Additional support provided by the Arkansas Community Foundation. © 1996-2020 Historycentral. African Americans were technically free, but no one wanted to hire a colored man, so they were put on crop lien work contracts. When Congress convened (Dec. 4, 1865) it refused to seat the Southern representatives. African Americans who asserted their rights in dealings with white employers, teachers, ministers, and others seeking to assist the former slaves also became targets. Those who could afford these goods experienced a world of material comfort unknown to any but the rich in antebellum society. Doubts as to the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act led the radicals to incorporate (June, 1866) most of its provisions in the Fourteenth Amendment (ratified 1868). This meant that the primary means of increasing revenue would be to raise taxes on the most powerful element within the state—its landowners. An offshoot of the national Greenback Labor Party, the Arkansas Greenbackers, who believed that national monetary policy placed an undue burden on the debtor, sought to expand the national currency with paper money. Hild, Matthew. At the same time, falling retail prices reduced the need for farmers to grow food for themselves and their animals, making it possible for them to devote a larger proportion of their land to cotton. ———. Conservative Democratic governors and legislators managed to hold on to state government for twenty-five years, but these were not peaceful times. 9, 1866), designed to protect African Americans from legislation such as the black codes, and the Freedmen's Bureau Bill (July 16), extending the life of that organization (see Freedmen's BureauFreedmen's Bureau,in U.S. history, a federal agency, formed to aid and protect the newly freed blacks in the South after the Civil War. “‘The Great Negro State of the Country’: Arkansas’s Reconstruction and the Other Great Migration.”Arkansas Historical Quarterly 72 (Spring 2013): 1–41. Simply paying the annual interest on notes had given the government little discretionary money. Living together in larger communities forced rural Arkansans to integrate themselves into a more complex social order. In the northwestern section, companies such as Springdale Canning and the Fayetteville Evaporator Company processed the new crops of apples, peaches, strawberries, and many different vegetables. Part 1 The Republican presidential candidate that year, Rutherford B. HayesHayes, Rutherford Birchard,1822–93, 19th President of the United States (1877–81), b. Delaware, Ohio, grad. The railroad companies, seeking to increase the amount of traffic they carried, actively promoted economic diversification in agriculture themselves. In the election of 1890, Napoleon B. Fizer ran as the candidate against the incumbent, James P. Eagle, and received more votes than Norwood. By 1900, non-farm workers made up almost thirty percent of all workers. 1988); R. N. Current, Those Terrible Carpetbaggers: A Reinterpretation (1989); E. Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (1988), Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction (2005), and The Second Founding (2019); P. Dray, Capitol Men: The Epic Story of Reconstruction through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen (2008); A. C. Guelzo, Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (2012); D. R. Egerton, The Wars of Reconstruction (2014); H. L. Gates, Jr., Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow (2019). This system had emerged after the Civil War as the primary way landowners contracted with freedmen for their labor, but the practice expanded between 1879 and 1898 with large numbers of white farmers joining African Americans as tenants. Towns and cities became more important. Like the farms on the Grand Prairie, the western mines attracted European workers. Reconstruction/Post Civil War [1865-1880] PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENTS. One movement that changed its future was Reconstruction. The North only had the intent to bring the Union back together, however, abolition was an act by the civil war. Once a group in any conquered state equal in number to one tenth of that state's total vote in the presidential election of 1860 took the prescribed oath and organized a government that abolished slavery, he would grant that government executive recognition. He spent the years 1837 to 1840 in Europe...... Click the link for more information. The former slaves also demanded economic independence. Creating an account gives you access to all these features. This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. He was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1836 and began to practi… On Mar. These new concerns did not measure up to the factories of the Northeastern states in size or value, but their growth paralleled that of companies in many of the Midwestern states. In the countryside, black workers continued to protest unfair treatment, including participating in the various farm movements that challenged Democratic rule. Changes disrupted traditional economies and society, and many, particularly farmers and workers, failed to share in the bounty of the new world. This was only the first of numerous measures that formally segregated the races in all public spaces. The first significant threat to Democratic control came in the form of the Greenback Party in the late 1870s. 100 Rock Street At the end of the deductions, the black man would be in debt of the white man and would be forced to work another harvest since Black Codes prevented freedmen from owing money. The state’s economy improved as Arkansas became more closely linked to the national market, but economic change also led to demographic change. These contracts allowed African Americans to work and gain a ‘share’ of the harvest. Later scholars have concluded that Norwood may have won, but the Arkansas General Assembly stymied his efforts to obtain a full investigation of his charges. In 1880, only seventeen percent of all workers in the state worked at jobs other than farming. Presidential Reconstruction, from 1865 to 1867, required little of the former Confederate states and leaders. In every state, African Americans formed the overwhelming majority of Southern Republican voters. One of the most significant businesses to emerge in this period was banking, with McIlroy’s Bank in Fayetteville (Washington County), Pine Bluff’s Merchants’ & Planters’ Bank, and Little Rock’s W. B. Worthen & Company and the First National Bank being among the more successful. But the increased turnout of 191,448 voters saw the party’s actual portion of the total reduced to forty-four percent. Following Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, Andrew Johnson became president and inaugurated the period of Presidential Reconstruction (1865–67). Rate and review titles you borrow and share your opinions on them. Arguably the most important addition to the Constitution other than the Bill of Rights, the amendment constituted a profound change in federal-state relations. It was put into operation in parts of the Union-occupied Confederacy, but none of the new governments achieved broad local support. In 1880, the state produced only 14,778 tons hard coal. Productivity simply outpaced consumption. Transportation and MarketsThe rapid expansion of railroads following the Civil War provided the single most important force for change in the nation and in Arkansas during the Gilded Age. Omissions? The federal government set the conditions that would allow for the Rebellious Southern States back into the Union. You can also try the grid of 16 letters. ...Effects of Reconstruction on African Americans Presidential Reconstruction, from 1865 to 1867, required little of the former Confederate states and leaders. Soon afterward, Congress approved the Fifteenth Amendment, prohibiting states from restricting the right to vote because of race. But President Johnson in the summer of 1865 ordered land in federal hands to be returned to its former owners. He taught in an academy at York, Pa., studied law, and was admitted to the bar in Maryland...... Click the link for more information. After the Civil War, African Americans were free but with no place to live in or to work at, they settled with their former ‘masters’. An outraged Northern public believed that the fruits of victory were being lost by Johnson's lenient policy. This was a very complex time for our country and many goals were set in order to bring everyone together to live in unity after a violent Its members placed an amendment creating a poll tax on the ballot in 1892, and it passed. In many cases, the struggle ended in bankruptcy. Little Rock, AR. Generally, new statutes passed through these years strengthened the power of landowners over their tenants, the most important measure being to give the landowner the first lien over a tenant’s crop. ———. This debt consisted of a variety of obligations, including levee and railroad bonds issued during Reconstruction. With the advent of the railroad, timber companies, many based in the Midwest, moved into the state and developed this particularly lucrative resource. Few farmers made much money on cotton at that price. Farm expansion, resource development, and manufacturing brought a wide variety of other economic endeavors. These groups emerged primarily from among the increasingly dissatisfied farmers of this period who wanted government to redress their growing problems. 15 of January 1865, which set aside a large swath of land along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia for the exclusive settlement of Black families, and by the Freedmen’s Bureau Act of March, which authorized the bureau to rent or sell land in its possession to former slaves.