Union Blockade of GA's Coast

   This was the battle between ship and shore on the coast of Confederate Georgia. The Union Blockade was a crucial part of the Union strategy to suppress the state during the Civil War. Union planned to halt any trade and prevent the flow of supplies to the Confederates. It ran from 1861 to 1865. U.S. president Abraham Lincoln's call at the start of the war for a naval blockade of the entire Southern coastline took a long time to form, but by early 1862 the Union navy had positioned a serviceable fleet off the coast of the South's most prominent Confederate ports. On April 19, 1861, the blockade finally began. In Georgia, Union strategy centered on Savannah, the state's most significant port city, and the other eleven of the most important ports of the Confederates were shut down. The plan was a huge success and victory was an easy gain to the Union.

Sharecropping and Tenant Farming

Sharecropping

Many former slaves expected the federal government to give them a certain amount of land as a gift for all the work they had done during the slavery era. Union General William T. Sherman had encouraged this expectation in early 1865 by granting numerous of freed men 40 acres each of the abandoned land left in the wake of his army. During Reconstruction, however, the conflict over labor resulted in the sharecropping system, in which black families would rent small plots of land in return for a portion of their crop (often half), to be given to the landowner at the end of each year. Sharecroppers often rarely had a chance to make any profit or to save any money. 

Tenant Farming

Tenant Farming was a "step up" from sharecropping. It enabled farm laborers to rent land from landowners for a percentage of crops, called crop rent, or cash payments, called cash rent. The terms of contracts varied, it depended on whether the worker owned any equipment or purchased his own seed and supplies. Though tenant farmers usually owned equipment and/or farm animals, and the landowners provided the house and land. Crop rent contracts generally required that one-fourth to one-third of the crop be paid to the landlord. 

Reconstruction Plans

Abraham Lincoln Plan

In late 1863, Lincoln announced a formal plan for reconstruction:

-A general amnesty or pardon would be grated to all (pertaining to Southerners) who would take   an oath of loyalty to the U.S and pledge to obey all federal laws pertaining to slavery.

-High Confederate officials and military leaders were to be temporarily excluded from the process

-When 10% of the voters who had participated in the 1860 election had taken the oath within a particular state, then that state could rejoin, form a new government and elect representatives to Congress.

Andrew Johnson  Plan

President Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865. His successor, Andrew Johnson, lacked his predecessor’s skills in handling people, and those skills would surely be missed. Johnson’  envisioned plans agreed with Lincoln's. He also approved the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery forever, and he nullified ordinances of secession.

Initial Congressional Plan

In July 1864, Congress passed the Wade-Davis Bill, their own formula for restoring the Union:

     -A state must have a majority within its borders take the oath of loyalty

     -A state must formally abolish slavery

     -No Confederate officials could participate in the new governments.

However, Lincoln did not approve of this plan and exercised his pocket veto.

Freedman's Bureau

Freedmen's Bureau was an organization formed by the Radical Republicans to aid and protect the newly freed blacks in the South after the Civil War. It was established by and act of March 3rd, 1865, under the name of "bureau of refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands,"

Between 1865 and 1869, the bureau issued about 15 million rations to blacks and 5 million to whites. By 1867 it had established 45 hospitals staffed with doctors and nurses. Its medical department treated about one million sick people.

Its greatest accomplishments were in education. More than 1,000 black schools were built and over $400,000 were spent to establish teacher-training institutions. All major black colleges were either founded by, or received aid from, the bureau. However, less success was achieved in civil rights,  for the bureau’s own courts were poorly organized and short-lived.

Land, was the biggest failure on the Bureau's part. Prevented by President Andrew Johnson’s restoration of abandoned lands, the bureau was forced to overlook sharecropping arrangements that unavoidably became an inflicting conflict. Congress was already preoccupied with other national interests and the hostility of white Southerners, terminated the bureau in July 1872.

Henry McNeal Turner and black legislatures

Black men participated in Georgia politics for the first time during the Congressional Reconstruction from 1867 to 1876. Between 1867 and 1872, sixty-nine African Americans served as delegates to the constitutional convention (1867-68) or as members of the state legislature. One of the three most prominent black legislators was Henry McNeal Turner.

Turner was the most successful black politician in organizing the black Republican vote and attracted other ministers into politics. He was a delegate to the Georgia constitutional convention of 1867 and was elected to two terms in the Georgia legislature, beginning in 1868. 

In September 1868,  the legislature, dominated by Republicans, expelled their African American members. Energized, the black legislators, led by Turner, continued to concentrate on political and civil rights. For many of them,education had been their highest priority since 1865. With their solid support, Georgia adopted public education.

Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan, with its long history of brutal violence, was America's first and most infamous domestic terrorists.  This hate group was formed in December 1865, the Klan has typically seen itself as a Christian organization, although it was anything but Christian-like. Though they mainly targeted blacks, the Klan also targeted Jews, immigrants, gays and lesbians and, until recently, Catholics.

Their initial goal however, was to stop blacks from voting, and they tried to deprive blacks of their rights throughout the South. They also targeted whites, such as the Radical Republicans, who were working to guarantee blacks' civil rights. 

After the Jim Crow Law was passed, the "first era" of the Ku Klux Klan was demolished, it rose again in the 1920s due to the strong opposition to immigrants (mainly Catholics and Jews). By 1925, the Klan had as many as 4 million members and, in some states, considerable political power. But a series of sex scandals, internal battles over power and newspaper exposés quickly reduced its influence and it died out. The Klan arose a third time during the 1960s to oppose the civil rights movement and to preserve segregation. The Klan's bombings, murders and other attacks took many innocent lives, leaving America fearing the worst. 

Since the 1970s, the Klan has been greatly weakened by internal conflicts, court cases, and government infiltration. Today, the Center estimates that there are between 5,000 and 8,000 Klan members, split among dozens of different organizations that use the Klan name.

13th, 14th & 15th Amendment

Thirteenth Amendment 

- It was passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th amendment abolished slavery in the United States and stated that "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.".

Fourteenth Amendment

- It was ratified on July 9, 1868, and granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” which included former slaves recently freed. In addition, it forbids states from denying any person "life, liberty or property, without due process of law" or to "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” By directly mentioning the role of the states, the 14th Amendment greatly expanded the protection of civil rights to every American. It also prevented former Confederate officials from holding office. 

Fifteenth Amendment

- It was ratified on February 3, 1870. It granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that 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." Although the promise of the 15th Amendment would not be fully realized for almost a century. Through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other means, Southern states were able to effectively disenfranchise African Americans. It would take the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 before the majority of African Americans in the South were registered to vote.

Sites: www.loc.gov