OUTLINE
Reconstruction in Texas

I. Popular perceptions of Reconstruction

A. carpetbaggers

B. scalawags

C. freedmen

D. Southern Democrats

II. Realities

A. Presidential Reconstruction, June 1865-March 1867

1. the Lincoln-Johnson plan

2. the plan put into motion (with A.J. Hamilton as provisional governor)

a) loyalty oaths taken

b) presidential pardons for Confederate officials and planters

c) new state constitution written

d) 13th amendment ratified

e) elections held

3. problems with the plan

a) election of ex-rebels

(1) James Throckmorton, governor
(2) Oran Roberts & David Burnet, senators
(3) rebels at all levels of government
(4) senators and congressmen refused their seats

b) the Black Codes

(1) labor contracts
(2) apprenticeship laws
(3) vagrancy laws
(4) corporal punishment

c) Presidential Reconstruction overturned

B. Congressional Reconstruction, March 1867-April 1870

1. Congress’s plan: the Reconstruction Acts

2. the plan put into motion (with Hamilton removed from office & E.M. Pease appointed governor)

a) military districts

b) 14th Amendment ratified

c) new state constitution written (finished in early 1869)

d) black males voting

e) test oath required for voting (disfranchises 10,000; 60,000 still can vote)

f) elections held

3. results of the plan

a) constitution gives state government new powers

b) Black Codes abolished

c) Republican party comes to power

C. Radical Reconstruction, April 1870-January 1874

1. Edmund J. Davis

a) a despot?

b) a spendthrift?

c) a corrupt tool of big business?

2. the Republican agenda

a) restore law and order

b) public education

c) promote economic development (railroads)

III. Redemption

A. Ex-Confederates return to politics

B. Democratic propaganda

C. the Ku Klux Klan

D. Democrats win at the polls

1. the legislature redeemed, 1872

2. Davis defeated by Richard Coke, December 1873

E. the status of African Americans

1. sharecropping

2. political rights circumscribed