Supreme Court Conservatism

Slaughterhouse Cases (1873)

First time 14th am. is interpretted
Supreme Court ruled the 14th am applied only to privileges
associated with federal citizenship, not state citizenship
US v. Reese (1876)
15th am. did not confer the right of suffrage but prohibited
exclusion on racial grounds
Upheld state voting restrictions such as literacy test, poll taxes,
grandfather clause

Compromise of 1877

Election of 1876
both Rutherford B. Hayes (R) and Samuel Tilden (D)
claimed victory
20 electoral votes in dispute from 4 states
Deal made between Democrats and Republicans
-Hayes agreed to withdraw
army from the South
if Democrats agreed to
his election
RESULT: Collapse of
Reconstruction

Waning Support in the North

Attention turns to industrializaiton, growing West,

economic crisis (1873), Gilded Age corruption
Many people buy into the Myth of Negro Rulecorruption inaccurately blamed on inexperienced
black voters/leaders

The whole public are tired out with these autumnal outbreaks in the
SouthPreserve the peace by the forces of your own state.
- Response of Grants Attorney General to Governor Ames of MS (who
was appealing to Washington to help with interferences in the 1874
elections)

You say that you have emancipated us. You have and I thank you for it.
But what is your emancipation?
When the Israelites were emancipated they were told to go and
borrow of their neighbors borrow on their coin, borrow their jewels,
load themselves down with the means of subsistence; after they
should go free in the land which the Lord God gave them. When the
Russian serfs had their chains broken and were given their liberty, the
government of Russia aye the despotic government of Russia gave
to these poor emancipated serfs a few acres of land on which they
could earn their bread.
But when you turned us loose, you gave us no acres. You turned us
loose to the sky, the storm, to the whirlwind, and worst of all, you
turned us loose to the wrath of our infuriated masters.

- Frederick Douglass, on the limits

of Reconstruction

A truly radical program would have called for the confiscation of land
for the freemen. Land was the principal form of Southern wealth, the
only effective weapon with which the ex-slaves could have battled for
economic competence and social equalityThe dominant Radicalism
of the day naively assumed that a peoples salvation could be obtained
through the ballot and the spelling book.
- Frances B. Simkins, 1939

 Land confiscation is a question not of humanity, not of loyalty, but

of fundamental relation of industry to capital; and sooner or later, if
begun at the South, it will find its way into the cities of the
NorthAnd attempt to justify the confiscation of Southern land
under the pretense of doing justice to the freedmen, strikes at the
root of property rights in both sections. It concerns Massachusetts
as much as Mississippi.
- New York Times, 1867

Legacy of Reconstruction

Liberalized state constitutions by providing for universal male

suffrage, property rights for women, debt relief, internal
improvements
State supported public school systems in the South benefitted
whites and blacks
Literacy rates heightened a
Many black education institutions emerged ie. Howard in DC, Fisk
in TN, Hampton in VA
14th and 15th amendments will later provide foundation for new civil
rights legislation (but not for nearly 100 years)

Over 4 million Africans and their

descendants were enslaved in the US
and its colonies from 1619 to 1865, and
as a result, the US was able to begin its
grand place as the most prosperous
country in the free world.
Unclear however, is what the effects and remnants of this relationship have
had on African-Americans and our nation from the time of emancipation through
today. I chose the number of the bill, 40, as a symbol of the unfulfilled promise
to freed slaves . The devastation that slavery had on African-American lives has
never been officially recognized by the United States Government.
John Conyers (D- Congressman from IL) on his proposal
for Bill HR-40 (see next slide)

Bill HR - 40 does four things:

1) acknowledges the fundamental injustice and inhumanity of slavery
2) establishes a commission to study slavery, its subsequent racial and economic
discrimination against freed slaves
3) studies the impact of those forces on today's living African Americans
4) make recommendations to Congress on appropriate remedies to redress the harm
inflicted on living African Americans.