 Good morning. Today we're gonna talk about Reconstruction. That's the period in Texas history following the Civil War and Reconstruct of course means to put back together and that's one of the things they try to do after the Civil War in Texas. The period we're looking at is from 1865 to about 1890. So let's look at this period following the Civil War. Right after the Civil War there were a couple of big questions that the United States had to answer and this also applied to Texas. First of all, how do we bring the Confederate States back into the Union? I mean there was nothing in the Constitution to say that states could secede from the Union. So the whole question of secession, what it was and then what was going to happen afterwards was something people had to wrestle with. The other question is who is responsible for doing this? Is it the role of the President? Is it the role of Congress? Is it the role of the Supreme Court? No one was certain and this all had to be worked out. Another question that had to be addressed was what are we going to do about the Freedmen? These are these slaves that had been freed after the 13th Amendment and so what would happen to them? Of course, they had their own hope. So there were a lot of people who were roaming around trying following the Civil War, trying to find families, put their families back together after they had been sold off during slavery. People looking for work because many of the plantations in the South were damaged. Now, Texas escaped some of that, but there were still questions about who was going to plant, who was going to raise, who owned the land. And there were black hopes as well. Many African Americans bought into the idea of 40 acres in a mule. Now that really didn't happen and it wasn't implemented outside of a few places in the South. But the idea of 40 acres in a mule became very popular. The Army itself played a role and it established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, commonly referred to as the Freedmen's Bureau. It was given a one-year charter starting in March of 1865 and it was overseen by General O. O. Howard. So that lets you know that the military was in charge of this and they wanted to help the Freedmen find land, find homes, find jobs, find family, and get an education and also make sure that they could vote. The President also had plans on how to conduct the war. Lincoln, in December of 1863, established the 10% plan. This was a plan that as long as 10% of the people who voted in the 1860 election, the previous election, as long as they declared future allegiance to the Union, the state could come back in as a fully functioning state. Well, the Republicans in Congress and especially a faction known as the radical Republicans didn't think that was enough. So in 1864, the Wade Davis bill passed Congress and this established the so-called Ironclad Oath and it made the requirements as soon as 50% of people could promise allegiance to the Union, then that state would be allowed into the Union. However, Lincoln did not sign this, so in fact he gave it a pocket veto. He didn't sign the bill, so it didn't go into law and as a result Wade and Davis issued the so-called Wade Davis Manifesto, which essentially told the President that it was the right of Congress to oversee reconstruction. Now in April of 65, the President was assassinated at Ford's Theater shortly after the end of the war and the Vice President of the United States, Andrew Johnson, who was a Democrat. Lincoln had chosen a Democrat in order to show the South and show the Democratic Party that he was willing to accept them to hopefully end the war sooner. Johnson had a different view of slavery and of civil rights. However, he did want to uphold at first Lincoln's 10% plan. He issued a proclamation of amnesty in May, towards the end of May of 1865 and a plan for restoration of the Union, but Congress was not very happy with what he had done. Now in Texas, the provisional government was established in June and that was overseen by Governor Hamilton. In June 19th, the so-called General Orders number three, Gordon Granger came into Galveston and read the proclamation that announced to all slaves in Texas that they were free and no longer slaves. And this is where you get Juneteenth from. In September, the Army began operating the Freedmen's Bureau in Texas. They established schools, and that was probably their most successful endeavor in Texas. They tried to oversee votes. There was a lot of conflict because of the Army coming in and the Freedmen's Bureau's schools. Many schools were attacked, some burned, teachers were attacked, students were attacked, and yet they persisted. So Texas began their own political reconstruction with an election in 1866 and the legislature came in in August of that year. It was a conservative legislature. Throck Morton was elected governor, and he was very moderate. By that point, as far as the government was concerned, reconstruction was complete in Texas. However, Texas refused to ratify the 13th Amendment, which eliminated slavery. And so, despite that, President Johnson said that reconstruction in Texas was complete in August of 1866. However, in Congress, the radical Republicans wanted to exert more control over reconstruction, and so they were very upset about in the South many southern states had enacted black code. This was legislation that tried to limit the freedoms of the newly freed slaves and basically reserved them back to a status much like slavery. And this was too much for the radical Republicans in Congress. They felt that, you know, the South had lost the war, but they weren't acting like they had lost the war. And in fact, many Confederates, former politicals in office during the Confederacy were re-elected and were returning to the Senate and the House, and Congress was not happy about this. And so Congress began a way of trying to exert its power. They extended the power of the Freedman's Bureau. Remember, it was only chartered for one year. Johnson tried to veto that extension, but they overrode the veto. In 1866, Congress passed the first Civil Rights Act ever passed by Congress. And then in order to prevent Johnson from trying to veto that or future legislators from trying to overturn that, they passed the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment is probably one of the most important amendments in the Constitution. It is the basis for many court cases that come up that the Supreme Court looks into. It's a civil rights amendment, and it's for the first time the United States defined what it meant to be a citizen of the United States, and who was responsible for ensuring citizens' rights. And that was in the hands of the government now. They also passed some Reconstruction Acts in 1867 that were aimed at limiting the powers of Andrew Johnson to prevent him from trying to change Reconstruction or challenge Congress's ability to oversee Reconstruction. In Texas, General Phil Sheridan was put in charge of the 5th Military District. That was what Texas was under, basically under martial law. Governor Throckmorton was removed, and the new provisional governor was Elisha Peace. In Texas, radical Reconstruction continued then. There was a convention to establish a new Constitution, and it was biracial. African Americans sat and were representatives on that convention, and there were moderate and radical Republican factions present. And so what happens is they tried to rebuild the government by creating a stronger central government in Texas with a strong governor. They established a school system, the first school system in Texas that was statewide, and it was desegregated. So it meant schools for blacks and whites together, and this caused a lot of problems. And they also enacted other guarantees for African Americans. In 1870, the state elected Governor E.J. Davis, and President Grant at this time said, okay, Texas is back in, so we're restoring its status as a state in the Union in April of 1870. But Davis ran afoul of many of the conservative Democrats in Texas, the so-called obnoxious acts. He established a biracial state militia, and this offended many people, a biracial state police force. So you had the state military and the state police force both employing African-American officers in addition to white officers, and this really rubbed people the wrong way. Also the school system, there was more taxes in order to pay for the school system and the stronger government. And so all these caused problems. But the real thing that made a lot of people angry was that Davis tried to get election dates changed in Texas so that they would correspond with national congressional elections. And this was just to bring it in line and to make the voting process more efficient. But many people saw this as political shenanigans. He was brought up on charges of corruption, and they tried to oust him from government. In 1873, the legislature repealed many of Davis's programs. They elected a new governor, Richard Koch, who is much more conservative. They came up with a new constitution that Democrats were very much in charge of. It was an agrarian, more farmers concerned. The farmers had formed an organization, or an organization been formed by farmers called the Grange. And these farmers had many issues that they were very concerned about. One of the things that they wanted was a very weak government. They didn't like the fact that the governor had so much power. And so in the Constitution of 1876, they made the governor very weak and made the lieutenant governor the more powerful office. It was also a very anti-big business. And so, for example, they put a lot of restrictions on railroads and other businesses coming into Texas, and they reduced the state school system. In the end, the Republican Party declined. The president of the United States refused to send in troops to help uphold the Republican Party. Racism began dividing the Republicans. There were Republicans who were African Americans and many whites didn't like this. And so other parties began coming in and challenging the Democratic Party, especially in West Texas. You have the green backs, but there were other parties as well. However, the Democrats maintained power. One of the things they used quite often in politics was the fear that African Americans were ruling. And this was throughout the South. There were charges that African Americans, as a part of reconstruction, had been placed in the government. And certainly they didn't know how to rule according to this theory. And so there was a lot of misrule Democrats claimed. And so they tried to reduce the effectiveness of the African American vote. They adopted more farm issues, agrarian issues, and they took control of the political party's primary elections. All this in an attempt to maintain power for the Democratic Party and to keep African Americans from voting. Throughout the South, this idea of New South, that reconstruction had ended the agrarian role, the pre-Civil War type lifestyle, and that the South was going to be rebuilt. This New South idea called for smaller government and reduced government spending. They wanted balanced budgets. They wanted in Texas to sell off the public lands. And so they passed this 50 cent law. You could buy land for 50 cents an acre. And this, of course, attracted a lot of investment, a lot of business investment. A lot of railroads came in. And despite the fact that the 1866 Constitution had put limits on the railroad business, the government gave away a tremendous amount of land given to railroads. And this is eventually going to affect us negatively. There was the great railroad strike of 1886 because of labor issues on the railroads. And that is going to affect Texas and the nation as well. You also had the commercialization of agriculture. You're going to see it especially and most prominently in the lumber and in the cotton industry, where you're going to have businesses coming in. And it's not going to be the small farmer anymore. Of course, because reconstruction changed everything. And the Civil War also affected the cotton industry. So the idea of big businesses coming in and running these cotton and lumber industry are going to make changes in the state's economy. And there was some effort to help the poor and help the injured. And so these ill-emissinary institutions, for example, in Austin, there were two state hospitals that were created, one for people with mental illness and the so-called insane hospital. And then there was schools for people who could not see or could not hear in the so-called deaf and blind schools. And actually, there were four schools because they had to have one each for African Americans because of segregation.