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Reconstruction
When it became evident that the North was going to win the Civil War president
Lincoln made it clear that he wanted to offer the rebellious southern states leniency in the
requirements for their reentry into the union. Lincoln’s Proclamation of Amnesty and
Reconstruction (Dec. 1863): would allow Confederate States to establish new state
governments, send representatives and senators to Congress when 10% of those who
voted in 1860 swore their allegiance to the Union, and would pardon all Confederates
except high ranking officials and those accused of crimes against prisoners of war, after
they swore their allegiance.
Congress which was controlled by Republicans wanted to punish the Southern
states for the war. The Radical Republicans led by Thaddeus Stevens in the House of
Representatives and Charles Sumner in the Senate led the opposition to Lincoln and his
plans for a lenient reconstruction. The Radical and Moderate Republicans in Congress
banded together to pass the Wade-Davis Bill which said that 50% of the 1860 voters in
the southern states needed to make the allegiance pledge before the state would be
considered for re-admittance, and that Congress had the supreme authority on setting
terms of reconstruction. Lincoln vetoed the bill.
After Lincoln’s death, Andrew Johnson became president and offered to Congress
a similar reconstruction plan to Lincoln’s. Congress was outraged with this proposal and
refused to admit the new legislators of the southern states. The Radical Republicans were
able to take control of the Congress in the mid term elections of 1866 and passed the
Reconstruction Act which expanded Congresses activities in the south.
Ultimately the Radical Republicans would try to impeach President Johnson in
their attempts to force their wills on the South. The impeachment would fail by one vote,
but Johnson would be ineffective in his attempts to temper the vindictive activities of the
Radical Republicans. The Congress did pass the Freedman’s Bureau and the Civil Rights
Act of 1866 over Johnson’s vetoes. The Freedman’s Bureau assisted the freed slaves
with educational opportunities and assisted them in their civil rights. The Civil Rights
Act gave the African-Americans citizenship, forbid states from passing discriminatory
laws and Black Codes; it did not grant the freed slaves the right to vote.
Under the Reconstruction Act of 1867 Congress dictated how the southern states
would be treated as well as handling the explosive racial issue that existed with the new
African American citizens. The old Confederacy was divided into five (5) military
Districts with Union soldiers present as an occupying army. The military was there to
insure the radical new laws enacted by Congress were enforced, i.e. Public schools for all
children, social services for all citizens, and citizenship for freed former slaves. The
Southern white citizenry overwhelmingly disliked the presence of the Union troops in
their states.
The Civil War destroyed the social and political institutions of the white planter’s
political control of all facets of local, state and federal governments. The destruction of
the plantation system also drastically changed the social and economic systems in the
South. The South was in economic ruin and individuals with cash or goods could
potentially make huge profits off of others misfortunes. Southern would allied
themselves with the Radical Republicans reconstruction policies were called Scalawags
by their fellow southerners. Most often these were white yeoman farmers who wanted to
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replace the “planters” as the political leaders in their communities. Scalawags were
desperately despised by the other white Southerners. Carpetbaggers was the term given
to Northern white speculators who came south for investment purposes. Carpetbaggers
oftentimes manipulated the votes of the newly freed African-Americans to secure their
own economic and political advancements, at the expense of the white “rebel”
community and the ignorant black community.
The African-Americans on the whole did not leave the south for two major
reasons: first, not having the economic resources to do so, and second not being
welcomed in the areas of the Union where the institution of slavery had not existed prior
to the Civil War. In the South those who owned land needed the African-Americans as a
source of labor but the African-Americans now needed to be compensated for their labor.
The sharecropping system evolved where an African-American family would be given a
plot of land and seed to farm in return for the majority of their harvest at the end of the
year. The sharecropper would purchase from the merchants/landowner his needed
supplies on credit for the next year, again placing him in debt and the cycle would
continually repeat with the sharecropper never being able to improve his economic
situation.
Poor white farmers were economically one step higher than the mostly AfricanAmerican sharecropper in that they were tenant farmers, where they leased the land they
used from a landlord and paid the landlord each year a predetermined rate of his crop.
The war ruined the infrastructure necessary for agricultural or any means of
substantial economic production. The lack of taxable capital in the south compounded
the South’s inability to rebuild the infrastructure needed to assist the economic recovery
in the South, oftentimes leading to fierce competition and open hostility for any available
resources.
Almost universally throughout the south European-Americans resented the new
laws which allowed freedoms to the African-Americans. The Union army’s presence
was the only thing that protected the African-Americans from vigilante groups such as
the Ku Klux Klan. Various forms of intimidation were used against former slaves and
their carpetbagger and scalawag supporters, but by far most of the hostilities were
directed against former slaves.
Black Codes were written and unwritten laws enacted to keep the AfricanAmericans in a lower class. If African-Americans tried to vote or press for legal
protection under the law, the white community would economically stigmatize them. No
one would hire them or buy their crops. Segregation between the races was stringently
enforced.
The Reconstruction did pass the 14th and 15th amendments that made AfricanAmericans citizens, and gave them the right to vote, and for awhile African-Americans
were active participants in all Southern state legislatures and even the Federal Congress.
Enough time has passed since the Civil War and reconstruction to allow historians
to interpret the events of the period from both sides, as a failure and as a success. The
American Civil War and Reconstruction is the studied era of American history to date.
There are numerous and varied interpretation of the facts with equally diverse
conclusions that have been written over the years with social and political biases of the
times of the investigation lending different interpretations.
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Reconstruction ended with the elections of 1876. Republican scandals during the
Grant administration and an economic depression in 1873 helped to bring an end to
Republican support for the continued economic and political support of the South and
African-Americans there. The Democrats ran Samuel Tilden from New York who
apparently won the election, but the Southern states withheld their results saying the vote
was too close. The Republican candidate Rutherford Hayes ultimately was given the
presidency after back-room negotiations between Democratic and Republican leaders.
The Democrats agreed to deliver enough Southern electoral votes that would give the
Republican candidate Hayes the presidency. In return the Republicans agreed that all
Federal occupation troops would be removed from the South and that white Southern
Democrats would be able to resume control of their own states.
The Civil War ended slavery in the United States but it did not address racial
problems anywhere in the country. In the North, South, East and the West the
overwhelming majority of the European-Americans felt that the African-American and
the Native-Americans were not racial equals, and should not in anyway be treated equal,
be it socially, politically or economically.
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