Download Can blacks and whites live together? Who runs this country?

Unit XVI: Reconstruction
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Reconstruction Raised Three Questions
Can the United States be truly united?
Can blacks and whites live together?
Who runs this country?
What the War had done to the South
Physically
Legally and Constitutionally
Emotionally
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The first northern efforts to
reconstruct the South took place
during the Civil War itself. On Dec. 8,
1863, President Abraham Lincoln
issued his Proclamation of Amnesty
and Reconstruction.
Lincoln was prepared to recognize
Southern state governments
established by only one tenth the
number of voters in the 1860
presidential election.
These persons were simply
required to take an oath
supporting the United States
Constitution and the Union.
 In 1864 Congress passed the
Wade-Davis Bill, which required
50% of the population to take an
oath of loyalty and stronger
protection of emancipation.
Lincoln however pocket vetoed
the bill.
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Lincoln had no intention of
distributing the estates of the
masters among the freedmen. Under
Lincoln confiscated lands in some
parts of the South were for a time
distributed among the freedmen.
Subsequently, however, much of this
land was restored to its former
owners.
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The failure to provide lands to
the freedmen helped make them
the easy victims of economic
exploitation and political
intimidation during and after
Reconstruction.
Opposing views on Reconstruction
Throughout the summer of 1865 Johnson
had proceeded to carry out Lincoln's
reconstruction program, with minor
modifications. By presidential proclamation
he appointed a governor for each of the
seceded states and freely restored political
rights to large numbers of southern citizens
through use of the presidential pardoning
power.
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He 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.
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In due time conventions were held in each
of the former Confederate states to repeal
the ordinances of secession, repudiate the
war debt, and draft new state
constitutions. Eventually the people of
each state elected a governor and a state
legislature, and when the legislature of a
state ratified the Thirteenth Amendment,
the new state government was recognized
and the state was admitted back in the
Union again.
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By the end of 1865, this process,
with a few exceptions, was
completed. But the states that had
seceded were not yet fully restored
to their former positions within the
Union because the Congress had not
yet seated their U. S. Senators and
Representatives, who were now
coming to Washington to take their
places in the federal legislature.
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Both Lincoln and Johnson had
foreseen that the Congress
would have the right to deny
southern legislators seats in the
United States Senate or House of
Representatives, under the
clause of the Constitution that
says: "Each house shall be the
judge of the qualifications of its
own members."
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This denial came to pass when,
under the leadership of Thaddeus
Stevens of Pennsylvania, those
Congressmen who sought to punish
the south refused to seat its duly
elected Senators and
Representatives. Then, within the
next few months, the Congress
proceeded to work out a plan of
southern reconstruction quite
different from the one Lincoln had
started and Johnson had continued.
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Eventually President Johnson alienated
Congress, which led them to take over
Reconstruction.
He had done little to stop a campaign of terror
that extralegal organizations (KKK) had
launched against Southern freedmen and proUnion whites.
When Congress refused to seat the newly
elected Confederate leaders, Johnson
responded by vetoing Congressional
Reconstruction legislation and personally
attacking Republican leaders.
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Johnson vetoed a Civil Rights bill, as well
as a bill to extend the life of the
Freedmen's Bureau, which Congress
established just before the end of the Civil
War to aid and protect the freed slaves.
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He also condemned the
proposed 14th Amendment,
which all Southern states except
Tennessee refused to pass.
Johnson's veto of the Civil
Rights bill was overridden, and
the 14th Amendment--which,
like the Civil Rights bill,
conferred citizenship upon the
freedmen--was eventually
ratified.
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This was the first of several civil
rights bills passed near the end
of Reconstruction aimed at
countering the effects of Black
Codes enacted in the South. The
codes were Southern laws
forcing blacks to live in rural
areas; sign labor contracts, and
avoid confrontation with whites.
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Republicans, who wanted to
punish the South, were lead in
part by Charles Sumner. The
moderate Republicans agreed
with Lincoln’s viewpoint that
states should be re-admitted
swiftly but under Congressional
terms, but sided with the
Radicals against Johnson’s
leadership.
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Overall the Republicans wanted
to ensure that they controlled
Southern politics in large part
due to the fact that newly freed
slaves increased the number of
eligible southern voters therefore
increasing the number of
southern representatives (12) in
the House and the addition of
twelve electoral votes.
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The newly created Joint
Committee on Reconstruction
reported (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,
function.
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Under the First Reconstruction Act of
March 2, 1867--also passed over
Johnson's veto--military rule was to
be imposed on the South until new
state constitutional conventions were
called and new state constitutions
written. The South was divided into
five military districts in which the
commanding officer would determine
eligible voters.
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White Southerners who had
participated in the rebellion were
disenfranchised, while blacks,
Southern Unionists, and Northern
whites enjoyed the franchise and
assumed political leadership in the
Southern states.
Before a state could be readmitted to
the Union, more than half of its
white male voters had to take an
oath of loyalty to the Union.
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Also, black males had to be given
the right to vote, and the 14th
Amendment had to be ratified. To
get a clean start for reentry into the
Union, all state governments elected
during the time of Presidents Lincoln
and Johnson were no longer valid
and new elections were to be held.
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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, scalawags and
freedmen, they began to rebuild
the Southern economy and
society.
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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.
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The governments established
under Congressional
Reconstruction made notable
and lasting achievements. They
established free public schools
in which many thousands of
blacks and poor whites began to
learn to read and write. They
removed property qualifications
for voting and abolished
imprisonment for debt.
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Cruel and extreme forms of
punishment were declared illegal.
Crimes punishable by death were
drastically reduced in number. Large
sums of money were spent on
valuable public-works projects.
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When President Andrew Johnson
removed Secretary of War Edwin
Stanton from office on February 21,
the Radical Republican-dominated
House of Representatives accused
him of violating the 1867 Tenure of
Office Act, which prevented the
president from dismissing any
federal officeholder who had been
appointed with the consent of the
Senate.
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The Radical Republicans, who
disliked Johnson's plans for
reconstruction of the former
Confederate states, used the
president's violation of the law to
organize an impeachment vote
against him for "high crimes and
misdemeanors," which they won
by a 126 to 47 margin.
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On May 16 and May 26, the
Senate held votes on the
charges against the president.
Both times the vote was 35 for
conviction and 19 for acquittal-one vote short of the two-thirds
majority needed for conviction.
After their loss, the Radical
Republicans dropped the
proceedings against Johnson.
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Moderate Republicans refused to
impeach Johnson for fear of
destabilizing the government, no
vice president was chosen after
Lincoln’s death which meant
President Pro-Tempore of the Senate
Ben Wade would become President
and he was disliked by the business
community.
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By the mid-1870's Democrats had
begun winning elections in the south
as voting restrictions were relaxed
and white voters took control of local
elections. Democratic victory in the
South led to a massive scaling back
of Reconstruction's accomplishments
as southerners claimed that
reconstruction governments were
corrupt. Taxes were slashed; so too
was spending on education,
especially for black schools.
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Throughout the South, a campaign
ensued to put blacks in “their place,”
which culminated around the turn of
the century when one state after
another passed laws providing for
the rigid segregation of the races
and for the disfranchisement of
blacks through such devices as
literacy tests, poll taxes, and political
primaries that were open only to
whites.
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These devices prevented almost all
Southern blacks and some poor
whites from voting or choosing
candidates.
Demobilization at the end of the
war by the Union army took place
so quickly that there was only a
small occupation force in the south,
which disappeared in 1877
following a political compromise.
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In the 1876 election four
southern states had returned
controversial votes which would
decide the presidency. A special
commission was created to
determine the winner.
Republicans managed to gain the
essential votes for Rutherford B.
Hayes in return for Hayes’s
promise to end reconstruction.