SC Black Codes: A Lesson on Reconstruction Legislation and Amendments

Lesson Overview

This lesson is one component of a unit on Reconstruction, which would be preceded by a separate unit on the Civil War.  Preceding lessons in this unit should address the political, economic, and social results of the Civil War in the summer of 1865; Andrew Johnson’s plan for Presidential Reconstruction; and the tensions between Johnson and Congress over the composition of the new southern state governments.  Succeeding lessons in this unit should address the imposition of martial law, the pervasive corruption associated with the military occupation governments, the use of African-American occupation troops, the rise of the KKK, sharecropping, the Compromise of 1877, the white restoration governments, and the overall results of Reconstruction.