Download 36. Part One of Reconstruction

Part One of Reconstruction
The last weapons fired in the conflict between the North and the South were not
rifles or cannon but words. Just as a war of words preceded the Civil War, the last
volleys were in the form of three amendments to the Constitution designed to punish the
South. The 13th Amendment was, in December of 1865, the first amendment to the
Constitution since 1804 so it is radical even in its timing. It also launched
Reconstruction, one of the most complex and controversial periods in US history. The
term reconstruction does not merely imply rebuilding burned cities or torn-up railroads.
The period historians call Reconstruction is when the country tried to figure out how to
go forward as one nation in the aftermath of the Civil War.
Several crucial questions demanded answers. Should the Rebels be punished?
How were the slaves to be kept free? What rights did freedmen have? When, and how,
and under what conditions should the seceded states be readmitted to the Union? Will
the readmitted states be permitted to vote in national elections? Would they be allowed
representation in the Congress? Essentially, would the former Confederate states ever be
allowed to be equal members of the United States again?
The reason Lincoln’s death by assassination was a calamity for the South was that
his plan for Reconstruction was the most lenient of the three that would be proposed.
Had Lincoln lived, he would have served out his second term as President and guided the
process. While there were many detractors opposed to Lincoln’s ideas, he had stood
alone on more than one issue already. His entire Cabinet had feared the issuing of the
Emancipation Proclamation, but it proved to be one of Lincoln’s most significant
contributions to US history and laid the groundwork for the 13th Amendment which
abolished slavery. Lincoln’s plan was known as the 10% Plan because he suggested that
when 10% of a state’s population disavowed the Confederacy and supported a pro-Union
government, the rebels of that state would be given amnesty. John Wilkes Booth
removed any possibility for a benevolent federal government’s forgiveness.
Lincoln’s second Vice President was a unionist Tennesseean named Andrew
Johnson, the only Southern US Senator not to leave the US Congress upon the secession
of his state. As President, Johnson’s plan for Reconstruction was just, but not harsh. He
said Southern whites should initiate new state governments while he appointed new state
governors. These hand-picked governors would call state conventions to form new
constitutions with three requirements. Each reconstructed state must adopt the 13th
Amendment, repeal their acts of secession, and cancel their war debts. These “hoops”
through which Johnson wanted the states to jump were intended to make the people of
the South regret that they had ever supported the Confederacy, especially if they had
purchased war bonds.
By 1866, all the eleven seceded states were on their way back, but you can
probably gather that Johnson was ultimately unsuccessful by the fact that Mississippi did
not adopt the 13th Amendment until your lifetime. Johnson recommended that the states
he had reconstructed send Congressman back to Washington, DC. Congress, however,
had grown jealous of Executive power during Lincoln’s presidency and tacked on the 14th
Amendment as another hoop. The 14th Amendment, among other things, said that freed
slaves were citizens, a radical departure from the ante bellum Supreme Court.
The South refused ratification and a third plan for Reconstruction was launched
by the Radical Republicans who wanted to punish the South for the war. The 13th and
14th Amendments had already earned them their radical label, but they became harsher
and pushed for black male suffrage with the 15th Amendment. The Reconstruction
amendments, therefore, are the 13th, 14th, and 15th. Roughly, they freed slaves, made
freedmen citizens, and gave black males the right to vote. At no other time for another
century could they have been possible. Only when former Confederate/Democrats could
still not vote and when radicals in the Republican Party had taken control in the wake of
Lincoln’s assassination were they accomplished. Together they were a punitive peace
that made the South’s way of life Gone with the Wind.
Only Tennessee escaped the righteous indignation of the Radical Republicans
partly because it was Johnson’s home state but mostly because it had been conquered
early in the war. Tennessee was Reconstructed (back in the Union) by 1866. Most other
states had to wait until 1871 when they submitted to equality-based constitutions forced
on them by an occupying Union Army’s protection of black voters. The South was even
divided up into five military districts and placed under martial law, and three states still
did not submit to the repressive measures of the Radical Republicans until 1877 when
Reconstruction was considered over. On the brink of being dissolved, the federal
government had asserted sweeping powers that totally reorganized society in ways that
some Southerners rue even to this day. Those stubborn holdouts, however, should
contemplate the frightening prospect that Reconstruction could have been much worse.
There are at least three groups with motives to make Reconstruction harsher,
more violent, and more repressive. If any one of three possible scenarios had occurred
the process of Reconstruction could have taken significantly longer and crippled our
nation even to the point of keeping us on the sidelines in the two World Wars of the
Twentieth Century, which is to say, the “new birth of freedom” of which Lincoln spoke
at Gettysburg could have been snuffed out. For once in A. P. US history I will deal for a
time with “What if?” None of these scenarios happened, but to truly understand
Reconstruction we should briefly imagine why they might have happened and what
would have been the consequences for all Americans if they did.
First, since the North had lost 360,000 men and would eventually pay $10 billion
to cover the cost of putting down the rebellion, Reconstruction could have been worse.
Beyond these costs in lives and treasure, there was the discovery after the war of the
atrocities of Andersonville, Georgia, where a Confederacy that could barely afford to
feed its own soldiers kept prisoners of war in conditions of extreme exposure and
deprivation. Twelve thousand of the fifty thousand prisoners who went to Andersonville
died, a death toll of almost 1 in 4. To the outrage of other segments of the Northern
population, Nathan Bedford Forrest was said to have ordered the beating, shooting, and
burning of black soldiers he had captured in Tennessee. Both Frank and Jesse James got
their start as outlaws by committing other atrocities while “serving” as Confederate
guerrilla fighters. Rumors also abounded. Harper’s Magazine printed rumors that
Southern men drank from goblets made from Yankee skulls, and women wore necklaces
of Yankee teeth. It was no rumor, however, that a Southerner murdered Lincoln.
The point of all this conjecture is that the North could have turned on the South
for vengeance. The federal government of the United States could have hanged Jefferson
Davis, Alexander Stephens, Robert E. Lee, and every man who had served as an officer
in the Confederate Army above the rank of, say, Major. All other officers and politicians
could have been exiled. The government could have erased all state boundaries and
started again with states all the size of Texas, reducing the power of the South in the
Senate. All plantation land could have been confiscated and redistributed to freedmen, an
experiment that was even tried on a limited scale.
None of these measures was done, however. The only Confederate officer
executed for war crimes was Major Henry Wirtz, the commandant of Andersonville.
Jefferson Davis, who had been caught in Irwinville, Georgia on May 10, 1865, was
merely imprisoned for two years and had all charges of treason dropped against him in
1869. Robert E. Lee went on to be the President of what was renamed Washington and
Lee University. Some Confederate officers fled the country, but they were not exiled.
The South had been steeped in propaganda, too, however. They were told by
their leaders that even Lincoln’s lenient plan for Reconstruction included, “emancipation,
confiscation [of land], conflagration, and extermination.” The President was going to
use, ironically, “the Assassin’s dagger, the midnight torch [arson], poison, famine, and
pestilence.” It was no rumor, however, that the North had an embarrassing prisoner of
war camp at Elmira, New York, where 775 of 8,347 prisoners died in three months, a 9%
death rate. Sherman’s March to the Sea was a bitter memory well on into the Twentieth
Century. The South knew the March had included “unauthorized” plunder when
Yankees had stolen the silver out of plantation houses along with other valuables and
either carried them off or threw them in wells or ponds to come back for them later.
A vengeful plan was proposed to Robert E. Lee by some of his junior officers on
the morning of the day of his surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. Foreshadowing halfa-dozen 20th-century insurgencies including Afghanistan (against the Russians), Cuba,
Iraq (against the US), and the forty-year struggle in Columbia, these Confederates
suggested that the Army disband to form bands of guerrilla fighters. They said
determined troops could hold out in the Appalachian Mountains for years while they
sabotaged, assassinated, and robbed. Some even cut through the first Union assault to top
a rise only to observe a “sea of blue” surrounding them. Had they attempted to act on
their idea earlier, historians guess that the Confederacy might have fought on for at least
another decade. Some of these officers were the ones to exile themselves to Canada and
Mexico. Lee was against the plan from the beginning. He urged all his men to surrender,
to restore law and order, to re-establish agriculture and commerce, and to promote
education and general rebuilding. This moment is when Lee saved the Union.
Don’t rule out the blacks. Former slaves could have easily sought vengeance and
gone renegade, unleashing violence across the South including murder and the rape of
white women in payment for centuries of sexual exploitation of their women. Blacks
could have demanded and carved out a nation within a nation similar to a huge Indian
reservation where no whites would be allowed. Southerners, indeed, feared these things
would happen. Blacks did expect to obtain the former masters’ lands, but they did not
seize them. This scenario is a third disaster that did not occur. In fact, blacks said they
would strive for “peace, friendship, and good will toward all men—especially toward our
fellow white citizens among whom our lot is cast.” That line is among the most
incredible ever uttered in US history! I am sure the South was grateful that they had
permitted their slaves to become Christians. Blacks actually fought in political struggles
to return former Confederates to full citizenship, including voting and holding public
office (which the 14th Amendment forbade).
After all the sacrifice of the Civil War, the Union was preserved; the slaves were
freed. Radical changes took root in our society, but Reconstruction was by no means as
revolutionary or as bloody as it could have been. In fact, the 13th, 14th, and 15th
Amendments were stymied by the South and did not at all accomplish their purpose until
approximately 100 years after the Civil War. We will need to take up the limitations on
Reconstruction that made the Civil Rights Movement necessary in our next installment.