Create a Magic Lantern Show:

Freedpeople in the Reconstruction South

Essential Questions: How, after the Civil War, did freedpeople act on their freedom?

In what ways did the freedpeople attempt to secure their citizenship status?

Why did freedpeople believe land ownership to be crucial?

Why did freedpeople believe they had a claim to the land?

What were the methods of physical violence and intimidation used by white southerners in response to freedpeople's

attempts to exercise their political and economic rights?

Instructions 1. Step 1: We will read p. 1-2 of the viewer’s guide prior to beginning the film Dr. Toer's Amazing Magic Lantern Show:

A Different View of Emancipation (20 minutes).

2. Step 2: After we view the first clip (to 4:12), we will read p. 3-6 of the viewer’s guide.

3. Step 3: After we view the second clip (4:12-12:10), we will read p. 7-8 of the viewer’s guide.

4. Step 4: After we view the third clip (12:10-15:50), we will read p. 9-10 of the viewer’s guide.

5. Step 5: After we view the fourth clip (15:50 to 18:35), we will read p. 11-12 of the viewer’s guide.

6. Step 6: After we view the fourth clip (18:35-end), we will read p. 13 of the viewer’s guide.

a. We will read p. 14 in a later lesson in which we will view excerpts from the film Birth of a Nation.

7. Step 7: After the film (AND THEN FOR HW), you will divide into groups of 4-7 students. Each student will be given

a worksheet and each group a packet of the documents. We will review the three historical understandings on the

worksheet, making sure that you understand what all the words mean. After the discussion, you should decide whether

each document is an example of what was done "to" "for" or "by" freedpeople during Reconstruction and note that on

your worksheets.

Historical Context At the end of the Civil War, a freed slave and Baptist minister named J.W. Toer traveled the South holding public meetings of

men and women recently freed from slavery. Historical documents show that these meetings featured a "magic lantern show"

entitled "The Progress of Reconstruction," which illustrated the enormous changes then taking place in the South. Dr. Toer's

journey took place in the Reconstruction years, 1865-1877, when Americans grappled with the effects of the Civil War and

Emancipation. Four million black men and women made the enormous leap from slavery to freedom and citizenship. With

slavery dead, the social and economic foundations of southern society had to be rebuilt. It was potentially a revolutionary

moment, full of fear and promise. Its outcome would shape the lives of African Americans—indeed, the lives of all

Americans—for generations to come.

The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments Congress passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing slavery, before the Civil War had ended. Once the war was over, white

southerners passed laws (known as Black Codes) to keep freedmen from exercising their rights, and Congress responded by passing a Civil

Rights Act in 1866 to ensure black citizenship. Congress overrode President Andrew Johnson’s veto and went even further, passing the 14th

Amendment. When enfranchised African Americans began exercising political power, white southerners and organizations like the Ku Klux

Klan targeted them with violence and intimidation (especially after 1867). To protect black voting rights, Congress passed the 15th Amendment.

The 15th Amendment, however, did not outlaw literacy tests, poll taxes and other methods that might prevent poor blacks and whites from voting.

After Congressional passage, constitutional amendments require three fourths of the states to approve them—by 1871, 31 states out of 37 had

ratified the 14th and 15th amendments.

AMENDMENT XIII

Passed by Congress on 31 January 1865; Ratified 6 December 1865

Section 1

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,

shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

AMENDMENT XIV

Passed by Congress 13 June 1866; Ratified 9 July 1868

Section 1

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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of

citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor

deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws…

AMENDMENT XV

Passed by Congress 26 February 1869; Ratified 3 February 1870

Section 1

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account

of race, color or previous condition of servitude…

SOURCE | U.S. Constitution, National Archives; full text available from the National Archives,

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_amendments_11-27.html.

CREATOR | U.S. Congress

ITEM TYPE | Laws/Court Cases

Black Codes Restrict Newly Won Freedom

In the fall of 1865, white southerners, most of them ex-Confederates and planters, won large majorities in local and state elections throughout

the South. They quickly passed a series of restrictive laws, or Black Codes, which varied only slightly from state to state. These laws were

designed to control and limit the political, social, and economic opportunities of African Americans, forcing them to work under conditions not

very different than slavery. The punishment for violating the Codes was years of unpaid hard labor. In response, freedmen demanded that the

federal government do more to protect their rights; outraged white northerners urged their Congressmen to intervene as well.

Vagrancy

Any person who is able to work is not allowed to wander or stroll about leisurely. Such people will be deemed vagrants and be

arrested. Anyone can arrest a vagrant. Landowners or other people with a source of income are not subject to vagrancy

laws. (Georgia)

Labor & Contracts

No person of color can be an artisan, mechanic or shop-keeper, or pursue any other trade or business besides farming, manual

labor or domestic service (South Carolina)

Police and sheriffs must find and arrest any laborer or domestic servant who quits his or her job before the contract has expired;

the police or sheriff must return the laborer or servant to his or her employer. Any person is allowed to fetch and return laborers

and servants who quit their jobs, but only police and sheriffs are compelled to (Mississippi)

When a person of color working on a farm or plantation deliberately disobeys orders, is impudent or disrespectful to his

employer, refuses to do the work assigned, or leaves the premises, he can be arrested. (Florida)

If a judge declares that a parent cannot support his or her children, then the children can be bound out as apprentices until they

are 21 (for boys) and 16 (for girls)(Alabama)

The former slave owner gets first preference when their former slave children are bound out as apprentices (Georgia and North

Carolina)

It is illegal for any person to hire or to offer a better contract to any black person contracted in domestic service or manual labor

to another (Mississippi)

Testifying Against Whites

No person of color can testify against a white person in court, unless the white person agrees to it (North Carolina)

Serving in State Militias

No person of color can serve in the state militia; it is illegal for black people to own firearms, swords or other military

weapons (South Carolina)

Crime and Punishment

Each county will elect two jail keepers, one to be in charge of poor whites and one to be in charge of poor blacks (North

Carolina)

If any white person sees a black person commit a misdemeanor or felony crime, the white person has the authority to arrest the

black person. If a white person commits a crime, then the witness must first get a warrant for his arrest from a judge before the

criminal can be arrested (South Carolina)

It is legal to prevent the escape of a black person who has committed a crime at night by any means necessary, even if the black

person is killed (South Carolina)

Any black man who is convicted of rape or attempted rape of a white woman will be given the death penalty (North Carolina)

Interracial Marriage

It is a felony crime for any person of color to marry a white person; white people may not marry freedmen or other people of

color. Any person who commits this crime will be sentenced to life in prison (Mississippi)

Voting

Only white men can serve on juries, hold office, and vote in any state, county, or municipal election (Texas)

No colored persons have the right to vote, hold office or sit on juries in this state(Tennessee)

SOURCE | Adapted from “The American Black Codes, 1865-1866,” George Washington University Library,

http://home.gwu.edu/~jjhawkin/BlackCodes/BlackCodes.htm.

CREATOR | Various

ITEM TYPE | Laws/Court Cases

The First Vote This illustration from Harper's Weekly features three figures symbolizing black political leadership: a skilled craftsman, a sophisticated city

dweller, and a Union Army veteran.

Focus Questions Look at the three men in line. How are they similar and how are they different?

SOURCE | Alfred R. Waud, "The First Vote," wood engraving, Harper's Weekly, 11 November 1867.

CREATOR | Alfred R. Waud

ITEM TYPE | Poster/Print

A Freedman Seeks to Reunite His Family

After emancipation, many former slaves immediately searched for family members who had been sold away during slavery. They used whatever

scant information they had and frequently placed advertisements like this in southern newspapers.

SAML. DOVE wishes to know of the whereabouts of his mother, Areno, his sisters Maria, Neziah, and Peggy, and his brother

Edmond, who were owned by Geo. Dove, of Rockingham County, Shenandoah Valley, VA. Sold in Richmond, after which

Saml. and Edmond were taken to Nashville, Tenn., by Joe Mick; Areno was left at the Eagle Tavern, Richmond.

Respectfully yours,

SAML. DOVE.

Utica, New York, Aug. 5, 1865-3m

SOURCE | The Colored Tennessean, August 12, 1865, courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society; available at Slavery and the Making of America,

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/experience/family/docs2.html.

CREATOR | Samuel Dove

ITEM TYPE | Advertisement

The Freedmen's Bureau Aids Civil War Refugees

In the chaotic last days of the Civil War, newly emancipated slaves were on the move across the South. Some had escaped bondage by joining

Union military forces and following them; others were attempting to reunite with lost family members. Most had only the clothes on their backs.

In March 1865 Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (which became known as the Freedmen’s

Bureau) to oversee the transition from slavery to freedom. The Freedmen’s Bureau provided food, shelter, and medical aid to the freedpeople and

other war refugees. The Sanitary Commission was a U.S. government agency that coordinated the work of women volunteers to the Union cause

during the war. The author’s original spelling and grammar has been preserved.

The average arrivals of Freedmen in transit from all parts of the state, Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina seeking their

relatives and endeavoring to reach their homes have been fifty (50) per day, and twenty one thousand (21,000) rations have been

issued to such persons during June and July on the ground of absolute destitution and inability to proceed further without such

aid. . . . One hundred articles of clothing have been given to Freedmen since June 1st, the value of which was fifty dollars

($50.00). The whole of it was donated by the Agent of the Sanitary Commission and no supplies distributed from this office

have apparently been more needed or better bestowed. . . . Many of those who followed Genl. Sherman from Georgia, suffering

from the toilsome march, exposure and insufficient clothing & food died soon after reaching Port Royal, leaving friendless and

unprotected orphans; of this class a large number subsist we hardly know how, mainly in Beaufort & it seems an imperative

duty to provide for them some place of refuge. The benevolence of northern associations will secure clothing &c but the Govt

should set apart from unsold property a building or buildings in which they can be property cared for.

SOURCE | H. G. Judd to Maj. Gen. R. Saxton, 1 August 1865, Beaufort, South Carolina; The Freedmen’s Bureau Online: Records of the Bureau of

Freedmen, Refugees and Abandoned Lands, http://freedmensbureau.com/southcarolina/scoperations5.htm.

CREATOR | H. G. Judd

ITEM TYPE | Diary/Letter

Freedpeople Describe the Meanings of Freedom

At the end of the Civil War, Northern officials were not yet sure what exactly freedom would entail for the millions of freedpeople in the South.

The following first-person accounts by former slaves and free blacks describe their expectations, experiences, and struggles during the

Reconstruction Era. Their actions, in the years following emancipation, defined what freedom would entail, from social equality to political

participation to new threats of danger.

Land Ownership:

"Every colored man will be a slave, and feel himself a slave, until he can raise his own bale of cotton and put his own mark

upon it and say this is mine." —a Black Soldier

"There ain't going to be no more master and mistress, Miss Emma. All is equal. I done hear it from the courthouse steps. All

the land belongs to the Yankees now, and they're going to divide it out among the colored people. Besides the kitchen of the

big house is my share. I helped build it." —Cyrus, a freedman to his former mistress, Emma Mordecai, after the fall of

Richmond, April 1865

"Our wives, out children, our husbands have been sold over and over again to purchase the lands we now locates upon; for that

reason we have a divine right to that land." —Bayley Wyat, a former slave protesting eviction from land assigned to him by the

Union Army

"We feel it to be very important that we obtain HOMES–owning our shelters, and the ground...which our children can say–

'These are ours'" —Resolution of Virginia freedmen sent to Freedmen's Bureau, August 4, 1865

Education:

"I was full of energy and hope, and…put forth every effort to make a man of myself, and to earn an honest living. I saw that I

needed education; and it was one of the bitterest remembrances of [slavery] that I had been cheated out of this inalienable

right….Hence I entered the night-school for freedmen… and faithfully attended its sessions during the months it was kept

open." —Louis Hughes, Thirty Years a Slave, 1897

"A question arose whether the white teachers or the colored teachers should be superintendents. The freedmen had built the

school-house for their children, and were Trustees of the school….The result was a decision that the colored teachers should

have charge of the school. We were gratified by this result...These people, born and bred in slavery, had always been so

accustomed to look upon the white race as their natural superiors and masters, that we had some doubts whether they could

easily throw off the habit; and the fact of their giving preference to colored teachers, as managers of the establishment, seemed

to us to indicate that even their brief possession of freedom had begun to inspire them with respect for their race." —Harriet

Jacobs, Letter from Teachers of the Freedmen, 1864

Family and Marriage:

"This meeting again of mother and daughters, after years of separation and many [hardships], was an occasion of the

profoundest [deepest] joy, although all were almost wholly [without] the necessaries of life. This first evening we spent together

can never be forgotten. I can see the old woman now, with bowed form and gray locks, as she gave thanks in joyful tones yet

reverent manner, for such a wonderful blessing." —Louis Hughes, whose wife found her mother and sister in Cincinnati, Ohio

after the war

"I went to church in Monticello [Kentucky], and there I and finally married Henry Coffee. Henry, he'd been in the war, and

belonged to the 6th Kentucky Cavalry. Us was the third colored couple to get [a] marriage license in 1868....Then [we] moved

to London [Kentucky], and Henry farmed and done first one thing and another to make a living. We bought a nice little place

and lived real nice, and worked in the church." —Anna Maria Coffee, interview for the Works Progress Administration Ex-

Slave Narratives project

Law and Politics:

“The law no longer knows white nor black, but simply men, and consequently we are entitled to ride in public conveyances,

hold office, sit on juries and do everything else which we have in the past been prevented from doing solely on the ground of

our color…” —Delegate to a convention of Alabama freedmen, 1867

"We were eight years in power. We had build schoolhouses...provided for the education of the deaf and dumb, rebuilt the jails

and courthouses, rebuilt the bridges and reestablished the ferries. In short, we had reconstructed the State and placed it upon the

road to recovery." —Thomas Miller, a freeborn African-American who served in the South Carolina legislator

Violence and the Ku Klux Klan:

"I am afraid to leave town and in constant dread of being murdered....This state of things cannot long continue. Either we must

have protection or leave....We have fallen upon evil times when an American citizen can not express his honest opinions

without being in great danger of being murdered." —Daniel Price, in a letter to Alabama governor William Smith, October 7,

1868

"On Friday night, there came a crowd of men to my house...calling, knocking, climbing and shoving at the door....It is a plot to

drive me out of the country because I am a school teacher. They say that I shall not teach school any longer in this

country. Please your honor, send some protection up here." —Letter from Thomas H. Jones to South Carolina's Republican

governor, 1871

SOURCE | American Social History Project, Who Built America?: Working People and the Nations History, vol. 1, third edition, (Boston: Bedford/St. Martins,

2008), 597; Joseph R. Johnson to Gen O. O. Howard, 4 Aug. 1865, National Archives, available at Freedmen and Southern Society Project,

http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/J%20Johnson.htm; Louis Hughes, Thirty Years a Slave (Milwaukee, 1897) available at Documenting the American South,

http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/hughes/hughes.html; Harriet A. Jacobs and Louisa Jacobs, "Letter from Teachers of the Freedmen," in National Anti-Slavery

Standard, 16 April 1864, available at Documenting the American South, http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jacob/support4.html; Anna Maria Coffee, Works Progress

Administration (WPA) Ex-Slave Narratives, Library of Congress, http://dbs.ohiohistory.org/africanam/page.cfm?ID=13913&Current=004&View=Text; Delegate to a

convention of Alabama freedmen, 1867, in William E. Gienapp, ed., The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection (New York: W.W. Norton &

Co., 2001), 367; Thomas Miller, in American Social History Project, eds., Freedom's Unfinished Revolution: An Inquiry Into the Civil War and

Reconstruction (New York: The New Press, 1996), 172, 229, 274, 261.

CREATOR | Various

ITEM TYPE | Diary/Letter

Gathering the Dead and Wounded

A Harper’s Weekly engraving shows some of the grim results of a terrorist attack on the African-American citizens of the rural town of Colfax,

Louisiana, in April 1873. Starting in 1871, the Democratic party in several southern states began an organized campaign of intimidation to

unseat Republicans from state governments. They drove whites out of the Republican party through race-baiting, economic pressure, and threats

of violence and intimidated African-American Republicans through violence and economic coercion. In Colfax, freedmen who feared Democrats

would seize the county government blockaded the town and held it for three weeks until they were overpowered the White League, a paramilitary

group that targeted black and white Republicans throughout Louisiana. Seventy African Americans and two whites were murdered in Colfax;

most of the murdered African Americans had already surrendered when they were killed. The massacre in Colfax was one of hundreds of such

attacks on black voters, politicians, schools and farms during the Reconstruction era.

The Louisiana Murders--Gathering the Dead and Wounded

SOURCE | “Gathering the Dead and Wounded,” Harper’s Weekly, 10 May 1873, American Social History Project.

CREATOR | Unknown

ITEM TYPE | Poster/Print

Marriage of a Colored soldier at Vicksburg by

Chaplain Warren of the Freedmen's Bureau

Because marriages between slaves before emancipation had no legal standing, many couples rushed to have their marriages officially registered

and made solemn during Reconstruction. The Freedmen's Bureau along with African-American ministers became strong advocates of legalized

marriages. This sketch showed a chaplain marrying an African-American couple in the offices of the Vicksburg, Mississippi Freedmen's Bureau.

The sketch was the basis for a news illustration published in Harper's Weekly. Marriage was only one way that former slaves exercised their new

freedom. For many former slaves, freedom meant choosing a new name for themselves, dressing as they pleased, learning to read, or refusing to

be deferential toward their former owner.

Focus Questions This sketch was turned into an illustration for Harper's Weekly magazine. Why was it news?

SOURCE | Alfred R. Waud, Marriage of a Colored Soldier at Vicksburg by Chaplain Warren of the Freedmen's Bureau, drawing, c. June 1866, American

Social History Project.

CREATOR | Alfred R. Waud

ITEM TYPE | Poster/Print

A Northern Reformer Teaches Freed Children to Read Calling themselves Gideon’s Band (after the biblical hero), many northern reformers went to the Sea Islands in Georgia to live with and assist

the freed population. Abolitionist Laura M. Towne, shown here with three of her students, ran a school on St. Helena Island. A report from

North Carolina indicates how urgent the need for teachers, black and white, was: “The whole number of schools…is 63, the number of teachers

85, and the number of scholars 5,624.” Eventually freedpeople operated most of the Sea Island schools themselves and replaced northern

teachers who lost their zeal and returned home as Reconstruction dragged on.

Feb. 1866--Laura M. Towne

Dick, Maria, Amoretta

SOURCE | From R.A. Holland, ed., Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne (1912), American Social History Project.

CREATOR | Unknown

ITEM TYPE | Photograph

A Northern Teacher Finds Eager Students and Threatening Neighbors

Edmonia Highgate, the daughter of freed slaves, grew up and was educated in New York. She was part of a wave of northern reformers who

traveled south as the Civil War was still ongoing to set up schools for freedpeople, both adults and children. In this letter to her sponsor the

American Missionary Society, Highgate notes that while her students were eager to learn, area whites were hostile to her school and the changes

it wrought. The author’s original spelling and grammar has been preserved.

Louisiana

Lafayette Parish

Vermillionville, Dec. 17th, 1866

Rev. M.E. Strieby, Sec. A.M.A.:

Dear Friend:

Perhaps you may care to know of my work here for the Freed people… The Lord blessed me and I have a very interesting and

constantly growing day school, a night school, and, a glorious Sabbath School of near one hundred scholars. The school is

under the auspices of the Freedman’s Bureau, yet it is wholly self-supporting. The majority of my pupils come from plantations,

three, four and even eight miles distant. So anxious are they to learn that they walk these distances so early in the morning as

never to be tardy. Every scholar buys his own book and slate, etc… Most of them are trying to buy a home of their own. Many

of them own a little land on which they work nights in favorable weather and Sabbaths for themselves. They own cows and

horses, besides their raising poultry.

There is more than work for two teachers yet I am all alone. God has wonderously spared me. There has been much opposition

to the School. Twice I have been shot at in my room. Some of my night-school scholars have been shot but none killed. A week

ago an aged freedman was shot so badly as to break his arm and leg—just across the way. The rebels here threatened to burn

down the school and house in which I board before the first month was passed. Yet they have not materially harmed us. The

nearest military Jurisdiction is two hundred miles distant at New Orleans… But I trust fearlessly in God and am safe…

Yours for Christ’s poor,

Edmonia G. Highgate

SOURCE | Edmonia G. Highgate, “Letter to M.E. Strieby,” 17 December 1866, available from PBS, Reconstruction: The Second Civil War,

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reconstruction/schools/ps_highgate.html.

CREATOR | Edmonia G. Highgate

ITEM TYPE | Diary/Letter

A South Carolina Landowner Attempts to Indenture a Free Child

When slavery ended, southern landowners attempted to establish a labor system that would pay freedpeople low wages and keep them under strict

control. One method of accomplishing this was through indenture contracts for African-American children who were orphans or whose families

were incapable of providing for them. These contracts required that the master feed, house, clothe, and educate the child for a set period of years

(sometimes as long as a decade or more) in exchange for the child’s labor. Some states passed laws requiring that former owners have the first

opportunity to indenture orphans who had once belonged to them. Many African-American parents objected to this system. As this report from a

Freedmen’s Bureau agent demonstrates, the Freedmen’s Bureau frequently intervened in such disputes between landowners and freedpeople.

In one instance a Mr. Ben Ville Ponteaux living about 38 miles from Charleston on the North Eastern R. Road held a

freedman’s son, aged about 12 years, against the wishes of his father, who complained to me about it. On my request to Mr.

Ponteaux to inform me whether or not he had authority to retain the boy in his service, I received no answer, but Mr. Ponteaux

is said to have remarked that he had nothing to do with the ‘Yankees’ and to have threatened to shoot the boy’s father if he

again came to his house. I went to Mr. Ponteaux to enquire on the matter, and found the boy there. Mr. Ponteaux gave as his

reason for holding the boy that he was unwilling to live with his father. I sent the boy to his parents. Mr. Ponteaux denied

having made the above mentioned remark and to have threatened to shoot the boys father. At first I intended to arrest and bring

this man to trial, but finding that I could not get sufficient evidence to convict him, I merely confiscated his gun thereby

preventing him to carry out his threat to shoot.

SOURCE | F. W. Liedke to Major H. W. Smith, 30 April 1866, Moncks Corner, S. C., The Freedmen’s Bureau Online: Records of the Bureau of Freedmen,

Refugees and Abandoned Lands, http://freedmensbureau.com/southcarolina/scoperations6.htm

CREATOR | F. W. Liedke

ITEM TYPE | Diary/Letter

A Visit from the Ku Klux

After the end of slavery, African Americans, particularly those who attempted to exercise their right to vote, were often the victims of harassment,

intimidation, and murder at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was a secret society founded by former Confederate military officers during

Reconstruction; it was dedicated to maintaining white supremacy. This Harper's Weekly illustration from 1872 was meant to elicit sympathy from

white Northern readers for African-American victims of the Klan.

SOURCE | Frank Bellew, "A Visit from the Ku-Klux," wood engraving, Harper's Weekly, 24 February 1872; From Library of Congress,

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2001695506/.

CREATOR | Frank Bellew

ITEM TYPE | Poster/Print

Thomas Nast Cartoon #1 1865

Caption: FRANCHISE. AND NOT THIS MAN?

Source: Thomas Nast was a political cartoonist who

drew for a New York magazine called Harper’s

Weekly. He supported the North’s side during the

Civil War.

Thomas Nast Cartoon #2 1874

Caption: COLORED RULE IN A RECONSTRUCTED (?) STATE.

(The members call each other thieves, liars,

rascals, and cowards.)

COLUMBIA: “You are aping the lowest

Whites. If you disgrace your race in this way

you had better take back seats.”

Name: ____________________ DIRECTIONS: Read over the documents. Decide which historical understanding the document BEST illustrates. On the line, write TO, FOR, or BY to indicate which historical understanding it illustrates.

DOCUMENTS

______ The 13th

, 14th

and 15th

Amendments (excerpt)

______ Black Codes Restrict Newly Won Freedom

_______ The First Vote

______ A Freedman Seeks to Reunite His Family

______ The Freedmen’s Bureau Aids Civil War Refugees

______ Freedpeople Describe the Meanings of Freedom

_______ Gathering the Dead and Wounded

_______ Marriage of a Colored Soldier at Vicksburg

______ A Northern Reformer Teaches Freed Children to Read

______ A Northern Teacher Finds Eager Students and Threatening Neighbors

______ A South Carolina Landowner Attempts to Indenture a Free Child

______ A Visit From the Ku Klux Klan _____ Thomas Nast Cartoons

HISTORICAL UNDERSTANDINGS

What was done TO freedpeople White southerners used physical violence, intimidation and coercive contracts in response to freedpeople’s attempts to exercise their political and economic rights.

What was done FOR freedpeople The federal government’s Reconstruction plan encompassed protection of freedpeople’s civil rights, provided for their physical safety, and, through the Freedmen’s Bureau, established schools and helped to ensure fair labor contracts between freedpeople and their former masters. Northern reformers set up schools to educate both adults and children.

What was done BY freedpeople FOR THEMSELVES?

After the Civil War, freedpeople acted on their freedom by reuniting with their

families and getting married. They attempted to secure their citizenship by

voting, establishing schools and holding elected office. Freedpeople believed

land ownership was crucial to their economic self-sufficiency and that they

had a right to the land they had worked.