Würzburger Dolmetscherschule 2020/2021

Fachakademie II student version

Landeskunde USA

• History
• Early American History and Settlement

• 1492: Columbus lands in the Caribbean looking for a western

route to Asia. This is a discovery with consequences…
•
• 1522: Mexico conquered by Spain; Spanish gradually push
northward.

• 1540: horses introduced to the American Southwest (Great

Plains) by the Spaniard Francisco Coronado. Within a few
generations, Plains Indians become masters of horsemanship.

• By the end of 16th century, both England and France had started
colonies in North America.

• 1585: First colony: Roanoke Island off coast of modern-day

North Carolina. Colony abandoned; nobody knows what
happened to settlers.

• 1607: Jamestown colony founded in present-day Virginia. Only

half of the 105 original settlers were still alive after a year.
Nevertheless the colony persisted, and became the first
successful, permanent English colony in the new world.

• In 1620, the Mayflower aims for Virginia but is blown off course
and arrives at Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Aboard the ship were
101 passengers, the so-called Pilgrims, later known as the
Pilgrim Fathers. Despite the fact that Jamestown had become
the first permanent colony, this event is regarded by many
Americans as the real beginning of American history because
the settlers who founded “Plymouth Colony” set up the
“Mayflower Compact”, the first founding document.

• Reasons why the English left their home country:

• Mixture of motives: economic hardship, religious

persecution, political oppression
• Agricultural Revolution: new techniques made
peasants redundant
 • English Civil War: former “King’s men” fled to
America

• Religion in the New World:

• The northern colonies were mostly Puritan in

religion; their belief was Calvinist (pure form of
Protestantism, reformist)
• They believed in Predestination, the “elect”, a belief
that outward prosperity proves inward virtue
• This led to the so-called “Protestant work ethic”, the
idea that working extra hard and while being
particularly virtuous, which is still there in American
culture today
• They provided a haven for those who felt as they
did; others were not tolerated (atheists,
freethinkers)

• In the South (Virginia), there were the beginnings

of an agricultural and traditional society, with official
ties to the British Empire, and with the beginnings
of slavery.

• How slavery developed:

• As early as in 1619, Dutch pirates had captured

20 Africans off a Spanish ship in the Caribbean and
exchanged them for food at Jamestown Colony.
Without anyone realizing it at the time, this marked
the beginning of slavery in the New World…
• Initially, they weren’t really slaves: theoretically,
they were only "indentured servants", which
means that they could win their freedom after
working for a fixed period of time (usually either 4

or 7 years). And a few were actually freed after

their period of "indenture" was over. However, this
situation changed to out-and-out slavery during the
17th century, as more and more tobacco-growers
used black "servants" to work in their tobacco
fields.
• The Thirteen Colonies:

• Northern and southern settlements along the

American east coast eventually became known as
the “Thirteen Original Colonies”

• From very early on, and in all areas, the population

of the Colonies was of international origin. English
subjects ran the show, but the people themselves
came from all over Europe – and, of course, West
Africa

• Repression of Native Americans:

• Colonialism in America was based on the idea that

the land was the settlers’ to discover and to
occupy; indigenous tribes were driven off their
land and, if they resisted, annihilated
• The 1830 Indian Removal Act, for example, saw for
southern Indian tribes to give up their homeland
and move to designated territories (reservations)
• For centuries Native Americans were not
considered part of American society; only in 1924
were they officially granted citizenship
• The American Revolution

• Events leading up to the American Revolution:

Needing more money to support its growing empire, the British

government started trying to squeeze money out of the
Colonies and to limit their relative independence so as to make
the squeezing process easier. This led to a series of Acts of
Parliament in the 1760s and 1770s that were perceived by the
Americans as unfair and humiliating.

• Heavy taxes (both internal and external) were imposed

by the British on a number of commodities such as sugar,
molasses, and tea, paper, glass, and lead; the Stamp Act
(1765) imposed an internal tax on newspapers and official
documents.

• The Colonies were forbidden to print paper money;

Americans had to pay their debts to the British in gold.

• The Colonies were required to provide royal troops with

supplies and barracks

Complaint of Colonists: "Taxation Without Representation."

The Colonies were taxed, but not represented in Parliament.

March 1770: The "Boston Massacre." British troops stationed

in Boston. People started throwing snowballs at them, a mob
attack ensues, and the British troops fire upon the crowd. Fife
Bostonians were killed. The outcry over this forced Britain to
retreat: all taxes were repealed except that on tea.
As a result of these highly unpopular policies, an independence
movement developed in the early 1770s, led by Samuel
Adams (of beer fame). This movement was given an impetus
when the British East India Company was granted
permission to sell tea to the Colonies directly, bypassing
independent American retailers. This produced outrage. On
Dec. 16, 1773, a band of men disguised as Mohawk Indians
and led by Samuel Adams boarded three British ships lying at
anchor and dumped their tea cargo into Boston harbor. This
was the famous "Boston Tea Party." Britain responded by
more repressive measures (the "Five Intolerable Acts,"
including ceding much Western territory to France in violation
of preexisting English-colonial charters).
 In response to the "Intolerable Acts," the First Continental
Congress met in Virginia in Sept. 1774. Delegates from every
colony except Georgia were present. They adopted a series of
resolutions, including a declaration that the Colonists have a
right to "life, liberty, and property," and affirmed the
exclusive right of the Colonies to determine internal policy and
specifically taxation.

During the early 1770s, an unofficial revolutionary militia called

the "Minutemen" came into being: they were called this
because they could be ready to fight in a minute.

In Lexington, Massachusetts, on April 19, 1775, British troops

charged 70 Minutemen with bayonets, leaving 8 dead and 10
wounded. This was the start of the American Revolutionary
War.

• The American War of Independence:

On May 10, 1775, the Second Continental Congress voted to

go to war, appointing Colonel George Washington of Virginia
as Commander-in-Chief of the American forces.

At first, the goals of the Americans were limited: not

independence, just relief from taxes and a certain amount of
autonomy under the British Crown.

Over the period 1775-1776, however, support grew for full

independence. One factor: Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common
Sense, which argued powerfully for American independence.

On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence (mostly

written by Thomas Jefferson) was adopted. This is the official
beginning of American independence. It contains the central
statement of American democratic philosophy. This is the

crucial passage, in which Jefferson proclaims a "social

contract" theory of government that comes from John Locke's
Second Treatise:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted
among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or
abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundations on
such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them
shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
The War:

At first the war went badly for the revolutionaries, but later they
got lucky:

• February 1778: France entered into an alliance with

America. Motives: revenge for its loss of the Seven
Years' War, and the weakening of British imperial
power.
• 1779: Spain joined the conflict against the British
for similar reasons.
• 1780: the Dutch joined against the British as well.

Eventually, the combination of France, Spain, Holland, and

America proved too much for the British, and they agreed to
peace terms in the Treaty of Paris in 1783. The thirteen
colonies were now independent states.
• Territorial Expansion:

• Addition of 1783: In accordance with the Treaty of Paris,

which ended the American Revolutionary War, Britain ceded all
its territory east of Mississippi to the U.S. This was a bitter
betrayal of the Indian tribes, many of whom had fought for
Britain (there were about 200,000 Indians east of the
Mississippi at this time).

• Louisiana Purchase (1803): In 1762, France had ceded the

Louisiana territory to Spain, but by the secret Treaty of San
Ildefonso (1800) the French had regained the area. Napoleon
Bonaparte envisioned a great French empire in the New World,
and he hoped to use the Mississippi Valley as a food and trade
center to supply the island of Hispaniola, which was to be the
heart of this empire. First, however, he had to restore French
control of Hispaniola, where Haitian slaves under Toussaint
Louverture had seized power during the 1790s. In 1802 a large
army sent by Napoleon arrived on the island to suppress the
Haitian rebellion. Despite some military success, the French
lost thousands of soldiers, mainly to yellow fever, and

Napoleon soon realized that Hispaniola must be abandoned.

Without that island he had little use for Louisiana. Facing
renewed war with Great Britain, he could not spare troops to
defend the territory; he needed funds, moreover, to support his
military ventures in Europe. Accordingly, in April 1803 he
 offered to sell the entire Louisiana territory to the United States
for $15 million. President Jefferson had qualms about the
purchase, since the Constitution did not allow Presidents to
buy new territory, but when Napoleon threatened to change his
mind if the Americans didn’t decide quickly, Jefferson agreed to
the deal. The U.S. thereby acquired approximately 2,144,500
square kilometers of land, nearly doubling its size, and making
it one of the largest nations in the world.

• Purchase of Florida (1821): General Andrew Jackson (later

President) had undertaken a war of conquest against Spanish
Florida in 1817-18 (the so-called "First Seminole War"). The
pretext for the war was that Spain could not keep the peace in
its Florida territory; in fact, white settlers had previously
attacked the Seminole Indians (indigenous to Florida) and the
Seminole had retaliated. Another sore point: the Seminole had
been accepting runaway slaves from southern U.S. territories.
U.S. possession of the territory was finally formalized in 1821,
with payment to the Kingdom of Spain.

• Texas Annexation (1845): In 1836, American settlers in Texas

had fought a successful war of independence against Mexico,
and Texas had become an independent republic. The
American settlers in Texas asked to become part of the U.S.
(trade and security advantages), but the request was rejected
because of opposition by anti-slavery members of Congress,
who were afraid that Texas would become a "slave state."
Finally, in 1845, President Tyler did in fact manage to secure
the annexation of Texas as a slave state. The Republic of
Texas had had an ongoing border dispute with Mexico (both
Mexico and Texas claimed a large amount of territory to the
north and east of the Rio Grande). When Texas was annexed,
the U.S. inherited this dispute, which led directly to the
Mexican-American War.

• Mexican Cession (1848): In late 1845, President Polk offered

to buy the Southwest, including California, from the Mexican
government, but Mexico refused, breaking off relations with the
U.S. Desiring to provoke a war with Mexico, Polk sent troops
into the disputed Texas-Mexico territory east of the Rio
Grande, and in May 1846, Mexico obliged by attacking a U.S.
unit there, killing 11 soldiers. Polk responded by asking
Congress for a declaration of war, and he got it. Mexico lost the
resulting 21-month conflict, and was forced to cede the entire
Southwest to the U.S. in the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo
(signed February 1848).
• Gadsden Purchase (1853): In the early 1850s, plans to build
a transcontinental railroad through the southern U.S. were
frustrated by the mountainous terrain of the Southwest.
However, the territory immediately south of the Gila River was
relatively passable. In 1853, President Pierce sent railroad
developer James Gadsden, who had personal connections
with the Administration, to Mexico in order to negotiate a deal.
Santa Anna, the Mexican President, was desperate for money,
and accepted. This land sale, known as the Gadsden
Purchase, gave the United States possession of the Mesilla
Valley south of the Gila River, an area of nearly 78,000 square
kilometers (about the size of South Carolina). In return the
Mexicans received $10 million.

• Purchase of Alaska (1867): Andrew Seward, Secretary of

State under Presidents Lincoln and Johnson, dreamed of
establishing a U.S. empire that stretched from Canada to
Panama. In pursuit of this fantasy, he arranged for the
purchase of Alaska from the Russians for $7.2 million.

The expansion of the United States was bolstered by two

ideological doctrines: the Monroe Doctrine and the idea of
Manifest Destiny.

• The Monroe Doctrine: in 1823, President James Monroe

proclaimed: (1) that the Americas, North and South, were
closed to further European colonization; and (2) that any
attempt by a European power to colonize, oppress, or
threaten any nation in the Western Hemisphere would be
viewed as a hostile act against the U.S. In return, the U.S.
would not interfere with internal European affairs (wars
etc.), and the U.S. recognized the already existing
European colonies in the Western Hemisphere. The US
accepted the responsibility of being the protector of
independent Western nations. The Monroe Doctrine went
through a number of incarnations following its initial
promulgation in 1823. During the presidency of Teddy
Roosevelt, it acquired a "Roosevelt Corollary," according to
which, if a Latin American nation misbehaved badly
enough, the U.S. had a right to interfere and restore order
(i.e., invade). Later, in the context of the Cold War, the
Monroe Doctrine was pressed into service against Soviet
expansion in Latin America. Kennedy's televised speech
announcing the "quarantine" of Cuba in October 1962
consciously echoes provision (2) above:
 "It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any
nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any
nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by
the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a
full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union."

So this doctrine cast a long shadow.

• The idea of "Manifest Destiny": in 1845 (i.e., right before

the Mexican war), an American journalist predicted "the
fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the
continent allotted by Providence." The idea, in other words,
was that since we've succeeded in conquering and buying
half the continent, God must intend for us to have all of it,
and then some.

As with so many features of early American history, the

"Monroe Doctrine" and the doctrine of "Manifest Destiny"
can be viewed cynically as high-sounding excuses for an
enormous land-grab, or more generously as expressions of
a genuine desire to spread freedom and democracy
throughout the continent and beyond. In any case, both
M.D.'s proved immensely influential and served as
ideological rallying-cries in support of the Mexican war, the
 purchase of Alaska, and--later--the annexation of Hawaii,
Guam, and the Philippines.

• Slavery and the causes of the Civil War

• Slavery

Throughout the 19th century, the institution of slavery had grown more
and more important, particularly in the South (agriculture), and—despite
a U.S.-wide ban on importing any more African slaves—the slave
population grew by natural increase to a total of 4 million by 1860 (Total
U.S. population, free and slave: about 32 million). At the time there
were 15 slave states, including Texas, Florida, Missouri and Delaware.

The position of the Founding Fathers on slavery was very

ambivalent. Most of them were personally opposed to slavery, but
many—including Washington and Jefferson—were also slaveholders.
Moreover, the universalist human-rights creed enshrined in the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution contrasts jarringly
with toleration of slavery. So why was it permitted?

• First, the framers of the U.S. constitution did not want to

offend southern states, whose economy was based on
slave labor and who therefore never would have ratified
an explicitly anti-slavery constitution. National unity was,
at the time, deemed more important than moral
righteousness.

• Second, they believed that slavery would die out fairly

soon anyway. They knew that, in general, slave
economies are much less efficient and productive than
free economies, and they imagined that, eventually, the
problem would disappear because of market forces. It
was a reasonable hope. The first slave crop was
tobacco, and by the 1790s, demand for it had dropped
on the world market, production of the crop had depleted
the soil in many tideland areas, and the economy of the
South was in decline. This economic slump had reduced
 the importance of slaves, and the institution did indeed
appear to be dying slowly.

What the Founders didn’t anticipate (though actually it was already

starting to happen) was the emergence of a new crop: cotton. Originally
a luxury item, cotton was made affordable by a series of labor-saving
inventions during the 1770s, 80s, and 90s, culminating in Eli Whitney’s
1793 invention of the cotton gin (a device for separating seeds from
lint). With Whitney’s invention, a slave on a plantation could produce 50
pounds of cotton a day instead of one. In the wake of these inventions,
a huge world market for cotton developed, with the southern slave
economy as the main supplier. For example, in 1810, the British bought
half their raw cotton—about 36 million pounds--from the American
south. The cotton gin had saved slavery as an American institution by
making it (relatively) efficient and sustainable.

• Events leading up to the Civil War

• The events leading up to the Civil War are complex, and

can best be dealt with under two headings: (1) economics
and ideology, and (2) statehood, law, and the "Dred Scott"
decision.

• Economics and ideology

During the 19th century there was a growing rift

between northern and southern states that centered
on slavery, for both economic and ideological
reasons. For example, the South, being a huge
exporter of cotton and tobacco, was strongly in favor of
low tariffs, while the North, building up its industry,
wanted tariffs high. More importantly, the entire
economy of the South was based on slave labor, and
Southern whites had a vested interest in keeping it that
way. Ideology followed economic necessity: Southern

whites cited the Bible in their support of slavery, and

developed a theory of natural black inferiority in order to
support their right to keep blacks enslaved.

Northern reaction took the form of the abolitionist

movement, so-called because its chief aim was the
abolition of slavery. The movement had its historical
origins in late 18th-century Britain. British and American
Quakers had already repudiated slavery on religious
grounds and required that their members not hold
slaves. Inspired by the Quakers’ example, and spurred
on by passionate anti-slavery activists such as
Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson, a group of
politically conservative members of the Church of
England launched a movement to ban the slave-trade
throughout the British Empire with the eventual goal of
ending slavery itself. After a long struggle, the slave-
trade was abolished within the Empire in 1807. The
abolition of slavery itself took longer, but was finally
accomplished (following a series of particularly bloody
slave revolts in the West Indies) in 1838.

Inspired in turn by the British example, the American

abolitionist movement—originally at the margins of
public opinion—used argument, agitation, boycotts, and
sometimes violence, to push neutral Northerners into
committing themselves to the cause of ending slavery.
By mid-century, educated opinion in the North was
overwhelmingly in favor of abolition (although popular
opinion lagged behind).

Two important American abolitionists:

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) was a white

journalist who established the Liberator (1831) at Boston
to advocate unconditional emancipation of the slaves,
marking the beginning of the abolitionist movement.
Garrison was an extremist who is said to have once
publicly burned a copy of the U.S. Constitution, saying:
"So perish all compromises with tyranny."

Frederick Douglass (1817?-1895), a slave who taught

himself to read and write, escaped to the North in 1838,
and became a leading speaker and writer for the
abolitionist movement. His powerful and brilliantly
 written autobiography (Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass, an American Slave) is still in print, and highly
recommended.

• Statehood, law and the “Dred Scott” decision

So North and South were divided by an economic

conflict of interest and by a matter of principle. Uneasy
peace between the two regions had been kept from the
early 19th century on by maintaining approximate
equality between the number of "slave states" and "free
states" in the Union: as new states were admitted, slave
states were balanced against free states, keeping
representation of North and South approximately equal
in the U.S. Senate. This unofficial policy was maintained
for several decades despite repeated crises (resolved
by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which banned
slavery north of 36°30’, and the Great Compromise of
1850, which introduced the Fugitive Slave Act), until the
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 designated the western
territories as an area where "popular sovereignty" would
decide whether slavery was to be permitted.

The final (apparent) blow to the cause of abolition was

struck by the Supreme Court in the notorious "Dred
Scott" decision. Dred Scott was the slave of Dr. John
Emerson, a military physician who had taken Scott to
Fort Snelling, in present-day Minnesota. At the time, this
part of the Louisiana Purchase was free territory under
the Missouri Compromise. After Emerson’s death, Scott
sued for his freedom on the grounds that he had
become free in Minnesota, and once free, always free.
After nearly 11 years of litigation in state and federal
courts, the Supreme Court finally decided the case in
1857, holding that:

• blacks were not protected by the Constitution at all,

because they were naturally inferior beings in need
of slavery for their own benefit;

• therefore, neither Scott nor any other black—slave or

free—could be a U.S. citizens;

• slave ownership was a property right, with which

Congress could not legally interfere;

The immediate legal effect of this decision was to

guarantee the legality of slavery in all the "Territories"
(=areas owned by U.S. but not yet states), and to
prohibit any further Congressional compromises limiting
the spread of slavery. The more long-term effect of the
decision, since it outraged the North, was to make the
election of Abraham Lincoln, and therefore the Civil
War, inevitable.

Abraham Lincoln: born in (relative) poverty, the son of

a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had served as an
Illinois Congressman and a practicing attorney before
running for the Senate in 1858 on a moderate anti-
slavery platform. He lost the Senate race, but through
his articulate presentation of the anti-slavery position, he
became the star of the newly-formed Republican
Party.
Lincoln had always been personally and publicly
opposed to slavery, but he was willing to compromise to
avoid tearing the country apart. He adopted (and until
1862, maintained) a kind of "containment" approach to
the problem. That is, he did not propose to abolish
slavery everywhere in the U.S. (and in fact, had he
proposed this, he could never have gotten elected) but

to limit its further expansion. This was the main plank in

the Republican Party’s platform, and basis on which
Lincoln won the Republican nomination for
President in 1860.

To southerners, Lincoln’s moderation was invisible: they

viewed him as an abolitionist plain and simple. One
obvious reason for this: "limiting the further expansion of
slavery" might sound like a moderate platform, but it
meant, in effect, not admitting any more slave states to
the Union—and under this scenario, the slaveholding
South would, in time, lose parity in the Senate as new
states were carved out of the Western territories.

In any case, Lincoln won a four-way Presidential

election in which he received about 39% of the popular
vote. The vote was purely sectional: Lincoln dominated
in the North, and won almost no votes at all in the
South. By the time he was sworn in as President, seven
southern states had announced that they were leaving
the Union. Four more would shortly follow.
• The Civil War and the End of Slavery

• The Civil War (1861-1865)

By early 1861, 11 Southern states had seceded and formed

the Confederate States of America (with a Constitution
similar to the U.S., but with guarantees for slavery). Lincoln,
hoping to avoid war, reacted to the Southern secession by
trying to hold federal lands (i.e., real estate owned and
maintained by the central government) in the seceded
states. The clash came on April 12, 1861, when the

Confederacy attacked the federal fort, Fort Sumter, in the

harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. The garrison
surrendered and were allowed to leave. War had begun.
Lincoln is known as the "Great Emancipator“, but for the
first year and a half of the war, his stated war aim was not
the abolition of slavery but the repression of rebellion. As
he wrote in 1862:

„My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union and it

is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the
Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it; and if I could
save it by freeing some slaves and leaving others alone I would
do that.“

By September 1862, Lincoln had changed his mind (due

to both moral and political considerations—e.g., foreign
opinion) and issued the Emancipation Proclamation,
which stated that as of January 1, 1863, those slaves held
in states in rebellion against the U.S. would be forever
free. The Proclamation did not free slaves in the border
states or in those areas of the South already occupied by
Northern armies; it was not until the 13th Amendment to
the Constitution was adopted, shortly after the war ended
in 1865, that slavery was abolished permanently
everywhere in the U.S.

The war lasted four years and was very bloody: over
600,000 American deaths, more than all other U.S. wars
put together. It devastated the South, both physically and
economically, and the effects lasted for decades. The
best-known instance of the Civil War’s brutality was
General Sherman’s March to the Sea. Sherman's troops
left the captured city of Atlanta, Georgia in mid-November
1864, and ended with the capture of the port of Savannah
on December 22. He and U.S. Army commander Ulysses
Grant believed that they could win the Civil War only by
breaking the Confederacy’s strategic, economic, and
psychological capacity for warfare. Sherman therefore
applied the principles of scorched earth, ordering his
 troops to burn crops, kill livestock, consume supplies, and
destroy civilian infrastructure along their path. The March
had its desired effect: it terrorized and demoralized
southerners, and Georgians hate Sherman to this day.

• Reconstruction

On April 14, 1865, five days after the South surrendered at

Appomattox, Lincoln was shot to death in a public theater by
John Wilkes Booth, an embittered Southerner. The question of
how best to "reconstruct" the South (i.e., how and on what terms
to reintegrate it into the Union) thus had to be settled in the
politically and emotionally charged atmosphere of national grief
over a martyred President. Lincoln himself had favored a policy
of reconciliation. The new President, Andrew Johnson, a
southern Democrat whom the Republicans had placed on the
ticket in the hope that he would persuade voters that Lincoln was
a moderate, shared Lincoln’s policy of reconciliation; however,
Congress was controlled by the so-called Radical Republicans,
an extremist wing of the Republican Party who were in favor of
punishing southern whites (for example, by disenfranchisement)
and setting up strong civil-rights guarantees for freed slaves.
Since the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress with
large majorities, they were able to force their punitive agenda on
the South despite President Johnson’s opposition.

The centerpiece of this agenda consisted of the 14 th and 15th

Amendments to the Constitution. These amendments were
intended to combat the Black Codes which the former
Confederate states had enacted immediately after the war
ended. Under the Black Codes (known collectively as Jim
Crow), the rights of former slaves were severely restricted: for
example, blacks had no right to bear arms, and no right to testify
in trials involving whites. In South Carolina, they were excluded
from practicing skilled trades. Throughout the South, they were
prevented from voting, often by means of intimidation; when they
succeeded in voting, the votes were often not counted. In
response to the Codes, the Senate drafted the 14 th Amendment
(guaranteeing a broad range of civil rights for freed slaves) and
the 15th (guaranteeing voting rights). The South resisted these
amendments, but Congress made it clear that the Northern
occupation troops would not be withdrawn until they were ratified.

Reconstruction was imposed on the South from 1865-1877.

The new southern state constitutions often embraced
progressive social agendas (e.g., property rights for women, the
building of schools for the handicapped, and the elimination of
property qualifications for voting). Moreover, blacks had access
to the political process: their right to vote was guaranteed, and
many blacks served in state legislatures.

However, while concentrating on political reform,

Reconstruction ignored the traditional power structure and
social structure of the south. The land was still held by its
former (white) owners, and the same attitudes about blacks
prevailed. Many former slaves worked as sharecroppers: they

lived on the land, and worked as farmers or field-hands for the

landowner, being paid not in wages but with a portion--usually
half--of the money realized from the sale of the farm's crops.
Furthermore, they often borrowed money from the landowners,
gradually sinking deeply into debt. In short, many southern
blacks were too poor, debt-ridden, and unskilled to escape from
a life that closely resembled slavery except on paper. They were
also subjected to vicious attacks by whites. During the period
1865-1871, many of these attacks were organized by the Ku
Klux Klan, a white terror organization founded by former
slaveowners.
The last attempt by the North to reconstruct the South was the
Civil Rights Act of 1875, which prohibited discrimination against
blacks in hotels, restaurants, etc. Two years later, Reconstruction
ended as the last Union troops were withdrawn from the South.
The South immediately strengthened and extended the Jim Crow
laws, and the Supreme Court helped it along: in 1883, it struck
down the Civil Rights Act on the grounds that the 14 th
Amendment didn’t apply to private institutions (hotels etc.) but
only to public ones, and—in the now notorious ruling Plessy v.
Ferguson in 1896—it approved of the "separate but equal"
doctrine. In this climate of renewed oppression, southern whites

were able to devise new ways to deny black people their rights:
the "Grandfather Clauses," for example.

In the words of the historian Paul Johnson:

„In short, within a decade of its establishment, Congressional

Reconstruction had been destroyed. New [state] constitutions were
enacted, debts repudiated, the administrations purged, cut down, and
reformed, and taxation reduced to pre-war levels. Then the new white
regimes set about legislating the blacks into a lowly place in the
scheme of things. Thus the great Civil War, the central event of
American history, having removed the evil of slavery, gave birth to a
new South in which whites were first-class citizens and blacks citizens
in name only. And a great silence descended for many decades.“