Reconstruction: Lincoln’s View

Reconstruction attempts actually began before war started when the Senate Crittenden Committee attempted in December 1860 to find a compromise that might reverse the course of secession. That committee went so far as to propose an amendment to the Constitution that would have guaranteed the right of slavery to continue where it already existed. All such attempts were bound to fail, however, given the mood in much of the South at that time. After decades of tension, when the break finally came, it was a relief to many.  Had the results of four years of bloody conflict been foreseen, that relief might have vanished.

President Lincoln had actually tried to start the reconstruction process during the Civil War. Following Union victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg and Chattanooga, Lincoln hoped that at least some Confederate states might see the handwriting on the wall and be willing to rejoin the Union if generous terms were offered. Thus in December 1863 Lincoln issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, which stated that those states where 10% of the 1860 electorate would take an oath of loyalty to the Union and agree to emancipation might be readmitted. Congress refused to recognize Lincoln's plan and countered with the Wade-Davis Bill, a much harsher approach, which the president vetoed with a “pocket veto.” (A pocket veto occurs when a bill is sent to the president, who does not sign it, but Congress adjourns within the 10-day period allowed for the president to return the bill.)

Lincoln did not back off from his intention to treat the South generously.  In his famous Second Inaugural Address, which is inscribed on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, he closed with the words:

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Following Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, President Lincoln again outlined a generous plan for reconstruction.  Sadly, the President did not live to see his ideas realized.  On April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to Ford’s theater to attend to play with his wife. John Wilkes Booth, a Virginia actor enraged by the South’s defeat, made his way to the presidential box and shot the president in the head.  Lincoln was carried across the street and placed in a bedroom, where he died the next morning. Lincoln’s assassination dealt a fatal blow to hopes for a more lenient reconstruction effort than what actually occurred. His death also had a chilling effect on  potential sympathy for the South. Winston Churchill wrote:

Others might try to emulate Lincoln's magnanimity; none but he could control the bitter political hatreds which were rife. The assassin's bullet had wrought more evil to the United States than all the Confederate cannonade. ... The death of Lincoln deprived the Union of the guiding hand which alone could have solved the problems of reconstruction and added to the triumph of armies those lasting victories which are gained over the hearts of men. (Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (New York, 1966), Vol. 4, The Great Democracies, 263.)

Lincoln had been seen by many as a messiah, a notion enhanced by the fact that he died on Good Friday; even some Southerners—those not consumed by bitterness—realized they had lost a friend.

Vice President Andrew Johnson succeeded to the presidency upon Lincoln's death. A non-slave-holding Senator from Tennessee who had remained loyal to the north, he ran with Lincoln on the Union Party ticket in 1864. Johnson carried a distinct animus toward the wealthy Southern planter class. He apparently intended to carry out Lincoln's generous reconstruction policies, but his motivations were quite different from those of Lincoln. He was prepared to have wealthy Southerners who had betrayed their country by serving the Confederacy dance to his tune.  Powerful Republican Senators and Congressmen, thirsty for revenge and wanting a proper transition to freedom for the former slaves, visited with Johnson during the months following Lincoln’s death in order to assess his attitudes toward the defeated South. Initially, they came away satisfied that Johnson was on the right track.  That assessment, however, would soon change radically.

The Thirteenth Amendment. When President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, he was concerned that the measure might be unconstitutional. Congressional Republicans shared the president’s concerns, in that the proclamation was a war measure and might be invalid once the war was over. At Lincoln’s urging, Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment in 1864. Article I reads:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Lincoln made passage and ratification of the amendment to abolish slavery a campaign issue in the election of 1864. The amendment was ratified by the requisite number of states in December, 1865.

Reconstruction Politics.

The complex issue of reconstruction became yet another chapter in the ongoing struggle over political power in the United States. President Andrew Jackson, who saw himself as guardian of the people, sought to protect them from excessive government interference in their lives by using the veto power liberally. An entire party—the Whigs—came into existence over that issue during Jackson’s reign, as members of Congress considered his vetoes executive tyranny. Members of Congress nicknamed Jackson “King Andrew,” resenting his defiance of what many felt should be the dominant branch of the government. (Two presidents, John Tyler and Andrew Johnson, faced impeachment charges over the issue of presidential vetoes, although the vote to impeach President Tyler did not pass. Johnson’s impeachment is discussed further below.)

President Lincoln had also been a powerful political leader during the Civil War, and Congress sometimes bridled under his forceful direction of the government. The President’s veto of the Wade-Davis Bill was only one occasion when he and Congress were at odds. Lincoln's assassination and the accession of Vice President Andrew Johnson to the highest office in the land, the stage was set for a showdown between Congress and the White House.  Some members of the House and Senate even felt a need to move toward a system similar to that in Great Britain, where the head of state—the monarch, Queen Victoria during those years—was becoming more of a figurehead than a political force. In fact, the struggle between Congress and the President moved  outside the context of reconstruction and became a fight in its own right, leading to the impeachment of President Johnson in 1868. That conflict between the institutions at opposite ends of Pennsylvania Avenue meant that reconstruction was bound to be a challenging endeavor. (See Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, New York, 2005.)

The Legal Issue. Since the Constitution contained no provision for the legal separation of the states, there was naturally no provision included for reuniting a divided Union. What, then, was the legal status of the former Confederacy? Were the rebellious states still in the Union? The Supreme Court eventually ruled on the matter in an important and often overlooked decision, the 1869 case of Texas v. White. In that case,  which arose over the matter of bonds issued by the Confederate government of Texas, the Court held that secession was inadmissible under the Constitution and that the Confederate states had never existed legally. In its decision the Court stated, “The Constitution … looks to be an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible states.” The argument hinged on the fact that the Articles of Confederation said that “the Union shall be perpetual,” and the preamble to the Constitution called for a “more perfect Union.”  Nevertheless, the Court stated, Congress could dictate the terms under which the seceded states could rejoin the Union because of Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution, which states: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” As Texas v. White was not decided until 1869, the president and Congress continued to wage a bitter fight over how best to reconstruct the Union.

Northern Attitudes: The North was split on the question of reconstructing the South. Many Northerners, content to follow the lead of the White House, favored a speedy reconstruction with a minimum of changes in the South. Other Northerners, many of them former abolitionists, had the rights of the freedmen and women in mind. That faction favored a more rigorous, gradual reconstruction process, which would include consideration of the rights of freed African-Americans.

In the North, with the exception of thousands of shattered families, many with wounded veterans back in their midst, there was little to reconstruct; most of the fighting had occurred in the South. Northerners buried their dead, cared for the wounded and did their best to get on with their lives.  It is safe to say that the majority of Northerners were happy to see slavery gone, if for no other reason than the fact that the divisiveness of the issue had poisoned the political scene for decades. The desire of many for abolition notwithstanding, it cannot be assumed that all Northerners were ready to embrace the full incorporation of blacks into the national fabric. On the other hand, most Northerners did expect the South to accept the verdict of the war and to do whatever would be necessary to reconcile themselves to the end of that “peculiar institution” of slavery.

Most Northerners felt little vindictiveness toward their southern brethren, but they lacked a sense of patience. The punishment of the South was very mild by comparison with other lost rebellions: Only one man was hanged, and there were few jail sentences for what many considered outright treason. No one was fined and there was no confiscation of property. But the South did have to accept certain things: the end of secession doctrine; the end of slavery; and the end of control of the South by the old southern aristocracy. Government of the South during the immediate postwar years was under Northern control. (Henry Wirz, commander of the Andersonville, Georgia, prison camp was tried for murder, convicted and executed. Former Confederate President Jefferson Davis was imprisoned for a time at Fort Monroe, Virginia, but was soon released because of failing health.)

Northerners generally sought no “special” treatment of blacks. Some historians partial to the South have claimed that there was little of the misery, hatred and repression by which the South has been characterized, and that most of the South was peaceful and happy after the war. From a distance, it may have seemed that way; Northerners were obviously far less concerned with reconstruction than the South, but many were not happy about prospects of millions of blacks invading the northern job market, perhaps jeopardizing their economic security. Most white northerners wished blacks well, but weren’t willing to do much to help them; yet many teachers, including women from New England, went South to help blacks. Other Northerners who went south included the so-called “carpetbaggers,” men who went south in order to commercially or politically exploit the situation for their own ends. (The epithet comes from the cheap suitcases they carried, which were made of pieces of carpet sewn together.) Although infamous in their time (and after), recent studies have argued that they often did much good by helping to modernize the South and promoting education.

Once Northerners had honored and mourned their dead and taken care of widows and orphans, they got back down to work building railroads, factories, businesses, settling the west, fighting the Indian wars and finding room for the 25 million immigrants who came to the United States between 1865 and 1910. One significant result of the war for the North was the fighting experience of thousands of soldiers who became laborers in the growing industries of the North. When labor disputes arose, they were quick to use the same tactics they employed on the battlefield against their bosses.

Southern Attitudes: Many Southerners were enraged at the outcome of the war. Having suffered and bled and died to get out of the Union, they now found themselves back in it. A woman in Richmond wrote in her diary after the hated Yankees raised the American flag over the former Confederate capitol, “I once loved that flag, but now I hate the very sight of it!” Southerners recognized that they had to bow to the results of their loss, but did so with underlying hatred. Much ill feeling toward the North existed among the people who had stayed at home, especially in areas invaded by Sherman and others: wives, widows, orphans and those who had endured incredible hardships were particularly horrified to be back under federal control, ruled by their former enemies.

Many Southern whites, having convinced themselves in the prewar years that blacks were incapable of running their own lives, were also unable to understand what freedom meant to blacks. As one former slave expressed it, “Bottom rung on top now, Boss.” Many Southern whites were still convinced slavery had been right. In a migration reminiscent of the departure of loyalists after the American Revolution, many southerners emigrated. Some took their slaves and went to Brazil, where the institution still flourished. Others went west to get as far away as possible from “those damn Yankees.” (Along Interstate Highway 5 In Washington stands a monument to the Confederacy, one of a number of monuments raised by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and other groups in that state. The highway is named for Jefferson Davis.)

Condition of the Former Slaves: Many slaves who had been restricted all their lives had no “where” to go. Although they were elated to be free following the “great day of jubilation,” this new state of freedom also caused confusion. Some stayed on old plantations, others wandered off in search of lost family. Many slave owners were glad to get rid of “burdensome slaves” and threw them out “just like those Yankee capitalists.”  Some freedmen celebrated their freedom openly, while others, less trusting, approached their new status with caution.  As they quickly learned, there was more to being free than not being owned as a slave.  When asked how it felt to be free by a member of a Congressional investigating committee, one former slave said, “I don’t know.” When challenged to explain himself, he said, “I’ll be free when I can do anything a white man can do.” One does not have to be a historian to know that such a degree of freedom was a long time coming.

The Meaning of Freedom: For African Americans, the most important single result of War was freedom—“the great watershed of their lives.”  Pertinent phrases include: “I feel like a bird out of a cage ... Amen ... Amen ... Amen!”  Freedom came “like a blaze of glory.”  “Freedom burned in the heart long before freedom was born.” The search for lost families was “awe inspiring.”  Some whites claimed that blacks did not understand freedom and were to be “pitied.”  But blacks had observed a free society, and they knew it meant an end to injustices against former slaves.

Blacks in the South also had a workable society—church, family and later schools.  A black culture already existed, and could be adapted, albeit with difficulty, to new conditions of freedom. Blacks also took quickly to politics. As Booker Washington put it in his autobiography, Up From Slavery, blacks watched the way their former masters voted and then did the opposite. Remarkably, the former slaves exhibited little overt resentment against their masters, and many adopted a conciliatory attitude. When they got into the legislatures they did not push hard for reform because they recognized the reality of white power.

(On the topic of freedom for former slaves, see Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 and Page Smith, Trial by Fire: A People's History of the Civil War and Reconstruction.)

Radical Reconstruction: In contrast to the relatively lenient and passive approach of Lincoln and Johnson, the radical Republicans, the liberal wing of the Republican Party, had a much tougher approach. They were idealists, many of them driven by an almost religious fervor. They did not accept the commonly held notion that blacks were inferior and therefore insisted on full political, social and civil rights for the former slaves. In this sense they were true reformers, in many ways far ahead of their time, and they had very different ideas about reconstruction from those of Lincoln and Johnson. (How Lincoln’s thinking on reconstruction might have evolved over time can, of course, never be known.)

The radicals thought Lincoln was “too soft” on the South and wanted to “revolutionize Southern habits, institutions and manners”; they wanted to see the South rebuilt according to a new order. Northern Republican newspapers such as the New York Tribune agreed. Radicals believed that the South should be treated as “conquered provinces,” and that the rebel states had committed “political suicide.” They claimed that no state governments could exist in the South until Congress restored them under any conditions it deemed necessary. 

Following Lincoln’s death, congressional Republicans held hearings on conditions in the South which revealed widespread mistreatment of blacks, including random incidents of violence. More formal attempts at controls, as demonstrated by the Black Codes drawn up in many states, also surfaced.  Black Codes prohibited blacks from owning firearms, required them to be employed or face vagrancy charges, imposed fines which could be worked off by labor, and placed other restrictions on their freedom. For all practical purposes, the codes recreated slavery in a form under which the state rather than individuals purposes owned the slaves. Postwar Southern governing officials understood that the slave codes that had existed prior to the Thirteenth Amendment had to be repealed. But the new codes went far beyond what was necessary to remove the former restrictions, and limited the freedom of the former slaves in the process. (See the Mississippi Code in the Appendix, for example.)

Those factors intensified Radical feelings about a heavy-handed reconstruction process.  Congressional moderates had more modest goals—to protect blacks but not to grant them full equality or any special favors. Johnson’s reaction to Congressional initiatives, however, eventually drove many moderates into the radical camp.

The Battle Lines Are Drawn.  The fact that President Johnson was a Democrat, placed on the National Union party ticket in 1864 by President Lincoln in order to balance the team, did not help.  His demeanor often left much to be desired as well. (He had been drunk during President Lincoln's second inaugural celebration.)  Since Congress was not in session when the war ended, Johnson proceeded to carry out what he honestly believed was Lincoln's policy.  Radical leaders still in Washington visited Johnson shortly after the war ended and came away satisfied that he would do things properly.

President Johnson issued a proclamation of amnesty on May 29, 1865, citing Lincoln’s original attempts at reconstruction as background. (See Appendix.) Exceptions to the blanket amnesty were made for those who had held prior federal office and later occupied positions in the Confederate government, but those persons would be dealt with by “special application” to the President for the sake of “the peace and dignity of the United States.” Over the course of the summer of 1865, President Johnson dispensed pardons liberally to many former high-ranking confederates. Johnson apparently took pleasure at the spectacle of former Southern aristocrats, some of whom had previously scorned him, having to plead their case before him.

By the time Congress returned on December 4, 1865, President Johnson was satisfied that reconstruction had been completed. The Radical Republicans who dominated Congress were not so sure. If the president asserted that the former Confederate states had been readmitted, however, how was Congress to assert its will? The answer lay in the Constitution, which states in Article I that, “Each house shall be the judge of the … qualifications of its own members.” When Southern legislators returned to Washington in December, 1865, they were turned away. In the first place, some of the newly-elected Congressmen had served as officers in the Confederate armies, and they belonged to the opposition Democratic Party. Furthermore, Republicans feared that they would lose control of Congress because the 3/5 rule for counting slaves was gone as a result of the Thirteenth Amendment—they would henceforth all be counted. By refusing to seat their congressional delegations, Congress effectively denied the former Confederate states readmission to the Union.

Nevertheless, President Johnson declared on December 6 that the Union was restored, which angered the Republicans, who then set out their own plan for reconstruction, quite different from that proposed by the president. In February, 1866, a new Freedmen’s Bureau Bill was passed to counteract the Black Codes. Johnson vetoed the bill, further angering the Radicals, and his veto was quickly overridden. In March Congress passed the Trumbull Civil Rights Act, which was designed to counter the Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott case by granting blacks citizenship. The act affirmed the right of freedmen to make contracts, sue, give evidence and to buy, lease and convey personal and real property. The act excluded state statutes on segregation, but did not provide for public accommodations for blacks.  Johnson again vetoed the bill on constitutional grounds and also on the grounds that Southern Congressmen had been absent. Again, he was overridden.

The Fourteenth Amendment. Johnson's vetoes infuriated the radical leaders. In June they passed the Fourteenth Amendment because they feared that the Trumbull Civil Rights Act might be declared unconstitutional. Section 1 of the Amendment states:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment was eventually made a condition for states to be readmitted to the Union. The radicals continued to uphold their exclusion of Southern Congressmen on grounds that by excluding blacks from the political process, the Southern governments were not republican in form, which constituted a violation of the Constitution’s Article IV, Section 4, which states in part: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”

Every Southern state legislature except that of Tennessee refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. Instead, they persisted in applying Black Codes to the freedmen and denying them voting and other rights. Mistakenly thinking that the radical approach to reconstruction was out of tune with Northern sentiment, the South decided to wait things out, pending the results of the 1866 congressional elections.

In August, 1866, the National Union Party, on which Lincoln and Johnson had been elected in 1864, challenged the Radicals for the upcoming congressional elections. During the fall campaign President Johnson went on a speaking tour in opposition to the Radicals, but his maladroit addresses simply aroused indignation and turned the voters toward the Republicans, who returned an overwhelmingly radical Congress. The huge Republican victory gave them a 43-11 majority in Senate, and 143-49 in the House. With 3-1 majorities in both houses and veto overrides certain to follow, the Radicals proceeded to take control of reconstruction—the president would be powerless to stop them. 

The first item on the radical agenda was a determination to crush the old southern ruling class. Radical reconstruction soon became what one historian has called a “states’ righters’ nightmare” and an “exquisite chastisement” of the South. The first Reconstruction Act was passed in March 2, 1867. It divided the former Confederate states into five military districts and declared that the existing state governments were provisional only. The states were required to call constitutional conventions with full manhood suffrage and to enroll blacks on voter rolls. They would then be required to ratify their new state constitutions as well as the Fourteenth Amendment; then and only then would their representatives be readmitted to Congress.

President Johnson fought the Reconstruction Act by appointing governors who refused to vigorously enforce them. The states in turn stonewalled and refused to comply, finding loopholes in the act to avoid their full execution. At the same time Congress passed the first Reconstruction Act, they also passed the Tenure of Office Act and the Command of the Army Act. The Tenure of Office Act was aimed at keeping Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a Radical sympathizer, in his position. The act stated that Johnson could not dismiss cabinet officers who had been confirmed by the Senate without Senate approval. The Command of the Army Act was designed to control the president by requiring all reconstruction actions to go through the Commander in Chief of the Army, General Grant, also a Republican sympathizer. The two acts would later form the basis for President Johnson's impeachment.

Responding to Southern resistance to the first Reconstruction Act, in 1867 and 1868 Congress passed three supplementary Reconstruction Acts designed to close loopholes in the original act Those acts granted more authority to military governors and allowed simple majorities of the voters rather than majorities of the full population to decide elections. (Southerners tried to avoid the provisions of the Reconstruction Acts by advising white voters to boycott elections.)

The Reconstruction Acts, which President Johnson reluctantly carried out, resulted in what has been called “military reconstruction.” The military districts were overseen by U.S. Army generals, and Union soldiers were still present in the South. The Republican party in the South grew strong, as some 700,000 blacks were registered to vote, which meant that blacks comprised a majority of voters in many areas of the South. The Republican Party in the South also consisted of former Unionists and northern Republicans who had moved south, the so-called “carpetbaggers. The carpetbaggers, so called because of the cloth suitcases they carried, were Northerners who went South after the war for various reasons. Some went to help Blacks get an education or assist them in other ways. Some went because they saw opportunities to make a fast buck. They were almost universally scorned by Southerners.

The Southern State Constitutional Conventions were dominated by Radical Republicans, and blacks participated in all of them. The new constitutions were generally quite progressive and often ahead of those of the North in terms of expanded rights. They guaranteed civil rights for blacks and excluded former Confederates from high positions in government.

White Counterrevolution: The KKK. In the months following the end of the Civil War many whites carried out acts of random violence against blacks. In their frustration at having lost the war and suffered great loss of life and property, they made the former slaves scapegoats for what they had endured. The violence became more focused when the Ku Klux Klan was founded in December, 1865. The Klan and other white supremacy groups, such as the Knights of the White Camellia, were well underway by 1867. The target of the Klan was the Republican Party, both blacks and whites, as well as anyone who overtly assisted blacks in their quest for greater freedom and economic independence.

The result was what can only be called a reign of terror conducted by the clan and other groups over the next decades. Thousands were killed, injured or driven from their homes or suffered property damage as buildings were burned and animals destroyed. Blacks who tried to further the cause of the Republican Party were singled out for attack, as were whites who, for example, rented rooms to northern carpetbaggers, including school teachers. Black men were beaten within an inch of their lives or even to death in front of horrified family members. The fear of night riders often drove blacks into the woods to sleep because they felt they were not safe in their own homes. (See Judge Albion Tourgee, Appendix)

Former Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, reported to be the first Grand Wizard of the Klan (though he claimed be never had control), formally disbanded it in 1868 because of increasing violence. Nevertheless, the group continued to wreak vengeance upon freedmen and their white supporters. Eventually the Congress passed Force Bills in 1870 and 1871 to control the violence and protect blacks from being deprived of their civil and political, but enforcement of those acts was often lax, and other means of intimidation often proved effective.

The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson. President Johnson had infuriated the Radicals with his vetoes even though they were overridden. When the president tried to sabotage radical reconstruction by failing to administer it vigorously, Congress decided to try to remove him from office. Johnson suspended Secretary of War Stanton in violation of the Tenure of Office Act, which gave the Radicals an issue on which to proceed. In February 1868 the House voted to impeach the president by a vote of 126-47 for violating the acts and “attempting to bring disgrace and ridicule on Congress.” Johnson was well defended in his trial before the Senate and was wise enough to stay away from the capitol and leave his defense to his attorneys.

Meanwhile popular opinion had begun to turn against the Radical Republicans. Many citizens believed they were willing to subvert the Constitution in order to accomplish their political goals. The Radicals were forced to acknowledge that impeachment was indeed a political act—a test of the power of Congress. Some of them would have the legislature become “as powerful as the British,” rendering the president little more than a figurehead. It was also personally directed against Johnson. The final outcome of the Senate trial failed to convict Johnson by a single vote. It may have been rigged because of fear that Ben Wade, an extreme radical, President pro Tempore of the Senate and next in line for the White House, might have the advantage in the election of 1868. Article I of the Constitution leaves succession to the presidency if the office of vice president is vacant up to Congress. The final vote of 35-19 left Johnson chastised, and he carried out reconstruction for the remainder of his term without further incident.

(The current succession act, passed in 1947, makes the Speaker of the House next in line after the vice president. Until the 25th Amendment was ratified in 1967, there was no provision for replacing the vice president in case of removal by death or resignation. Although eight presidents died while in office prior to that time, the office of vice president was always filled on those occasions, so the succession act has never been used.)

By June 1868 Arkansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama and Florida had been readmitted to the Union. Many of the governors, representatives and senators in those states were Northern carpetbaggers who took advantage of the opportunity to establish political careers by joining with black Republicans. African Americans gained majorities in the legislatures of Louisiana and South Carolina. Mississippi, Texas and Virginia were readmitted to the Union in 1870. Georgia was actually removed briefly after passing a bill barring blacks from political office. In order to continue to be represented in Congress, they had to repeal the act.

The Fifteenth Amendment. In 1869 Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which stated that, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The amendment was finally ratified in 1870, and well over half a million black names were added to the voter rolls during the 1870s. The Force Acts were further attempts to suppress terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, which had become strong enough to seize political control of some Southern states.

Although the Fifteenth Amendment was meant to ensure voting rights for all males, such devices as poll taxes and literacy tests were used to subvert the purpose of the amendment. Poll taxes had to be paid two years in advance, and the financial burden was stiff for blacks. (Poor whites could procure election “loans” to enable them to vote.) Literacy tests were used to restrict blacks, and alternatives such a passing a test on the Constitution were often rigged in favor of whites. By the turn of the century, as a result of such things as amended state constitutions, grandfather clauses and gerrymandering, black voting in the South had been reduced to a fraction of its former numbers. By 1910 few blacks could vote in parts of the South; thus, a vast contrast existed between the earlier goals of the abolitionists and the reality of everyday life for freedmen in the South. This condition persisted until the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.

The Election of 1868. The Republican choice for president in 1868 was General Ulysses Grant, who, along with President Lincoln, was deemed the savior of the Union. His Democratic opponent was former Governor Horatio Seymour of New York. Grant won the presidency in a fairly close election, as more than 450,000 blacks voted for the former Union general. 

Serving during one of the most difficult periods in American history, Grant lacked the consistency and sense of purpose to be an effective administrator. On the battlefield he had always been able to select competent commanders for the brigades and divisions in his armies. Once he gave his orders, which were generally concise and clear, he was content to let generals like Sherman, McPherson, Schofield, and others carry out their missions without interference. Never a martinet, Grant was a thoughtful, careful, yet daring field commander, one of the most successful generals in American military history.

In the White House, however, Grant faced problems that might have defeated a more experienced president, but he did not always help himself. Lacking political skills or strong political principles, he was by temperament not well suited to the job. Just as he had been an un-military general, he was an un-political president.

Above all, President Grant sought reconciliation between North and South in order to heal the wounds of the Civil War. He ended his first inaugural address with these words:

In conclusion I ask patient forbearance one toward another throughout the land, and a determined effort on the part of every citizen to do his share toward cementing a happy union; and I ask the prayers of the nation to Almighty God in behalf of this consummation.

Grant’s hands-off approach to military command did not work well in a political setting. He was unable to read the political landscape with the sharp eye he had employed in combat, and some of his appointments were unfortunate. As a result, his administration was tainted by controversy and corruption. Although never personally implicated in the misfeasance of his subordinates, Grant was unable to see the damage it was doing to his administration. The troubles included the “Credit Mobilier” scandal, in which Union Pacific Railroad managers formed a company to divert profits to themselves and others and gave shares in the company to politicians in order to get favorable legislation passed.

In the South, Grant’s administration initially failed to sustain black suffrage against violent groups bent on restoring white supremacy. Organizations like the Ku Klux Klan used terrorism, insurrection and murder to intimidate southern Republican governments and prospective black voters. With the Fifteenth Amendment severely threatened, Congress finally passed the Force Act of 1870, sometimes called the “Ku Klux Klan” Act, which allowed the president to use military forces effectively to quell insurrections and keep violence away from polling places.

Grant’s Second Term. Despite scandals caused by some members of his administration, as well as support from many liberal Republicans for New York Tribune publisher Horace Greeley, Grant was reelected in 1872. His reelection bid was aided by the successful conclusion of  treaty with Great Britain over war claims negotiated by Secretary of State Hamilton Fish in 1871. (Discussed further below. Fish was clearly Grant’s most successful appointment.)

During his second term Grant’s attention began to shift from Reconstruction matters to more general issues of concern to the country. During the Civil War the Union had issued paper money not backed by specie, known as greenbacks. Following the war there was pressure to return to “hard money,” but pressure for inflationary policies kept them in circulation into the 1870s. In 1873 a new currency act was passed to return the county to the gold standard. Speculation in gold markets led to a financial crash, which created a financial panic that  led to a depression that hung over the nation for several years.

In 1875 Congress passed the Sumner Civil Rights Act, which stated, “That all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement.” It also stated that blacks could not be excluded from jury duty, and provided for criminal penalties for violations of the act. The Sumner Act was designed to go further than the Fourteenth Amendment in providing “social rights,” but in 1883 the Supreme Court ruled the act constitutional question in that the Fourteenth Amendment did not require equality in areas controlled by private interests.

The Physical Reconstruction of the South: Much of the South was physically devastated and demoralized after the war. Railroads and factories had been destroyed, farms had gone unattended, and livestock had been killed or driven off in areas occupied by the Union armies. The former plantation owners still had their land but had lost much if not all of their capital. The former slaves comprised a large and experienced labor force but owned neither land nor capital. Many former slaves believed in the precedent set by General Sherman, that the federal government was going to supply them with “forty acres and a mule.” Sherman, however, had exceeded his authority, and the Constitution inhibited the ability of the government to confiscate or claim private property “without due process of law.”

Many black leaders in the South who participated in the Reconstruction governments did not fully understand the land problem. Blacks who gained office had been free before the war, lived in cities or towns, and had not been directly connected with agriculture. Those who sought public office were generally literate and had relatively little in common with plantation field hands. Even among the former slaves themselves there were significant differences in the way they saw their situation; those slaves who had been artisans and had worked at jobs other than simple farming had more opportunities than those who simply needed land on which to live and raise crops.

Some sort of system of production had to be worked out, and what evolved was a combination of various plans that on the surface seemed reasonable: sharecropping, tenant farming and the crop lien system. Sharecropping meant that those working the land would share the profits from their crop sales with landowners; tenant farmers simply rented the land; and the crop lien system allowed farmers, in effect, to mortgage their future crops with owners. Each system had as its basis a bargain among laborers, those who had land and those who owned or controlled capital. Each system was potentially beneficial to all parties, but each also contained the possibility of exploitation and fraud, as was shown in practice. Even poor whites became sharecroppers or tenant farmers, so there was nothing inherently discriminatory in any approach. In fact, by 1880 a significant portion of the former slaves had become landowners, and despite exploitation and abuses, the system brought a moderate amount of cooperative self-reliance to the parties involved.

The South also needed capital to rebuild railroads and make other internal improvements, and those needs generated a reawakening of the South in the post-Civil War years that slowly brought new prosperity to the region. It was hard won, however, and many of the losses suffered by the Confederacy were never regained. The economic ups and downs of the industrial era often hit the South especially hard. The South was not always seen as a favorable region for the investment of capital, especially in periods where capital was in short supply. Railroad building tended to be concentrated in the trans-Mississippi area.

Despite attempts at industrialization, the South produced a smaller national share of manufactures in 1900 than in 1860. The South had 30% of the population, 50% of the farmers. By 1880 the average annual income in South was half that of the national. The high rate of tenancy resulted in economic slavery for many. The Redeemer regimes, often corrupt, welcomed Northern investment, and Northern control of Southern economy. These governments neglected the problems of small farmers, black or white, who suffered from unpayable debts. Eventually, the small farmers of the South joined in the creation of a new political party, called the Populists, in the 1880s. The Redeemers also began the process of legal segregation and invented ways of denying blacks the right to vote. North and South united, but at a heavy cost to the newly freed blacks.

End of the Reconstruction Era: The Compromise of 1877

By 1876 many people both North and South had grown tired of reconstruction and wanted to forget the Civil War altogether. It had become apparent that the problems of the South could not be resolved by tough federal legislation, no matter how well intended. In May 1872, Congress had passed a general Amnesty Act, which restored political rights to most remaining confederates. The Democratic Party was restored to control in many Southern states, and black voting rights began to be curtailed by one means or another.

The election of 1876 was the vehicle by which reconstruction was finally ended. The candidates were former Union General Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, Republican, and New York Democratic Governor Samuel Tilden. The campaign was carried out by far less than above-board means, with corruption and treason being some of the charges which the parties leveled at each other. Hayes was called to answer for the “crimes” of the Grant administration, while Republicans continued to call the Democrats the party of treason. The charge became known as the “bloody shirt,” so called because of a politician who waved a blood-stained shirt at a convention, blaming the South for the war. White supremacy groups helped spread pro-Democratic propaganda throughout the South. As the campaign drew to a close, Tilden was regarded as the favorite, and on the final night of voting, even Hayes believed that he had lost as he retired for the night. It soon became apparent, however, that the results were unclear.

The winter of 1876-1877 thus became one of confusion and bitterness as the outcome of the election was smothered in doubt. To this day it is not certain who really won. When the electoral votes had been counted, the election returns in three Southern states—South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana—were in question. Because of alleged intimidation and other reasons, charges arose that the election had been stolen in those three states. The apparent results gave those three states to Hayes, which meant that he would have won in the Electoral College by one vote; but if any of those results were overturned, Tilden would have become the victor. The question was: how could the conflict be resolved?

President Grant’s mediation in the affair helped avert a national crisis, but the country still faced a difficult and messy problem. Congress did what it usually does when confronted with a political imbroglio: it formed a committee. Originally the committee was comprised of seven Republicans, seven Democrats and one independent: five Congressmen, five senators and five Supreme Court justices. But when it turned out that the independent became ineligible, he was replaced by a Republican, and they now had an 8-7 majority on the committee.

When the returns in the three states were examined, the committee decided not to “go behind the returns”—that is, they decided to accept the results as presented to Congress, in each case by a vote of 8 to 7. Thus all three states were given over to Hayes, but not without a fight. Democrats in Congress threatened to refuse to accept the committee recommendations. That action would have thrown the nation into turmoil, with no new president to take office on March 4. Behind closed doors, in smoke-filled rooms, a deal was hatched: in return for allowing the committee's recommendations and giving the election over to Hayes, the Democrats exacted three promises in return. First, reconstruction would be ended and all federal troops would be removed from the South. Second, the South would get a cabinet position in Hayes’s government. And third, money for internal improvements would be provided by the federal government for use in the South.

The irony of the situation is that President Hayes was probably prepared to do those things in any case, but the Compromise of 1877 that ended reconstruction was accepted. In April of that year federal troops marched out of the South, turning the freedmen over (as Frederick Douglass put it) to the “rage of our infuriated former masters.”

The Clock is Turned Back. All the advances that had been made for black people during the reconstruction period slowly began to be undone. Through one means or another, voters were taken off the rolls, and economic progress was thwarted. Although slavery was not restored, freedmen and their descendents found life in the South growing increasingly difficult, a process that would not really begin to change for almost a century.

Although reconstruction had ended the South had still not recovered from the war, and a decade of racial turmoil had demoralized both blacks and whites. Whereas the radical Republicans had supported civil rights for blacks and had tried to prevent white extremists from dominating the South, the government eventually backed off by turning a blind eye to discriminatory acts. During the last quarter of the 19th century, the Southern states passed many “Jim Crow” laws that resulted in segregated public schools and limited black access to public facilities, such as parks, restaurants and hotels. In addition, poll taxes and literacy tests, administered in a discriminatory manner, denied most blacks the right to vote.

Thus by 1877 the only people who were probably not fed up with reconstruction were the freedmen. Even so, they had seen enough violence and experienced enough frustration that they must have wondered indeed whether all this was worth the trouble. Most Northerners had been indifferent to reconstruction because they had other things on their minds—the war had been over for 12 years, the dead were buried though not forgotten, and those wounds that could be healed had healed. The remainder continued to fester. The United States Congress was also tired of dealing with reconstruction because of other political issues that needed attention. The country had undergone a long-lasting financial recession beginning in 1873; Custer's men were wiped out at Little Bighorn in 1876; the first transcontinental railroad had been completed in 1869, but labor discontent was rising; and immigrants were pouring into the country at an ever-increasing rate. Thus the problems of the South had become something of a distraction.

Because of the impact of the Ku Klux Klan and a general high level of corruption that attended the democratic process in all parts of America, the electoral process, including presidential elections, was rough at best. In the North political machines told their voters to “vote early and often”; in the South the reconstruction governments were also touched by corruption, and both black and white leaders found themselves unequal to the task of furthering the rights of freedmen without further enraging whites.

Summary of Reconstruction

In the immediate aftermath of the war its most serious consequence was undoubtedly the rage that swept across the South, manifesting itself in bitterness and hatred of all things associated with the Union—or the North. “Yankee” was a pejorative term, and “damn Yankee” was one of the milder epithets applied to anyone who came from the far side of the Mason-Dixon line. (One of my former students who married a Southerner said that she had lived in the South for twenty years before she knew “damn Yankee” was two words.) The South saw a huge portion of its young male population destroyed, along with homesteads, farms, factories and railroads. After all the sacrifice and suffering that Southerners had endured, they were back in that hated Union.

Naturally the rage and frustration felt by many Southerners needed a target or outlet, and unsurprisingly, that target was the freedmen and women, the former slaves who now walked unfettered in the streets of Charleston, Atlanta, Mobile and New Orleans. Their very presence as free men and women further aggravated feelings of Southerners like salt in a wound, and their wrath was often expressed by bloody and violent means.

Reconciliation of the two sections of the country came at the expense of Southern blacks and poor whites. North and South reconciled after 1877, but only through the compromise that stripped African-Americans of their political gains and turned the South back over to the “redeemers”—conservative Democratic governments that sought to further legislation restoring white supremacy through Jim Crow laws and other means. The “New South” of the redeemers would recreate as far as possible the racial conditions of the Old South. The Southern economy was dominated by Northern capital and Southern employers, landlords and creditors. Economic and physical coercion, including hundreds of lynchings, effectively disenfranchised people of color. Some blacks, justifiably bitter at the depth of white racism, supported Black Nationalism and emigration to Africa, but most chose to struggle for improvement within American society. Over time, many migrated north or west in search of better opportunities.

The results of the Civil War included the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments that ended slavery, created national citizenship for the first time, amplified the meaning of the Bill of Rights, and attempted to provide access to the democratic process for all adult male Americans. They were, in the short term, only partially successful at best.

As Southerners viewed the history of the prewar years, secession and the war itself, they soon began the process of writing their own history of those terrible events, and came to adopt what is called the “Lost Cause,” the idea that in the end the South had been right in its desire to govern itself and the defend the institution of slavery. The idea—or, as some term it, the “myth”—of the Lost Cause is still present. (See Edward A. Pollard. Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates, 1866.)

In 1915 moviemaker D.W. Griffith produced one of the most famous and controversial films in American history, The Birth of a Nation. In terms of its contributions to the history of cinematography, the film is a masterpiece. With a running time of over three hours, it was long even by today's standards. A black and white silent film, it nevertheless used color tinting for dramatic effects, employed hundreds of extras, and had elaborate subtitles and other graphic effects. The film, however, was overtly racist. Its theme was the salvation of the reconstruction South by the Ku Klux Klan from rampaging former slaves and northern opportunists. Race riots over the film broke out in some northern cities, and the NAACP protested in cities across the country. Although President Woodrow Wilson showed the film in the White House and proclaimed it good history, in later times critics have condemned the content of the film for its overt racism and historical inaccuracies.

Conclusion. It is hard but not impossible to say good things about reconstruction. In later years, some blacks looked back on reconstruction as “the good old days,” when for a time anything seemed possible. The goals were land, the ballot and education for freedmen. Blacks did get the ballot, and education opportunities were provided. Congress could not support land confiscation, however, as it was legally barred. There was no “Marshall Plan” for the South, but on the other hand, the South was not brutalized. Despite the enormous problems of the Reconstruction era, the hope existed among many that further progress could be made. Many honest citizens, both black and white, understood the challenges and worked to solve them; nevertheless, many goals were unrealized, and much of the progress that was made during Reconstruction was reversed later.

Perhaps the greatest irony of reconstruction is that it had to occur at all in a legal sense. For four years a bloody war had been conducted to prove the point that a state could not unilaterally leave the Union. During the years after the war was over, however, the United States Congress dictated terms under which the states would be admitted back into the Union.

Like the Civil War that preceded it, the reconstruction experience changed life in the American South, and to some extent even in the north, permanently. In the first place, the leadership of the old plantation-slave-owning aristocracy was undermined. It was a bitter pill for those who had shaped the fortunes and destinies of most of the southern population. Although it existed in nostalgic memories for some time, the old South was gone. To some extent, the old leadership tried to hold onto power through black codes and other measures. Neither did the Republican radicals in Congress understand the degree to which Southern conservatives could conspire to flout federal laws. Furthermore, leadership at all levels, North and South, was insufficient to meet the extraordinary challenges of reconstruction.

Although the “Black Republican” governments in the South were accused of corruption, dishonesty and shady dealings in government were typical of the time, especially in the northern cities. Political leadership was insufficient to meet the challenges of government, and corruption among politicians was widespread. In terms of how the federal government conducted business during Reconstruction, many historians have decided that the radicals were not radical enough; they left too much undone, and walked away while the readjustments were still far from complete. As Frederick Douglass put it, “you turned us loose to the wrath of our infuriated masters.” Douglass might have said “former masters,” but with the black codes and other legal and extralegal methods devised to control the population of Freedmen, in a sense he was still correct.

In the end, blacks in 1875 were in essentially the same situation as in 1865, when slavery was formally ended. Yet their considerable achievements should be recognized: Former slaves had participated in government in high levels, including the United States Congress. The new constitutions they had helped write were more progressive than many in the North. Many former slaves had managed to become landowners, had voted in elections and pursued educational goals. They had become part of the body politick. But for decades, the hopes of most Southern blacks were not realized.

Aftermath. In the years following Reconstruction, segregation in the South soon spread to virtually all public entities. The Sumner Civil Rights Act of 1875, as noted above, was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1883. The Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment protected blacks from discrimination by state action, but not by individuals, thus making “Jim Crow” laws possible and legally acceptable. As a Richmond Times editorial stated, “God Almighty drew the color line and it cannot be obliterated. The Negro must stay on his side of the line, and the white man on his.”

In 1896 the Supreme Court in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson affirmed a policy that would stand for 58 years: segregation was legal so long as the separate facilities were of equal quality. (In reality, the latter rarely existed.) Restoration of white rule in the South hampered public education for blacks, who relied on church groups and foundations. Among black institutions of higher learning were Hampton Institute in Virginia and Tuskegee in Alabama, the latter founded by Booker T. Washington. Although Plessy v. Ferguson was hurtful, it did have some positive results in that separate facilities had to be provided, especially schools. Segregated schools were better than none.

The lynchings and other forms of random violence were reduced to some extent after segregation was enforced. President Rutherford Hayes told blacks that their interests would be best guaranteed when Southern whites regained control over their state governments so that they would have no desire to continue harassing former slaves. Frederick Douglass called that policy a “sickly conciliation.” Although many blacks participated in elections during and after Reconstruction, disenfranchisement in the South was nearly total by 1900, a result of poll taxes, literacy tests, and the all-white Democratic primary. The so-called “New Era of Good Feelings” between North and South was based on the notion that “time is the only cure.” Fraud, intimidation and every kind of chicanery were used to keep blacks in the South suppressed until modern civil rights movement got under way following World War II.

	Booker T. Washington and the Atlanta Compromise Booker T. Washington was born into slavery in Virginia.  As a young boy he was present when a Union Army officer appeared and announced that the war had ended and that all slaves were free.  As a young man he learned how to read and write and eventually attended Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia, where he trained to become a teacher.  He became the first president of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, a position from which he rose to become one of the most prominent black leaders in American history. In his 1895 “Atlanta Compromise” Washington urged whites to assist blacks in advancing themselves. He advised blacks to accept segregation and second-class citizenship and instead concentrate on learning useful skills. Once blacks improved themselves accordingly, they would be accepted as equals by whites, Washington predicted. Though he chose accommodation, Washington discreetly lobbied against restrictive measures and organized the black vote in northern states. He became one of the most powerful men in the United States, in touch with presidents and business and philanthropic leaders throughout the nation. A character based on Booker T. Washington is prominent in Ralph Waldo Ellison's great novel, The Invisible Man.
	W.E.B. Du Bois One of America’s great civil rights leaders, an eminent writer, sociologist and historian, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois became in 1895 the first Black man to earn a Ph.D. degree from Harvard. He was born in Massachusetts in 1868 and was well educated. He taught at various universities and gained public attention when he began to disagree openly with the ideas of Booker Washington. Although the two men respected each other and ultimately had the same goal—the improvement of the lives of Black men and women, they had very different opinions as to how this could best be achieved. Du Bois believed in full racial equality and integration of the races. He did not accept what he saw as Washington’s “accommodationist” approach to race relations, exemplified in the Atlanta Compromise. Du Bois believed in a “talented tenth”—educated leaders of the Black community who would by precept and example lift other members of their race to higher levels of achievement.  Du Bois helped found the Niagara Movement, which became the NAACP in 1910, and he served for years as the NAACP Director of Publications and edited the Association’s newspaper, The Crisis. Du Bois visited Russia in 1926 and thereafter became more and more interested in Socialism as the means of advancing the Black cause. Du Bois became increasingly disenchanted with America and its capitalist system and eventually exiled himself to Ghana, where he died in 1963.
Although Washington and Du Bois differed significantly in their ideas about how to gain greater rights for African Americans, in the end they had the same goal—the elevation of black men and women to a higher status in American society. While Du Bois often criticized Washington's accommodationist approach, he nevertheless held him respect.

The Supreme Court and Civil Rights, late 19th Century

In 1896 Supreme Court issued the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which upheld by a 7-1 vote a Louisiana Law of 1890 requiring segregated railroad facilities. As long as equality of facilities existed, the Court ruled, segregation did not constitute discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment. Recognition of differences in color, said the Court, “has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races.” Justice John Marshall Harlan’s dissent called that doctrine “pernicious.” Harlan claimed that the law should be color blind, and in 1954 the Court agreed with him in the famous Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Harlan also said that discrimination was a “badge of servitude” and therefore impermissible under the Thirteenth Amendment. The decision opened the way for further Jim Crow laws. The key concept in the majority argument was “state action,” which became the defining criterion for application of laws deriving from the Fourteenth Amendment.

In an 1898 case, Williams v. Mississippi, a man named Williams, who had been convicted of murder, appealed on the grounds that he was convicted by an all-white jury, and was therefore denied equal protection guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment. In Mississippi one had to be qualified to vote in order to serve on a jury.

The Supreme Court generally upheld literacy tests, poll taxes and grandfather clauses because they did not on their face indicate racial discrimination. By 1892 only 8,000 blacks were left on the voter rolls in Mississippi, and those soon disappeared. Similar numbers existed in other states.

In 1899 the case of Cumming v. Richmond County [Ga.] Board of Education carried separate but equal one step further. Richmond County closed a black high school and sent black students elsewhere to get schooling. The Court did not grant relief to black parents who demanded that the white school be closed as well—closing white schools wouldn’t help black students, the Court said. (Following the Brown decision of 1954, one Southern county closed all its public schools rather than submit to integration. The “private” established schools were not required to admit blacks.)