Chapter Seventeen

Reconstruction, 1863—1877

“. . . the slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.” W. E. B. Du Bois

Reconstruction was a conflict in three areas. The first area was who was to conduct it, the executive or the legislative branch. This led to political battles between Johnson and the Radical Republicans.

The second area was between Radical Republicans and a white South that refused to be reconstructed.

A third area of conflict was between black and white with the latter trying to diminish any gains of the former slaves by enacting black codes and by condoning groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.Eventually Reconstruction would fail because the Radicals lost the will to struggle and the Republican Party became more identified with business. A disputed election in 1877 ended in a compromise that allowed Hayes to take the presidency if federal troops were withdrawn from the South.

Part One:

Introduction

The William Dunning and John W. Burgess school/perspective of Reconstruction from the early 1900s = the South accepted defeat, treated former slaves justly, and desired swift reintegration into the national society. Radical Republicans, motivated by hatred, brought Black suffrage and corruption through carpetbagger and scalawag officials. Therefore, the Whites were required to overthrow these corrupt governments in order to restore “home rule” [a phrase for “white supremacy”]. The former slaves weren’t ready for freedom, White civilization and democracy [“negro incapacity”]. They blamed President Johnson for creating corrupt governments in the Southern states.

The Progressive interpretation portrayed the Radical Republicans as agents of Northern capitalism who used former slaves against the former slave owners.

Eric Foner: “Over a half-century ago, Charles and Mary Beard coined the term “The Second American Revolution” to describe a transfer in power, wrought by the Civil War, from the South’s “planting aristocracy” to “Northern capitalists and free farmers.”

W. E. B. Du Bois, author of the 1935 book Black Reconstruction in America viewed Reconstruction as an idealistic effort to create a democratic, interracial political order. A Marxist, he emphasized the long-term struggle between capital and labor to control the Southern resources.

He wrote: “One fact and one alone explains the attitude of most recent writers towards Reconstruction; they cannot conceive of Negroes as men.”

Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863 – 1877 by Eric Foner [1988]

“Negro rule” was a myth. The Freedman’s Bureau worked with former slave owners to return the freed blacks to the plantations as workers.

His three key themes: [1] blacks were active agents in the Reconstruction of the South; [2] slaves became free laborers and eventually became “equal citizens;” and [3] although racism was pervasive at the local, state and national levels, some Whites worked hard for social justice as well as political and economic equality for former slaves and received similar mistreatment.

“. . . how essentially non-revolutionary and conservative Reconstruction really was.”

C. Van Woodward [1979]

Frederick Douglass 1817-1895

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.  Frederick Douglass July 4, 1852

Sources

• Brigham Family Reconstruction Letter • W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction [1935] • C. Vann Woodward, Reunion and Reaction: The

Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction [1956]

• Fawn Brodie, Thaddeus Stevens [1959] • Kenneth M. Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction [1965] • Eric Foner. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished

Revolution 1863-1877 [1980] • James McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and

Reconstruction [1982]

Chronology1865 Freedmen’s Bureau established

Abraham Lincoln assassinated Andrew Johnson begins Presidential Reconstruction

Black codes enacted in South, 13th Amendment 1866 Civil Rights Act passed

Congress approves 14th Amendment [equal protection, due process,citizenship] KKK founded

1867 Reconstruction Acts passed over President Johnson Veto, begin of Congressional Reconstruction

Tenure of Office Act Southern states call constitutional conventions

1868 President Johnson impeached, acquitted Fourteenth Amendment ratified

Most southern states readmitted to Union Ulysses S. Grant elected president

1869 Union Pacific and Central Pacific tracks meet at Promontory Point in Utah Territory; Suffragists spilt into Nat. Woman Suffrage Assoc. & American Woman Suffrage Assoc.

1870 Fifteenth Amendment ratified 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act passed

NYC’s “Tweed Ring” exposed 1872 Liberal Republicans break with Grant and Radicals,

nominate Horace Greeley for president Credit Mobilier scandal Grant reelected president

1873 Financial panic and beginning of economic depression Slaughterhouse cases

1874 Democrats gain control of House for first time since 1856

Civil Rights Act 1876 Disputed election between Samuel Tilden and

Rutherford B. Hayes 1877 Electoral Commission elects Hayes president

President Hayes dispatches federal troops to break Great Railroad Strike and withdraw last remaining Federal troops from the South

Executions of Lewis Paine, George Atzerodt, David Herold, and Mary Surratt July 7, 1865 – 8 found guilty by military tribunal,

some to prison

Lincoln’s funeral procession on Pennsylvania Avenue – a special funeral train took 2 weeks to Springfield, Illinois [ “Like a Bridge Over Troubled

Water” -- 1968 RFK ]

Chapter Focus Questions

• What were the competing political plans for reconstructing the defeated Confederacy?

• How difficult was the transition from slavery to freedom for African Americans?

• What was the political and social legacy of Reconstruction in the southern states?

• What were the post-Civil War transformations in the economic and political life of the North?

1. In what sense did Reconstruction succeed and in what way did it fail?

2. What was the "Second Reconstruction?" 3. What shifts occurred in the national & state gov’ts? 4.  Why do we emphasize the years 1863-1877? 5.   Compare presidential & congressional reconstruction. 6.   What was the Freemen’s Bureau? What did it accomplish? 7.  Was "King Cotton" still the king after the war? 8.   Did the South lose the war but win the peace? 9.   Do we still have "waving the bloody shirt” ? 10. Explain the importance of the 14th Amendment

in "incorporating" or "nationalizing" the Bill of Rights in the 1960s.

Study Questions

Part Two:

American Communities

From Slavery to Freedom in a Black Belt Community?

• In Hale County, former slaves showed an increased sense of autonomy, expressing it through politics and through their new work patterns.

• One planter described how freed people refused to do “their former accustomed work.”

• Former slaveholders had to reorganize their plantations and allow slaves to work the land as sharecroppers, rather than hired hands.

• Freed people organized themselves and elected two of their number to the state legislature.

• These acts of autonomy led to a white backlash, including nighttime attacks by Ku Klux Klansmen intent on terrorizing freed blacks and maintaining white social and political supremacy.

Part Three:

The Politics of Reconstruction

The Defeated South

• The South had been thoroughly defeated and its economy lay in ruins.

• The presence of Union troops further embittered white Southerners.

• The bitterest pill was the changed status of African Americans whose freedom seemed an affront to white supremacy.

Abraham Lincoln’s Plan • During his life, Lincoln had promoted a plan that:

– authorized amnesty for those swearing an oath of allegiance

– once 10 percent of a Confederate state’s voters registered their oaths they could establish a state government.

• Lincoln used a pocket veto to kill a plan passed by Congressional radicals

• Redistribution of land posed another thorny issue. • Congress created the Freedman’s Bureau and

passed the Thirteenth Amendment

Andrew Johnson and Presidential Reconstruction

• Andrew Johnson, the new president, was a War Democrat from Tennessee.

• He had used harsh language to describe southern “traitors” but blamed individuals rather than the entire South for secession.

• While Congress was not in session he granted amnesty to most Confederates. Initially, wealthy landholders and members of the political elite had been excluded, but Johnson pardoned most of them.

• Johnson appointed provisional governors who organized new governments.

• By December, Johnson claimed that “restoration” was virtually complete.

Andrew Johnson 1808-1875 – pardoned 13,000 former Confederates,

impeached but found not guilty by one vote

The Radical Republican Vision • Radicals Republicans wanted to remake the South in

the North’s image, advocating land redistribution to make former slaves independent landowners.

• Stringent “Black Codes” outraged many Northerners. • In December 1865, Congress excluded the southern

representatives.• Congress overrode Johnson's vetoes of a Civil Rights

bill and a bill to enlarge the scope of the Freedman’s Bureau.

• Fearful that courts might declare the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional, Congress drafted the Fourteenth Amendment.

• Republicans won the Congressional elections of 1866 that had been a showdown between Congress and Johnson over Reconstruction and the amendment.

Rep. Thaddeus Stevens 1792-1868 – helped

secure Civil Rights Act of 1866, helped

draft 14th Amendment,

Military Reconstruction

Act of 1867

He’s buried in a “Black” cemetary

Congressional Reconstruction

• The First Reconstruction Act of 1867 enfranchised blacks and divided the South into five military districts.

Impeachment

• A crisis developed over whether Johnson could replace Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

• In violation of the Tenure of Office Act, Johnson fired Stanton.

• The House impeached Johnson but the Senate vote fell one vote short of conviction.

Edwin M. Stanton 1814-1869 - Lincoln’s Sec. of War, fired by Johnson – 1868 – [linked to Tenure

Act/impeachment]

Impeachment Committee of the House [l to r] Benjamin Butler, James Wilson, Thaddeus Stevens, George Boutwell, Thomas Williams, John

Logan, John Bingham

The Election of 1868

• By 1868 eight of the eleven ex-Confederate states were back in the Union. Republicans nominated Ulysses Grant for president.

• The Republicans attacked Democrats’ loyalties. • Democrats exploited racism to gather votes and

used terror in the South to keep Republicans from voting.

• Republicans won with less than 53 percent of the vote. [Therefore, 1870 15th Amendment.]

1868 Republican Convention in Chicago nominates Grant

Reconstruction and Ratification

• The remaining unreconstructed states had to ratify both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to be admitted to the Union.

Woman Suffrage and Reconstruction

• Women’s rights activists were outraged that the new laws enfranchised African Americans but not women.

• The movement split over whether to support a linkage between the rights of women and African Americans.

Part Four:

The Meaning of Freedom

Freedmen at Richmond, VA April 1865

Moving About

• For many freed people, the first impulse to define freedom was to move about.

• Many who left soon returned to seek work in their neighborhoods. Others sought new lives in predominantly black areas, even cities.

• Former slaves enjoyed the freedom of no longer having to show deference to whites.

The African American Family

• Freedom provided the chance to reunite with lost family members.

• The end of slavery allowed African Americans to more closely fulfill appropriate gender roles.

• Males took on more authority in the family. • Women continued to work outside the home.

African American Churches and Schools

• Emancipation allowed ex-slaves to practice religion without white interference.

• African American communities pooled their resources to establish churches, the first social institution that they fully controlled.

• Education was another symbol of freedom. • By 1869 over 3,000 Freedman’s Bureau schools taught

over 150,000 students. • Black colleges were established as well.

Primary school for Vicksburg freemen – Freedmen’s Bureau established March 3, 1865

Howard University law school, 1900 – Howard was established in Washington, D.C. in 1867 named after Oliver

O. Howard, director of the Freedman’s Bureau

Land Labor After Slavery

• Most former slaves hoped to become self-sufficient farmers, but with no land redistribution this dream was not fulfilled.

• The Freedman’s Bureau was forced to evict tens of thousands of blacks that had been settled on confiscated lands.

• At war’s end most planters expected blacks to work for wages in gangs, but was unacceptable to many ex-slaves.

Sharecropping and Living Patterns

• Sharecropping represented a compromise between planter and former slave.

• Sharecroppers set their own hours and tasks.

• Families labored together on adjoining parcels of land.

The Origins of African American Politics

• Former slaves organized politically to protect their interests and to promote their own participation.

• Five states had black electoral majorities. • The Union League became the political

voice of former slaves. • New leaders, drawn from the ranks of

teachers and ministers, emerged to give direction to the black community as it fought for equal rights.

1872 – African Americans in Congress [l to r] Sen Hiram Revels, Miss; Rep Benjamin Turner, AL; Rep Robert DeLarge, SC; Josiah

Walls, FLA; Joseph Rainey, SC; Robert Brown Elliott, SC

Sen. Blanche Kelso Bruce, Mississippi elected in 1874, Oberlin graduate

Part Five:

Southern Politics and Society

Southern Republicans • Most northerners were satisfied with a

reconstruction that brought the South back into the Union with a viable Republican Party.

• Achieving this goal required active Federal support to protect the African American voters upon which it depended.

• Republicans also drew strength from:– white, northern, middle-class emigrants called

carpetbaggers– native southern white Republicans called scalawags

who were businessmen and Unionists from the mountains The result was an uneasy alliance, with each group pushing an agenda that was incompatible with the plans devised by its allies.

Reconstructing the States • Throughout the South, state conventions that

– had a significant African American presence– drafted constitutions– instituted political and humanitarian reforms

• The new governments insisted on equal rights, but accepted separate schools.

• The Republican governments did little to assist African Americans in acquiring land though they did help protect the rights of black laborers to bargain freely.

• Republican leaders envisioned promoting northern-style prosperity and gave heavy subsidies for RR development.

• These plans frequently opened the doors to corruption and bankrupted the states.

White Resistance

• Many white southerners believed that the Republicans were not a legitimate political group.

• Paramilitary groups like the Ku Klux Klan used terror to destroy the Reconstruction governments and intimidate their supporters.

• Congress passed several laws to crack down on the Klan.

• The Civil Rights Act of 1875 outlawed racial discrimination in public places

• [1896, Plessy v. Ferguson]

Ku Klux Klan members, 1866 Tennessee

Thomas Nast cartoon shows freedmen as victims of

Democratic Party

Redemption

• As wartime idealism faded and Democrats gained strength in the North, northern Republicans abandoned the freed people and their white allies.

• Conservative Democrats (Redeemers) won control of southern states.

• Between 1873 and 1883, the Supreme Court weakened enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and overturned convictions of Klan members.

1873 election of

Georgia Democrat

John Brown Gordon

1832-1904 to Senate was

“Redemption” because he had been an officer with Gen. Robert Edward Lee

“King Cotton”

• The South grew more heavily dependent on cotton.

• The crop lien system provided loans in exchange for a lien on the crop.

• As cotton prices spiraled downward cotton growers fell more deeply into debt.

• The South emerged as an impoverished region.

Part Six:

Reconstructing the North

The Age of Capital

• Republicans like Lincoln believed that their society was bound by a harmony of interests without class conflict that allowed for social mobility.

• A violent railroad strike in 1877 suggested that the North had undergone its own reconstruction, shattering that harmony.

• Fueled by railroad construction, the postwar years saw a continued industrial boom that concentrated industries into the hands of a few big businesses.

• Several Republican politicians maintained close connections with railroad interests resulting in the Credit Mobilier scandal.

“In the aftermath of Reconstruction, the struggle between capital and labor had clearly replaced ‘the southern question’ as the number one political issue of the day.”

Out of Many [deluxe version of text, page 541]

Horace Greeley 1811-1872 – founded New York Tribune in

1841, ran against Grant in 1872 as a Liberal Republican and Democrat

Liberal Republicans and the Election of 1872

• The Republican Party underwent dramatic changes:– the old radicals were dying or losing influence– party leaders concentrated on holding on to federal patronage– a growing number of Republicans were appalled by the

corruption of the party and sought an alternative.

• The Liberal Republicans:– were suspicious of expanding democracy– called for a return to limited government– proposed civil service reform to insure elites would have

federal posts– opposed continued federal involvement in Reconstruction

• In 1872, Horace Greeley challenged Ulysses Grant for the presidency. Grant easily won but the Liberal Republican agenda continued to gain influence.

The Depression of 1873

• In 1873, a financial panic triggered the longest depression in American history.

• Prices fell, unemployment rose, and many people sank deeply in debt.

• Government officials rejected appeals for relief.

• Clashes between labor and capital led many to question whether their society was one with a harmony of interests.

The Election of 1876

• As the election of 1876 approached, new scandals in the Grant administration hurt the Republicans.

• The Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden of New York, a former prosecutor. Democrats combined attacks on Reconstruction with attacks on corruption.

• The Republican nominee, Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, accused Democrats of treason and promised to clean up corruption.

Samuel J. Tilden 1814-1886 -- denied presidency when several southern Democrats in Congress failed to support him in return

for an end to Reconstruction

1876 voting cartoon

Crisis and Resolution

• Tilden won more votes than Hayes, but both sides claimed victory.

• In three southern states two sets of electoral votes were returned.

• An electoral commission awarded the disputed votes to Hayes.

• Hayes struck a deal that promised money for southern internal improvements and noninterference in southern affairs.

• The remaining federal troops were removed from the South.

• The remaining Republican governments in the South lost power.