Reconstruction & The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments: Fifth Grade Social Studies
Following the Civil War, the United States entered the era of Reconstruction (1865-1877), a tumultuous period of constitutional revolution that abolished slavery, redefined American citizenship, and established voting rights for African American men.
The Challenge of Reconstruction
When the Civil War ended in the spring of 1865, the United States faced monumental challenges unprecedented in human history:
- A Devastated South: Cities like Richmond, Atlanta, and Charleston lay in ruins; two-thirds of Southern railroads were destroyed; thousands of farms and livestock were wiped out; and the Southern financial banking system was completely bankrupt.
- Four Million Freedpeople: Nearly four million formerly enslaved African Americans were now free, but possessed no land, no money, no tools, and no formal education. They needed immediate civil rights, economic opportunities, and protection from white supremacist violence.
- Constitutional Readmission: How should the eleven former Confederate states be reintegrated into the Union? Had they ever truly left? Who was in charge of Reconstruction—the President or Congress?
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| COMPETING VISIONS FOR RECONSTRUCTION (1865) |
| |
| PRESIDENTIAL RECONSTRUCTION RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION |
| (Lincoln & Andrew Johnson) (Congressional Republicans) |
| -------------------------- --------------------------- |
| - Lenient and forgiving - Strict and transformative |
| - Quick readmission of states - Punish Confederate leaders |
| - Moderate loyalty oaths - Guarantee full civil and |
| - Left Black civil rights to voting rights for freedmen |
| state legislatures - Reconstruct Southern society|
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Following Lincoln's assassination, Vice President Andrew Johnson became president. Johnson was a pro-Union Southern Democrat from Tennessee who held deep racial prejudices and fiercely championed states' rights. Johnson implemented a lenient "Presidential Reconstruction" policy: he pardoned thousands of wealthy Confederate leaders and allowed Southern states to organize all-white governments.
These new Southern state legislatures immediately enacted the "Black Codes"—oppressive state laws designed to recreate the conditions of slavery under a different name. Black Codes barred African Americans from renting farmland in towns, prohibited them from carrying firearms or serving on juries, and required Black laborers to sign annual labor contracts with white planters. If an African American refused to sign or walked away from a job, they were arrested as a "vagrant," fined, and auctioned off to white planters to work off the fine in forced labor.
Congressional Reconstruction: The Radicals Take Control
Outraged by the Black Codes and the election of unrepentant Confederate generals to Congress, Northern voters swept the "Radical Republicans" into massive, two-thirds veto-proof majorities in the 1866 congressional elections.
Led by fierce champions of equality—Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania in the House and Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in the Senate—Congress took control of Reconstruction away from President Johnson.
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| RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION ACTS OF 1867 |
| |
| 1. SOUTHERN GOVERNMENTS DISSOLVED: Wiped out all 10 state |
| governments organized under President Johnson! |
| | |
| v |
| 2. MILITARY DISTRICTS: Divided the South into FIVE MILITARY |
| DISTRICTS, each commanded by a Union army general with |
| federal troops to protect freedpeople and keep order. |
| | |
| v |
| 3. CONDITIONS FOR READMISSION: |
| - Draft new state constitutions granting Black men voting. |
| - Must formally RATIFY THE 14TH AMENDMENT! |
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Under the Military Reconstruction Act of 1867, Congress declared that no former Confederate state could rejoin the Union until it wrote a new state constitution guaranteeing universal male suffrage (voting rights for Black and white men alike) and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment.
When President Johnson repeatedly vetoed civil rights laws and attempted to fire Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in violation of the newly enacted Tenure of Office Act, the House of Representatives impeached Johnson in February 1868. Johnson became the first president in U.S. history to be impeached. In May 1868, after a dramatic trial in the Senate, Johnson was acquitted by a single vote (thirty-five to nineteen, falling one vote short of the necessary two-thirds majority), serving out the remainder of his term in political irrelevance.
The Three Reconstruction Amendments
The lasting constitutional triumph of this era was the passage and ratification of the three Reconstruction Amendments (the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments), often called the "Second American Founding" because they fundamentally remade the United States Constitution.
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| THE THREE RECONSTRUCTION AMENDMENTS |
| |
| 13TH AMENDMENT (Ratified December 1865) |
| "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude... shall exist |
| within the United States." |
| - Officially & permanently ABOLISHED SLAVERY nationwide! |
| |
| 14TH AMENDMENT (Ratified July 1868) |
| - CITIZENSHIP CLAUSE: Grants birthright citizenship to all |
| persons born or naturalized in the U.S. (Reverses Dred Scott)|
| - DUE PROCESS CLAUSE: States cannot deprive any person of |
| life, liberty, or property without due process of law! |
| - EQUAL PROTECTION CLAUSE: States must guarantee equal |
| protection of the laws to ALL persons! |
| |
| 15TH AMENDMENT (Ratified February 1870) |
| - VOTING RIGHTS: Prohibits federal and state governments from |
| denying the right to vote based on "race, color, or |
| previous condition of servitude." |
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The 13th Amendment (1865): Eradicating Slavery
The Emancipation Proclamation had been a temporary wartime executive order that applied only to areas in rebellion. To ensure that slavery could never be revived in the United States, Lincoln and congressional leaders pushed through the Thirteenth Amendment. Passed by the House in January 1865 and ratified by three-fourths of the states in December 1865, it permanently abolished slavery and involuntary servitude across the entire United States, freeing four million human beings forever.
The 14th Amendment (1868): Citizenship and Equal Protection
The Fourteenth Amendment is widely considered the most important amendment ever added to the Constitution, providing three monumental guarantees:
- Birthright Citizenship: The Citizenship Clause declares that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." This definitively overturned the infamous Dred Scott decision, establishing that anyone born on American soil—including four million formerly enslaved people—is an American citizen.
- Due Process: It prohibits any state from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
- Equal Protection of the Laws: The Equal Protection Clause mandates that no state can deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. This clause became the constitutional foundation for modern civil rights, desegregation, and legal equality.
The 15th Amendment (1870): The Ballot for Black Men
To protect the newly won liberties of freedpeople, Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment in 1869, which was ratified in February 1870 under President Ulysses S. Grant. It prohibited federal and state governments from denying any citizen the right to vote based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
The 15th Amendment caused a painful rift in the women's rights movement. Suffragists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony opposed the amendment because it granted the ballot to Black men while continuing to exclude all women. In contrast, leaders like Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and Frederick Douglass supported the amendment, arguing that this was "the Negro's hour" and that the immediate survival of Black men in the South depended upon having the vote.
Black Political Empowerment During Reconstruction
With the vote guaranteed by the 15th Amendment and protected by federal troops, African Americans participated in Southern democratic politics with immense enthusiasm and courage.
Between 1868 and 1877, more than two thousand African Americans were elected to public office across the South, transforming Southern politics:
- The U.S. Senate: In 1870, Hiram Revels of Mississippi took the Senate seat once held by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, becoming the first African American United States senator in history. In 1875, Blanche K. Bruce, also of Mississippi, became the first African American senator to serve a full six-year term.
- The U.S. House of Representatives: Fourteen African Americans were elected to the House of Representatives, including Robert Smalls of South Carolina (a former enslaved harbor pilot who had heroically commandeered a Confederate gunboat to freedom during the war) and John Roy Lynch of Mississippi.
- State and Local Leadership: African Americans served as lieutenant governors, secretaries of state, state supreme court justices, mayors, sheriffs, and state legislators. In South Carolina, African Americans won the majority of seats in the state legislature.
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| HISTORIC RECONSTRUCTION LEGISLATORS |
| |
| HIRAM REVELS (Mississippi): |
| - First African American U.S. Senator (1870). |
| - Took the exact seat once held by Jefferson Davis! |
| |
| BLANCHE K. BRUCE (Mississippi): |
| - First Black senator to serve a full six-year term (1875-1881)|
| |
| ROBERT SMALLS (South Carolina): |
| - Escaped slavery by stealing Confederate gunboat CSS Planter;|
| served five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives! |
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These pioneering interracial Reconstruction governments achieved historic reforms:
- Created the South's very first tax-funded, free public school systems, educating hundreds of thousands of Black and white children for the first time.
- Rebuilt shattered infrastructure: repairing roads, bridges, and railroads.
- Eliminated property qualifications for voting and holding office, giving poor white citizens a democratic voice for the first time.
- Outlawed racial segregation in public accommodations and transportation.
While hostile Southern whites ridiculed these governments using derogatory terms—calling Southern white Republicans "scalawags" and Northern migrants "carpetbaggers"—Reconstruction demonstrated the extraordinary possibilities of multiracial democracy in America.
Chapter Review and Exercises
Summary Review Exercises
Exercise One asks students to explain the purpose and constitutional significance of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, describing what specific protection each amendment established. The response should explain that the 13th Amendment abolished slavery nationwide, the 14th Amendment established birthright citizenship, due process, and equal protection under the law, and the 15th Amendment prohibited denying voting rights based on race, color, or prior enslavement.
Exercise Two asks students to contrast the lenient "Presidential Reconstruction" of Andrew Johnson with the strict "Radical Reconstruction" enacted by Congress in 1867. The response should explain that Johnson pardoned Confederate leaders and permitted Southern states to pass oppressive Black Codes, detailing how Radical Republicans in Congress dissolved Southern governments, established five military districts, and required ratification of the 14th Amendment and Black suffrage for readmission.
Exercise Three requires students to analyze the political achievements of African Americans during the Reconstruction era between 1868 and 1877, identifying key leaders and social reforms. The response should highlight the election of over two thousand Black officials, including Senators Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce, detailing how interracial state legislatures established the South's first public school systems and rebuilt infrastructure.
Detailed Solutions
Solution to Exercise One clarifies that the Reconstruction Amendments represented a constitutional revolution. By transferring the protection of individual civil rights from individual state legislatures to the federal government, these amendments transformed the Constitution from a protector of state sovereignty into a charter of universal human liberty and equal citizenship.
Solution to Exercise Two reveals that the struggle between Johnson and Congress was a contest over the meaning of Union victory. While Johnson sought a rapid restoration of white-dominated Southern rule, Radical Republicans recognized that military victory was meaningless without securing the civil and political equality of the formerly enslaved population.
Solution to Exercise Three details that Reconstruction proved the viability of multiracial democracy. Despite facing white supremacist violence and economic disenfranchisement, Black leaders established progressive social programs, tax-funded public education, and modern civil rights statutes that served as models for twentieth-century democratic governance.