US History - Reconstruction - Success or Failure
EQ: Was Reconstruction a Success or Failure?
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Reconstruction Summary
Reconstruction, the period immediately following the Civil War during which the United States sought to rebuild the South physically, politically, socially, and economically. Reconstruction, also called the "Second American Revolution," is an often misunderstood era of U.S. history. For decades, historians presented Reconstruction as a time when the South was a region besieged by a punitive North. According to this view, President Abraham Lincoln initially offered reasonable terms to the rebellious southern states to speed reunion; but Radical Republicans, the liberal wing of the Republican Party, instituted a period of " Negro rule" in which blacks, incompetent to govern, mismanaged the South. In this interpretation, conscientious whites " redeemed" the South by using secret patriotic organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan to depose black rule. Only during the " Second Reconstruction," the Civil Rights Movement, did most historians begin to reevaluate conclusions about Reconstruction. Concurring with W. E. B. Du Bois, most scholars now agree that Reconstruction was a period of progressive politics in which newly emancipated blacks, with the help of the federal government and sympathetic whites in the South, helped build a more democratic society.
The Federal Government During Reconstruction
Most historians consider Reconstruction to encompass the years between 1865 and 1877. But the course Reconstruction would take, and the questions associated with it, were the subjects of national debate even before the end of the Civil War. Who should be punished for inciting secession and the war? How would the southern states be readmitted to the Union? What penalties would apply? What was the federal government's responsibility to the freed slaves? Should the government extend rights to former slaves, and, if so, which rights? How would the southern economy replace slave labor with free labor? Finally, and perhaps most important to the federal government, who was responsible for implementing Reconstruction policy — the president or Congress? Although Lincoln had been granted far-reaching powers during the war, Congress could not allow the president such latitude in peacetime.
By issuing the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, Lincoln committed the United States to abolishing slavery. Because slavery had been part of the American social fabric from the nation's beginning, its abolition would fundamentally alter the nation. Combined with this drastic social and political change was the need to rebuild the war-torn South. Many southern cities lay in ruins. In addition, the loss of farmland and animals, as well as human labor — not only black slaves but whites killed or disabled in the war — jeopardized its agrarian economy.
Presidential Reconstruction
In December 1863 Lincoln introduced the first Reconstruction scheme, the Ten Percent Plan, thus beginning the period known as Presidential Reconstruction. The plan decreed that when 10 percent of the state's prewar voters had taken an oath of loyalty to the U.S. Constitution, its citizens could elect a new state government and apply for readmission to the Union. In addition, Lincoln promised to pardon all but a few high-ranking Confederates if they would take this oath and accept the fact of abolition. The plan also required that states amend their constitutions to abolish slavery. Conspicuous in this plan was the stipulation that only whites could vote or hold office. Despite the objections of northern abolitionists, Lincoln began to implement the plan in Louisiana, which the Union army had occupied since 1862. In a private meeting at the White House, a group of highly accomplished free blacks from New Orleans objected to their unequal status. Spurred by this protest, Lincoln unsuccessfully urged Louisiana's governor to allow the state's qualified free blacks to vote.
Congress, believing that Lincoln's Reconstruction plan was too permissive, took a series of steps to counteract it. Congress passed the Wade-Davis Bill in late 1864, which contained more stringent readmission policies. It required that 50 percent of a state's voters declare loyalty to the Constitution before the state could create a new government, and also that these new governments recognize freedpeople as equal before the law. In addition, in January 1865 Congress approved the Thirteenth Amendment, which constitutionally ended slavery. It was ratified in December of that year, and in March 1865, Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, or Freedmens Bureau, a relief agency for needy refugees. Although the agency represented both black and white refugees, it was primarily intended to aid blacks in the transition from slavery to freedom.
Lincoln indirectly vetoed Wade-Davis by leaving it unsigned until Congress adjourned in late March 1865. He considered the Ten Percent Plan experimental, however, and in his final speech indicated that at least some blacks should vote. Because of this, many historians believe he might have adapted his Ten Percent plan had he not been assassinated. It was obvious, however, that Lincoln and Congress disagreed on the basic nature of Reconstruction policy. When the war ended and Reconstruction began in earnest, the federal government had no solid plan for its direction. Congress had adjourned by the end of the war and did not reconvene until December. With Lincoln's assassination in early April 1865, Vice President Andrew Johnson became president, controlling Reconstruction policy at its crucial beginning. Johnson, a poor white from Tennessee, harbored disdain for both the southern planter aristocracy and blacks. In May 1865 he began issuing proclamations that were even more lenient than Lincoln's. Johnson pardoned all southern whites except for Confederate leaders and persons whose wealth exceeded $20,000. They would have to apply personally for Johnson's pardon. Johnson appointed provisional governors and required that to rejoin the union, the states need only abolish slavery and repudiate both secession and the Confederate war debt. After the rebellious states met these requirements, they were considered " reconstructed." In addition, Johnson ordered that abandoned plantations be returned to their former owners. Though representatives from the Freedmen's Bureau initially refused to follow Johnson's directive, he ultimately sent federal troops to force the return of these lands.
Southern states, encouraged by Johnson's leniency, began to return the old elites to power. In addition, southern state governments issued Black Codes, laws that aimed to limit black mobility and economic options, and virtually to reinstate the plantation system. Under the Black Codes, interracial marriages were banned and blacks could be forced to sign yearly contracts. They could also be declared vagrants for not having a certain (typically unreasonable) amount of money on their person and be sentenced to labor on a white-owned plantation. In addition, these laws limited the types of occupations and property blacks could hold. Other laws sought forcibly to apprentice black children. As a result, freedpeople existed somewhere between freedom and slavery. Congress had observed these events during their adjournment and, upon returning to Washington, D.C., in December 1865, sought to alter Johnson's policies. When the newly elected southern representatives arrived, and northern congressmen discovered that many of them were former Confederate cabinet members, congressmen, and generals who had won congressional seats in the state governments restored under Johnson, Congress refused to seat them. Many congressional Republicans, especially Radical Republicans such as Thaddeus Stevens in the House and Charles Sumner in the Senate, believed that the Johnson state governments should be dissolved and Reconstruction begun again, this time based on equality under law and universal male suffrage. Moderate members of the party, however, attempted to work with Johnson and convince him to modify his policies.
In early 1866, Congress sought to advance Reconstruction by passage of the Freedmen's Bureau Act and the Civil Rights Act. The Freedmen's Bureau Act extended the agency's life for another year. The Civil Rights Act defined people born in the United States as national citizens and stated explicitly what rights they were entitled to regardless of race. Johnson vetoed both bills, insisting that they violated states' rights. Congress quickly overrode Johnson's vetoes. Shortly thereafter, Congress approved the Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1868. Designed to protect the rights of freedpeople and to restrict the political power of former Confederates, the Fourteenth Amendment defined U.S. citizenship much like the Civil Rights Bill and prohibited states from abridging the "privileges or immunities" of citizens without due process. Rather than prohibit states from restricting suffrage, it encouraged southern states to allow black suffrage by reducing representation in states that disfranchised any male citizens. Johnson's Reconstruction program became the decisive issue in the 1866 congressional elections. Although Johnson had toured the north to win support for candidates sympathetic to his program, his efforts were mostly unsuccessful. His rhetoric was more influential in the South: all of the former confederate states, except Tennessee, rejected the Fourteenth Amendment, which Johnson had publicly disavowed. By 1867 moderate and radical Republicans in Congress, tired of Johnson's obstruction to their more ambitious Reconstruction plan, began to take advantage of the president's waning power to forge an era of Congressional Reconstruction.
Congressional Reconstruction
After a series of compromises, Congress decided upon a Reconstruction plan that was far more broad-ranging than Johnson's. In March 1867 Congress began by passing the Reconstruction Acts, which divided the ten unreconstructed states (except Tennessee, which had already ratified the Fourteenth Amendment) into five military districts, each headed by a commander whose responsibilities included overseeing the writing of new constitutions that provided for enfranchisement of all adult males. Only after ratifying the new state constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment would a state be considered reconstructed and readmitted to the Union. In addition, Congress passed several laws to restrict Johnson's power to undermine congressional policy. In response, Johnson removed military officers who were enforcing the Reconstruction Act, and fired his secretary of war. Shortly thereafter, Congress began impeachment proceedings against Johnson, ultimately coming within one vote of conviction. In 1869 Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment, which broadened the Fourteenth Amendment's protection of black voting rights, stating that no citizen could be denied the vote on the basis of race, color, or "previous condition of servitude." It was ratified in 1870. In addition, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which barred discrimination by hotels, theaters, and railroads. The act, however, was rarely enforced.
The Supreme Court and Reconstruction
The Supreme Court, which had been largely silent during the war years, became active during Reconstruction, helping the retreat from Reconstruction by overturning many Congressional measures. In Bradwell v. Illinois (1873), the Court ruled against a female attorney who claimed that in prohibiting her from practicing law because of her gender, Illinois had violated the "privileges and immunities" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The following day, the Court further narrowed the Fourteenth Amendment's scope in the Slaughterhouse cases (1873), in which the Court rejected the argument that the Fourteenth Amendment had transformed citizenship by making it the federal government's responsibility. In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), it ruled that the duty to protect citizens' rights rested with states. In United States v. Reese (1876), the Court ruled that the Fifteenth Amendment did not guarantee citizens the right to vote, but listed the grounds impermissible for denying the vote. Southern states now had a clear path toward the disfranchisement of black voters.
Freedpeople During Reconstruction
For former slaves, their first decision was often whether to stay on the plantation or to move. In general, the choice depended on the disposition of the former master: if a master had been mean or violent, few of his former slaves were likely to remain; if the master had been fair, however, former slaves did often stay. Southern whites exaggerated the number of blacks who refused to work after emancipation as a supporting argument for black inferiority, but these numbers were in fact low. Many freedwomen, however, refused to work in the fields any longer after emancipation, choosing instead to remain at home with their children.
To some freedpeople, emancipation meant the freedom to move about, either because it had been prohibited or because they wished to search for family members who had been sold away during slavery. The Reconstruction era produced many touching stories of ex-slaves who traveled thousands of miles, with very little evidence, to reunite with family members. Others, sadly, found no success in their searches.
Blacks, denied literacy during slavery, also sought education, often paying for it themselves. By 1877 more than 600,000 African Americans had enrolled in elementary schools throughout the South. The Freedmen's Bureau founded more than 4000 schools, including Howard University, and many benevolent organizations, black and white, offered education. The American Missionary Association founded seven colleges, including Fisk and Atlanta Universities.
Freedpeople established other black institutions, especially churches, that profoundly affected African American history. As slaves, blacks had been forced to worship in their masters' churches. After emancipation, freedpeople founded their own churches or moved to black denominations, which served as social and political centers in the black community. Ministers often became community leaders, a practice that continues to this day.
Freedpeople also knew that land meant independence, and that they were entitled to some of the lands of their former owners. Early in the war, as the U.S. Navy approached South Carolina, Confederates abandoned their lands on the sea islands. Freedpeople immediately lobbied for ownership of the land, insisting that the land was rightfully theirs after generations of forced servitude. Instead, the U.S. government implemented the Port Royal Experiment, in which freedpeople labored in the abandoned sea island lands as wage workers. Eventually, General William T. Sherman issued Special Order No. 15, which gave the land to the freedpeople. President Johnson, however, rescinded the order and the land reverted to its original owners. One of Reconstruction's great failings is that the U.S. government did not effectively redistribute land after the Civil War. Most freedpeople were unable to buy land, and instead rented it for farming. Freedmen's Bureau agents, many of whom wanted to change the southern economy by introducing northern concepts such as wage labor, needed to retain enough of the old system to ensure stability. To do this efficiently, Freedmen's Bureau agents developed work contracts, which, in the cash-poor South, would promise the slave a certain wage in exchange for crops. Although intended to mediate disputes, Bureau agents often sided with the former master. The Freedmen's Bureau grew less active after 1866, leaving tenants and planters to find their own way. Thus, contracts between the former slave and masters were not enforced and slaves often depended on the goodwill of their former owners.
Freedpeople also took advantage of the franchise, voting almost unanimously for Republican candidates in the 1866 Congressional elections. Freedpeople also joined governments. Largely because of large black turnout and because Congress banned many former Confederates from politics, the Republican Party won control of many southern constitutional conventions. Of the 1000 Republican delegates to constitutional conventions throughout the South, 265 were black.
Participation in government among blacks was greatest in state and local governments, where many attained high rank. Francis Cardozo was a member of South Carolina's constitutional convention and later served as state secretary of the treasury and as South Carolina's secretary of state. In Louisiana P. B. S. Pinchback became the first black governor in U.S. history. He also served as lieutenant governor and he was elected to both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. Blanche K. Bruce was a U.S. senator from Mississippi, as was Hiram Revels. In all, 16 blacks served in the U.S. Congress during Reconstruction.
Although whites who sought to disfranchise blacks justified their actions by claiming that they had been subjected to incompetent "Negro rule," blacks were the majority in only two state conventions, and only in South Carolina's lower house were black representatives a majority. In many ways, the biracial coalitions of which most Republican governments were composed made progressive changes, such as creating state-funded public schools and a fairer tax system, outlawing discrimination in public transportation, and ending the death penalty.
Opposition to Reconstruction
As Reconstruction was implemented, a struggle began in the South over the new social order. On one side were the freedpeople and their allies, who wanted to participate in free society. On the other side were white elites and their followers, who wanted to restore the old order. Many whites — even those who had not owned slaves before the Civil War — found it difficult to imagine a society in which blacks had the same rights as they.
Reconstruction inspired deep resentment among southern whites. Former Confederates were bitter about losing the war and facing their new prospects. They believed that white Republicans were race traitors and objected to the high taxes that Republicans imposed to pay for Reconstruction. Many believed that Reconstruction politics and the politicians who practiced them were corrupt. Though southerners did not have a defined course, to restore white rule meant white unity. In states with white majorities, convincing white Democrats to vote Democratic was enough to eliminate Republican rule, and by 1871 Democrats had taken back Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia. In other states, however, where Republican rule depended on interracial coalitions, white Democrats were determined to convince some people not to vote, often through the violence and intimidation of such terrorist organizations as the Ku Klux Klan, which was founded in 1869. Often led by the most prominent whites in a community, Klan members concealed themselves in white robes and hoods, and often acted at night, beating, lynching, burning, or merely threatening.
Problems existed between the elite planters, who were almost unanimously Democrats, and the Republicans, who were from three main groups: freedpeople, carpetbaggers (as Northern republicans were called, supposedly because they had come South with all their possessions in carpetbags), and scalawags, those white southerners who supported Reconstruction. Wherever possible, white southerners reasserted themselves and their control; forcing blacks to stop voting was their primary tool to regain control of the South. In addition, whites still exercised a great deal of economic control over blacks, who usually had to work for whites. During this period, many blacks were told explicitly, "If you vote, don't come back to work."
Another method of increasing the dependence of blacks on whites was through sharecropping, in which a farmer provided a tenant land and materials in exchange for a share of the crop. Although sharecropping began as a way to maximize land under cultivation and extend credit in a credit-poor region, it relegated many freedpeople and poor whites to a state of virtual peonage. Sometimes the conditions in which peonage and sharecropping put blacks was even worse materially than slavery.
End of Reconstruction
The country had been in an economic depression since around 1873, .and white northern attention turned from the plight of black people in the South to the national economy. State by state, southern Democrats began to take control of local governments, working to reinstate the conditions of the antebellum South. southern white supremacists believed, correctly, that northern whites would no longer enforce Reconstruction policy. They began to subjugate blacks again, reinstating the Black Codes. Many southern states began to pass segregation or Jim Crow laws.
For many, the Compromise of 1877 marks the end of Reconstruction. In the presidential election of 1876, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden were virtually deadlocked. Tilden won the popular vote, but Republicans had control of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, thus giving them control of the electoral college. Because each party in those three states had competing electors, however, Congress needed to decide the election. Hayes, the incumbent, appointed an electoral comission, which, with one more Republican than Democrat, declared him the winner.
The Democrats and the Republicans had made a deal, however, in which the Democrats conceded the White House in exchange for "Home Rule" in the remaining three states. In a meeting that, ironically, took place in the black-owned Wormly House Hotel, the Republicans agreed. The remaining military presence in those states departed and Republican rule crumbled: the Democrats had won back the South. Though it would take until the 1890s for them to finish the job, the white supremacists were well on their way to what southerners referred to as "Redemption".
Historians have presented differing interpretations regarding the legacy of Reconstruction. Many historians now argue that Reconstruction fundamentally changed how the United States defined citizenship, as well as the way in which U.S. citizens perceive the power and role of the federal government. The Bill of Rights, for instance, was created to prevent the federal government from infringing on the rights of the people. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth Amendments, however, placed the federal government in the role of protector of citizens' rights. This new concept of federal power and responsibility provided a framework for the Civil Rights Movement, which, a century later, finally realized what Reconstruction had begun.
Activities
Lesson Activity: Reconstruction - Good or Bad