HISTORY

100-150 WORDS PER QUESTION

1) Describe the impact federal Reconstruction policy had on the former Confederacy, and on the ex-Confederates themselves.

2) Explain the ways in which the newly freed slaves reshaped their lives after emancipation.

3) What factors contributed to the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s, and which was most significant?

4) Discuss to what extent Reconstruction should be considered a failure.

HIS 131

The Crises of Reconstruction

Chapter 1

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I. The Issues of Reconstruction

The word “Reconstruction,” as Americans in the 1860’s used it, referred to the process by which states of the defeated Confederacy were to be brought back to their former places in the Union….Several possible ways of achieving reconstruction existed.

One possibility would be to grant easy terms…permitting the states to return promptly and with little internal change except for the elimination of slavery.

Another possibility would be to delay the readmission in such a way as to reduce the power of the rebel leaders.

A quick and easy restoration of the Union would be to the advantage of the former Confederates and the Democratic party of both the North and South….Ironically, the abolition of slavery would increase the power of the Southern states in national politics.

In the past, under the “three-fifths clause” of the Constitution, only three-fifths of the slaves had been counted in determining a state’s representation in Congress and its electoral votes in presidential elections.

In the future, all the former slaves would be counted, whether or not they themselves were given political rights.

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However, the Republicans saw this easy restoration of the Union as creating a potentially disastrous outcome for their party….This was because the Republicans had gained control of the government in 1860 only because of the split in the Democratic party over the slavery issue, and the subsequent secession of the Southern states which lost the Democrats roughly half of their representation.

Once the Southern states would be restored and the Democratic party would be reunited, the Republicans would have to face the fact that once again they would be in the minority.

The outlook on an easy restoration was also disturbing for Northern businessmen who during the war had obtained favors from the federal government and this preferential treatment might be ended if the Democrats were returned to power.

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For the newly freed slaves, a quick and easy restoration would be catastrophic….The Southern white population, which had controlled the state governments in the South before the Civil War, would continue to do so….The newly freed slaves could then expect to be kept in a position that would be somewhere between slavery and freedom.

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Therefore, the issues of Reconstruction were very similar to the Civil War itself.

So far as the Southerners were concerned, the war had been fought for the Independence of the South, and the preservation of the Southern way of life which included slavery…After the war the Southerners hoped to maintain a considerable degree of Southern independence through the assertion of states’ rights, and they also hoped to retain the essence of slavery by finding some substitute for it.

In the North, there was the memory of sacrifice, suffering, and personal loss…In the South there was the bitterness of defeat.

In the North there was a widespread feeing that Southerners ought to be required to acknowledge their defeat by some gesture of submission, and that at least a few of them ought to be punished.

Also, there was a great conviction that the former slaves ought to be protected in their freedom and assured of justice.

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Even among the majority in Congress….there was disagreement as to the kind of peace that should be imposed on the South…The two factions of the Republican party…the Conservatives and the Radicals…clashed over the issue of Reconstruction.

The
Conservative Republicans
advocated a mild peace agreement and the rapid restoration of the South to the Union…With the exception of insisting that the South accept the abolition of slavery, the Conservatives preferred not to interfere with race relations or attempt to alter Southern society.

On the other hand, the
Radical Republicans
directed by such leaders as
Thaddeus Stevens
and
Charles Sumner
, stood for a harsher peace agreement…They urged that the civil and military leadership of the late Confederacy be subjected to severe punishment.

There also existed another faction of the Republican leadership, the
Moderate Republicans
…This group would go further than the Conservatives in demanding concessions of the South, particularly in regard to rights for blacks, but they rejected the punitive goals of the Radicals.

II. Lincoln’s Plan

Even before the war ended, President Lincoln began the task of restoration.

Motivated by a desire to build a strong Republican party in the South and to end the bitterness caused by war, he issued (on Dec. 8, 1863) a proclamation of amnesty and reconstruction for those areas of the Confederacy occupied by Union armies.

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The proclamation offered pardon, with certain exceptions, to any Confederate who would swear to support the Constitution and the Union.

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 and allow them back into the Union.

Lincoln’s plan aroused the sharp opposition of the radicals in Congress, who believed it would simply restore to power the old planter aristocracy. They passed (in July, 1864) the
Wade-Davis Bill
, which required 50% of a state’s male voters to take an “ironclad” oath that they had never voluntarily supported the Confederacy.

Lincoln’s veto kept the Wade-Davis Bill from becoming law, and he implemented his own plan.

By the end of the war it had been tried, not too successfully, in Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Virginia….Congress, however, refused to seat the Senators and Representatives elected from those states, and by the time of Lincoln’s assassination the President and Congress were at a stalemate.

III. Johnson and Reconstruction

Lincoln’s successor, president
Andrew Johnson
, at first pleased the radicals by publicly attacking the planter aristocracy and insisting that the South must be punished for its rebellion.

His amnesty proclamation (of May 29, 1865) was more severe than Lincoln’s…It disenfranchised all former military and civil officers of the Confederacy and all those who owned property worth $20,000 or more and made their estates liable to confiscation.

The obvious intent was to shift political control in the South from the old planter aristocracy to the small farmers and artisans, and it promised to accomplish a revolution in Southern society.

While Congress was in adjournment from April to Dec., 1865, Johnson put his plan into operation….Under provisional governors appointed by him, the Southern states held conventions that voided or repealed their ordinances of secession, abolished slavery, and (with the exception of South Carolina) repudiated Confederate debts.

Their newly elected legislatures (except Mississippi) ratified the Thirteenth Amendment guaranteeing freedom for blacks….By the end of 1865 every ex-Confederate state except Texas had reestablished civil government.

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However, the control of white over black seemed to be restored, as each of the newly elected state legislatures enacted statutes severely limiting the freedom and rights of the blacks….These laws, known as
black codes
, restricted the ability of blacks to own land and to work as free laborers and they also denied them most of the civil and political rights enjoyed by whites.

In addition, many of the offices in the new governments were won by disenfranchised Confederate leaders, and president Johnson, rather than ordering new elections, granted full pardons to these leaders on a large scale.

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This initial phase of Reconstruction…often known as
Presidential Reconstruction
…lasted only until the reconvening of Congress in December 1865…At that point, republican leaders looked over Andrew Johnson’s handiwork and expressed their displeasure.

Congress immediately refused to seat the senators and representatives of the states that the president had restored while Congress was out.

Radical leaders insisted that Congress needed to learn more about conditions in the postwar South…They felt that there must be assurances that the former Confederates had accepted their defeat and that emancipated blacks and loyal whites would be protected.

Therefore, Congress set up the new
Joint Committee of Reconstruction
to investigate conditions in the South and to advise Congress in creating a Reconstruction policy of its own.

The new period of Reconstruction, known as
Congressional
or “
Radical
”

Reconstruction
, had begun.

IV. Congressional Reconstruction

An outraged Northern public believed that the fruits of victory were being lost by Johnson’s lenient policy…As mentioned, when Congress convened (on Dec. 4, 1865), it refused to seat the Southern representatives.

Johnson responded by publicly attacking Republican leaders and vetoing their Reconstruction measures.

Johnson’s actions drove the moderates into the radical camp. The
Civil Rights Act
(Apr. 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, were both passed over Johnson’s veto.

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The Freedmens Bureau had been established by Congress in 1865 in order to provide services to former slaves…It helped to provide medical care, schools, and provided free legal assistance.

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Doubts as to the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act led the radicals to incorporate (in June, 1866) most of its provisions in the Fourteenth Amendment which was (ratified in 1868).

The 14th Amendment defined the citizenship and rights of the newly freed slaves for the first time…It also stated that the states could not pass laws that negate the rights guaranteed by the federal Constitution.

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The newly created Joint Committee on Reconstruction reported (on Apr. 28, 1866) that the ex-Confederate states were in a state of civil disorder, and hence, had not held valid elections….It also maintained that Reconstruction was a congressional, not an executive or presidential, function. The radicals solidified their position by winning the elections of 1866.

Congress insisted that the Southern states ratify the 14th Amendment, and an angry Andrew Johnson, feeling that Congress was overstepping their bounds, traveled from state to state in the South campaigning to encourage the Southern states not to ratify the 14th Amendment.

When every Southern state (except Tennessee) refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and protect the rights of its black citizens, the stage was set for more severe measures.

V. The Reconstruction Acts and Johnson’s Impeachment

On Mar. 2, 1867, Congress enacted the
Reconstruction Act
, which, supplemented later by three related acts, divided the South (except Tennessee) into five military districts in which the authority of the army commander was supreme.

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Johnson continued to oppose congressional policy, and although the president had long ceased to be a serious obstacle to the passage of Radical legislation, he was still the official charged with administering the Reconstruction programs…And because of this, the Radicals believed that they needed to get him out of the way.

Early in 1867, they began searching for evidence that Johnson had committed high crimes or misdemeanors in office, which were the only legal grounds for impeachment…But, they could find nothing on which to base charges.

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Then Johnson gave them plausible reason for action by deliberately violating the
Tenure of Office Act
, which guaranteed tenure to cabinet members for the term of the president by whom they had been appointed.

Johnson suspended Secretary of War
Stanton
, who had worked with the Radicals against Johnson…In fact, his action was meant as a Court test case of the tenure law, which he believed to be unconstitutional.

In the House of Representatives the Radicals presented to the Senate eleven charges against the president…The first nine accusations dealt with the violation of the Tenure of Office Act…The tenth and eleventh charged Johnson with making speeches calculated to bring Congress into disrespect and with not faithfully enforcing the various Reconstruction Acts.

In the trial before the Senate (March 25 to May 26, 1868), Johnson’s lawyers argued that he was justified in technically violating a law in order to force a test case and that the measure did not apply anyway.

This was because the Tenure of Office Act applied only to those cabinet members that the president had appointed and Stanton had been appointed by Lincoln.

Following this logic, the House managers of the impeachment proceedings began to stress the issue that Johnson had opposed the will of Congress by not faithfully enforcing the Congressional Reconstruction Acts.

They tried to exert terrific pressure on all Republican senators, but the final vote to remove the president was 35 to 19, one vote short of the required two-thirds majority.

Therefore, Andrew Johnson was allowed to finish out his term, but his presidency was severely crippled by the impeachment.

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Under the terms of the Reconstruction Acts, new state constitutions were written in the South…By Aug., 1868, six states (Arkansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida) had been readmitted to the Union, having ratified the Fourteenth Amendment as required by the first Reconstruction Act.

The four remaining unreconstructed states—Virginia, Mississippi, Texas, and Georgia—were readmitted in 1870 after ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment as well as the
Fifteenth Amendment
, which guaranteed the black man’s right to vote by stating that US citizens could not be denied the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

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VI. The Radical Republican Governments in the South

The radical Republican governments in the South attempted to deal constructively with the problems left by the Civil War and the abolition of slavery.

Led by so-called
carpetbaggers
(Northerners who settled in the South) and
scalawags
(Southern whites in the Republican party) and freedmen, they began to rebuild the Southern economy and society.

Agricultural production was restored, roads rebuilt, a more equitable tax system adopted, and schooling extended to blacks and poor whites….The freedmen’s civil and political rights were guaranteed, and blacks were able to participate in the political and economic life of the South as full citizens for the first time.

However, the bitterness created by the Civil War remained, and most Southern whites objected strongly to the former slaves’ new role in society…Organizations such as the
Ku Klux Klan
arose.

The acts of violence perpetrated by these groups kept African Americans and white Republicans from voting, and gradually the radical Republican governments were overthrown.

Their collapse was hastened by the death of the old radical leaders in Congress, such as Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, and by the revelation of internal corruption in the radical Republican governments.

The newly elected Grant administration was compelled to lessen its support of these radical Republican governments in the South because of growing criticism in the North of corruption in the federal government itself.

VII. Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant was considered the greatest American general of his time and is credited with winning the Civil War…As such, he was guaranteed a lifetime job in the military, but he sacrificed this financial assurance and ran for the presidency of the United States in the election of 1868…Grant easily defeated the Democratic candidate,
Horatio Seymour
, by 134 electoral votes.

When Grant took office he admitted that he lacked political experience…In his inaugural address he said, “The office has come to me unsought.”

Grant strongly believed in racial equality, not only in the South, but also in the North. In his inaugural address he spoke in favor of “security of a person, property, and free religious and political opinion in every part of our common country.”

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However, Grant took no action as president to enforce this belief, only his motto guided him and his actions…that is “Let us have peace.”

One of Grant’s biggest problems was a failure to foster allies as he had done in the war…He did not consult party leaders for his federal appointments, and he gave many of these positions to friends or family.

Other offices were held by those he hardly knew but had contributed large sums of money to his campaign…Grant’s unwise appointments are but one of the better known aspects of his presidency.

Although Grant made mistakes during his presidency, he wanted the North and South to be reunited more than anything, and he accomplished several things during Reconstruction…Grant persuaded Congress to pardon many former Confederate leaders…He also tried to limit the number of federal troops in the South while leaving enough soldiers to maintain the rights of southern blacks and protect them from the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1869 and 1871 Grant passed three bills to enforce voting rights of blacks and the prosecution of many Klan members….Grant’s other Reconstruction accomplishments include the passage of civil rights legislation and the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment…Overall Grant failed at Reconstruction, but he did achieve many of his goals for the South.

Grant is often accused of failing as a president because of the many scandals and the corruption that marked his presidency….The federal government’s corruption was, for the most part, due to the spoils system…Because Grant was unwise in his appointments within the federal government, many of those under him proved themselves untrustworthy.

Although Grant was not personally involved in any of these scandals, he is blamed because he stood by those people.

One of the most serious scandals occurred in the summer of 1869.
Jay Gould
and
James Fisk
, speculators, bought all of the gold available in New York City at the time, and they planned to force bankers and businessmen into buying gold from them at inflated prices.

However, this plan to corner the gold market was defeated on September 24, a day that became known as
Black Friday
…Secretary of the Treasury
George S. Boutwell
reported to Grant that the scandal was creating a financial panic. ..his message forced President Grant to make one of the most important decisions of his presidency…he ordered Boutwell to sell four million dollars of government gold to end the panic….This decision was not only one of Grant’s most important, but one of his wisest.

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There were numerous other scandals in the government at this time.

Many Congressmen accepted bribes in the form of stock in railroad in return for votes in favor of the
Union Pacific Railroad
…Another example is the Secretary of War’s involvement in
Indian Agency Frauds
…Another was the
Whiskey Ring Scandal
, which involved Grant’s own private secretary….In this scandal a group of distillers and tax officers defrauded the U.S. Treasury of revenue taxes paid on whiskey.

These scandals greatly contributed to Grant’s tarnished reputation as a president.

President Ulysses S. Grant is often considered a political failure because of his limited successes during Reconstruction and his inability to stem the post-war government scandals….Of course, this mediocre record as president is very different than his sterling reputation as the commander of the victorious Union army in the Civil War

VII. Reconstruction’s End

As the North grew increasingly preoccupied with its own political and economic problems, interest in Reconstruction began to go away.

The Grant administration continued to protect Republican governments in the South, but less because of any interest in ensuring the position of freedmen than because of a desire to prevent the reemergence of a strong Democratic party in the region.

But even the presence of federal troops placed there by president Grant was not enough to prevent white Southerners from working to overturn the Republican governments that they believed had been ruthlessly thrust upon them.

In a few states, the Democrats returned to power almost as soon as civilian government was restored.

In Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia, Republican rule came to an end in 1870…In other states, the Democrats gradually regained control over several years.

Texas was “redeemed,” as Southerners liked to call the restoration of Democratic rule, in 1873.…Alabama and Arkansas in 1874…and Mississippi in 1875.

For three other states…South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida…the end of Reconstruction had to wait for the withdrawal of the last federal troops in 1877.…a withdrawal that was the result of a long process of political bargaining and compromise at the national level.

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In his inaugural address in 1877, Rutherford B. Hayes stressed the Southern problem.

While he took care to say that rights of the blacks must be preserved, he announced that the most pressing need of the South was the restoration of “wise, honest, and peaceful local self-government”…which of course meant that he was going to withdraw the troops and let the Southern whites take control of the state governments.

Hayes laid down this policy knowing full well that his action would lend weight to current charges that he was paying off the South for agreeing to the political bargaining previously mentioned…particularly in the Southern support of his election.

This had the effect of strengthening Hayes’s critics who referred to him as “his Fraudulency.”

The president hoped to build up a new Republican party on the South composed of whatever conservative white groups could be weaned away from the Democrats and committed to some acceptance of black rights.

But, his efforts, which included a tour of Southern cities and even the decoration of a memorial to the Confederate war dead, failed to produce any positive results.

Although many Southern leaders sympathized with the economic platform of the Republicans, they could not advise their people to support the party that had imposed Reconstruction on the South.

Nor were Southerners pleased by Hayes’s granting of federal offices on carpetbaggers or his vetoes of Democratic attempts to repeal the “force acts.”…The “force acts” were a move by the Radical Republicans to stamp out Southern organization such as the Ku Klux Klan…They authorized the president to use military force and martial law in areas where these organizations were active.

The “solid South,” although not yet fully formed, was beginning to take shape…Neither Hayes nor any other Republican could reverse the trend…particularly since no one was willing to use federal power to protect black voting rights, which alone held the promise of giving the Republicans lasting strength in the region.

The withdrawal of the troops was a signal that the national government was giving up its attempt to control Southern politics and also giving up its attempt to determine the place of blacks in Southern society.

The surrender, it is to be noted, was made by the Republicans…They could yield with good grace because after 1877 they had no particular need for the support of the reconstructed South.

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The economic legislation of the war and postwar years was safe from repeal…Industry was securely entrenched in the national economy…and Republican domination of national politics could be maintained without Southern votes.

VIII. The Tragedy of Reconstruction

The record of the Reconstruction years is not one of complete failure, as many have charged.

That slavery would be abolished was clear well before the end of the Civil War….But, Reconstruction worked other changes upon Southern society as well.

There was a significant distribution of income, from which blacks benefited…There was a more limited, but not unimportant redistribution of land ownership, which enabled some former slaves to acquire property for the first time.

There was both a relative and an absolute improvement in the economic circumstances of most blacks.

Nor was Reconstruction as disastrous an experience for Southern whites as most believed at the time.

The region had emerged from a long and bloody war defeated and devastated…and yet, within a decade, the South had regained control of its own institutions…and, to a great extent…restored its traditional ruling class to power.

No harsh punishments were handed out to former Confederate leaders…No drastic program of economic reform was imposed on the region…And, few lasting political changes were forced on the South.

In comparison, not many conquered nations fare as well.

Yet for all of that, Americans of the 21st century cannot but look back on Reconstruction as a tragic era…For in those years the United States made its first serious effort to resolve its oldest and deepest social problem…the problem of race relations.

And, it failed horribly in this effort.

What was more, the experience so disappointed, disillusioned, and embittered the nation that it would be many years before an attempt would be made again.

Why did this great assault on racial injustice…an assault that had emerged over a period of more than 50 years…end so badly?

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Of course, in part it was because of the weaknesses and errors of the people who directed it.

But in greater part, it was because the resolution of the racial problem required a far more fundamental reform of society than Americans of the time were willing to make….One after another, attempts to produce solutions ran up against conservative obstacles so deeply embedded in the nation’s life that they could not be dislodged.

Veneration of the Constitution sharply limited the willingness of national leaders to infringe on the rights of states and individuals in creating social change.

A profound respect for private property and free enterprise prevented any real assault on economic privilege in the South, ensuring that blacks would not win title to the land and wealth they believed they deserved.

Perhaps above all, a pervasive belief among even the most liberal whites that the black race was inherently inferior served as an obstacle to the full equality of the freedmen.

Given the context within which Americans of the 1860’s and 1870’s were working, what is surprising is not that the Reconstruction did so little, but that it accomplished even as much as it did.

The era was tragic not so much because it was a failure…but because it revealed how great were the barriers to racial justice in the United States…Therefore, it could be argued, because of these barriers and obstacles to racial justice, Reconstruction was doomed from the very beginning.

Given the odds confronting them, the newly freed slaves had reason for pride in the limited gains they were able to make during Reconstruction…And, the nation at large had reason for gratitude that the postwar era produces two great cornerstones of freedom…the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.

These two Amendments to the United States Constitution, although largely ignored at the time, would one day serve as the basis for a Second Reconstruction, one that would renew the drive to bring freedom and equality to all Americans.