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11/18/2015 Reconstruction: Outline I. The states of affairs, Spring 1865 II. Presidential reconstruction A. The Freedmen’s Bureau B. Black codes C. Race riots of 1866 III. Congressional reconstruction A. Reconstruction Acts B. Civil Rights C. Black political participation IV. Conclusion Reconstruction: Outline I. The states of affairs, Spring 1865 "Peace at the End of the Civil War," Rotunda, US Capitol, Washington, DC 1 11/18/2015 “Worse Than Slavery.” Harper’s Weekly (October 24, 1874), p. 878. "War is merely the continuation of policy [politics] by other means.“ Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz “Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed." Mao Zedong 2 11/18/2015 Preston Brooks caning Sen. Charles Sumner in the Senate chamber - 1856. New York Public Library - Aster, Lenox & Tilden Foundations. The Room in the McLean House, at Appomattox C.H., in which Gen. Lee surrendered to Gen. Grant. The Major & Knapp Eng. Mfg. & Lith. Co. 71 Broadway. 1867. Thomas Nast, “Emancipation,” Harper’s Weekly, January 24, 1863 3 11/18/2015 View of Richmond above the Canal Basin, after the Evacuation Fire of 1865. War Department. Office of the Chief Signal Officer. National Archives. “Fugitive Negroes fording the Rappahannock (during Pope’s retreat).” 1862 photo by Timothy H. O'Sullivan. 4 11/18/2015 Lincoln’s “10% plan” of Dec. 1863 • A wartime plan for returning Unioncontrolled Louisiana to the Union • “Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction” • 10% of population must swear oath of loyalty to Union • Must ratify 13th Amendment abolishing slavery • Freedpeople: ?? “any provision which may be adopted by such state government in relation to the freed people of such state, which shall recognize and declare their permanent freedom, provide for their education, and which may yet be consistent as a temporary arrangement with their present condition as a laboring, landless, and homeless class, will not be objected to by the National Executive.” Representative Henry W. Davis of Maryland (on the left) and Senator Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio (on the right) sponsored the Wade-Davis Bill, a strict plan for re-admittance of Confederate states to representation in the Union. Henry Winter Davis, ca. 1855-1865, Brady-Handy Photograph Collection, both images from Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress The Assassination of President Lincoln (Currier & Ives, 1865) Broadside advertising reward for capture of Lincoln assassination conspirators 5 11/18/2015 Andrew Johnson taking the oath of office in the small parlor of the Kirkwood House [Hotel], Washington, [April 15, 1865]. Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. Andrew Johnson on reconstruction: “Treason must be made odious, traitors must be made odious and impoverished. They must not only be punished, but their social power must be destroyed.” (April 21, 1865) “There’s no such thing as reconstruction. These States have not gone out of the Union. Therefore reconstruction is unnecessary.” (May 21, 1865) “White men alone must manage the South.” (Johnson to John Conness, Summer 1865) “In the progress of nations Negroes have shown less capacity for government than any other race of people. No independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands. On the contrary, wherever they have been left to their own devices they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism.” (Annual message to Congress, 1867) 6 11/18/2015 • What did the Georgia ministers argue was most needed? • What did Frederick Douglass argue was most needed? Reconstruction: Outline I. The states of affairs, Spring 1865 II. Presidential reconstruction A. The Freedmen’s Bureau 7 11/18/2015 The Freedmen’s Bureau • Origins – American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission (3/63) – March 1865: Congresses establishes Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands under War Department – 1st and only Superintendent: Union General Oliver Otis Howard • The “Christian General” • Bowdoin College • Functions – – – – Relief Education Abandoned lands Alternative court system Freedman’s Bureau officers, who were often taken from the ranks of military officials, were charged with reconstructing the plantation regime by negotiating between planters and the freedpeople Excerpts from the testimony before Congress of J. D. B. DeBow, 1866 J. D. B. De Bow was a wealthy and prominent southerner who lived through the Civil War years. He published DeBow’s Review, an influential journal, out of New Orleans, Louisiana. DeBow’s Review offered a conservative slant on the problems of Reconstruction, often echoing the paternalism of the southern white elite. DeBow offered the following testimony before Congress in 1866. I think if the whole regulation of the negroes, or freedmen, were left to the people of the communities in which they live, it will be administered for the best interest of the negroes as well as of the white men. I think there is a kindly feeling on the part of the planters towards the freedmen. . . . The sentiment prevailing is, that it is for the interest of the employer to teach the negro, to educate his children, to provide a preacher for him, and to attend to his physical wants. . . . The Freedmen’s Bureau, or any agency to interfere between the freedman and his former master, is only productive of mischief. There are constant appeals from one to the other and continual annoyances. It has a tendency to create dissatisfaction and disaffection on the part of the laborer, and is in every respect in its result most unfavorable to the system of industry that is now being organized under the new order of things in the South. Source: Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, part iv, p. 134. 8 11/18/2015 • Why did Andrew Johnson veto the 2nd Freedmen’s Bureau Bill? Veto of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill Andrew Johnson February 19, 1866 “The power that would be thus placed in the hands of the President, is such as in time of peace certainly ought never to be intrusted to any one man. If it be asked whether the creation of such a tribunal within a State is warranted as a measure of war, the question immediately presents itself, whether we are still engaged in war. Let us not unnecessarily disturb the commerce and credit and industry of the country, by declaring to the American people and the world that the United States are still in a condition of civil war. At present there is no part of our country in which the authority of the United States is disputed. Offences that may be committed by individuals should not work a forfeiture of the rights if the same communities. The country has entered or is returning to a state of peace and industry, and the rebellion is in fact at an end. The measure, therefore, seems to be as inconsistent with the actual condition of the country as it is at variance with the Constitution of the United States.” Source: Andrew Johnson, His Life and Speeches by Lillian Foster, New York: Richardson & Co., 1866. http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1940 9 11/18/2015 Reconstruction: Outline I. The states of affairs, Spring 1865 II. Presidential reconstruction A. The Freedmen’s Bureau B. Black codes Black Codes • Laws passed by southern state governments, 1865 • Strict controls over terms of labor • Vagrancy laws kept freedpeople a docile, immobile labor force • Denial of basic civil rights • Violation of free market principles Mississippi Black Code (1866) Section 2. Be it further enacted, that all freedmen, free Negroes, and mulattoes in this state over the age of eighteen years found on the second Monday in January 1966, or thereafter, with no lawful employment or business, or found unlawfully assembling themselves together either in the day or nighttime, and all white persons so assembling with freedmen, free Negroes, or mulattoes, or usually associating with freedmen, free Negroes, or mulattoes on terms of equality, or living in adultery or fornication with a freedwoman, free Negro, or mulatto, shall be deemed vagrants; and, on conviction thereof, shall be fined in the sum of not exceeding, in the case of a freedman, free Negro, or mulatto, 150, and a white man, $200, and imprisoned at the discretion of the court, the free Negro not exceeding ten days, and the white man not exceeding six months. Source: Laws of the State of Mississippi, Passed at a Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature, held in Jackson, October, November and December, 1865 (Jackson, 1866), pp. 82-93, 165-67. 10 11/18/2015 Excerpts from “What’s to Be Done with the Negroes?” by George Fitzhugh, DeBow’s Review 1:6 (June 1866) We of the South would not find much difficulty in managing the negroes, at least tolerably well, if left to ourselves, for we would be guided by the lights of experience and the teachings of history, sacred and profane. . . . We should be satisfied to compel them to engage in coarse, common manual labor, and to punish them for dereliction of duty or nonfulfillment of their contracts with sufficient severity, to make the great majority of them useful, productive laborers…. To punish idleness is the first and most incumbent duty of government…. Vagrant laws are hardly needed by the whites, and they sleep upon our statute books. The white race is naturally provident and accumulative, and but few of them thieves…. But a great deal of severe legislation will be required to compel negroes to labor as much as they should do, in order not to become a charge upon the whites. We must have a black code, and not confound white men with negroes…. Immemorial usage, law, custom and divine injunction, nay human nature itself, have subordinated inferior races to superior races. Never did the black man come in contact with the white man, that he did not become his subordinate, if not his slave. “Address of the Colored State Convention to the People of the State of South Carolina,” 1865 We ask for no special privileges or peculiar favors. We ask only for even-handed Justice, or for the removal of such positive obstructions and disabilities as past, and the recent Legislators have seen fit to throw in our way, and heap upon us…. Without any rational cause or provocation on our part, of which we are conscious, as a people, we, by the action of your Convention and Legislature, have been virtually, and with few exceptions excluded from, first, the rights of citizenship, which you cheerfully accord to strangers, but deny to us who have been born and reared in your midst, who were faithful while your greatest trials were upon you, and have done nothing since to merit your disapprobation…. We simply desire that we shall be recognized as men; that we have no obstructions placed in our way; that the same laws which govern white men shall direct colored men; that we have the right of trial by a jury of our peers, that schools be opened or established for our children; that we be permitted to acquire homesteads for ourselves and children; that we be dealt with as others, in equity and justice. A Missouri Democrat rejects the black codes: “The contest [i.e., the Civil War] was not closed when Lee surrendered. It only changed its form. We have no longer a known foe and an open field. Intrigue and chicanery come by gift of nature to all Southern races. For skirmishes we are to have speeches; for battles, conventions, and in place of campaigns, the sessions of Legislatures and Congresses. The rebel puts aside the bayonet, and takes up the ballot. It is for us to say whether it will not prove the more deadly weapon of the two…. We cannot justly leave all the rights of the freedmen at the mercy of those who so long held them in slavery. We cannot safely leave four millions of people so utterly defenseless against the cruelty or revenge of a hostile and exasperated race. . . . “The Rights of the Nation, and the Duty of Congress,” by W. M. Grosvenor, New Englander and Yale Review 24, no. 93 (October 1865): 755-77. 11 11/18/2015 Reconstruction: Outline I. The states of affairs, Spring 1865 II. Presidential reconstruction A. The Freedmen’s Bureau B. Black codes C. Race riots of 1866 Harper’s Weekly 10, no. 491 (May 26, 1866) “The riot in New Orleans – murdering negroes in the rear of Mechanics' Institute ; Platform in Mechanics' Institute after the riot.” Harper's Weekly (1866). 12 11/18/2015 “The rebels of New Orleans have proved worthy of their cousinship to the rebels in Memphis. They have fleshed their maiden swords in the blood of the negro. . . . [They demonstrate] their devotion to the President’s [lenient] policy by a riot or massacre, inaugurated in order to suppress free speech and to prevent the people of Louisiana from enjoying their Constitutional right to assemble peacefully and petition for the redress of grievances. . . .” Chicago Tribune (August 1, 1866) "The Riot in New Orleans," Harper's Weekly (August 25, 1866). Virginia freedpeople call for government aid: “We know these men -- know them well -- and we assure you that, with the majority of them, loyalty is only ‘lip deep,’ and that their professions of loyalty are used as a cover to the cherished design of getting restored to their former relations with the Federal Government, and then, by all sorts of ‘unfriendly legislation,’' to render the freedom you have given us more intolerable than the slavery they intended for us. . . . “We are ‘sheep in the midst of wolves,’ and nothing but the military arm of the government prevents us and all the truly loyal white men from being driven from the land of our birth. Do not, then, we beseech you, give to one of these ‘wayward sisters’ the rights they abandoned and forfeited when they rebelled, until you have secured our rights by the aforementioned amendment to the constitution.” Late Convention of Colored Men of Virginia, “Address to the Loyal Citizens of the United States and to Congress,” New York Times (August 13, 1865). Reconstruction: Outline I. The states of affairs, Spring 1865 II. Presidential reconstruction A. The Freedmen’s Bureau B. Black codes C. Race riots of 1866 III. Congressional reconstruction A. Reconstruction Acts 13 11/18/2015 Radical Republicans respond Charles Sumner, Massachusetts Senator and Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens, Pennsylvania Congressman and Radical Republican Congressional Reconstruction (1867-77) • a.k.a. “Radical” or “Military” Reconstruction • Reconstruction Act of 1867 a response to Southern intransigence on black rights • All former Confederate states removed from Union (except Tennessee) • Former Confederacy placed under military rule • New conditions for re-entry of states into Union: – Voting for delegates in the conventions = universal manhood suffrage (no racial exclusion) – Service as delegates open to all on same basis – Stricter loyalty oath (“ironclad oath”) required – The constitutional conventions had to ratify the 14th Amendment Radical Reconstruction: The Military Reconstruction Act of 1867 The former Confederacy was divided into military districts during Congressional (or “Military”) Reconstruction 14 11/18/2015 Reconstruction: Outline I. The states of affairs, Spring 1865 II. Presidential reconstruction A. The Freedmen’s Bureau B. Black codes C. Race riots of 1866 III. Congressional reconstruction A. Reconstruction Acts B. Civil Rights Civil Rights Act (1866) “All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens, of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall have the same right, in every State and Territory in the United States, to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, to the contrary notwithstanding.” Civil Rights Act (1866) • Intended to ensure that federal and state citizenship were the same – Closes a loophole opened in the Dred Scott case of 1857 • Defined new “civil” rights (i.e., those social rights deemed sufficiently important for government to protect – part of the meaning of “freedom”) • Federal government becomes guarantor – Because states could not be relied upon to do so – A reversal of longstanding principles of federalism? • Johnson’s veto (overriden) 15 11/18/2015 In all our history, in all our experience as people living under Federal and State law, no such system as that contemplated by the details of this bill has ever before been proposed or adopted. They establish for the security of the colored race safeguards which go infinitely beyond any that the General Government has ever provided for the white race. In fact, the distinction of race and color is by the bill made to operate in favor of the colored and against the white race. They interfere with the municipal legislation of the States, with the relations existing exclusively between a State and its citizens, or between inhabitants of the same State—an absorption and assumption of power by the General Government which, if acquiesced in, must sap and destroy our federative system of limited powers and break down the barriers which preserve the rights of the States. It is another step, or rather stride, toward centralization and the concentration of all legislative powers in the National Government. The tendency of the bill must be to resuscitate the spirit of rebellion and to arrest the progress of those influences which are more closely drawing around the States the bonds of union and peace…. 14th Amendment • To ensure constitutionality of Civil Right Act of 1866 • Both guaranteed citizenship of former slaves • Closed the “dual citizenship” loophole Taney opened in Dred Scott (1857) • Republican response to the intransigence of the planter South (the black codes) • Proposed 1867; ratified 1868 • Centrality of dialogue and contention • Long-lasting effects; reinterpreted for business The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, 1868 Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Constitution, amend. XIV. 1. Closes “dual citizenship” loophole; state citizenship confers national citizenship. 2. Privileges and immunities clause 3. Due process clause 4. Equal protection clause 16 11/18/2015 The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, 1868 Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. Constitution, amend. XIV. To the extent that states deny enfranchisement, to that extent their population will be reduced for purposes of representation. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, 1868 Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. Constitution, amend. XIV. Disfranchisement of former Confederate officials. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, 1868 Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void. Constitution, amend. XIV. The federal government may not assume debts incurred on behalf of the Confederacy (including those to foreign countries), nor indemnify those who had slaves for the loss of their slaves. 17 11/18/2015 Reconstruction: Outline I. The states of affairs, Spring 1865 II. Presidential reconstruction A. The Freedmen’s Bureau B. Black codes C. Race riots of 1866 III. Congressional reconstruction A. Reconstruction Acts B. Civil Rights C. Black political participation Why black enfranchisement? • Conservative constitutional foundations • States’ rights federalism: highly proscribed role for federal government in local matters • Protection of black rights required federal intervention • Enfranchisement = blacks can use the vote to protect themselves • Distasteful federal intervention minimized Frederick Douglass on black enfranchisement (1866) While there remains such an idea as the right of each State to control its own local affairs, -- an idea, by the way, more deeply rooted in the minds of men of all sections of the country than perhaps any one other political idea, -- no general assertion of human rights can be of any practical value. To change the character of the government at this point is neither possible nor desirable. All that is necessary to be done is to make the government consistent with itself, and render the rights of the States compatible with the sacred rights of human nature. The arm of the Federal government is long, but it is far too short to protect the rights of individuals in the interior of distant States. They must have the power to protect themselves, or they will go unprotected, spite of all the laws the Federal government can put upon the national statute-book. . . . Source: Frederick Douglass, "Reconstruction,” Atlantic Monthly 18 (December 1866), 761765. 18 11/18/2015 The state constitutional conventions of 1867-68 were remarkable. In no other post-emancipation society did those formerly enslaved become full participants in the formal political process. Once in office, African Americans supported the Republican Party in launching a sweeping agenda that promised to revolutionize the South. Delegates to states constitutional conventions, 1867-1869 120 100 Southern whites 80 Outside whites 60 Blacks 40 Unclassified whites 20 Unclassified delegates 0 Delegates to all ‘67-’69 constitutional conventions 38 8 Southern whites 257 Outside whites 549 Blacks 159 Unclassified whites Unclassified delegates 6 8 10 35 8 17 45 Arkansas 72 14 South Carolina 68 Texas 19 11/18/2015 Number of Black Elected Federal and State Legislators Who Served Terms During the Reconstruction Period, by State: 1869 to 1901 Federal Representat Senators ives State State Total Representat Senators ives State total Total Alabama 0 3 3 6 69 75 78 Arkansas 0 0 0 2 12 14 14 Florida 0 1 1 10 38 48 49 Georgia 0 1 1 3 37 40 41 Louisiana 0 1 1 24 97 121 122 Mississippi 2 1 3 6 58 64 67 North Carolina 0 4 4 22 56 78 82 218 South Carolina 0 8 8 33 17 210 Tennessee 0 0 0 0 12 12 12 Texas 0 0 0 4 35 39 39 Virginia 0 1 1 14 78 92 93 Total 2 20 22 124 670 794 816 African Americans elected to state and federal legislatures, 1869-1901 VirginiaAlabama Arkansas Texas Florida Tennessee 10% 2% 11% Georgia 5% 6% 1% South 5% Louisiana Carolina 15% NorthMississippi 27% Carolina 8% 10% African-Americans in Congress during Reconstruction 20 11/18/2015 J.R. Rainey of South Carolina, an antebellum free African American Hiram Revels occupied the Mississippi Senate seat once held by Jefferson Jonathan Jasper Wright, 1st black state supreme court justice (South Carolina) Robert Smalls, former slave, war hero, Congressman from South Carolina “Hon. H.R. Revels,” Harper’s Weekly, February 19, 1870, p. 116. “Tim Works Wonders,” Harper’s Weekly, April 9, 1870, p. 232. “Time Works Wonders” IAGO (Jeff Davis): "For that I do suspect the lusty moor hath leap'd into my seat: the thought whereof doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw my inwards." -- Othello In a historical twist of fate, Senator Hiram Revels took the Senate seat formerly held by Jefferson Davis, who had served as president of the Confederate States of America. In this cartoon by Thomas Nast, Revels is welcomed to the Senate chamber by fellow-Republican senators (l-r), Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, Oliver Morton of Indiana, Carl Schurz of Missouri, and Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Nast often tapped the plays of Shakespeare, which were well known to nineteenth-century Americans, as sources of inspiration and symbolism. In this illustration, the artist portrays Davis as the evil Iago, who schemed against the innocent Othello, the Moor (African). 21 11/18/2015 The Radical state governments • Blacks hold office in most states • Free schools, social institutions, internal improvements • All southern states fall out of Republican hands by 1877 Reconstruction: Outline I. The states of affairs, Spring 1865 II. Presidential reconstruction A. The Freedmen’s Bureau B. Black codes C. Race riots of 1866 III. Congressional reconstruction A. Reconstruction Acts B. Civil Rights C. Black political participation IV. Conclusion Take-aways • The war settled questions of union and slavery, but did not (could not) alter class relations and class interests in the South • Desires for speedy reunification clashed with imperative of protecting rights of the freedpeople • Showdown over the use of federal power ensued between Johnson and Congress • This demanded the clarification of black rights, and the fed’s role in protecting them 22