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Reconstruction Debate
Charles Sumner’s Bio
Sumner was born in Boston in 1811, educated as a lawyer, and entered politics. After holding
several minor offices in Boston, he was elected to the United States Senate in 1851. He served in the
senate until his death, 24 years later.
In the senate he waged an uncompromising war on slavery. His first important speech attacked
slavery. This was followed in 1856 by another on “The Crime Against Kansas,” in which he reflected
severely upon Senator Butler of South Carolina. This speech led to an assault in the senate chamber
upon Sumner by Preston Brooks, a southern representative and relative of Butler. Sumner was so badly
injured that he was incapacitated for nearly four years. This attack led to the disease which ended his life.
In 1861 he became chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. For ten years of this
critical period, Sumner held this chairmanship. At the close of the Civil War, he secured the enactment
of a civil rights law to secure the equality of treatment of Negroes.
He could never forgive the south for the institution of slavery. He was almost fanatical in his
desire to punish the south after the war.
Sumner’s Speech
We have just ended a long Civil War. It was frightfully costly in both natural and human
resources. Literally hundreds of thousands of our brave men bled and died to preserve the Union and
abolish slavery. Now at the ending of this terrible ordeal are we calmly to let the same men representing
their same dastardly ideas reappear in our Congress and let them again gain control in their venom at us
here in the halls of Congress? Is the black man – only just recently released from slavery—to be given
back again to his oppressors? I say, “No!” We must never allow the old southern aristocracy to again
control the governmental machinery in the South or gain positions of authority in the United States
Congress. They made a fatal error by striking us first, and by god we are going to strike them so hard
they will never recover to achieve their sordid ends. Their ideas and ways of life should and will be gone
with the wind. We should not accept the rebel states back into the Union until they, like the Phoenix
shall have been reborn. When they left the Union, they lost their rights as states. They are but dead
corpses lying within the Union. They must have new state constitutions and new governmental officials
acceptable to us in the Congress. No rebellious scoundrel who served the Confederacy will, or should,
have a place in these new governments. They must, in these new state constitutions, guarantee to former
slaves political as well as social equality. Black men must have the right to vote and hold political office
or the war will have been fought in vain.
Until these conditions are met, we should keep military forces within the rebel territories. Only
when these rebellious areas have proven themselves worthy will we allow them to come again into our
sacred Union.
Jefferson Davis’s Bio
He was raised in Mississippi, the on of a planter. He became a soldier and graduated from west
point. He fought in the Mexican war, where he was wounded and decorated for bravery. He later served
as United States Senator and as a Cabinet member before the Civil War.
Davis opposed the idea of secession for the Union as a means of maintaining the principles of the
south. After secession, he was elected President of the Confederate States. He is responsible for the
raising of the formidable army and the Appointment of Robert E. Lee as commander. His seal, energy,
and faith in the cause of the south were a source of much of the tenacity with which the confederacy
fought.
On the 10th of May 1865, federal troops captured him in Irwinsville, Georgia. From 1865 to 1867,
he was imprisoned. In 1868 charges were dropped against him. He lived to be 81. He died in 1889, 24
years after the war ended. To the end he believed the cause of the South was just.
Davis’s Speech
I have come before you to plead the cause of the South. Our cities lie in ruins, our fields
everywhere lie untilled. The aged, the widowed and the orphaned beg to survive. Starvation and disease
are everywhere. The props that once held our society up are all broken. We have no currency, no law
save the primitive code that might makes right. No civil authority exists in out states. Much of the South
lies in ruin and desolation – ashes and cinders mark the grave of this once noble civilization.
Gangs of freed Negroes now ravage our cities. In many areas Negroes are planning large scale
uprising in which they will take vengeance in the whites and dispossess them of their property. These
blacks will not work, for they expect the federal government to provide food, clothing, and housing.
Many of them are armed and feel they have a right to take what they want.
Honorable Congressman, the vast majority of people in the South are sick of war. Their country
is so devastated, there is so much want and suffering among the people that they have no desire to resist
any longer. The South realizes, whatever may be said about the right of secession, the thing itself may
be laid aside, for it is certainly not practical and probably never will be. All parties in the South agree
that it is for the best interest of the nation that they perform all the duties of citizens of the United States.
They also agree to accept the free status of the Negro.
In exchange the South expects the return of their civil and political rights as promised by
President Lincoln and the restoration of the states to their original status under the Constitution.
To restore order in the South, I look to the disbanded regiments of the rebel army, not the
conquering army of the North. The rank and file of the disbanded Southern army is the backbone and
sinew of the South. They are the best and altogether most hopeful elements of the South, and the real
basis of reconstruction. Allow these men to reorganize ad they will bring order to the South.
Because of the Negro’s inferiority, it is necessary that they should not be left to themselves
without a guardian; in many sections the Negro should be discouraged from leaving his old master. A
very large majority of Southerners have genuine concern for the problems of the freedom. It is this
concern that will guide and elevate the Negro to a new level of freedom. The sentiment prevailing
among the planters 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. I think there is a willingness to give
them every right except the right to vote. At the present time they are unfit to exercise that privilege.
The solution to the problems of the Negro in the South is simply a matter of time. The South, if
left to its own devices, will certainly help the freedom to adjust to his new found way of life. My plea,
gentlemen, is a simply one; allow your defeated brothers to return to the Union. As sovereign states they
and their people will rebuild the South. Leave our people to themselves and they will manage well.
William Tecumseh Sherman’s Bio
After his father died, his eleven brothers and sisters were split up among friends and relatives.
Sherman was a tough, red headed kid named after Chief Tecumseh. He secured a West Point
appointment, and graduated 6th in his class. Then he married the daughter of his foster parents after a
long courtship. He served in Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia; later he served in the Mexican war
under Kearny.
Sherman hated to see war come. He loved the south and her people but he regarded the
preservation of the union with almost religious necessity. The war must be brought to a conclusion as
swiftly as possible and the south returned to the union. If this meant total war, let it be. Sherman was 80
years ahead of his time in military thinking. He took the war deep into enemy territory, outraced his own
supplies and communications; and lived off the enemy’s food.
He destroyed everything he could not use or carry with him. He saw the object of his attack as
not only the enemy army, but also the enemy civilian population that supplied that army. By fighting
thus, he destroyed not only the enemy food supplies and transportation but enemy civilian morale as
well. Sherman’s name is still hated in the south, even today.
“War means fighting and fighting means dying, and you cannot refine it,” he said, “War is all
hell.”
Sherman’s Speech
Gentleman, you asked me here to give you my report oh the South today. First let me relate to
you my actual knowledge of a land ravaged and despoiled by war. A trail of destruction has been left.
Railroads have been destroyed; tracks are torn and twisted; bridges, burned or dynamited; streams and
rivers blocked and made useless; wharves and warehouses burned; cities put to the torch - Jackson,
Atlanta, Columbia, Richmond, and Savannah, to mention a few.
Gentleman, what the Union armies missed, the retreating Confederate armies took or burned;
then the confederate guerillas took care of anything overlooked.
Returning Confederate veterans now find impoverished and exhausted communities with no
employment to offer – these become aimless young men in tattered grey uniforms.
The war has turned time back for the South. It is once more a primitive society, a frontier region;
and the violence that was characteristic of the earlier frontiers has become a familiar pattern today.
But treason is not dead in the South, gentleman. The Southern press still seeks to arouse
disaffection. Some Southern governments will not fly the national flag. The voters have elected men to
Congress who were leaders of the defeated Confederacy; the former Vice President of the Confederacy,
five Confederate generals and six members of the secessionist government will now serve in
Washington, D.C.
The Southern states have no intention of accepting the black freedom as a member of Southern
society. Blacks in large numbers wander aimlessly from place to place looking for the riches of freedom.
All the states of the deep south have passed “Black Codes” to thwart emancipation by restricting voting,
movement, and occupation. The Negro has exchanged slavery for serfdom.
Law and order have been broken down in the South. Local government is weak and frustrated.
Local vigilante groups usurp the power of government. Groups of ex-Confederates form secret
organizations to terrorize freedmen and whites alike. Fear walks the roads and anarchy fills the seats of
government.
What I propose to you gentleman is that the only existing and possible government bet set up and
given full authority in the South. Sirs, I mean the Union Armies down there. Divide the South into
sections, each under a Union general. He will be able to keep law and order and augment government
through his military command. Martial law – gentleman – that is the only answer, martial law.
Fredrick Douglass’s Bio
He was born in Tuckahoe, Maryland in 1817. He was the son of the negro slave Harriet Bailey
and a white man; and he was largely self-educated. Cruel treatment instilled in him a hatred of slavery;
he failed in an attempt to escape in 1836, but two years later he succeeded and reached New Bedford,
Mass., where he assumed the name Douglass. As “a recent graduate from the institution of slavery with
his diploma on his back,” he was engaged as an agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.
In 1845, Douglass, at the urging of his friends, went to England to escape the danger of seizure
under the fugitive slave laws. After returning to the United States in 1847, he became the “stationmaster
and conductor” on the Underground Railroad in Rochester, N.Y., where he also published an
Abolitionist newspaper. During these years he became friendly with John Brown. After the raid by John
Brown on Harpers Ferry, fearing reprisals by the government, Douglass fled to Europe, where he stayed
for six months. Following the outbreak of the Civil War, he helped raise a regiment of Negro soldiers.
After the war, Douglass was a recognized leader of, and spokesman for, the former Negro slaves. He
fought for the enactment of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. He became U.S. Marshal for the
District of Columbia and later U.S. Minister to Haiti.
Douglass’s Speech
Fellow citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called to speak here today? What have I,
or those I represent, to do of national justice, embodied in the Declaration of Independence, truly
extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and
to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your fight victory in
abolishing slavery?
If such be your purpose in inviting me here, you are to be sorely disappointed. Such is not the
case. The victory, in which you this day rejoice, is not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of
justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers to you is shared by you, not by
me.
I perceive that you are unaware of the conditions of which I speak. Permit me to enlighten you.
True, you have graciously given us the right to own property, to marry within our own race, and secure
the protection of existing laws. But are you aware that one of the rights held most sacred to all, the right
to have a part in picking the nation’s leaders, the right to vote, is still denied? And we have not yet the
right and privilege to serve o a jury?
Friends, this is but a small part of the injustices now inflicted upon my “free” people. Many parts
of the south have begun to adopt certain “black codes”, which often have an effect worse than slavery
ever did. Under these codes it is law that a Negro must make a long-term engagement with an employer,
thus denying him the right of self-betterment. Many Negroes unable to find employment due to
prejudices upon the part of the employer have been arrested as vagrants, and their labor of sold to the
highest bidder.
Surely you must realize that this is slavery, the very thing you have fought to destroy, hidden
under a different name- peonage! And consequently, your proclamation has succeeded only in changing
the name of slavery, not the inhumanity, the cruelty, the vileness of slavery itself.
You may wonder what you can do about the vile situation of my people. These laws will not be
changed unless you change them. New laws will not be enforced unless your army stays in the South
and enforces them. Justice and freedom do not rain like manna from heaven on outstretched hands.
You claim to have set us free, but have you?
Give my people land, provide for their education, guarantee their freedom under just laws - give
them equal opportunity. When you have done these things, you will have truly set them free.
Andrew Johnson’s Bio
Andrew Johnson, the seventeenth President of the United States, was born to a poverty-stricken
immigrant family in Tennessee. He had no early formal education and grew to manhood illiterate. He
was apprenticed to a tailor when he was ten years of age, and eventually acquired his own tailor shop.
He married young. She was a remarkably fine girl, congressmen who opposed the KansasNebraska Bill, and this made him unpopular with the Southern slave interests. When the border states
left the Union after Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the secession move, Johnson, now a
senator, refused to secede, but stayed in the Union and continued representing a state that had left the
Union. When Tennessee was secured by the Union armies Lincoln appointed Johnson military governor.
The election of 1864 came and the Republican Party wanted to present a picture of national unity
even though the Civil War still raged. They dropped the name Republican and called the party the
Nation Union Party. They wanted a loyal southern Democrat to run as Lincoln’s Vice President.
Johnson was a logical almost necessary choice. So the man who was in the right place at the right time,
due to an unusual set of circumstances, became President with Lincoln’s assassination.
The awesome responsibility of the President’s role in reconstruction fell to Johnson. He
attempted to follow Lincoln’s plans. He was in constant conflict with the “radicals” in Congress who
wanted a harsher southern policy. This conflict led congress to impeach him. He was acquitted by one
vote, but his power was diminished.
Andrew Johnson’s Speech
Gentlemen of the committee, I come before you in what you and I both realize to be a very
unusual Presidential appearance.
You have heard or will soon hear other plans and opinions on how the South should be dealt with.
I ask your support for the policy of our late President, Abraham Lincoln. He promised the “olive branch
of forgiveness” to those recently seceded states. “We will show malice toward none and charity for all in
order to achieve a lasting and just peace,” he said.
We fought a terrible war to save the Union; let us not say that the Union does not exist. This is
what some here are saying in asking policies that would put some states outside the Union; to declare
and impose martial law, to control the elections of a state legislature and its members to congress, to
dismiss state officers and arbitrarily appoint the others without regard to the state law, to regulate their
domestic affairs according to the mere will of strange and irresponsible agents sent among them for that
purpose—these powers granted top the Federal government by the Constitution. By assuming these
powers not given, we blatantly violate the Constitution.
Again, gentlemen of the committee, let us not destroy the country we fought to save; rather, let
us put into workable policy the generosity of our late and beloved President and readmit these rebel
states after ten per cent of their voters have signed loyalty oaths. True, I would favor stripping the power
from the Southern aristocracy for this small group of wealthy planters have been the architects of this
tragic conflict. I would willingly work with this committee to draft this policy. The wounds of war may
be healed by the balm of human kindness, but will only be aggravated by the salt of human viciousness.
We must not allow the Federal government to violate rights granted to the several states by the
Constitution. Should such things come to pass, those dead would have truly died in vain.
Please answer these questions as your character would. If your person’s bio/speech doesn’t mention his
position on the question, make an educated guess (given what you know about the person, what would
he be likely to believe?).
1. Under what circumstances will the former Confederate states be readmitted to the Union (what will
each state have to do)?
2. How will former Confederate leaders be treated (execution, imprisonment, prohibition from holding
office, prohibition from voting, no punishment, etc.)?
3. What, if anything shall be done for the Freedmen?
4. What, if anything, shall the federal government do to rebuild the economy of the South?