Реферат: The Impact the Civil War 1861-1865 on Economic, Politic and Industry Development in the USA

Реферат: The Impact the Civil War 1861-1865 on Economic, Politic and Industry Development in the USA

NATIONAL PEDAGOGOC UNIVERSITY

FOREIGN PHILOLOGY DEPARTMENT

Tne Impact the Civil War 1861-1865 on Economic, Politic and Industry

Development in the USA

Written by

53-th group student

Tatiana Ryabchun

Kyiv, 2000

Reconstruction

(1865-77), in U.S. history, period during and after the American Civil War in

which attempts were made to solve the political, social, and economic

problems arising from the readmission to the Union of the 11 Confederate

states that had seceded at or before the outbreak of war.

As early as 1862, Pres. Abraham Lincoln had appointed provisional military

governors for Louisiana, Tennessee, and North Carolina. The following year,

initial steps were taken to reestablish governments in newly occupied states

in which at least 10 percent of the voting population had taken the

prescribed oath of allegiance. Aware that the presidential plan omitted any

provision for social or economic reconstruction, the Radical Republicans in

Congress resented such a lenient political arrangement under solely executive

jurisdiction. As a result, the stricter Wade-Davis Bill was passed in 1864

but pocket vetoed by the President.

After Lincoln's assassination (April 1865), Pres. Andrew Johnson further

alienated Congress by continuing Lincoln's moderate policies. The Fourteenth

Amendment, defining national citizenship so as to include blacks, passed

Congress in June 1866 and was ratified, despite rejection by most Southern

states (July 28, 1868). In response to Johnson's intemperate outbursts against

the opposition as well as to several reactionary developments in the South (

e.g., race riots and passage of the repugnant black codes severely

restricting rights of blacks), the North gave a smashing victory to the Radical

Republicans in the 1866 congressional election.

That victory launched the era of congressional Reconstruction (usually called

Radical Reconstruction), which lasted 10 years starting with the

Reconstruction Acts of 1867. Under that legislation, the 10 remaining

Southern states (Tennessee had been readmitted to the Union in 1866) were

divided into five military districts; and, under supervision of the U.S.

Army, all were readmitted between 1868 and 1870. Each state had to accept the

Fourteenth or, if readmitted after its passage, the Fifteenth Constitutional

Amendment, intended to ensure civil rights of the freedmen. The newly created

state governments were generally Republican in character and were governed by

political coalitions of blacks, carpetbaggers (Northerners who had gone into

the South), and scalawags (Southerners who collaborated with the blacks and

carpetbaggers). The Republican governments of the former Confederate states

were seen by most Southern whites as artificial creations imposed from

without, and the conservative element in the region remained hostile to them.

Southerners particularly resented the activities of the Freedmen's Bureau,

which Congress had established to feed, protect, and help educate the newly

emancipated blacks. This resentment led to formation of secret terroristic

organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camelia.

The use of fraud, violence, and intimidation helped Southern conservatives

regain control of their state governments, and, by the time the last Federal

troops had been withdrawn in 1877, the Democratic Party was back in power.

About 1900, many U.S. historians espoused a theory of racial inferiority of

blacks. The Reconstruction governments were viewed as an abyss of corruption

resulting from Northern vindictiveness and the desire for political and

economic domination. Later, revisionist historians noted that not only was

public and private dishonesty widespread in all regions of the country at

that time but also that a number of constructive reforms actually were

introduced into the South during that period: courts were reorganized,

judicial procedures improved, public-school systems established, and more

feasible methods of taxation devised. Many provisions of the state

constitutions adopted during the postwar years have continued in existence.

The Reconstruction experience led to an increase in sectional bitterness, an

intensification of the racial issue, and the development of one-party

politics in the South. Scholarship has suggested that the most fundamental

failure of Reconstruction was in not effecting a distribution of land in the

South that would have offered an economic base to support the newly won

political rights of black citizens.

Wade-Davis Bill

(1864), unsuccessful attempt by Radical Republicans and others in the U.S.

Congress to set Reconstruction policy before the end of the Civil War. The

bill, sponsored by senators Benjamin F. Wade and Henry W. Davis, provided for

the appointment of provisional military governors in the seceded states. When

a majority of a state's white citizens swore allegiance to the Union, a

constitutional convention could be called. Each state's constitution was to

be required to abolish slavery, repudiate secession, and disqualify

Confederate officials from voting or holding office. In order to qualify for

the franchise, a person would be required to take an oath that he had never

voluntarily given aid to the Confederacy. President Abraham Lincoln's pocket

veto of the bill presaged the struggle that was to take place after the war

between President Andrew Johnson and the Radical Republicans in Congress.

Property law

Ownership as the absolute right to possession

One may thus define ownership in the same way that the legal philosopher

Felix Cohen defined property: "That is property to which the following label

can be attached: To the world: Keep off X unless you have my permission,

which I may grant or withhold. Signed: Private citizen. Endorsed: The state."

Cohen, however, goes on to warn that all the terms of the definition "shade

off imperceptibly into other things." Consider, for example, the large range

of possibilities encompassed in the phrase "permission, which I may grant or

withhold." In all Western legal systems there are a number of situations in

which the law will either assume that permission has been granted or will

require the private citizen to grant his permission. The situations tend to

be dramatic: Firefighters, for example, are usually allowed to enter private

property to prevent the spread of a fire and frequently are authorized to

destroy private property in order to prevent the spread of a fire.

In the 1960s a number of U.S. Supreme Court cases starkly posed the conflict

between the property owner's right to exclude and civil rights, in the

context of "sit-ins" in restaurants that were excluding customers on racial

grounds. These cases suggested, if they did not quite hold, that in this

context the possessory right of the restaurant owner would have to yield to

the civil-rights claim of those sitting in. In the same period a number of

courts held that owners of farms could not exclude visitors from agricultural

migrant labour camps.

The conflict in these cases between property rights and civil rights was made

starker by the practice in the United States of treating social issues as

constitutional controversies. The issue, however, of the use of property to

discriminate against members of the society whom the property owner

disfavours is present throughout the Western world. Ultimately in the United

States the problem of restaurant sit-ins was resolved by national legislation

that made it the duty of anyone providing food or lodging to serve all comers

without regard to race. Similar legislation exists in many Western countries,

as does legislation allowing access to premises in which workers are

employed.

Black code

in the United States, any of numerous laws enacted in the states of the

former Confederacy after the American Civil War, in 1865 and 1866; the laws

were designed to replace the social controls of slavery that had been removed

by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the

Constitution, and were thus intended to assure continuance of white

supremacy.

The black codes had their roots in the slave codes that had formerly been in

effect. The general philosophy supporting the institution of chattel slavery

in America was based on the concept that slaves were property, not persons,

and that the law must protect not only the property but also the property

owner from the danger of violence. Slave rebellions were not unknown, and the

possibility of uprisings was a constant source of anxiety in colonies and

then states with large slave populations. (In Virginia during 1780-1864,

1,418 slaves were convicted of crimes; 91 of these convictions were for

insurrection and 346 for murder.) Slaves also ran away. In the British

possessions in the New World, the settlers were free to promulgate any

regulations they saw fit to govern their labour supply. As early as the 17th

century, a set of rules was in effect in Virginia and elsewhere; but the

codes were constantly being altered to adapt to new needs, and they varied

from one colony, and later one state, to another.

All the slave codes, however, had certain provisions in common. In all of

them the colour line was firmly drawn, and any amount of Negro blood

established the race of a person, whether slave or free, as Negro. The status

of the offspring followed that of the mother, so that the child of a free

father and a slave mother was a slave. Slaves had few legal rights: in court

their testimony was inadmissible in any litigation involving whites; they

could make no contract, nor could they own property; even if attacked, they

could not strike a white person. There were numerous restrictions to enforce

social control: slaves could not be away from their owner's premises without

permission; they could not assemble unless a white person was present; they

could not own firearms; they could not be taught to read or write, or

transmit or possess "inflammatory" literature; they were not permitted to

marry.

Obedience to the slave codes was exacted in a variety of ways. Such

punishments as whipping, branding, and imprisonment were commonly used, but

death (which meant destruction of property) was rarely called for except in

such extreme cases as the rape or murder of a white person. White patrols

kept the slaves under surveillance, especially at night. Slave codes were not

always strictly enforced, but whenever any signs of unrest were detected the

appropriate machinery of the state would be alerted and the laws more

strictly enforced.

The black codes enacted immediately after the American Civil War, though

varying from state to state, were all intended to secure a steady supply of

cheap labour, and all continued to assume the inferiority of the freed

slaves. There were vagrancy laws that declared a black to be vagrant if

unemployed and without permanent residence; a person so defined could be

arrested, fined, and bound out for a term of labour if unable to pay the

fine. Apprentice laws provided for the "hiring out" of orphans and other

young dependents to whites, who often turned out to be their former owners.

Some states limited the type of property blacks could own, and in others

blacks were excluded from certain businesses or from the skilled trades.

Former slaves were forbidden to carry firearms or to testify in court, except

in cases concerning other blacks. Legal marriage between blacks was provided

for, but interracial marriage was prohibited.

It was Northern reaction to the black codes (as well as to the bloody antiblack

riots in Memphis and New Orleans in 1866; see New Orleans Race Riot)

that helped produce Radical Reconstruction (see Reconstruction) and the

Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments. The Freedmen's Bureau was created in 1865

to help the former slaves. Reconstruction did away with the black codes, but,

after Reconstruction was over, many of their provisions were reenacted in the

Jim Crow laws, which were not finally done away with until passage of the Civil

Rights Act of 1964.

References:

1. Garraty, John A

A short history of the American nation, - 6th ed. – New York Collons

college publ, 1992

2. Ray Allen Willington,

American frontier heritage,- New Mexico, Press 1991

3. Thomas A. Bailey

David M. Kennedy

The American pageant, - 9th ed.- Toronto