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Reconstruction Overview
The 10 years following the Civil War are
referred to as the era of Reconstruction.
Determined that the Union victory must
stand for more than simply restoration of
the status quo, the federal government
made numerous attempts to legislate the
reconstruction of the South. The majority
of the legislation was aimed at securing
political, social, and economic equality for
newly emancipated African Americans.
Civil Rights
In June 1866, Congress passed the
Fourteenth Amendment to the
Constitution, which states, "All persons
born or naturalized in the United States
and subject to jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States and of the
states in which they reside." Thereby,
Congress granted citizenship to the
freedmen. Hostile Southern state
legislatures responded by passing "black codes," local laws that in effect re-imposed bondage on the
freedmen.
The black codes required African Americans to enter into annual labor contracts; subjected dependent
children to compulsory apprenticeship and corporal punishments by masters; and allowed vagrants to be
sold into private service if they could not pay severe fines. Congress countered with the Reconstruction Act
of 1867, which divided the South into five districts and placed them under military rule. Congress also
passed the Fifteenth Amendment, which provided that "The rights of citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude."
Nevertheless, violence against African
Americans—often by such organized groups as
the Ku Klux Klan—became more and more
frequent. So in 1870, Congress passed an
Enforcement Act to severely punish those who
attempted to deprive the African American
freedmen of their civil rights. In reality, when the
last Federal troops had been withdrawn in 1877
and all 11 Confederate states had been
readmitted to the Union, the Democratic Party
was back in power in the South, and the AfricanAmericans struggle for civil rights would continue
well into the next century.
Economic
In March 1865, Congress established the U.S. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands,
commonly referred to as the Freedmen's Bureau. Its challenge was to provide practical aid to 4 million newly
freed African Americans in their transition from slavery to freedom. Headed by Gen. Oliver O. Howard, the
bureau was charged with furnishing food and medical supplies, regulating wages and working conditions,
establishing and maintaining schools, handling legal trials, and controlling the distribution of lands
abandoned by or confiscated from Southern proprietors.
During the years immediately after the war, the South's economy was recovering from wartime destruction in
the face of bad harvests. Bureau men brought relief in the form of food and clothing to hard-pressed white
and black Southerners. This type of assistance, however, was always considered an emergency measure,
necessary only until the new free-labor system could bear fruit. Freedmen's Bureau officers and agents
instructed both the freed people and their ex-masters in their obligations and rights within the new system.
The reliance on written contracts, as Howard later explained, was the best way to gain the confidence of all
involved parties.
Bureau men tried to prevent fraud against the freed people and to make sure they received just
compensation, in their minds a cornerstone for building a successful new system. Many officers and agents
assumed that slavery had retarded the freed people’s intellectual and moral development, but they also
believed that the position of the ex-slaves within a free-labor society was a dynamic one. The freed people’s
fairly paid hard work and thrift would allow them to move beyond their status as laborers to that of
independent landowners, just as education would allow them to leave behind the ignorance imposed on
them by their ex-masters. To assist the freed people in the latter area, the bureau coordinated the efforts of
the ex-slaves and Northern benevolent societies, such as the American Missionary Association, in
establishing a network of schools.
The bureau oversaw abandoned and confiscated property, initially with the expectation of leasing and then
selling land to the freed people. Because of decisions made in Washington, D.C., however, the bureau
eventually supervised the restoration of most property to former white owners. During 1866 and 1867, this
restoration was especially tragic in the Sherman Reservation, a swath of land along the coast of South
Carolina, Georgia, and Florida where ex-slaves had been settling since Gen. William T. Sherman had set
aside the area for their use in January 1865.
Although the bureau distributed about $20 million in various types of relief and assistance, it was
unsuccessful in helping African Americans establish themselves as independent farmers. As it turned out,
there were no federal provisions for land redistribution, and the bureau was reduced to overseeing
sharecropping arrangements that in many instances were barely different than the former master-slave
relationships. The only other option offered African Americans was access to the Southern Homestead Act
at the standard rates of purchase. However, very few had the money required to file for such land even if it
was available. When the bureau was terminated in 1872, this was its most significant failure. Without land,
African American couldn't build an economic base, and without an economic base, they had no political
power.
Education
On the other hand, the greatest area of
accomplishment of the Freedmen's Bureau was
the establishment of tax-supported, free public
schools for all children, regardless of race. The
bureau built more than 1,000 African American
schools; spent more than $400,000 to establish
teacher-training institutions; and established
Howard, Fisk, and Atlanta universities and the
Hampton Institute.
Freedom, But Not Equality
In the aftermath of the Civil War, slaves were granted their freedom, but not equality. Within 10 years, the
conservative Democratic Party was back in power in the South. Handicapped by inadequate funds and
poorly trained personnel, the Freedmen's Bureau had been unable to fully meet the freedmen's needs for
political and economic opportunity or simply protect them from violence and intimidation.
After 10 years of Reconstruction, the South remained in an intense struggle. Southern whites still wished to
keep African Americans in conditions of servitude and firmly rejected social equality, and African Americans
still wanted full freedom and land of their own. Despite civil rights legislation, programs for economic
assistance, and access to education, African Americans still faced a rigidly segregated life in the South and
hostility across most of the North.
Questions:
1. What might the life of a 17 year old African- American boy or a Caucasian girl in the Reconstruction South
been like? List 10 things that they might have seen or heard or encountered there.
2. Write a short letter to your friend in New York explaining what life has been like for you in the 10 years of
Reconstruction. Use the 10 things you listed above in the letter as a way to describe to her or him what it
was like to be alive from 1866 to 1876 in the Reconstruction South.