2 bathrooms per floor
 By 1890, half
buildings in NYC
tenements
 Environment

 Public transport still animal

 Animal/human waste dumped
into the water supply
 Baltimore smelled “like a
billion polecats”—H.L.
Menken
 Factories pouring smoke into
the air
 Pittsburgh at night: “hell with
the led off”
Urban Blight

 Unsafe labor conditions

 Overcrowding
 Disease epidemics
 Child labor
 Ethnic ghettos
 Crime
 Fire
 Suicide
 Rampant alcoholism
Chicago in 1880s
 2nd biggest city by 1890s
 1871: (Louis Sullivan1st
skyscrapers go up)
 1876: Otis elevator invented
 1889: Jane Addams opens Hull
House
 Railroads, shopping & slums
Chicago Skyline, 1888
 Five Points, NYC

 Highest murder rate in country—one complex of 1000

averaged a murder a night
 Birthplace of Al Capone

1855 1879
 “I believe that the danger of such conditions as are fast growing up
around us is greater for the very freedom which they mock. The words of
the poet, with whose lines I prefaced this book, are truer to-day, have far
deeper meaning to us, than when they were penned forty years ago:
“—Think ye that building shall endure
Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor?
_
Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 1890
19 TH Century America

 19th century a study in

contrasts—Romantic yet in
love with science
 Period of great reformers yet
also the great age of
imperialism and Scientific
Racism
 It saw the birth of both the
Horatio Alger myth and
Marxist Communism
American Victorianism

 Middle-class value system

 emphasis on refinement,
propriety
 Rational, “civilized,”
proper, prudish.
 Putting women and children
on pedestal
 Fear of both aristocracy
(decadent) and lower
classes (animals)
 “Protestant Work Ethic”
 Science & Religion

 Fight between science & religion heating

up

 Charles Darwin’s evolution disturbing

 So was Freud: repressed sexuality, the id

 Growth of the Missionary Movement

worldwide
Nativism
 Nativism: anti-immigrant,
anti-Catholic, appearing
before Civil War
 “Protestant Work Ethic”
 1882: Chinese Exclusion
Act
 Discriminatory Barriers,
official & “gentlemen’s
agreement”
 Mass Commercialism

 Birth of department stores

 Modern advertising industry

 Brand names an invention of

late 19th century

 Sears-Roebuck, 1893,
Godey’s Ladies’ Book

 New leisure activities: sports,

dance halls
 Horatio Alger Myth

 Rags-to-Riches archetype
 Reformist impulse
 Andrew Carnegie
 Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals
 Use of the “up-by-
bootstraps” myth by
conservatives
 Ragged Dick, 1896
 “There was Tweed;
Under his rule the ballot-box was freed!
Six times as big a vote he could record
As there were people living in the ward!

—W. A. Croffut, “Bourbon Ballads”

 The Gilded Age Presidents

 1881: James Garfield (shot) (R)

 1881-85: Chester Arthur (R)
 1885-89: Grover Cleveland (D)
 1889-93: Ben Harrison (R)
 1893-97: Grover Cleveland (again) (D)
 1897-1901: William McKinley (shot)
 1901-1909: Teddy Roosevelt (R)
 Social Darwinism

 Charles Darwin, Origin of the

Species, 1859, Descent of Man,
1871
 “Natural Selection,” evolution
 Herbert Spencer, “Social
Darwinism”
 “Survival of the Fittest”
 Opposed to welfare-type
programs, labor reform
 The growing wealth gap natural
“The forces which are working out
the great scheme of perfect
happiness, taking no account of
incidental suffering, exterminate
such sections of mankind as stand
in their way, with the same
sternness that they exterminate
beasts of prey and herds of useless
 Unionism
 Knights of Labor, 1870s-80s

 1877: National railroad strike

 Haymarket Riot, Chicago, 1886
 Samuel Gompers & AFL, 1881
 Eugene Debs, Socialist, railroad
unionist (ARU)
 Homestead Strike, 1892, Pittsburgh
(Carnegie & Henry Clay Frick)
 Pullman Strike of 1894, Chicago
(Pullman Palace Car Co.)
The Political Machines

 Tammany Hall (1830s-1930s) &

“Boss” William Marcy Tweed
 Spoils system for government jobs
 Huge monopolies, trusts in
business, railroad rebates & pooling
 Domination of politics by “robber
barons”
 Pendleton Act of 1883: civil service
test for govt. workers
Politics, Gilded Age Style

 Election day major holiday in late 19th

century America
 Over 75% voter turnout 1875-1896
 Few states let women vote
 Poll taxes & literacy tests in South
 No secret balloting
 Two parties evenly matched:
 Democratic: states’ rights, limited govt.,
decentralized govt.
 Republican: pro-industrial & reformist,
generally pro-tariff, still associated w/
Civil War
Gilded Age Political Issues

 Nativism/ Immigration quotas

 Criticism of machine politics &
ward bosses
 Silver Standard
 Tariff—and industry’s influence
on them
 Oversight over factory
conditions, women and child
labor
Attempts at Reform

 Temperance Movement
(WMCU)
 Suffrage Movement—state
level (Seneca Falls, 1848)
 Jane Addams’ Hull House,
est. 1889, Chicago
 Carnegie’s “Gospel of
Wealth” (1889)
 The Radicals: socialists,
communists, & anarchists
Plessy v. Ferguson, 1890-96

 Suing based on Civil Rights

Act of 1875, 13th & 14th
Amendments
 Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896: est.
“separate but equal” in South
 7-to-1 ruling against Plessy,
Court ruled law reasonable,
based on “accepted customs”
 Plessy ruling created legal
justification for segregated
South
The “Billion Dollar
Congress” (1888-90)
 Republican Party dominant after
1888 elections; Ben Harrison (R)
President
 Massive grants/infrastructure
$$$.
 McKinley Tariff Act—all-time
high
 Sherman Antitrust Act—1st
fed. attempt to regulate business
 Last attempt to protect Black
voting rights until 1950
Coxey Army & Pullman Strikes

 1894: Coxey’s army marches on DC—wanted govt. road building

job programs.
 Pullman Railroad Strike, 1894—extended into 27 states, shut
down western transportation lines.

“The only difference between slavery

at Pullman and what it was down
South before the war is that there the
owners took care of their slaves when
they were sick and here they don’t.”
 Two Gilded Age Symbols

Brooklyn Bridge, 1883 Ellis Island, opened 1892