The cruel war and the government

1. The Election of 1860

The election of 1860 was, to put it mildly, tumultuous. An aged fragment of the old Whig Party ran as the Constitutional Union Party (Links to an external site.) , centered in the Upper South. The party nominated John Bell of Tennessee and united behind a platform “to recognize no political principle other than the  Constitution (Links to an external site.)  of the country, the Union of the states, and the Enforcement of the Laws." The Democrats deadlocked over whether they would support the putative standard bearer, Stephen Douglas, or a Southern candidate with orthodox pro-slavery credentials. After one fruitless party convention, the party reconvened and then broke into two factions. The Northern Democrats nominated Douglas and the Southern Democrats nominated Kentucky’s John Breckinridge (Links to an external site.) , then the Vice President of the United States.

The Republicans sought to avoid association with abolitionism, Brown’s Raid, or with anything that might be associated with the “Black Republican” label, so Abraham Lincoln’s nomination emerged only after other more famous but abolitionist candidates had been considered. With Lincoln, the Republicans hoped at avoid the worst of their opponents’ criticism. They emphasized instead their platform of (non-slave) westward expansion, economic growth, and individual liberty, or “Free Soil. Free Labor. Free Men.”

The cartoon above depicts the election of 1860 as a baseball game, with Lincoln as the winner. The dialogue, from left to right:

John Bell (Constitutional Union Party): It appears to me very singular that we three should strike foul and be “put out” while old Abe made such a “good lick”

Stephen Douglas (Democrat—North): That’s because he had that confounded rail to strike with. I thought our fusion would be a “short stop” to his career.

John C. Breckenridge (Democrat—South): I guess I’d better leave for Kentucky, for I smell something strong around here and begin to think that we are completely “skunk’d”

Abraham Lincoln (Republican): Gentleman, if any of you should ever take a hand in another match at this game, remember that you must have “a good bat” and strike a “fair ball” to make a “clean score” and a “home run.”

2. Secession

The Democrats’ split gave the Republicans the victory. By defeating Douglas in the populous North, they won the Electoral College by almost 60 percent. Almost immediately, the Lower South states took steps to call secession conventions. To them, Lincoln’s election and the general Republican sweep of politics was an attack on their slave systems. As they clearly stated at the time (and as you will read this week), the idea of “states’ rights” was used to defend slavery, not as the goal. The main “state right” invoked was the right of secession, not the right of states to judge federal law. Southern states were quick to attack Northern states for refusing to follow the Fugitive Slave Law, for example.

In their own words, the seceding states sought to maintain and perpetuate slavery. South Carolina’s ordinance declared:

[A]n increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution… Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party [the Republicans] has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.

Texas was also blunt:

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated States to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility [sic] and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery—the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits—a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.

The initial round of seceding states were all from the Lower South, had a higher percentage of slaves, and a stronger commitment to a slave based economy. Several slaveholding states remained. These included the “Border States” of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. All of these shared a common border and economic ties with free states. Below them lay the Upper South states of Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia. All were culturally Southern and committed to slavery, but were unwilling to break with the Union just yet. The Lower South states convened and established the Confederate States of America (Links to an external site.) with its capital at Montgomery, Alabama. They appointed former Mississippi senator and Secretary of War Jefferson Davis (Links to an external site.) as provisional president. Meanwhile, they held out hope that other states would soon join them.

View an animated GIF of the changing map of the United States (Links to an external site.) before and during secession.

Politicians worked to reverse the crisis in early 1861. Kentucky’s Robert Crittenden proposed a series of measures that would confirm existing slave laws like the Fugitive Slave Law but make the Missouri Compromise permanent and extend it westward. It did not garner enough support. Meanwhile, outgoing President James Buchanan condemned extremists on both sides but said he had no power to stop secession. During his inaugural address, Lincoln responded to his critics, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” But Lincoln also reiterated secession’s illegality, “[N]o State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.”

3. Towards War and War Strategies

Open war came a month and a half after Lincoln’s inauguration. The seceding states had taken advantage of the confusion of late 1860 and early 1861 by seizing federal facilities like post offices, customs houses, forts, and naval facilities (aided by Southerners in Buchanan’s War Department). Lincoln considered such actions to be unlawful, but had little practical recourse. By April, Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor was one of a handful of federally-manned facilities in those states. Eager to demonstrate its sovereignty, South Carolina ordered it evacuated, even turning back an unarmed resupply ship. On April 12, South Carolina forces opened fire on Ft. Sumter (Links to an external site.) (view the animation of the bombardment of Fort Sumter (Links to an external site.) ). It surrendered the next day. Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers from the remaining states to suppress the rebellion.

Instead of rallying around the Union, the Upper South states seceded, citing Lincoln’s “aggression” and defending the institution of slavery. That left the Border States, all of which remained in the Union for various reasons. Lincoln’s next step was to identify strategies that would end the rebellion. At this point, Lincoln was less interested in destroying slavery than he was in restoring the Union. He and other Northern politicians believed in fighting for the Union on one hand, but entertained measures that might lead to reconciliation. As a result, abolitionists had yet to fully commit to Lincoln’s methods. With Army leadership decimated by Southern defections, Lincoln struggled to find a general that could lead Union armies to victory, in particular after the first significant Union defeat by Confederate forces at Bull Run (Links to an external site.) (Creek) near Manassas, Virginia, in July 1861 (you can view an animation of the Battle of Bull Run (Links to an external site.) ).

The Confederacy seemed to be in an enviable position at the start of the conflict. It did not need to invade the North but merely to hold out until the Union sued for peace. The Confederacy also had a lot of martial enthusiasm, lots of experienced officers, and was fighting in its home territory. President Jefferson Davis counted on an “offensive-defensive” strategy to throw back Union challenges wherever they might take place.

Such a strategy required the maintenance of a defense cordon around the South that could resist attack. Southern military planners also counted on its slave population to produce the South’s food and other war supplies, thus freeing up a larger segment of the white male population to fight. They believed that these factors would counter the North’s larger industrial capacity, its larger population, and its navy.

Lincoln soon selected General George B. McClellan (Links to an external site.) to head the main Union Army, soon known as the Army of the Potomac. McClellan rallied the dispirited Union forces and rebuilt them, but undertook no major offensive campaigns, which frustrated Lincoln and the Republican leadership who expected tidings of victory. McClellan’s first major offensive against the Confederate capital, now located at Richmond, Virginia, in June-July 1862 was a case of defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. McClellan’s deliberate nature and fear of being outmanned and outflanked handed the Confederacy a win; McClellan retreated back to Northern Virginia and complained of the lack of support from Washington.

The Union Navy implemented a blockade of Southern ports. Initially porous, the blockade began to tighten and made the Confederacy pay a higher price to smuggle in war material or smuggle out cotton. The naval blockade also helped the Union established the Anaconda Plan (Links to an external site.) suggested by General Winfield Scott at the start of the war.

Meanwhile, Union generals in the western theater (the area between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River) carried the battle to the South and won a series of significant engagements, such as the capture of the Tennessee capital of Nashville in February 1862 and the capture of New Orleans two months later. In the coming years, Lincoln looked to these commanders for war-winning tactics and strategies. But the war came at enormous cost—Civil War battles such as the Battle of Shiloh (Links to an external site.) (April 1862) killed and wounded troops in staggering numbers compared to previous years (view the animation of the Battle of Shiloh (Links to an external site.) ). The Civil War was taking on elements of “ total war (Links to an external site.) ” that involved huge commitments from the civilian population.

 

4. The US Civil War in International Context

The US Civil War served unwittingly as an international referendum on the strength of democracy. European democratic movements looked to the United States as an example of popular rule. Should the US fail, their causes might be seen as hopeless. But of greater concern was whether or not European nations would recognize the Confederacy. Despite having no practical foreign policy experience, Lincoln initiated policies that got Europe to remain effectively neutral in the conflict. The Confederacy attempted diplomacy to curry European support, but those had little effect. Despite the gains to be made by the United States splitting up or by currying favor with the Confederacy to obtain cotton, Europe did not want to risk its commercial ties with the Union and ally with a slaveholding nation.

 

5. The Changing Nature of the War

At the start of the war, most Northerners considered it a war to suppress a rebellion. To the extent that slavery was mentioned, it was to maintain it according to the political arrangements that had existed before the 1850s. But the actions of African Americans themselves commenced a reconsideration of Union war aims and the eventual embrace of slavery’s destruction.

African Americans, both slave and free, played crucial roles in transforming the Civil War. Free blacks and their white abolitionist allies pressed the Lincoln administration to embrace slavery’s destruction or, at the very least, to employ black soldiers and sailors (moves that Lincoln demurred for many months for fear of alienating the Border States or jeopardizing the slim hope of reconciliation with the warring states). As the fighting went on, enslaved blacks either escaped Confederate control or were caught up in the Union advance. Their legal status was unclear. Escaped yes, but if the Civil War was not about the abolition of slavery, could Northern commanders return them to their “rightful” owners? Eventually commanders declared escaped enslaved blacks as “contraband” not subject to return according to the laws of war if they had been used for the Confederate war effort. It was an imperfect system, but it signaled to enslaved blacks that the Union armies meant freedom. Contraband subjects were soon joined by large numbers of escapees and refugees. Southern slave owners had to reconsider their slaves’ supposed dedication and loyalty. Many slave owners evacuated their slaves to areas far away from any potential fight.

Eventually Lincoln and Congress decided on a new line of thinking. Congress mandated that escaped blacks could not be returned and that the president might employ black troops. In 1862, Lincoln and his cabinet began debating some measure of emancipation. Lincoln considered this carefully, attempting to walk a fine line between abolishing slavery as an institution and freeing slaves under Confederate control. Finally, Lincoln decided he would issue such a proclamation under his authority as commander-in-chief, as part of his warfighting powers. Secretary of State William Seward (Links to an external site.) prevailed upon Lincoln to wait until a decisive victory to announce it, lest the Union look desperate in a time when its armies were still recovering from numerous setbacks.

That victory came in September 1862 at Antietam Creek (Links to an external site.) , near Sharpsburg, Maryland (view the animation of the Battle of Antietam (Links to an external site.) ). That battle represented a bold Confederate offensive, led by General Robert E. Lee. Lee had proposed to take the fight to the North, and by invading Maryland he thought he could embolden the peace movement in the North. Lee’s armies clashed with McClellan’s on September 17 and ended with Lee’s retreat. McClellan’s failure to pursue Lee was a setback, but the battle’s results were otherwise to the Union’s benefit. Lincoln announced a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation (Links to an external site.) (which you will read for this week), with a final version to take effect on January 1, 1863. Slavery was now the war’s most significant aspect. Union setbacks at the disastrous Battle of Fredericksburg at the end of the year would affect the Union’s war strategy, but the Confederacy was now on the moral defensive and soon on the military defensive.

1. Home Fronts: The Confederacy

Both sides faced tremendous social strains as a result of the war, most of which were plainly apparent by 1863. Both North and South resorted to more comprehensive measures to sustain their war efforts.

The South’s relative lack of industrial resources inhibited its ability to fight a sustained war. Although the war accelerated industrial growth, it was too little, too late. The Union Navy’s blockade had a telling effect at limiting cotton exports and imports of war material. By mid-1863, the Confederacy’s hope of European recognition was essentially gone and the Confederacy was dependent upon its own production and increasingly expensive goods smuggled in from overseas.

Confederate policies also caused significant social stress. The Confederacy was first to turn to a draft, which met resistance from Southern politicians who accused Confederate leaders of acting like a centralized national government rather than a confederation. The draft exempted one man for every twenty slaves he owned, a policy that favored the rich. A “tax in kind” policy that appropriated crops for the war effort brought Confederate tax collectors to farms, a nagging reminder about the cost of sustaining the conflict, particularly for small farmers. The South, like the North, faced domestic opposition to the war that affected the war effort. Several Southern towns experienced bread riots (Links to an external site.) that highlighted what many believed to be the undue burden of the Confederate war effort.

Poor whites often resented political and economic elites and argued that the war had a disproportionate effect on the Confederacy’s non-slaveholding population. Some Southern politicians even desired peace talks to end the conflict, a subject that came up during the 1863 Confederate congressional elections.

Many Southerners expressed their opposition to the war in overt terms. Significant pockets of the Confederacy contained Unionists, those who for a variety of reasons opposed secession or who had come to oppose the Confederacy itself. Areas like eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, and western Virginia (which split off and formed the state of West Virginia) contained a strong Unionist presence. Sometimes these areas supported open resistance through guerrilla raids or enlistments with the US Army itself.

 

2. Home Fronts: The Union

The Union and its people were able to sustain a war effort despite serious setbacks. The war was the subject of literature, music, and other forms of public expression that historian Drew Gilpin Faust refers to (in a book of the same name) as the “ republic of suffering (Links to an external site.) .” Songs like the popular “The Vacant Chair” (Links to an external site.) helped families and individuals remember their recent dead. Congress passed legislation for the first national military cemeteries, as a way of memorializing the dead as individuals (when possible). Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was given at the occasion of dedicating one of these cemeteries, memorializing a war that was still going on.

After the war, the US attempted to locate and remove the Civil War dead to national cemeteries. Arlington National Cemetery was a result of this effort, aided by the fact that the premises were seized from its owner, Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

Embalming was in its infancy, and private, professional embalmers traveled with the armies to bring loved ones back home for proper burial. Families and communities visited battle fields to bring back remains for proper burial and mourning. The Civil War saw the popularization of such innovations as the corpse preserver coffin (Links to an external site.) —a coffin built with room for ice to keep the body cool, an airtight compartment, and a window for viewing the deceased.

Organizations like the United States Sanitary Commission raised money and donations to aid the Union forces’ hygiene effort (poor sanitation, the primitive state of medical care, and disease were major killers of soldiers). People at the state and local level formed a myriad of groups for war-related purposes. Churches and religious organizations supported the physical and spiritual health of the armed forces as well. Northern abolitionists, both white and black, made concerted efforts for the relief of former slaves (freedmen) and to lobby for post-war reforms like education and land redistribution. These endeavors both bolstered morale and brought the Union civilian population directly into the war effort. While similar efforts also existed in the South, they operated on a smaller scale and were often times limited by the stricter gender roles imposed on Southern white women.

Like the South, the Union populace experienced social strain as a result of the war. One particular issue of concern was that the war would liberate the South’s slaves, who might then compete with Northern labor. “Copperhead” Democrats (Links to an external site.) opposed the war. They frequently attacked the Lincoln administration on this account or accused Lincoln of using the war emergency to unconstitutionally expand federal powers. They were particularly concerned with Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus (Links to an external site.) , which was the right of courts to review the arrest of individuals or their trial by military tribunal.

In 1863, the Union joined the Confederacy in imposing conscription on able-bodied men. This provoked the most notable Northern backlash against the war, the New York City Draft Riots (Links to an external site.) of July 1863. New York had been a hotbed of anti-war sentiment, and the imposition of a federal draft incited mobs to riot. More than a hundred individuals were killed and at least 11 blacks lynched before US troops helped to suppress the riots.

 

3. Women and the War

The war put burdens on women on both sides. As men left to fight, women assumed roles as heads of household, taking charge of the economic and social welfare of their families. Women also worked in factories producing for the war effort and did clerical work for the War Department. More Northern women left the household for public work than women in the South, who had more social restrictions placed on them. Large numbers of women on both sides also joined organizations that supported the war effort, for example the US Sanitary Commission.

In the absence of a comprehensive health care system or organized veteran’s relief, women also bore responsibility for the care of returning wounded and disabled veterans. Nursing (Links to an external site.) emerged as an organized and female-dominated profession in this era and Northern nurses became actively involved in Civil War medical care. Backed by organizers like Dorothea Dix (Links to an external site.) , the Union’s nursing corps, including famed Union nurse Clara Barton (Links to an external site.) , tended to wounded soldiers and increased the standards of medical care. The Confederacy also employed women as nurses, but not as systematically and with less formal organization.

Historians are also aware of a few women on each side who adopted male attire and demeanor to fight in the war. For example, Sarah Rosetta Wakeman (Links to an external site.) used the name Lyons Wakeman to enlist at age 19 (claiming to be 21) in the 153rd Regiment of the New York State Volunteers. Wakeman served in Virginia and Louisiana, where she saw combat. She died of disease in June 1864, her true sex undiscovered. Her story only became known in the late twentieth century after her letters home to family were discovered. Wakeman’s story was unusual, but not unique. Rather than being observers or passive participants, women played a multitude of roles for the US and Confederacy during the conflict.

 

4. Black Soldiers in the War

The decision to employ black soldiers marked a turning point in the Civil War. The concerted enlistment of black soldiers to fight for the Union started after the Emancipation Proclamation. Still, Lincoln and others strongly favored the segregation of black troops (enlisted as US Colored Troops) and their being commanded by white officers. The Confederacy made no significant effort to enlist black troops and resisted it until too late in the war to have made a difference. Despite the lower pay, lack of respect, and menial assignments, black Union sailors and soldiers were a key part of the Union Army (one-fifth of its total numbers at one point). Black units participated in several key battles, and helped undermine the Confederacy’s morale and its belief in black loyalty and subservience.

5. Tides of Battle

In mid-December 1862, news out of Virginia broke that the Union Army had suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg (Links to an external site.) , which sent the American public reeling (view an animation of the Battle of Fredericksburg (Links to an external site.) ). That battle was indirectly a result of President Lincoln’s effort to bolster Union morale after Confederate gains in late 1862. In particular, Lincoln struggled to find a more vigorous overall commander, replacing the cautious and methodical General George B. McClellan with General Ambrose Burnside (Links to an external site.) . Burnside refused the offer twice, only taking it upon third asking to avoid the position going to a rival general. Burnside’s reluctance was a bad omen of his command abilities. Lee’s decisive victory over Burnside at Fredericksburg deflated any morale gained after Antietam.

The Union’s spirits were lifted somewhat by the announcement of the final Emancipation Proclamation  (Links to an external site.) on January 1, 1863 and the US victory at the Battle of Stones River from December 31-January 2, 1863. However, the Union still faced an uphill climb and frustration over the lack of progress.

 

6. Lee’s Offensive

Robert E. Lee sought to sustain the Confederate initiative won at Fredericksburg. Like in mid-1862, Lee advocated an offensive strategy to take the fight northwards, winning what battles he could and aiding the Union’s anti-war movement. He swept Northern Virginia of Union forces in April and May 1863, defeating Burnside’s replacement, Joseph Hooker, at Chancellorsville (Links to an external site.) (view an animation of the Battle of Chancellorsville (Links to an external site.) ). Lincoln then replaced Hooker with General George Meade. Meade took command as the Confederacy embarked on its second Northern invasion. The two armies famously clashed at Gettysburg (Links to an external site.) from July 1–3, 1863 (view an animation of the Battle of Gettysburg (Links to an external site.) ). Union forces turned back the Confederate assaults, most dramatically on the last day with the ill-fated attack known as Pickett’s Charge. Gettysburg marked a turning point in the war. Lee’s forces retreated, ending the Confederate offensive, and would now have to fight a protracted defensive war to force the Union to terms.

Simultaneously, the campaign in the Mississippi River region reached its climax. After several months of resistance, the town of Vicksburg (Links to an external site.) , Mississippi, surrendered to besieging Union troops led by Ulysses S. Grant (Links to an external site.) (view an animation of the Battle of Vicksburg (Links to an external site.) ). The Confederacy was cut in two, with the Mississippi River fully in Union hands. Union forces in the west gained momentum and now threatened to bisect the Confederacy once again by moving southeast from southern Tennessee into northern Georgia.

In 1864, President Lincoln selected Grant as commanding general. Lincoln believed he had found a commander who understood modern warfare and the need to sustain momentum over the long haul. Grant came east, leaving his theater commanders to keep up attacks against Confederate forces there while he confronted Lee directly. Grant’s offensives had mixed results. Battles like the Wilderness (Links to an external site.) and Cold Harbor (Links to an external site.) were tactical Union defeats, but in the overall scheme the battles weakened Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. By this time, the distinctive set-piece battles of the early years had given way to sprawling engagements in which opposing troops were in near-constant contact. The prize would go to the side who could survive a war of attrition (Links to an external site.) .

 

7. Lincoln’s Assassination and the End of the War

Lincoln’s prospects for reelection in 1864 depended in part upon the success of Grant’s armies to boost Union morale. Lincoln ran on the National Union Party ticket, the name the Republicans used on the national level, and selected the Democrat and Southern Unionist Andrew Johnson as his running mate. With the support of US Army soldiers (many of whom were furloughed to go home and vote) and the fall of Atlanta (Links to an external site.) in September, Lincoln won a convincing popular and Electoral College victory.

By early 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment  (Links to an external site.) officially abolished slavery as the Union was winning the battle of attrition. General William T. Sherman’s March through Georgia turned northeast through South Carolina and North Carolina. Meanwhile, Grant’s forces hammered at Confederate forces in Virginia. By April 1865, Richmond itself was under threat of direct attack. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia retreated with Grant’s forces on its heels. On April 9, 1865, Lee realized his hopelessness and surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox (Links to an external site.) , Virginia. Just over a week later, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston negotiated a surrender of his forces to Sherman at Durham Station, North Carolina (present-day Durham). Intermittent fighting took place for weeks afterwards but the Civil War was effectively over. Confederate president Jefferson Davis fled with what he could of his government after Lee abandoned Richmond. Davis’s plans to continue the fight from exile ended with his capture outside Irwinville, Georgia, in May 1865.

The war may have been over, but other struggles continued. Lincoln’s death on April 15, after being shot the night before by John Wilkes Booth (Links to an external site.) , certainly traumatized the Union. It also left a big question as to what his successor, Andrew Johnson, would do as president. The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery, but provisions for the political future of the nation’s freedmen were rudimentary at best. The rebuilding of the South and of the nation itself was a matter that would be discussed in the phase of US history known as Reconstruction.

1. Reconstruction and the Presidents

Reconstruction began not with the collapse of the Confederacy, but with efforts in Union-occupied areas during the war. While clearly favoring an end to slavery, President Lincoln favored an end to the war first and foremost. He countermanded orders from Army officers that freed captured slaves or harbored escaped ones until finally deciding upon a federal policy (i.e. the Emancipation Proclamation) to abolish slavery. Lincoln construed his role as a legalistic one—bound by the limits of the Constitution—but also determined by his role as overall military commander in a time of rebellion. In essence, Lincoln saw the war’s aims as reconciliation since secession had been illegal and unrecognized by the Constitution. His embracing of emancipation and the Thirteenth Amendment (in early 1865) must be understood in terms of evolving wartime strategy rather than as an innate conviction.

Lincoln’s practical approach encountered resistance from congressional Republicans (generally referred to as Radical Republicans  (Links to an external site.) ) who favored a more forceful policy regarding abolition, a sterner policy regarding Southern reentry to the Union, and protection of freed blacks. If the Southern states had not legally seceded, they had at least forfeited their political rights under the Constitution through “treasonous” rebellion. Thus began a political tug-of-war between the president and Congress over what policies should be enacted and by whom.

For instance, Lincoln’s December 1863 Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction aimed to reconcile occupied areas of Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana to reintegration in the Union. Congressional Republicans objected to the Proclamation’s leniency, blocked its implementation, and instead enacted the Wade-Davis Bill  (Links to an external site.) to tighten the requirements for readmission and require protection of freedmen’s rights. Lincoln feared Wade-Davis would undermine his own reconciliation efforts and pocket-vetoed the bill, which meant that he did not sign it and, since there were less than ten days left in the Congressional session, it could not become law without his signature.

Lincoln’s last statement on Reconstruction (Links to an external site.) indicated a desire to get beyond the question of whether the Southern states had effectively put themselves out of the Union or not, though he did support the expansion of black male suffrage. “Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between these States and the Union,” he said on April 11. His death four days later meant whatever vision he had would be replaced by others’ ideas, in particular that of then President Andrew Johnson (Links to an external site.) .

Johnson, a Tennessee Unionist and Democrat, assumed an even narrower legal interpretation of what could be done to the Southern states. To him, since secession was illegal there could be no remedy for its violation, meaning that consequences could be dealt only for the rebellion. Once Southern governments had been restored (through ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment and a couple other steps) then nothing else remained; the Union was “restored” as if it had existed uninterrupted. Johnson also alienated Republicans with his lenient pardon of Southern slaveholders.

 

2. Radical Republicans Take the Helm

Congressional Republicans watched events in the South carefully. They had hoped that victory in the war would open the door to a reformed South, stripped not only of slavery but also of its undemocratic political system. Southern states may have ratified the Thirteenth Amendment and recognized blacks as legal human beings, but beyond that they were disinclined to make changes in the domain of race relations. Black codes  (Links to an external site.) in several Southern states resembled slavery in spirit if not in form. Congress passed the first Civil Rights Act in 1866 (Links to an external site.) , which Johnson promptly vetoed (and which Congress overrode).

Congressional relations with Johnson deteriorated. Johnson attempted to countermand Congressional orders for the army occupying the South. In 1867, Congress passed two Reconstruction Acts and sharply curtailed Johnson’s ability to affect Reconstruction. This began the phase of Congressional Reconstruction (sometimes called Radical Reconstruction  (Links to an external site.) ), to distinguish it from the Presidential Reconstruction of Lincoln and Johnson.

Johnston stood firmly against black suffrage, declaring in late 1867:

But if anything can be proved by known facts, if all reasoning upon evidence is not abandoned, it must be acknowledged that in the progress of nations Negroes have shown less capacity for government than any other race of people. No independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands. On the contrary, wherever they have been left to their own devices they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism. In the Southern States, however, Congress has undertaken to confer upon them the privilege of the ballot. Just released from slavery, it may be doubted whether as a class they know more than their ancestors how to organize and regulate civil society. Indeed, it is admitted that the blacks of the South are not only regardless of the rights of property, but so utterly ignorant of public affairs that their voting can consist in nothing more than carrying a ballot to the place where they are directed to deposit it. I need not remind you that the exercise of the elective franchise is the highest attribute of an American citizen, and that when guided by virtue, intelligence, patriotism, and a proper appreciation of our free institutions it constitutes the true basis of a democratic form of government, in which the sovereign power is lodged in the body of the people. (Andrew Johnson: "Third Annual Message," December 3, 1867. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29508.) (Links to an external site.)

Johnson’s violation of the Tenure of Office Act of 1867 (Links to an external site.) (involving the ability of the President to dismiss Executive branch officials) led to his impeachment by the House in early 1868. The Senate refused to convict. Johnson remained in office, but Radical Republicans came across looking vindictive and out of the bounds of political propriety. In 1868, Radical Republicans were able to pass the Fourteenth Amendment  (Links to an external site.) to guarantee blacks equal political rights and established their citizenship beyond question (as well as for any other person born in the U.S.). Two years later, Congress ratified the Fifteenth Amendment  (Links to an external site.) which gave all male citizens the right to vote.

That year, former general Ulysses S. Grant won the presidential election as a Republican. Grant’s administration supported the suppression of the Ku Klux Klan (Links to an external site.) in several Southern areas, but undertook no new Reconstruction initiatives.

 

3. Black Reconstruction

As Reconstruction unfolded, former slaves built on their own grassroots organizing efforts to become a significant part of the American electorate. In the South, black men won elections and were appointed to office, almost exclusively as Republicans. Only in very rare cases did blacks “control” a state legislature. Their impact was felt mostly in coalition with white Southern Republicans. The Reconstruction-era state governments enacted significant reform legislation in the South that established school systems, civil equality, and progressive tax systems.

Black communities across the South worked together to establish churches, schools, and other organizations. Those who had not been allowed to marry under slavery now registered their marriages with the Freedmen’s Bureau  (Links to an external site.) and with state governments. The Freedmen’s Bureau had general responsibility from Congress to administer services to millions of Southern freedmen and women. Part of that duty included registering unofficial slave marriages as legal ones. The records show that regardless of the lack of official paperwork, and despite forced separations during slavery, these men and women considered themselves married for decades.

Some issues, such as access to land, were not easily resolved and this had massive implications for the economic progress of African Americans. Even in the cases of land abandoned by slave owners, very little was redistributed to the enslaved peoples who had worked that land. Instead, the Freedmen’s Bureau urged blacks to return as wage workers to the fields they had once been compelled to work as enslaved peoples. Whatever legal protections the Freedmen’s Bureau may have been able to offer were lost in the patchwork of laws that saw blacks as the South’s labor supply, a supply that had to be maintained at all costs. Radical Republicans made little headway against this system or the declining interest in social and economic reform.

As a result, the system of sharecropping  (Links to an external site.) grew substantially. In this system, a farmer (usually along with his entire family) lived on and tended the crops of a landowner. At the end of the harvest the landlord and sharecropper would “share” the profits from the crops. In the meantime, the sharecropper depended upon the land owner for food, supplies, and credit. The landlord, not the sharecropper, made the decision about what crop could be grown. That crop tended to be cotton. However, the declining price paid for that crop over time contributed to a vicious cycle of debt known as crop liens (Links to an external site.) that kept many sharecroppers tied to the land and beholden to the land owner. Sharecropping, and the system of subservience and debt it perpetuated, had a significant effect on the South’s social relations until the twentieth century.

4. Northern and National Reconstruction

Reconstruction has been strongly associated with the physical and political rebuilding of the South but it also had effects elsewhere. Many Northern states had discriminatory laws against blacks which were abolished by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

In addition, advocates for women’s rights had generally supported the war against slavery and the cause of black suffrage. However, supporters of universal suffrage clashed with those who supported prioritizing black men’s voting rights. Some advocates of women’s rights found themselves in principled opposition to the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments because of their exclusion of rights for women. The women’s suffrage movement split over this issue and many advocates found themselves using racist arguments to advance their cause, arguing that white women’s suffrage would counterbalance the vote of blacks generally. Southern white women generally preferred to maintain the gender and racial status quo and were less likely to support the extension of suffrage of any kind.

The national economy grew as a result of the war and so did the federal government’s powers. With the Southern states gone from Congress during the war, Republicans enacted a series of sweeping policy changes: a national currency (replacing a system of private or state-issued currency), funding a transcontinental railroad, and opening up the Great Plains to settlers through the Homestead Act (Links to an external site.) (all topics that will be explored further in HIS102: US History II). Higher education received federal support by allowing states to sell federal land and use the proceeds to fund universities and colleges. Higher tariffs and a national income tax were also wartime policies that, to varying degrees, became national policy and shaped national economic development.

Meanwhile, the abolition of slavery, the war, and structural changes in international cotton markets devastated Southern agriculture. As a result, the South went from being a wealthy (at least for planters and slave owners) region to being a relatively poor one. In the late nineteenth century, US economic wealth was overwhelmingly shaped by industry and industrial development and boosted enormously by the Civil War and postwar policies. The South had gone to war to preserve slavery but the war only served to hasten slavery’s destruction. Postwar Southern politicians advocated a “ New South (Links to an external site.) ” approach to rehabilitate the region by attracting industry and diversifying the region’s agriculture. Unfortunately, the South’s pre-Civil War economic legacy continued to influence the post-Civil War South and prevented the South from regaining its lost influence.

 

5. Reconstruction, Redemption, and the End

The Fifteenth Amendment  (Links to an external site.) , ratified in 1870, guaranteed to black men the right to vote. It was the last major piece of legislation during the era of Reconstruction. Violence in the South against the symbols of Reconstruction, combined with Northern indifference, marked the beginning of the end for the grand experiment. The Grant administration had suppressed the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1870s, but violence and extra-legal resistance to Reconstruction continued. Politicians dedicated to the imposition of white supremacy won office in the South—oftentimes through contacts with groups like the Ku Klux Klan—and promised to “redeem” the South from Reconstruction. These politicians began the process of dismantling legal protections for blacks, evading the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and scaling back the other reforms.

The Supreme Court then began to weigh-in on Reconstruction. The Court’s decision in the Slaughterhouse Case (1873) (Links to an external site.) significantly limited the Fourteenth Amendment. This lawsuit was brought by a group of New Orleans butchers challenging a state-established slaughterhouse monopoly. The (white) butchers challenged state law, claiming that it abridged their constitutional rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court ruled against them and in doing so limited the Fourteenth Amendment to federal actions and excluded civil rights from what the national government could regulate. The courts continued to take a skeptical view of any civil rights legislation in the late nineteenth century.

Reconstruction was a side issue by the 1876 election (Links to an external site.) . The national Republican Party chose to focus on economic issues (resulting from the Panic of 1873) and virtually gave up on Reconstruction. The confusion over the Electoral College results between the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and the Democrat Samuel Tilden was resolved when Hayes was acknowledged as the undisputed winner. His victory occurred in exchange for the withdrawal of the last few federal troops from the South. White supremacist governments had little to fear from federal intervention and, as a result, the rights of African Americans became vulnerable.

Over time, the Civil War took on elements of a romantic episode in popular memory, according to which a noble populace defended a traditional way of life and state’s rights rather than defending slavery.

 

6. Conclusion

First borne out of wartime efforts, Reconstruction gradually evolved into a more comprehensive (though much debated) program not just to reconcile the South to the Union but to implement a bold democratic experiment. Republicans hoped that this experiment would dismantle the institutions that had sustained slavery and the South’s political system and thus reconcile the nation. But its implementation first ran into the realities of white Southern resistance and a desire to maintain traditional race relations and politics. Second, it confronted the realities of national politics and debate within the Republican Party about what could and could not be done. The bold experiment had some successes but ultimately came up short. New concerns in the 1870s weakened support for Reconstruction and allowed for the 1877 Compromise that had repercussions for decades to come. The most immediate effects meant that black Southerners were trapped in a system of racism, indebtedness, and political inequality that did not appear all that different from slavery.