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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were withdrawn from the South.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 thanksgivings, 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]
Chronology
1865
1866
1867
1868
1869
Freedmen’s Bureau established
Abraham Lincoln assassinated
Andrew Johnson begins Presidential Reconstruction
Black codes enacted in South, 13th Amendment
Civil Rights Act passed
Congress approves 14th Amendment [equal
protection, due process,citizenship] KKK founded
Reconstruction Acts passed over President Johnson
Veto, begin of Congressional Reconstruction
Tenure of Office Act
Southern states call constitutional conventions
President Johnson impeached, acquitted
Fourteenth Amendment ratified
Most southern states readmitted to Union
Ulysses S. Grant elected president
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
1871
1872
1873
1874
1876
1877
Fifteenth Amendment ratified
Ku Klux Klan Act passed
NYC’s “Tweed Ring” exposed
Liberal Republicans break with Grant and Radicals,
nominate Horace Greeley for president
Credit Mobilier scandal
Grant reelected president
Financial panic and beginning of economic depression
Slaughterhouse cases
Democrats gain control of House for first time since 1856
Civil Rights Act
Disputed election between Samuel Tilden and
Rutherford B. Hayes
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?
Study Questions
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.
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 17921868 – 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 northernstyle 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 18321904 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.