Download James L. Roark Michael P. Johnson Patricia Cline Cohen Sarah

James L. Roark ● Michael P. Johnson
Patricia Cline Cohen ● Sarah Stage
Susan M. Hartmann
The American Promise
A History of the United States
Fifth Edition
CHAPTER 16
Reconstruction,
1863-1877
Copyright © 2012 by Bedford/St. Martin's
I. Wartime Reconstruction
A. “To Bind Up the Nation’s Wounds”
1. Lincoln’s second inaugural
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suggested that deep compassion for the enemy guided his thinking about peace.
2. Lincoln’s reconstruction plan
issued in December 1863, was designed primarily to shorten the war and end
slavery; his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction set the terms
included full pardons for rebels willing to renounce secession and accept the
abolition of slavery
when 10 percent of a state’s voting population took an oath of allegiance, the
state could organize a new government and be readmitted into the Union
did not require ex-rebels to extend social or political rights to ex-slaves; angered
abolitionists, who thought that the president was making a mockery of African
Americans’ freedom.
3. The Wade-Davis bill
Henry Winter Davis and Senator Benjamin Wade sponsored a bill that demanded
that at least half of the voters in a conquered rebel state take an oath of
allegiance to the United States before reconstruction could begin
bill prohibited ex-Confederates from participating in the drafting of new state
constitutions; also guaranteed the equality of freedmen before the law
Lincoln refused to sign the Wade-Davis bill into law and proceeded to nurture the
formation of loyal state governments under his own plan
still, he endorsed suffrage for southern blacks for the first time in April 1865, only
four days before his assassination; specified that he referred to “the very
intelligent, and…those who serve our cause as soldiers.”
I. Wartime Reconstruction
B. Land and Labor
1. From slavery to free labor
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the question of what to do with federally occupied land and how to organize labor on it
engaged former slaves, former slaveholders, Union military commanders, and federal
government officials long before the war ended.
2. A new federal labor code
the Mississippi Valley, occupying federal troops announced a new labor code; required
slaveholders to sign contracts with ex-slaves, agreeing to pay them wages and to provide
food, housing, and medical care; planters complained because the new system fell short of
slavery.
3. Land for black settlement
believed they had a moral right to land because they and their ancestors had worked on it
without compensation for more than two centuries
the federal government seemed to be moving toward granting blacks land; in January
1865, General William T. Sherman set aside part of the coastal land south of Charleston for
black settlement
by June, 40,000 blacks sat on 400,000 acres of Sherman Land; in March 1865, Congress
passed a bill establishing the Freedmen’s Bureau; distributed food and clothing to destitute
Southerners and eased the transition of blacks from slaves to free persons; by June, the
bureau had situated nearly 10,000 black families on land abandoned by planters.
C. The African American Quest for Autonomy
1. Whites’ response to emancipation
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argued that without the discipline of slavery, blacks would revert to their “natural”
condition: lazy, irresponsible, and wild.
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could move, work, and act as they pleased; most blacks did have to go back to work in
whites’ kitchens and fields
but freedmen continued to dream of land and economic independence; wanted to learn to
read and write; worked to restore families that had been broken by slavery; established
their own churches, with southern branches of black northern churches or black versions of
the major southern denominations.
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2. Black aspirations
II. Presidential Reconstruction
A. Johnson’s Program of Reconciliation
1. Johnson’s background and politics
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was the son of illiterate parents; a self-made man; the only senator from a Confederate state to remain loyal
to the Union; held the planter class responsible for secession; but despite his antiplanter sentiment, he was no
friend of the Republicans; Johnson had been a slaveowner and was a steadfast defender of slavery, only
begrudgingly accepting emancipation.
2. Johnson’s plan for reconstruction
plan was in many ways a continuation of Lincoln’s plan; he stressed reconciliation between the Union and the
defeated Confederacy, rapid restoration of civil government in the South, and the pardoning of most ex-rebels;
plan differed from Lincoln’s in response to restoring the governments of the rebel states; he only required the
states’ citizens to renounce the right of secession, to refuse to disown their Confederate war debts, and to
ratify the Thirteenth Amendment.
3. Returning land
led him to instruct military and government officials to return to pardoned ex-Confederates all confiscated and
abandoned land, even if it was in the hands of freedmen; this shocked reformers, who believed Johnson’s
hatred of planters would lead him to confiscate land and distribute it to freedmen.
B. White Southern Resistance and Black Codes
1. Southern defiance
2. Curbing black freedom
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South adopted a series of laws known as black codes; made a travesty of black freedom; sought to keep blacks
subordinate to whites by subjecting blacks to every sort of discrimination; could not vote, serve on juries, or
carry guns; black codes also limited blacks to farm work or domestic service.
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3. Johnson refuses to intervene
believed states should write their own constitutions; eager to restore white supremacy and to make friends
with southern democrats; personally pardoned 14,000 wealthy or high-ranking ex-Confederates; accepted the
new southern state governments even when they failed to satisfy his minimal demands for readmittance to the
Union.
4. Richmond in Washington
white Southerners chose former Confederates to represent them in Congress; one Georgian remarked, “It
looked as though Richmond had moved to Washington.”
II. Presidential Reconstruction
C. Expansion of Federal Authority and Black Rights
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1. Republican anger
Southerners miscalculated by assuming that the Republicans in Congress
would be so quick to accept everything that Johnson accepted; black
codes became a symbol of southern intentions to “restore all of slavery
but its name”; soured moderate Republicans who still remained distrustful
of the ex-Confederates.
2. Republican unity
Moderates represented the mainstream of the Republican Party; they did
not champion black equality, but wanted assurance that slavery and
treason were dead
when southern congressional representatives arrived in Washington, it
became clear that southern obstinacy had forged unity among Republican
factions
3. The Freedmen’s Bureau Bill and the Civil Rights Act of 1866
• Republicans declared that the president’s policy was wrongheaded and
drafted two bills strengthening the federal shield of protection for the
newly emancipated;
• Freedmen’s Bureau Bill prolonged the life of the agency
• Johnson vetoed the bill; Congress failed to override the veto by a narrow
margin; the Republicans’ second measure, the Civil Rights Act of 1866,
nullified the black codes by affirming blacks’ right to equality
• ended racial discrimination in state law; Johnson again vetoed the bill
• this time, Congress had enough votes to override the president’s veto
• Congress also submitted another bill to extend the life of the Freedmen’s
Bureau and successfully overrode the president’s veto.
III. Congressional Reconstruction
A. The Fourteenth Amendment and Escalating Violence
1. Defining citizenship
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June 1866, Congress passed the 14th Amendment to the Constitution
two years later, it gained the necessary ratification of three-fourths of the
states; most important provisions of this complex amendment made all nativeborn or naturalized persons American citizens and prohibited states from
abridging the “privileges or immunities” of citizens, depriving them of “life,
liberty, or property without due process of law,” and denying them “equal
protection of the laws.”
2. Voting rights
14 Amendment also dealt with voting rights; gave Congress the authority to
reduce the congressional representation of any state that withheld suffrage
from some of its adult male population; Republicans stood to benefit from the
Fourteenth Amendment, either by gaining black votes or by lessening
representation for southern Democrats who rejected black suffrage.
3. Women protest
4. The Fourteenth Amendment and the 1866 elections
Johnson advised southern states to reject the 14th Amendment and to rely on him
to trounce Republicans in the fall congressional elections; decided to make the
Fourteenth Amendment the overriding issue of the 1866 congressional elections
gathered the amendment’s white opponents into a new conservative party, the
National Union Party
Johnson’s strategy suffered a setback when whites in several southern cities went
on rampages against blacks; shocked Northerners and renewed skepticism about
Johnson’s claim that southern whites could be trusted; 1866 election resulted in an
overwhelming Republican victory; party retained its three-to-one congressional
majority over the Democrats.
III. Congressional Reconstruction
B. Radical Reconstruction and Military Rule
1. Radicals unite
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Unite—Johnson continued to urge the rejection of the Fourteenth
Amendment, and every southern state except Tennessee voted it
down; defiance by southern whites boosted the standing of the
radicals within the Republican Party, who began reconstruction all
over again.
2. The Military Reconstruction Act
March 1867, Congress overturned the Johnson-approved southern
state governments and initiated military rule of the South
• Military Reconstruction Act (and three subsequent acts) divided
the ten unreconstructed Confederate states into five military
districts and placed a Union general in charge of each district to
oversee political reform
• included the drawing up of new state constitutions guaranteeing
black suffrage; when the voters of each state had approved the
constitution and the state legislature had ratified the Fourteenth
Amendment, the state could submit its work to Congress.
3. The question of land -equal rights and the ballot; blacks would
have to get land themselves.
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4. The shift in power
dramatized the shift in power from the executive branch to the
legislative branch of government.
III. Congressional Reconstruction
C. Impeaching a President
1. Debating impeachment
2. The Tenure of Office Act
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August 1867, Johnson removed Edwin M. Stanton as Secretary of War without
the Senate’s approval, which violated the Tenure of Office Act; convinced every
Republican in the House to vote for a resolution impeaching the president
3. Johnson’s trial
impeachment forces in the Senate fell one vote short of the two-thirds needed
to convict; after the trial, Johnson called a truce
for the remaining ten months of his term, congressional reconstruction
proceeded unhindered by presidential interference.
D. The Fifteenth Amendment and Women’s Demands
1. Voting rights
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February 1869, Republicans passed the Fifteenth Amendment to the
Constitution; prohibited states from depriving any citizen of the right to vote
because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude
the Amendment did not absolutely guarantee the right to vote, it merely
prohibited exclusion on grounds of race
left disenfranchisement open by other means; white Southerners would in time
devise apparently nonracial measures, such as the literacy test and poll tax to
disfranchise blacks.
2. Women’s disappointment
the Fifteenth Amendment severed the early feminist movement from its
abolitionist roots.
IV. The Struggle in the South
A. Freedmen, Yankees, and Yeomen
1. Black Republicans
2. Carpetbaggers
• Northern whites who decided to make the South their home
after the war made up a second element of the Republican
Party
• conservative whites called them carpetbaggers, men so
poor that they could fit all their belongings in a carpet bag;
Northerners who moved South saw the region as a
promising place to make a living
• encouraged development along the lines of the free-labor
model.
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3. Scalawags
Southern whites made up the third element of the
Republican Party; about one out of four white
Southerners—typically yeoman farmers—voted Republican;
other whites called them scalawags, a term for runty horses
and rascals.
4. Party friction and white violence
• violence against blacks—the “white terror”—took brutal
institutional form in 1866 with the formation of the Ku Klux
Klan.
IV. The Struggle in the South
B. Republican Rule
1. Reconstruction conventions
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fall of 1867, southern states held elections for delegates to state constitutional
conventions
• three-fourths of the seats were won by Republicans; 15 percent were from the North; 25
percent were African Americans; and 60 percent were white Southerners.
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2. Rebuilding the South
to reduce aristocratic privilege, the constitutions adopted universal male suffrage,
abolished property taxes, and made more offices elective; to increase democratic
equality and expand the state’s responsibility for the general welfare, the constitutions
enacted prison reform, made the states responsible for the disabled and for orphans, and
exempted debtors’ homes from seizure
3. Fighting segregation
did not ban former Confederates from politics; Democrats were blind to the limits of the
Republican program and instead saw a revolution; called it “Negro Domination”; in
actuality, although four in five Republican voters were black men, more than four out of
five Republican officeholders were white.
4. The Republican record
Republican activity focused on three major areas—education, civil rights, and economic
development; each state inaugurated a system of public education, attacked racial
discrimination, and defended civil rights as well as launching ambitious programs of
economic development; but the southern Republican record was mixed; its biracial party
took up an ambitious agenda to change the South but was infected by corruption, which
ultimately limited its success.
C. White Landlords, Black Sharecroppers
1. Ex-slaves and ex-masters
• although forced to return to the planters’ fields, freedmen resisted efforts to
restore slavelike conditions
• wanted to rent land rather than work for wages.
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2. Sharecropping
planters rented small farms to freedmen, who paid with a share of that year’s
crop, usually half; gave blacks more freedom and released them from day-today supervision of whites.
3. Rising debt
introduced a new figure, the country merchant, into the agricultural equation;
landlords did not provide food and clothing; farmers had to go to merchants for
credit
under a crop lien, a merchant advanced goods to a sharecropper in exchange
for a legal claim on a future crop; between owing landlord and merchant,
farmers often ended up in debt and had to borrow more.
V. Reconstruction Collapses
A. Grant’s Troubled Presidency
1. “Waving the bloody shirt”
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1868, Republicans campaigned by “waving the bloody shirt”—
reminding voters that the Democrats were the party of rebellion;
Republican Ulysses S. Grant narrowly won the popular vote but
gained a substantial victory in the electoral college.
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2. Rife with scandal
3. The election of 1872
Anti-Grant Republicans grew disgusted with the corruption that
plagued the president’s administration
launched the Liberty Party, which supported the end of the spoils
system and the removal of the federal government from the South
but the nation still felt enormous affection for the man who had
saved the Union and, in 1872, Grant won reelection with 56
percent of the popular vote.
4. Failures abroad
Grant’s administration was not without accomplishments, but the
president’s great passion for foreign policy—the annexation of
Santo Domingo in the Caribbean—ended in failure; the South
preoccupied Congress and undermined Grant’s initiatives.
V. Reconstruction Collapses
B. Northern Resolve Withers
1. Leaving reconstruction behind
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Northerners wanted to invest in the South but blamed federal
intrusion for the region’s instability; Republican leaders also began
to question the wisdom of the party’s alliance with the South’s
lower classes—small famers and sharecroppers.
2. The persistence of Southern Republicans
won the passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 and the Civil
Rights Act of 1875.
3. Fading spokesmen
early 1870s, the Republican Party had lost its principal spokesmen
for African American rights either to death or to defeat at the
polls.
4. Racial prejudice
5. The Supreme Court undermines reconstruction
Court also undermined reconstruction; weakened the federal
government’s ability to protect black Southerners under the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments; never declared
reconstruction unconstitutional but did erode its legal foundation.
6. The elections of 1874
North found political expression in the election of 1874; for the
first time in eighteen years, the Democrats gained control of the
House of Representatives; by the early 1870s, southern
Republicans faced the forces of reaction largely on their own.
V. Reconstruction Collapses
C. White Supremacy Triumphs
1. Redeemers
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northern retreat from reconstruction permitted southern Democrats to
harness white rage to politics; called themselves Redeemers who
would replace “bayonet rule” with “home rule.”
2. Polarizing by color
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adopted a strategy to overthrow Republican state governments by
polarizing the parties around color and by gathering white voters into
the Democratic Party, leaving the Republicans to depend on blacks
to dislodge whites from the Republican Party, Democrats fanned the
flames of racial prejudice
also exploited the severe economic plight of small white farmers by
blaming their troubles on Republican financial policies; convinced poor
whites that they paid more taxes than blacks and that they paid these
taxes to aid blacks.
3. White terrorism
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targeted white Republicans as well as blacks for murder and
assassination.
4. Redemption
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1876, only three Republican state governments—in Florida, Louisiana,
and South Carolina—survived.
D. An Election and a Compromise
1. The election of 1876
• Democrats nominated New York’s reform governor, Samuel J. Tilden, who
immediately targeted the corruption of the Grant administration and the
“despotism” of Republican reconstruction
• the Republican Party nominated Rutherford B. Hayes, governor of Ohio, who
continued to wave the bloody shirt
• Tilden fell one vote short of securing a victory in the electoral college
• but the electoral votes of Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina remained in
doubt because both Republicans and Democrats in those states claimed victory;
Tilden needed one vote to win, while Hayes needed all nineteen of them.
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2. The election in Congress
special commission split down party lines, giving Hayes the election; some
outraged Democrats vowed to resist Hayes’s victory; rumors flew of an
impending coup and renewed civil war.
3. The Compromise of 1877
negotiations behind the scenes between Hayes’s lieutenants and some
moderate southern Democrats resulted in an informal understanding known as
the Compromise of 1877
in exchange for his election to the presidency, Hayes agreed to provide the
South with substantial federal subsidies and to withdraw federal troops from
the South
4. The end of reconstruction
the last three Republican state governments in the South fell quickly once
Hayes withdrew the U.S. Army; reconstruction came to an end.