Final American history

Lecture 9, Reconstruction

Contents

2 I. Reconstruction Before the War’s End

6 II. Reconstruction After Lincoln

9 III. Radical Reconstruction

12 IV. Reconstruction’s Effect on the South

16 V. The End of Reconstruction

19 VI. The “New South”

24 VII. Conclusions about Reconstruction

Important Terms and People (in order of appearance): Freedmen’s Bureau; Conservative Republicans; Radical Republicans; Reconstruction Plan #1; Wade-Davis Bill/Reconstruction Plan #2; pocket-veto; Andrew Johnson; John Wilkes Booth; Assassination conspiracy; William Seward; Ulysses S. Grant; Black Codes; Radical Reconstruction; Fourteenth Amendment; Reconstruction Plan #3; Reconstruction Plan #4; Reconstruction Plan #5; Fifteenth Amendment; “scalawags,” “carpetbaggers,” Southern education; Black land ownership; Tenant farming/sharecropping; marriages legalized; Presidential Election of 1876; Rutherford B. Hayes; Samuel Tilden; Compromise of 1877; New South/Redemption South; Booker T. Washington; Assimilate; Plessy v. Ferguson; Poll tax/property requirement; Grandfather clause; Literacy/ understanding test; Jim Crow laws

Instructions for reading this lecture: This lecture is broken into the chronologic or thematic sections shown above in the Table of Contents. I have done this to make it easier to follow the information being presented. Please also note the list of Important Terms and People that show up directly below the Table of Contents; this list provides a guide for terms and people you should be familiar with once you have completed reading the lecture. There may be instances in which you desire more information regarding an important term or person; I have hyperlinked useful websites throughout this lecture to important terms or people that you can follow up on and read if you would like more information (these hyperlinks show up in bright blue and when you click on them, they should direct you to the appropriate website). Additionally, there are images throughout with captions, to help you better visualize the information you are reading, as well as film clips that you can watch via YouTube (these hyperlinks to YouTube show up in maroon and when you click on them, they should direct you to the clip on YouTube).

Today we’re going to be jumping right into the post-Civil War period by talking about the program of Reconstruction that was implemented at the end of the War in order to reunify the torn country. We’ll do this by looking first at the plans for Reconstruction that were debated by Conservative and Liberal politicians immediately following the war. Next we’ll look at the Reconstruction concepts that won out and how the South dealt with, negotiated with and grew from these new policies.

I. Reconstruction Before the War’s End

Before we get started on any of this, however, I’d like to give you a quick refresher on the most important points of the Civil War, which we will use to inform our discussion of Reconstruction. As you know, the Civil War was fought from 1861-1865 between the North—the Union—and the South—the Confederacy. The Confederacy had seceded from the Union in 1861 after the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency, because many southerners feared that Lincoln would abolish slavery and that he didn’t represent their best interests. The war was a long and difficult one, with humongous casualties on both sides, but eventually the Union, under the leadership of Lincoln prevailed and in 1865, the process of Reconstruction officially began. You also know that during the war many, but not all, slaves were freed from slavery via Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation (the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863 and freed the slaves in all Confederate states not under Union occupation. Slavery was allowed to remain in the “Border States”—Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri—and in the Confederate states under Union occupation—Tennessee, West Virginia and parts of Louisiana). One other thing I’d like you to keep in mind is that Lincoln belonged to the Republican Party. When we talk about the Republican and Democratic in this lecture, you’ll need to get rid of any ideas you have about the Republican and Democratic parties of today—in many ways, the Republican party—the party that ended slavery and eventually got African Americans the right to vote—looks more similar to today’s Democratic party than today’s Republican party.

As you know, the North won the Civil War in 1865 under the presidential leadership of Abraham Lincoln. Well, Lincoln had his work cut out for him as president during this war, and, in particular, he had his work cut out for him in terms of figuring out what to do with the South once the war was over. You see, it became clear by 1864, that the Union was going to win the war, it became clear well before the Confederacy surrendered. Looking back, it seems that perhaps Lincoln shouldn’t have let the war go on so much longer, since it was clear—really to both sides—who the eventual victor would be. Indeed, some have argued that Lincoln should have negotiated with the South to try and end the war sooner. But Lincoln would have argued that he could never have negotiated with the South—he insisted that since the Confederacy was a rebellious bunch, since they had no legal right to exist, he couldn’t negotiate with them.

So Lincoln instead had to focus on what to do with the South once the war really did end. Lincoln did know one thing for sure—he knew he couldn’t just readmit the South and pretend that nothing had happened. Too much blood had been shed for that and he also didn’t want anyone to think that when they didn’t like a governmental policy, they could just secede from the Union with no consequences. This much was clear to Lincoln early on, but aside from this, he wasn’t too sure on how to proceed with the reunification or the reconstruction of the nation.

By the time the war did finally end in 1865, the South was in tatters, with homes and buildings destroyed, railroads and bridges completely gone, fields untended. The Emancipation Proclamation had stripped many Southerners of their slaves and many acutely felt new economic burdens, particularly because so many fathers and sons had been killed in the war. For these white Southerners, they hoped that the period of Reconstruction—the period of reunifying the nation—would consist of the federal government stepping out of southern affairs and they hoped to see African Americans denied the rights of citizenship. Some even hoped that in the places where the Emancipation Proclamation hadn’t touched slavery, the institution would continue.

For Southern blacks, whose situation was also incredibly difficult in the aftermath of the war, Reconstruction held some opposite hopes. Over 4 million men and women—former slaves all of them—were freed in the months following the surrender of the South in April 1865, and though they found hope in their ability to leave the plantation system, they also found that freedom in the South wasn’t as easy as they had hoped. Many found they had nowhere to go, nothing to feed or clothe them, and no work to do. So African-Americans hoped that the program of Reconstruction would be able to help them secure the real freedom they hoped for: political and economic rights, as well as a legal declaration of equality of all the races.

While the specific programs for Reconstruction were being worked out, in the months following the Civil War, Congress stationed federal troops throughout the South to preserve order and protect former slaves, and established the Freedmen’s Bureau , a government agency that was designed primarily to help the former slaves by providing food and education to them. The Bureau also worked to help both former slaves and poor whites find their own land. But the Freedmen’s Bureau only had a charter for one year (and no support from President Lincoln), so many former slaves hoped that the program of Reconstruction would extend the charter or design something equally useful to help them continue the transition into free life.

But the Freedmen’s Bureau was only a small part of what needed to be done in order to Reconstruct the nation; accordingly, Lincoln and other politicians in the Union were struggling with what to do with the South after the war was over. At this time, Democrats wanted a Reconstruction process that would readmit Southern states quickly and painlessly, because they knew that readmitted Southerners would vote for Democratic Party leaders and legislation (Why would Southerners vote for the Democratic Party, you might be asking? The Republican Party was the party of Lincoln, the party that freed the slaves, so it was clear that returning Southerners would vote for whoever stood in opposition to the Republican Party).

Republicans, however, who controlled both houses in Congress, felt differently. Conservative Republicans wanted the South to accept the abolition of slavery, but they had few other conditions to readmitting the South. Radical Republicans, on the other hand, felt that a large number of Southern whites should lose their voting privileges, that equality for blacks should be protected by the Federal government, and that land that had belonged to wealthy Confederates should be seized and distributed to former slaves.

In December, 1863, more than a year before the war actually ended, Lincoln made public his plan for Reconstruction—what we’ll call Reconstruction Plan #1—which tended to follow the Conservative Republican tack. He announced that all white Southerners, with the exception of high Confederate officials, would be granted amnesty upon pledging an oath of loyalty to the federal government and accepting the abolition of slavery. A state government could then be established after 10% of the state’s voters had taken this oath. Lincoln also proposed that suffrage be extended to educated, property-owning blacks who had also fought for the Union (imagine how few African Americans actually met these standards—in other words, Lincoln certainly wasn’t trying to extend the right to vote to all blacks, but rather to a privileged few). Three southern states that were under Union occupation at the time—Louisiana, Tennessee and Arkansas—followed Reconstruction Plan #1 and were ready for readmission to the Union in 1864.

But Lincoln underestimated the fury of the Radical Republicans. They refused to admit Congressional representatives from Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee, instead pushing through a bill titled the Wade-Davis Bill , what we’ll call Reconstruction Plan #2. The Wade-Davis Bill called on Lincoln to appoint a provisional government for each conquered state. In order for a state to come back into the Union under the Wade-Davis Bill, they had to have a majority (51%+) of males pledge an oath of loyalty (which was much more than Lincoln’s 10%!), which would then allow the provisional governor to call a state constitutional convention. The convention’s delegates had to be elected by voters who had not fought in the war and the constitution they drafted had to abolish slavery, take away all voting rights from former confederate leaders and come up with a plan to pay off war debts themselves. Congress passed this bill in 1864. Lincoln used the pocket-veto to destroy the bill, but seeing how enraged the Radical Republicans were about this whole situation, Lincoln knew that he would have to forge a more radical course in coming up with a viable plan for Reconstruction.

II. Reconstruction After Lincoln

Unfortunately, he was never able to do this. On April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated

Figure 3: Lincoln's Assassination

and Vice President Andrew Johnson, who came to be seen as perhaps the worst president of all time, took over the office and the plans for Reconstruction. When Johnson came into the presidency, he decided to bring back Reconstruction Plan #2—the Wade-Davis Bill. And to the undiscriminating eye, Johnson appeared to follow the Wade-Davis provisions. But upon closer examination, it became clear that Johnson was not applying Wade-Davis as the Radical Republicans had intended.

By the end of 1865, supposedly under the provisions of the Wade-Davis Bill (remember, the Wade-Davis Bill said that southern states had to get 51%+ of their men to pledge an oath of loyalty, they had to abolish slavery, they had to make sure that former Confederate officials didn’t get to vote, and they had to figure out how to pay off their war debt), all of the formerly seceded states had formed new state governments and were just waiting for approval of their governments and constitutions and then, of course, readmission to the Union. The Wade-Davis provisions were difficult—this was BIG stuff—and yet, within eight months all of the formerly Confederate states had allegedly met the requirements and were ready for readmission? Notherners smelled a rat.

Many people in the North, particularly the Radical Republicans, were unconvinced that the South had suddenly come around, had suddenly decided to follow the rules—and the North had evidence to this end. First, it had been revealed that the man who assassinated Lincoln ( John Wilkes Booth ) was a proud Confederate who did not accept defeat of the Confederacy. More important was the assassination conspiracy that was revealed days after Lincoln’s death. Lincoln’s assassination was supposed to be accompanied by the assassination of his Vice President, Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward, and famed Union General Ulysses S. Grant. These were important men—if they had all been killed, imagine the chaos that would ensue in the North! Many Northerners came to believe that the South was not yet mentally out of the Civil War.

Second, the new southern governments had ignored some of the most important parts of the Wade-Davis Bill by appointing many former confederate leaders to serve as heads of the new state governments.

Finally, the North was getting really mad that the South was reluctant to abolish slavery and grant suffrage to any blacks. Indeed, the South’s attitude towards blacks was appalling to many Northerners. Black Codes were enacted in 1865 and early 1866—these codes allowed local and city officials to arrest an unemployed black person, fine them for not having a job and then hire the black person out in order to pay off the fine. At the same time, it was difficult for African Americans to find work—many of the codes forbid blacks from owning or renting farmland, while others declared that blacks could only hold jobs as domestic or plantation workers. What does that sounds like? That’s right—to many Northerners this sure looked a lot like slavery!

Figure 4: The Enforcement of Black Codes

III. Radical Reconstruction

And so the North and the Radical Republicans backpedaled on the concessions they were willing to make to the South. In December 1865, Congress refused to accept any of the newly formed Southern state governments, launching the period known as Radical Reconstruction. Congress then extended the life of the Freedman’s Bureau, which you’ll remember initially only had a charter for one year. They also passed a Civil Rights Act, which led, in April 1866, to the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment defined a citizen as any person born or naturalized in the United States and provided each citizen with equal rights and protection by state and federal governments.

So by the end of 1865, Reconstruction Plan #1 and Plan #2 and both failed and no formerly Confederate states were back in the Union yet. Accordingly, Radical Reconstructionists in Congress presented their next plan for Reconstruction—what we’ll call Reconstruction Plan #3. Under this plan, ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment became a major criteria for readmission to the Union (in addition to all of the provisions that had made up Reconstruction Plan #2), and not surprisingly, the Southern states wanted no part of this. In fact, only one southern state did ratify the 14th amendment—Tennessee. And because no other southern state jumped on board, passage of the amendment was temporarily derailed, only Tennessee was readmitted to the Union, and yet another Reconstruction Plan had failed.

Luckily, Radical Republicans were elected in large numbers to Congress in 1866, giving them the power they needed to pass three Reconstruction bills in 1867, which finally established a viable plan for Reconstruction—what we’ll call Reconstruction Plan #4. Under this plan, all Southern states’ (except for Tennessee, which had been readmitted under Reconstruction Plan #3) readmission bids were denied and those states were combined into 5 military districts, each

Figure 5: The Five Southern Military Districts

governed by a commander who coordinated qualified voters (which were defined as all adult black males and all white males who had not participated in the war) to elect new state constitutional conventions. At the conventions, new state constitutions had to be written—with provisions for black suffrage (voting rights) included—and submitted to Congress. Once the new constitutions were approved by Congress, states could elect governmental leaders who were expected to convince state voters to ratify the 14th Amendment.

This is very interesting politicking… Radical Republicans realized that Northern states, alone, could not bring in enough votes for ratification; in other words, without Southern ratification, the 14th Amendment would never get enough votes to become law. But, of course, Southerners didn’t want blacks to have citizenship, so the great irony was that southern states couldn’t re-enter the Union until they ratified a piece of legislation they didn’t agree with! Indeed, Radical Republicans said that until enough states had ratified the 14th Amendment, until it became law, no southern states would be readmitted to the Union. Once enough states had ratified the 14th amendment, allowing it to become law, then each of those states would simultaneously be re-admitted to the Union. By 1868, Arkansas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and Florida had all fulfilled of the conditions of Reconstruction Plan #4, allowing the Fourteenth Amendment to be ratified and allowing their return to the Union.

But three southern states continued to hold out, refusing to ratify the 14th Amendment or follow the other provisions of Reconstruction Plan #4. Accordingly, Congress began aggressively pushing a new set of requirements—what we’ll call Reconstruction Plan #5—to get the rest of the south back into the Union. Reconstruction Plan #5 had all of the requirements of Plan #4, but also tacked on another requirement for readmission—the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment , which provided suffrage for all male citizens. Virginia and Texas were readmitted in 1869, and Mississippi in 1870, after ratifying the 15th Amendment. Ironically, without Virginia, Texas and Mississippi’s ratification of the 15th Amendment, it would never have become law, because several Northern and border states refused to ratify it—again, pretty good politicking by the Radical Republicans.

IV. Reconstruction’s Effect on the South

Once all of the states were finally readmitted back into the Union, Reconstruction could finally and truly get under way. The program of Reconstruction, of rebuilding and reintegrating the South, had dramatic effects on southern politics and society. One of the most interesting things about the early years of Reconstruction is that, with so many whites disenfranchised (meaning they did not have the ability to vote), African Americans held the voting majority in five states: South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida. For a period, then, African Americans were able to make their votes count and even elect some black leaders. But federal officials didn’t let this last for too long, quickly lifting restrictions so that almost all white males could vote—and of course, they would vote for the Democrats (remember, the anti-Lincoln party). This left the Republican Party with the new problem of having to rely on combined support from blacks and whites in order to maintain control of Congress.

Accordingly, the Southern Republican party was something of a mixed bag. Southern white Republicans were called, by their critics, either “scalawags” or “carpetbaggers.” Scalawags were southern whites who either didn’t like the Democratic Party or who lived in rural areas where there had been little or no slavery, thus causing them to be more sympathetic to the Republican Party than the Democrats. These folks voted Republican because they hoped that the Republican Reconstruction program would help rebuild and improve the South and perhaps end their own financial problems. Carpetbaggers was the term given to Northern white Republicans, often veterans of the Union army, who had settled in the south to become businessmen or planters.

Southern black freedmen made up the remainder and bulk of the southern Republican party. Many of these freedmen had no previous experience with suffrage or politics, but were excited about the opportunities they now had and wanted to learn more about the political process. In order to do this, African Americans often held their own conventions to outline the political future of African Americans. These political conventions, coupled with the all-black religious institutions they created after the end of the war, both united southern blacks and instilled in them a sense of confidence. The lessons they taught themselves about politics and society certainly paid off, as African Americans became very involved in Reconstruction politics. They served as delegates to constitutional conventions, held public offices, and between 1869 and 1901, twenty blacks served in the House of Representatives and two served in the Senate. African Americans also served in a number of state legislatures and offices. Southern whites grumbled loudly about this participation, even though African Americans never saw a black governor elected in this period, nor black control of any state legislature. Black officeholders were, in fact, far fewer than white officeholders in the South, even though their population numbers were greater. Nevertheless, black voting and black leadership seemed to have no limit in the early days of Reconstruction.

Reconstruction governments actually achieved a lot in terms of Southern social and economic development. The south finally received much-needed services, such as public education facilities, poor relief, and public works programs, among other things. In fact, the improvement in southern education was dramatic and benefited both blacks and whites. For African Americans, a large network of schools for former slaves was established and this network of 4,000 schools, 9,000 teachers, and 200,000 students was able to provide education to African Americans for the first time. More than half of all white children and nearly 40 percent of black children were attending school by 1875, a dramatic departure from the pre-Civil War period.

The fate of Southerners when it came to land ownership did not have nearly as good of a track record. One of the major goals of the Freedmen’s Bureau, you’ll remember, had been to help African Americans and even poor whites become landowners. In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, the Bureau was actually successful in placing 10,000 former slave families on land that had previously belonged to plantation owners. But by the end of 1865, plantation owners began arguing to get their land back and President Johnson acquiesced to their demands, returning much of the land to its original owners, negating Sherman’s Field Order #15 (which had granted some land seized from Confederates to former slaves). Nonetheless, black land ownership did increase from zero to twenty percent in the postwar years.

For those who were not able to become land owners, both black and white, most became involved in a system of tenant farming or sharecropping. What this meant was that they were tenants of a white landlord—they lived on a piece of his land, grew crops there, and paid him a portion of the take from their crops as rent. This system was a double-edged sword for former slaves. On the one hand, it offered African Americans the freedom to work on their own terms, to grow the crops they pleased, and to work without a master or overseer watching over them. On the flipside, this system provided a result similar to that of slavery for the plantation owner: he reaped the benefits of another man’s work, and he didn’t even have to feed, clothe or discipline that man. Likewise, plantation owners established a burdensome system of credit, under which sharecroppers were able to process crops and purchase goods and supplies only from their landlord, which often kept former slaves dependent on a master-type.

This is not to say that sharecropping was not a vast improvement over slavery—it was. Of course, there was the incalculable benefit of being free from the system of slavery, free to have a family as one wished, free to move about as one wished. Additionally, economically, sharecropping was more beneficial to the former slave. Economists have calculated the financial aspects of both slavery and sharecropping—these economists calculated the amount of money spent on a slave’s food, board, and upkeep versus the profits blacks received as sharecroppers and they found that blacks earned almost 40% more under the system of sharecropping by the end of Reconstruction. Yet, we must keep in mind that this doesn’t mean that these former slaves were doing well, financially—they were barely making enough to survive and largely found themselves unable to pull out of this poverty.

Another major change for African Americans in the Reconstruction period came for black families. During slavery, families were frequently torn apart, husbands and wives, mothers and children, sisters and brothers torn apart by unfeeling masters who didn’t recognize slave marriages or the bonds of family. Immediately after emancipation, then, former slaves went looking for and reuniting with family members. They rushed to churches to have their marriages legalized and, in defiance of the slave system, they created a sexual division of labor that they could never enjoy under slavery, wherein men worked primarily in the fields while women often performed domestic tasks. For those black women who needed to work for the money they generally became domestic servants rather than field hands.

V. The End of Reconstruction

The first years of Reconstruction developed under President Andrew Johnson and a Radical Republican Congress, leading to tremendous changes. But in 1868, Ulysses S. Grant, a former Union general, was elected to the presidency. In the interest of time, we’re not going to look at Grant’s presidency, which was largely seen as extremely corrupt, other than to say that his presidency brought on the beginning of the end of Reconstruction, which would have long-felt effects on the south, the north and African Americans. You see, white southerners—Democrats—in the Upper South had managed to grab back the political reins from Republicans and by 1872 began working diligently to regain political positions in order to put the balance of power back in their favor. In the states of the Lower South, where African Americans were a majority of the population, whites knew they couldn’t win political seats back the proper, legal way, so instead they turned to violence and intimidation. The Ku Klux Klan and other anti-black terrorist groups like the Knights of the White Camellia, terrorized African Americans to try to keep them from voting or fighting for equality or rights in any other way.

Figure 8: Anti-Black KKK Activity

African Americans were not just barred from the political arena, but were also faced with economic challenges by 1872, as some planters stopped selling land to them, stores stopped extending them credit, and employers stopped giving them work. Racism and discrimination, in other words, became everyday occurrences in the lives of southern blacks. I will argue throughout the rest of this quarter that the root of this racism came, not just from ignorance, but more importantly from FEAR: whites feared losing their political status, their economic status, and their social status. The way to ensure that African Americans would not be job competition, would not elect black leaders over white leaders, would not compete for wives and social popularity, was to make African Americans second class citizens with no access to political, economic or social power. This fear would not just surface against African Americans, of course—as you’ll see all quarter, this mentality affected many minority groups who posed a social challenge.

Not only were African Americans coping with terrorism, and diminished political and economic power, they also saw the end of Radical Reconstruction—Radical Republicans, who had fought so diligently for black citizenship and suffrage, felt that their duty was done and any future gains for African Americans would have to be done by blacks themselves. Reconstruction was coming to an abrupt end, it appeared.

Reconstruction was finally, totally, undone by the presidential election of 1876, which pitted another former Union general, Rutherford B. Hayes, as the Republican candidate against Samuel J. Tilden, the former governor of New York, as the Democratic candidate. In a situation that the United States wouldn’t see again until the Gore-Bush election of 2000, an electoral dispute over states’ returns made for a sticky situation. You see, it appeared that Tilden had won because he carried the southern states and many large northern ones. But election returns from Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida and Oregon were disputed, and they encompassed 20 electoral votes—exactly the number Hayes needed to win. The Constitution delegated the decision of who the winner should be to Congress, and since the Senate was Republican-controlled and the House Democrat-controlled, it was clear there would be a deadlock over the issue.

Accordingly, in January 1877, a special electoral commission was created to make the decision. This commission had fifteen seats: five from the Senate, five from the House, and five justices from the Supreme Court; seven of these fifteen delegates were to be Republican, seven Democrat, and the final spot was to go to an Independent. Interestingly, though, that independent resigned right after being assigned to the commission and a Republican took his place. You’re probably wondering how/why the Democrats would have let this happen, because, of course, this meant that Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes was going to win the presidency!

Figure 9: Controversy over the Election of 1876

So how did this happen? In what has been called the Compromise of 1877, Republican Senators met with Democratic leaders to extract their cooperation. To get this cooperation, Republicans promised, among other things, to put money into federal works programs to vastly improve the southern economy, industry, roads, schools and infrastructure. More importantly, Republicans promised to withdraw federal troops in all states where they remained—troops had been stationed in the South to protect the newly freed slaves and ensure that they could vote and otherwise exercise their rights of citizenship. These things seemed more important to the Democrats than winning the presidency—they knew that a strengthening of their economy would be more significant to their region than the states rights promise Tilden had raised as his presidential priority. Likewise, withdrawing federal troops from South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida would knock out the last resistance to the white policy of barring African Americans from voting and thus would mean a unified, Democratic, racist South would prevail.

VI. The “New South”

And indeed, that’s just what happened. In the “New South,” or “Redemption South,” as many Southerners called it—the post-Reconstruction South—things did not go well for African Americans. Interestingly, however, at least initially the idea of the “New South” was not one that only whites embraced; African Americans also viewed the New South as a place with limitless potential for progress and self-improvement. Some African Americans were able to move into the black middle class—one that was less prosperous than its white counterpart, but one that was distinguished and promising nonetheless. These former slaves had managed to get property, start small businesses or enter professions.

This new black, middle-class put a strong emphasis on education in the black community. They believed that the African American race could not be uplifted in American society without education, and they were able to expand the network of black colleges and institutions that had started during Reconstruction. The most vocal proponent of education for African Americans and for the black community as a whole was a man named Booker T. Washington. Washington was born into slavery, but, after emancipation, was able to work his way out of poverty by getting an education at Virginia’s Hampton Institute. He urged other African Americans to follow his lead and get an education on the path to self-betterment.

The message that Washington put out to the black community was both “cautious and hopeful.” He told them to focus on self-improvement first and foremost and worry about civil rights later. He instructed African Americans to get an education, build up a base of skills, and establish a solid footing in agriculture and the trades as a race. He believed African Americans shouldn’t waste their time on classical education, but on learning industrial and technological skills. He also advised African Americans to improve their speech, dress, cleanliness, and become more thrifty with their money. Washington believed that if African Americans did all of this, then the white community would come to respect them. And, in his eyes, once whites respected African Americans, African Americans would be granted all the rights they had supposedly secured during Radical Reconstruction.

Washington’s message was one that offered a plan for African Americans, but it also had some problems—namely, his plan offered a way up the social ladder, but it also insisted that African Americans assimilate, that they become just like whites, and behave to white standards if they ever wanted a place in the American society. Why do you think Washington might have done this?

Despite Washington’s unthreatening message, however, few white southerners really believed that African Americans could ever be equal. The limited rights that African Americans had gained during Reconstruction, namely the rights of citizenship and the right to vote, came about not because of any real southern support but because of the federal government and the efforts of newly freed slaves. But when Reconstruction ended in 1877, that outside support for African American rights all but disappeared.

You know that the federal troops were withdrawn, ending the physical protections in place to ensure enforcement of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. You also know that Congress lost interest in Radical Reconstruction by the mid-1870s. But perhaps more important than these factors were a series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1870s and 1880s that stripped much of the meat off the bones of the 14th and 15th Amendments. “In the so-called civil rights cases of 1883, the Court ruled that the Fourteenth amendment prohibited state governments from discriminating against people because of race but did not restrict private organizations or individuals from doing so. Thus railroads, hotels, theaters, and the like could legally practice segregation. Eventually, the Court also validated state legislation that institutionalized the separation of the races. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), a case involving a Louisiana law that required separate seating arrangements for the races on railroads, the Court held that separate accommodations did not deprive blacks of equal rights if the accommodations were equal, a decision that survived for years as part of the legal basis of segregated schools.”

But even before the Supreme Court decisions made discrimination easier to get away with, white southerners had been working to separate the races as much as possible. Perhaps the most vivid example of this can be seen with black voting rights in the period after Reconstruction. Prior to the withdrawal of federal troops, black voters were protected as they went to the polling places. But when troops were gone, it became much easier for white southerners to keep African Americans from voting. As Reconstruction ended, southern whites worked to regain political positions in states where whites were the majority, and used intimidation and violence to keep African Americans from voting in the regions where African Americans were the majority—in this way, white southerners began regaining much of the political control in the south by the early 1870s.

Things just got progressively worse for black voters in the final years of the 19th century. By the 1890s, you see, white yeoman farmers were starting to demand that African Americans be completely disenfranchised, or, in other words, that black voters be completely prohibited from voting or otherwise exercising their rights of citizenship. They did this partially because they were racist and they wanted black people to be beneath them—and the vote was something they could hold from African Americans. Also, poor white farmers believed that the post-Reconstruction government in the South was using the black vote against them—to hurt them—and so this provided another big reason to support the call for disenfranchising African Americans. Finally, the political elite was worried that poor whites might realize how similar their plight was to poor blacks and unite politically, a move that would have easily overthrown the political elite. So these political elite also saw the disenfranchisement of African Americans as a very good thing.

But in order to do this, in order to disenfranchise black voters, southern whites had to get around the Fifteenth Amendment which prohibited states from denying anyone the right to vote based on race. Two loophole measures were enacted that didn’t violate the Amendment and that were able to limit the number of voting blacks in the South. The first was the poll tax or a property requirement that was imposed on all voters. What this meant was that if you owned property, you could vote. Well, immediately all poor whites and blacks who didn’t own land were excluded. But, you could pay a head tax in order to vote, but, again, for the very poor, the tax was too high to pay, and these poor southerners weren’t allowed to vote. Many southern states didn’t want to limit the white vote, however, so many implemented what’s called a grandfather clause, which said that if your grandfather had ever voted, you would be excluded from the tax or property requirement—this meant that African Americans would always be excluded if they couldn’t pay the tax or didn’t own property, but that many whites would retain their ability to vote.

The second voting prohibition measure was the literacy or understanding test. This test was to be taken before entering the voting booth and voters had to demonstrate an ability to read and interpret the Constitution before they were allowed to vote. Even those African Americans who could read found the test near impossible to pass—white officials would often pass poor, illiterate whites, but fail African Americans for even a minor mistake. Nonetheless, white voting still declined by 26 percent in the 1890s. But black voting declined much more markedly—by 62 percent.

But these “separate but equal” laws and these laws that prohibited most blacks from voting were just the icing on the cake when it came to the south and African Americans. A series of laws, known as the Jim Crow laws , were passed in the first years of the twentieth century that severely, legally limited the position of southern blacks. “Blacks and whites could not ride together in the same railroad cars, sit in the same waiting rooms, use the same washrooms, eat in the same restaurants, or sit in the same theaters. Blacks had no access to many public parks, beaches, picnic areas; they could not be patients in many hospitals. Much of the new legal structure did no more than confirm what had already been widespread social practice in the South since well before the end of Reconstruction. But the Jim Crow laws also stripped blacks of many of the modest social, economic and political gains they had made in the more fluid atmosphere of the late nineteenth century. They served, too, as a means for whites to retain control of social relations between the races in the rapidly growing cities and towns of the South, where traditional patterns of subjugation were more difficult to preserve than in the countryside.”

VII. Conclusions about Reconstruction

Despite the New South that emerged, however, Reconstruction was both a series of positives and negatives. Of course, we’ve just looked at the failures of Reconstruction, we’ve seen the fact that racism was not properly discussed or dealt with and that meant it would never go away in the South or the North. However, it’s successes were that it allowed African Americans a measure of dignity and equality that they had not had under slavery; it provided economic opportunity, including the possibility of owning land, and, most importantly, it allowed African Americans to create their own culture within the American south, through churches, schools and meeting groups, that would allow them to feel a true sense of freedom. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments would prove to be invaluable laws for the Civil Rights movement that was to occur a century later. Other African Americans would use the end of the war and Reconstruction to try their hand in the more free-wheeling, independent West, and to that story we’ll be turning next time!

Figure � SEQ Figure \* ARABIC �1�: A Photo of Georgia after the War

Figure � SEQ Figure \* ARABIC �2�: The Wade-Davis Bill

Figure � SEQ Figure \* ARABIC �6�: The First Black Vote

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Figure � SEQ Figure \* ARABIC �10�: Booker T. Washington

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� Many students ask “Why did Southern states decide to come back into the Union? They tried to secede and create their own country, so why now, with all of the difficult requirements for readmission, would they have acquiesced?” The answer is that the South was destroyed at war’s end—people were hungry and homeless and they needed financial support from the Union. The Union shrewdly held back much of that financial support until states had re-entered the Union. By 1868, three years after the conclusion of the war, you can imagine how desperate the south was becoming!

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� Alan Brinkley, The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People (McGraw Hill: New York, 1996), 448.

� It would be hard for whites to argue with self-improvement and less scary because he’s saying African Americans won’t challenge the system of discrimination/segregation in place.

� Brinkley, 449.

� Brinkley, 450.