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Reconstruction

Dates:

The Civil War?_________

Reconstruction? ________

9-9-12

9/7/2010

Foner Chapter 15
"What Is Freedom?": Reconstruction, 1865–1877

After the Civil War, freed slaves and white allies in the North and South attempted to redefine the meaning and boundaries of American freedom. Freedom, once for whites only, now incorporated black Americans. By rewriting laws, African-Americans, for the first time, would be recognized as citizens with equal rights and the right to vote, even in the South. Blacks created their own schools, churches, and other institutions. Though many of Reconstruction’s achievements were short-lived and defeated by violence and opposition, Reconstruction laid the basis for future freedom struggles.

Introduction: Sherman Land

From the Plantation to the Senate

After the Civil War, freed slaves and white allies in the North and South attempted to redefine the meaning and boundaries of American freedom. Freedom, once for whites only, now incorporated black Americans. By rewriting laws, African Americans, for the first time, would be recognized as citizens with equal rights and the right to vote, even in the South. Blacks created their own schools, churches, and other institutions. Though many of Reconstruction’s achievements were short-lived and defeated by violence and opposition, Reconstruction laid the basis for future freedom struggles.

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Q: Chapter 15 includes a new comparative discussion on the aftermath of slavery in various Western Hemisphere societies. You see important commonalities in the struggle over land and labor in post-Emancipation societies. How do you situate the experiences of former slaves in the United States in this borrowed content.

A: Well, just as slavery was a hemispheric institution, so was emancipation. It’s useful for us in thinking about the aftermath of slavery in the United States, the Reconstruction era and after to see what happened to other slaves in places where slavery was abolished. What you see is a similar set of issues and conquests taking place everywhere slaves desire land of their own—this is the No. 1 thing, they want autonomy, they want independence from white control. All of these regions are agricultural, everywhere former slaves demand land. In some places they get land fairly effectively, like in Jamaica, West Indies, where there’s a lot of unoccupied land they can take. In some places they don’t, but that battle to who’s going to have access to land and economic resources is a commonality in the aftermath of slavery. So too is the effort of local plantation owners trying to get the plantation going again and to force slaves to work back on the plantations, or if not, to bring labor from somewhere else—in the West Indies they bring workers from China, from India, from southeast Asia to replace slaves who were moving off on land of their own. They can’t quite do that in the United States—they tried to bring in a few Chinese, but the national government here prevents it; they say, no, you’ve got to deal with these former slaves equitably, fairly, and then you won’t need foreign labor. What’s different in the United States, and I think it shows the difference between this country and others, is how the right to vote becomes so critical to former slaves. This is a democracy that prides itself on being a democracy and freedom in the United States includes the right to vote. That’s why the women’s movement made the right to vote such a key demand, even though the issues facing women were not political, there were social, economic, etc. In the United States if you are denied the right to vote, you are stigmatized as being outside the boundary of freedom. That’s not true in places where the right to vote is not as restricted for everybody like in the West Indies where you have to own a lot of property to vote. So here the issue of black political power and black political participation immediately comes to the fore in the aftermath of slavery in a way that it doesn’t in other parts of the Western Hemisphere that abolished slavery.

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Q: What were the understandings of freedom held by the freed men after the war, and how did the freed men go about remaking their lives during Reconstruction?

A: African-Americans brought out of slavery complex ideas about freedom. Slaves thought about freedom a great deal. They didn't come out ignorant of freedom or without any ideas about freedom. It's probably like prisoners think about freedom a great deal also. People who don't have it value it the most. To African-Americans, freedom meant, of course first of all, simply not being subjected to the punishments, inequalities, and restrictions of slavery. They could get education now, they could move about without a pass, they could wear whatever clothing they wanted, which was restricted in many places, they could carry a gun, they could own dogs—things like that. But more than that, freedom for them meant empowerment, it meant enjoying the rights that whites did in a democratic society: the right to vote, the right to go before a court and be treated equally. And it also meant increasing economic independence, the right to land; freedmen felt that ownership of land, or "forty acres and a mule," in the phrase of the day, was essential to guaranteeing their substantive freedom in the aftermath of slavery.

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Q: In what sense were the Reconstruction amendments a great constitutional revolution for America? How did they change the role of the national government?

A: The Reconstruction amendments to the U.S. Constitution—the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth—really brought a radical change in the Constitution. These are the most important changes in the Constitution since the adoption of the Bill of Rights seventy years before that. What they did first of all, of course, was to abolish slavery, but more than that to shift power in the federal systems away from the states and toward the national government. The national government now became the definer and the protector of the citizens' rights. The Fourteenth Amendment declares that anybody born in the United States is a citizen, that all citizens regardless of race are to enjoy the same basic rights, and that no state can deprive a citizen of those rights; and it empowers the federal government to override and oversee the actions of the states that might interfere with the privileges and immunities of American citizens. So instead of the federal government being seen, as it was before the Civil War, as a danger to liberty, now a strong federal government is seen as the protector of liberty, or the "custodian of freedom," as Charles Sumner, the senator from Massachusetts, put it. So this represents a shift in power between states and the national government, and also a shift in the conception of what the role of the federal government is. For the first time, the federal government takes on the role of protecting the basic rights of the American citizens.

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Q: How do you assess the successes and failures of Reconstruction and its overall legacy to the country?

A: Reconstruction did not succeed, at least certainly in its broad aims. The aim was to create a functioning, interracial democracy in the South. Its aim was to entrench the notion of equal rights, equal civil rights, and equal political rights for blacks in the society. Well, it didn't work; those rights were eventually taken away and for a long time they were violated. On the other hand, Reconstruction created a window of opportunity in which many forms of progress took place. Blacks were able to create their own institutions, churches, families; many of them did acquire land, eventually, although another failure of Reconstruction was that a large majority of blacks were left in a status of dependence, economic poverty, and dependence on whites, so Reconstruction lays the groundwork, you might say, for future struggle. You know, the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s is called sometimes the "Second Reconstruction." It built upon the aspirations, the tactics, and the legal doctrines of the first Reconstruction, but it took a full century for the country to again try to live up to these ideals.

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Q: And why did Andrew Johnson veto the bill?

A: Andrew Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Bill because he did not approve of the principle of black equality. Johnson was deeply racist; he also was a strong believer in states' rights, and he did not think Congress had a right to tell the states how to deal with individual citizens within the states. If a state wanted to discriminate between black and white citizens, that was up to them, it wasn't Congress's job to tell them how to do that. Johnson basically felt that Reconstruction should be in the hands of white people; black people should just go back to work on the plantations and not seek to take part in the public sphere. Most Republicans in Congress, at this point, were uncertain whether blacks should have the right to vote; they would give it to them a little later on. But they certainly believed that the basic legal protections of citizenship should apply equally to white and black Americans.

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Q: You say that the Fourteenth Amendment made the most important change in the Constitution since the Bill of Rights. What was that change, and why was it so significant?

A: The Fourteenth Amendment, which was passed through Congress in 1866 and then ratified by the states a couple of years later, changes the Constitution in a couple of fundamental ways.   The Bill of Rights had protected our basic liberties against interference by the federal government. It begins with the words "Congress shall make no law" abridging freedom of speech, the press, etc. The Fourteenth Amendment is directed at the states, not at the federal government. The states now have to recognize the equality before the law of all citizens, equal protection of the law, and due process of law, and states cannot deprive any individual of life, liberty, or property. So now, instead of the Bill of Rights, which restricts Congress, the Fourteenth Amendment empowers Congress to oversee and override measures of the state governments that interfere with the basic equal rights of American citizens. So it's a fundamental shift in the American system; it makes the national government the basic protector of the rights of citizens, not the state governments.   Also, it introduces this notion of equality for the first time into the Constitution. The word "equality" does not exist in the original Constitution. It's the Fourteenth Amendment which makes the Constitution what it has been ever since: a document to which groups of Americans who feel aggrieved, who feel their rights have been violated, can go; they can claim their constitutional rights in court. So it really makes the Constitution a vehicle for groups that feel aggrieved, which it really hadn't been before the Civil War.

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Q: Overall, can you comment on the Reconstruction amendments and the way in which they re-envisioned the role of the federal government?

A: The three Reconstruction amendments — Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth—the Thirteenth abolished slavery, the Fourteenth established equal citizenship, the Fifteenth tried to give black men the right to vote; these are all things which the federal government couldn't have conceived of doing before the Civil War. But the war itself empowers the national government, and the abolition of slavery leads, after a terrible political struggle, to the incorporation of black Americans as equal citizens of the society. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments each end with a clause saying, "Congress shall have the power to enforce this amendment." In other words, it gives Congress the right to protect the basic rights of American citizens. And even though those basic rights of blacks were soon violated and taken away, really, in many of the southern states, nonetheless those amendments remain in the Constitution, and a century later, they would be the basis, the legal constitutional basis, for the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. A hundred years later, those amendments, Charles Sumner—the senator from Massachusetts during Reconstruction—said were "sleeping giants" in the Constitution. And they did sleep for a long time, but then they were reawakened by the civil rights movement and became the basis for the civil rights revolution of the 1960s.

The Meaning of Freedom

Blacks and the Meaning of Freedom
African Americans’ understanding of freedom was shaped by their experience as slaves and observation of the free society around them.

Blacks relished the opportunity to demonstrate their liberation from the regulations (significant and trivial) associated with slavery.

The destruction of slavery made freedom and its definition central to national life. Was freedom for former slaves to be simply negative—the absence of slavery? Or was freedom also positive—including rights to civil equality, the vote, or land ownership? Freedom was contested and contradictory in the era of Reconstruction.

African Americans’ sense of freedom was rooted in their experience of slavery and knowledge of free society. Freedom, above all, meant escaping the horrors and injustices of slavery and enjoying the rights and opportunities of American citizenship. Freed blacks celebrated their new space to do what was denied under slavery—hold meetings and religious services free of white supervision, own dogs, guns, and liquor, and move freely to find work and family members. Many moved to southern cities, which seemed liberating compared to the rural plantation areas.

The Meaning of Freedom to Ex Slaves

Independence from white control

Moving about – finding loved ones

Using African American Churches
Withdrawing from white churches

Schools – great thirst for education

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The Meaning of Freedom

Families in Freedom
The family was central to the postemancipation black community.

Freedom subtly altered relationships within the family.
Emancipation increased power of black men within family.

Black women withdrew from work as field laborers and house servants to the domestic sphere.

Black institutions established under slavery, such as the family and secret slave church, and free blacks’ churches and schools were strengthened and expanded after the war. The family was fundamental to postwar black life. Former slaves sought to find loved ones separated from them by sale, and widows of black soldiers won the fight to gain pensions from the federal government, which acknowledged the status of slave marriages. Reconstruction also transformed relationships within families as black men and women sought to inhabit the “separate spheres” of free families, with women spending more time with families, at home, and men engaging in most work outside the home. Yet poverty compelled many black women to find wage work.

Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition

Family Record, a lithograph marketed to former slaves after the Civil War

The Meaning of Freedom

Church and School
Blacks abandoned white-controlled religious institutions to create churches of their own.

Blacks of all ages flocked to the schools established by northern missionary societies, the Freedmen’s Bureau, and groups of ex-slaves.

After the war, most blacks also left white churches and established their own churches. Independent black churches, most notably Methodists and Baptists, grew rapidly, and the church became central to black life, providing an educational, social, and political space for the black community. Freed people actively sought to improve themselves through education, which they hoped would allow them to read the Bible, prosper, and participate in politics, and the first black colleges were founded at this time.

Mother and Daughter

Reading

2) African American ex Slaves’ Vision:

Land and Labor After Slavery

•Control over own labor

grow own food, not cash crops

Political Freedom: Origins of African American Politics

Who was involved? Ex soldiers, ministers, previously free blacks.

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3) Southern White Planters’ Vision

CONTROL OF LABOR:

Knew ex slaves didn’t want to work for them
So, Whites refusal to rent or sell land to freedmen.
Black Codes
strict control while working
Contracts – pay at end of one year
“Vagrancy” laws

•Response to Black efforts: Terror

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The Meaning of Freedom

Political Freedom
The right to vote became central to the former slaves’ desire for empowerment and equality.

To demonstrate their patriotism, blacks throughout the South organized Fourth of July celebrations.

Inevitably, in a society in which political participation was central to freedom, former slaves wanted the right to vote. Once the war ended, and even earlier in some parts of the South, free blacks and former slaves asserted themselves in the public sphere, meeting, petitioning, and demanding the right to vote and organize their own political groups and candidates. Blacks now celebrated the Fourth of July, a holiday that many white southerners soon came to shun.

The Meaning of Freedom

Land, Labor, and Freedom
Former slaves’ ideas of freedom were directly related to land ownership.
Many former slaves insisted that through their unpaid labor they had acquired a right to the land.

Land ownership was at the core of the former slaves’ sense of freedom. By acquiring land, the freed slaves hoped to create an economic life and communities beyond white control and interference. Many former slaves believed they had earned rights to the land through their unpaid labor. While freed people’s idea of freedom was similar to that of white Americans—including self-ownership, family stability, religious liberty, political participation, and economic independence—they saw freedom as an open-ended process of transformation, not a birthright that could be assumed.

The Meaning of Freedom

Masters without Slaves
The South’s defeat was complete and demoralizing.
Planter families faced profound changes.

Most planters defined black freedom in the narrowest manner.

Most southern whites were dismayed by defeat and emancipation, which caused enormous destruction and resulted in northern domination. Some 260,000 southern men died in the war, more than a fifth of the South’s adult male whites, and the war destroyed much of the agricultural property on which the southern economy was based. Plantation-owning families faced enormous changes, having lost their slaves and their life savings, which had been invested in Confederate government bonds. With their slaves gone, some had to engage in physical labor for the first time in their lives. Southern planters tried to impose their own vision of freedom on the former slaves, seeking to regain the old control they had exercised under slavery. Freedom for the planters still meant hierarchy and mastery; it was a privilege, not a right, and did not mean economic independence or civil and political equality.

Map 15.1 The Barrow Plantation

The Meaning of Freedom

The Free Labor Vision
The victorious Republican North tried to implement its own vision of freedom.
Free labor
The goal of The Freedmen’s Bureau was to establish a working free labor system.

Northerners immediately tried to impose their own vision of freedom as free labor. Blacks would become wage workers and landowners, just like free whites in the North, and northern investors would inject capital and migrants into the South to rebuild the economy. The South would eventually resemble the “free society” of the North. Conflict was inevitable. Planters wanted a labor system as close to slavery as possible. Former slaves wanted economic autonomy and access to land.

The Freedmen’s Bureau

The task of the Bureau:
establishing schools, providing aid to the poor and aged, settling disputes, etc.

Daunting, since it had fewer than 1,000 agents.

The Bureau’s achievements in some areas, notably education and health care, were striking.

Directed by O. O. Howard, a Maine abolitionist and Civil War general, the Freedmen’s Bureau was established by Congress in March 1865 to establish a functioning free labor system in the South. The bureau’s agents were tasked to establish schools, give aid to the poor and aged, solve disputes between whites and blacks, and ensure equal treatment for former slaves and white Unionists in the courts. Though the bureau, which existed from 1865 to 1870, had no more than 1,000 agents at its height, it accomplished much in education and health care.

The Freedmen’s Bureau, an engraving from Harper’s Weekly

Freedman’s Bureau

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White

Southern

Attack on Freeman’s

Bureau

A Democratic Party

broadside from

election

of 1866 in

Pennsylvania

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Freedman’s Bureau

Negroes at Freeman’s Bureau: A Positive Image

The Meaning of Freedom

Failure of Land Reform
President Andrew Johnson ordered nearly all land in federal hands to be returned to its former owners.

Because no land distribution took place, the vast majority of rural freed people remained poor & without property during Reconstruction.

But the bureau had a conflicted legacy in economic affairs. The bureau believed that sound race relations in the South would rest on fair wages and working conditions and on opportunities for improvement and social advance. But freed people wanted land, not wage work on plantations. The law founding the bureau enabled the agency to divide abandoned and confiscated land into 40-acre plots for rental and sale to the freed people. But in summer 1865, President Andrew Johnson ordered that almost all confiscated land in federal hands be returned to former owners. In South Carolina and Georgia, army troops forcibly evicted blacks who had been given land by General Sherman, who had promised “40 acres and a mule” to the families of former slaves. Although blacks protested, no land distribution occurred, and nearly all rural freed people stayed poor and property-less during Reconstruction. They had little choice but to return to work on the plantations, often for former owners. Black men were mostly confined to farm work, unskilled labor, and service jobs. Black women were restricted to domestic work as cooks and maids. Wages were too low to build savings or wealth, although by 1900 a significant number of southern blacks had acquired their own land.

The Meaning of Freedom

Toward a New South
Sharecropping came to dominate the cotton South and much of the tobacco areas.

Sharecropping initially arose as a compromise between blacks’ desire for land and planters’ desire for labor discipline.

A new labor system emerged in the South. The task system survived in the rice areas of South Carolina and Georgia, while supervised wage labor became the norm in the Cotton Belt and much of the tobacco areas of Virginia and North Carolina. Sharecropping developed first as a compromise between black desires for land and planters’ insistence on labor discipline. It allowed each black family to rent a part of a plantation, and the crop was divided between the worker and owner at the end of the year. Sharecropping gave planters a stable labor force, and former slaves preferred it to gang labor, because it freed them from white supervision. But sharecropping became increasingly oppressive over time, especially as declining prices for southern crops limited opportunities for sharecroppers.

Map 15.2 Sharecropping in the South, 1880

The Meaning of Freedom

The White Farmer
Aftermath of the war hurt small white farmers.

Crop-lien system was the use of crop as collateral for loans from merchants for supplies.

White farmers increased cotton cultivation, cotton prices plummeted,

They found themselves unable to pay back loans.

The war and its aftermath also greatly impacted white farmers, who experienced what they thought was a loss of freedom. Before the war, most small white farmers had raised food for their families and grew little cotton. The war and successive crop failures ruined many farmers. To get supplies from merchants, they were forced to grow cotton and commit part of the crop as collateral (property the creditor can seize if a debt is not paid), which became known as the “crop lien.”

The Meaning of Freedom

Both black and white farmers found themselves caught in the sharecropping and crop-lien systems.

The Urban South
Southern cities experienced remarkable growth after the Civil War.
Rise of a new middle class

Though the rural South’s economy suffered, southern cities saw considerable growth in the postwar period. New railroad lines allowed city merchants to engage in commerce with the North, and a new urban middle class of merchants, railroad entrepreneurs, and bankers benefited from the expansion of cotton production. Reconstruction transformed the lives of all southerners. The antebellum world of master, slave, and independent yeomen had been replaced by a postwar world with new social classes: landowning employers, black and white sharecroppers, white cotton farmers, black wage workers, and urban businessmen.

The Meaning of Freedom

Aftermaths of Slavery
The Reconstruction-era debates over transitioning from slavery to freedom had parallels in other Western Hemisphere countries where emancipation occurred in the nineteenth century.

Only in the United States did former slaves gain political rights quickly.

The debates over land, labor, and political power that defined Reconstruction in America had parallels in other societies that experienced emancipation. In each case, planters tried to make former slaves return to plantation work to grow the same crops as under slavery and considered freed black workers as lazy and devoid of ambition. Slaves sought independence, through owning land to avoid labor similar to that of slavery or other through strategies to escape white control. Planters attempted to replace freedmen with a new foreign source of labor—Indians in the British case in the Caribbean and Chinese in the American case. But the United States was unique as a post-slavery society in that it gave freedmen the right to vote, an event that emerged as a result of a struggle between Congress and President Andrew Johnson over the course of Reconstruction.

Chinese laborers at work on Louisiana plantation during Reconstruction.

Making of Radical Reconstruction

Andrew Johnson
Johnson identified himself as champion of “honest yeomen” and foe of large planters.

Johnson lacked Lincoln’s political skills and keen sense of public opinion.

Johnson believed that African Americans had no role to play in Reconstruction.

Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor to the presidency, was initially responsible for Reconstruction. Johnson rose from poverty to a political career in state politics in Tennessee, which he represented in the U.S. Congress and where he was governor. Johnson championed Tennessee’s small white farmers and made enemies of the state’s large slave-owning planters. Staunchly Unionist, he was the only senator from a seceding state to remain in the Senate, and he served as Tennessee’s military governor during the war. His vice presidency, Republicans hoped, would gain support for the party in the South. But Johnson lacked Lincoln’s political acumen and ability to compromise. Johnson also defended states’ rights; he argued that since secession was illegal, southern states never actually left the Union or gave up their right to govern their own affairs. And Johnson, while supporting emancipation, was deeply racist, and did not believe blacks had a role to play in Reconstruction.

The Making of Radical Reconstruction

Failure of Presidential Reconstruction
Johnson’s plan for Reconstruction offered pardons to white southern elite.

Johnson’s plan allowed new southern state governments free hand in managing local affairs.

In May 1865, Johnson started to release proclamations that inaugurated a period that historians call Presidential Reconstruction (1865–1867). Johnson offered pardons, which restored political and property rights (except for slaves), to all white southerners who took an oath of allegiance, excluding only Confederate leaders and wealthy planters whose prewar property was worth more than $20,000. But Johnson soon pardoned those exempted by this rule. He also appointed provisional governors and ordered them to call state conventions, elected by whites only, to establish loyal southern state governments. These new state governments were required only to abolish slavery, repudiate secession, and refuse to pay Confederate debts. While many people in the North at first supported Johnson’s plan, southern whites mostly returned prominent Confederates and old elites to power and violence against the freed people and northerners in the South generated opposition to Johnson’s policies.

The Making of Radical Reconstruction

The Black Codes
Southern governments began passing new laws that restricted the freedom of blacks.

These new laws violated free labor principles and created vigorous response from Republican North.

New state laws in the South regulating the lives of former slaves, called the Black Codes, caused the most opposition to Johnson’s Reconstruction policy. While these laws gave blacks the right to legally marry, own property, and access the courts in some ways, they denied them rights to testify against whites, serve on juries or state militias, or vote. They also allowed authorities to arrest and hire out to white landowners any blacks who refused to sign annual labor contracts, a measure to force the former slaves to return to the plantations. Some states prohibited blacks from buying land and allowed judges to assign black children to work for their former owners without parental consent. These codes, an effort to reinstitute conditions of slavery, violated the free labor principles of the Republican North and caused many in the North to believe that Johnson’s policy was encouraging white southerners to restore their prewar way of life.

Selling a Freeman to Pay His Fine at Monticello, Florida

The Making of Radical Reconstruction

The Radical Republicans

The Radical Republicans called for:
dissolution of Johnson’s state governments,
establishment of new governments that did not have “rebels” in power,
and the guarantee of right to vote for black men.

In December 1865, Johnson declared that the establishment of loyal governments in all southern states had reunited the nation. But Radical Republicans in Congress, who coalesced around opposition to Johnson’s policies, called for new state governments that would exclude “rebels” from power and guarantee the vote to blacks. The Radicals believed that the Union victory presented an opportunity to guarantee equal rights for all, despite race.

The Making of Radical Reconstruction

The Radicals fully embraced the expanded powers of the federal government that resulted from the Civil War.
Charles Summer
Thaddeus Stevens

They welcomed the expanded powers of the federal government and thought federalism and states’ rights could not prevent national efforts to secure equal rights.

Sen. Charles Sumner

1856 in senate! (pre Civil War)

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Rep. Thaddeus

Stevens

Of Pennsylvania

The Radical Republicans

Thaddeus Stevens’s most cherished aim was to confiscate the land of disloyal planters
and divide it among former slaves and northern migrants to the South.

His plan was too radical for most others in Congress.

Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts senator, and Thaddeus Stevens, representing Pennsylvania in the House, were the most prominent Radicals. Stevens in particular wanted to confiscate the lands of disloyal planters and distribute them to former slaves and northern migrants. But most members of Congress respected property rights too much to embrace Stevens’s land reform proposals.

The Making of Radical Reconstruction

The Origins of Civil Rights
Most Republicans were moderates, not radicals.

A moderate senator proposed two bills to modify Johnson’s policy:

Extend the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau

Civil Rights Bill (equality before the law was central; sought to overturn the Black Codes)

Johnson vetoed both bills.

Although Republicans had an overwhelming majority in Congress (the South had no representatives) the party was divided. Radicals were only a minority; most Republicans were moderates who thought Johnson’s plan needed only improvement. The moderates believed that southern and northern whites would never accept black suffrage. Moderates and Radicals refused to seat southerners elected to Congress, but the moderates made sure that southern governments remained. Moderates extended the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau and proposed a Civil Rights Bill, which defined all persons born in the United States as citizens and spelled out rights they enjoyed, regardless of race. Equality before the law was central to the bill, making it impossible for states to have laws, like the Black Codes, that discriminated against blacks. Free labor values also informed the bill, which prohibited laws denying citizens’ rights to make contracts, bring lawsuits, or enjoy protection of person and property. The bill said nothing of black suffrage. Johnson, who shocked the Congress by vetoing both bills, claimed he was defending states’ rights and said blacks did not deserve citizenship.

The Making of Radical Reconstruction

Congress passed the Civil Rights Bill of 1866 over Pres. Johnson’s veto and later extended the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau.

Johnson’s vetoes alienated many in the Republican Party, and in April 1866 the Civil Rights Bill became the first major law in U.S. history to be passed over a presidential veto.

Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition

A Democratic Party

broadside from the

election of 1866

in Pennsylvania

President Andrew Johnson, in 1868

lithograph by Currier and Ives.

Radical Reconstruction

The Fourteenth Amendment

It put in Constitution the principle of citizenship for all persons born in the United States and empowered the federal government to protect the rights of all Americans.

It did not grant blacks the right to vote.

Congress soon created its own Reconstruction plan. Its Civil Rights Bill became the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment, which placed in the Constitution the principle of citizenship for all persons born in the United States and empowered the federal government to protect the rights of all Americans. The amendment banned the states from abridging the “privileges and immunities” of citizens or denying them the “equal protection of the law.” This language allowed future Congresses and federal courts to give meaning to this promise of legal equality.

As a compromise between moderate and Radical Republicans, the amendment did not grant black suffrage. But it did stipulate that any state that denied voting rights to any group of men would face a reduction in its representation in Congress. Emancipation also threatened the South’s political power, because now all blacks, not just three-fifths, would be counted in determining a state’s representation in Congress. The Fourteenth Amendment offered the white South’s political leadership a choice—allow black men to vote and keep their representation or limit the vote to whites and lose power in Congress.

The Fourteenth Amendment created great conflict between the parties. Not one Democrat voted for it and only four Republicans opposed it. While Radicals deplored that it did not give blacks the vote, the amendment made legal equality regardless of race a basic right of all American citizens.

The 14th Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution (ratified 1868)

Section 1.
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.

The 14th Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution (ratified 1868)

The 14th Amendment

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.

The underlined parts known as:

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the liberty clause

the due process clause

the equal protection clause

of the 14th amendment

Radical Reconstruction

Reconstruction Act of 1867
Johnson campaigned against the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866 midterm elections.

Over Johnson’s veto, Congress adopted the Reconstruction Act, which:
Divided the South into five military districts; and
Called for creation of new southern state governments, with black men given the vote.

The 1866 elections revolved around the Fourteenth Amendment. Johnson urged voters to elect men to Congress who supported his policies and claimed that Radicals were plotting to assassinate him. This, along with riots in southern cities targeting blacks, undermined support for Johnson’s allies, and Republican opponents emerged victorious in the elections. But every southern state except Tennessee refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. Johnson and the white South’s resistance pushed moderate Republicans into the Radical camp, and in March 1867, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act, which temporarily divided the South into five military districts and called for the establishment of new state governments, in which black men could vote.

The Making of Radical Reconstruction

The Reconstruction Act thus began Radical Reconstruction, which lasted until 1877.

Passage of the Reconstruction Act inaugurated the period of Radical Reconstruction, lasting until 1877.

Radical Reconstruction

Impeachment and the Election of Grant
To demonstrate his dislike for Tenure of Office Act Johnson removed the secretary of war from office in 1868.

Johnson was impeached and Senate fell one vote short from removing him from office.

Republicans nominated Grant for president in the 1868 election.

Congress simultaneously approved a measure prohibiting the president from removing certain officeholders, including members of the cabinet, without the Senate’s consent. Johnson believed this unconstitutionally limited his authority, and when he removed secretary of war Edwin M. Stanton, a Radical ally, the House approved articles of impeachment—sending charges against Johnson to the Senate, which was to decide his fate. This was the first time a president had faced trial in the Senate for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Not all Republicans supported impeachment, and Johnson indicated he would halt his interference with Congress’s Reconstruction policy. He barely escaped impeachment.

Republicans nominated Ulysses S. Grant for president to run against Horatio Seymour, the Democratic candidate and former New York governor, in the 1868 election. Reconstruction was the issue of the elections. Republicans tarred Democrats with secession and treason, a tactic called “waving the bloody shirt,” while Democrats denounced Reconstruction as unconstitutional and made racist appeals, arguing that black suffrage violated American political traditions.

Presidential Election of 1868

The Making of Radical Reconstruction

Fifteenth Amendment
Ulysses S. Grant won 1868 presidential election.

Fifteenth Amendment was ratified in 1870.

Prohibited federal and state governments from denying any citizen right to vote because of race.

It did not extend suffrage to women.

Grant won the presidential contest by a slim margin. Republicans responded in February 1869 by adopting the third and final Reconstruction amendment, the Fifteenth, which barred federal and state governments from denying the right to vote to any citizen based on race. Denounced by Democrats, the amendment was ratified in 1870. The Fifteenth Amendment enabled states to make suffrage restrictions not based on race, such as literacy tests, property requirements, and poll taxes, and did not give the vote to women, but it represented the culmination of abolitionism.

Celebrating the Fifteenth Amendment, 1870 lithograph

The “Great Constitutional Revolution”

The laws and amendments of Reconstruction reflected intersection of two products of the Civil War era:

A newly empowered national state; and

The idea of a national citizenry enjoying equality before the law.

Before the Civil War, American citizenship had been closely linked to race.

Reconstruction laws and amendments reflected the power of the new national state and the idea that citizens should enjoy legal equality. They were, in the words of one Republican, a “great Constitutional revolution” that transformed the federal system and the language of American freedom. Before the Civil War, citizenship had been bounded by race. But Reconstruction laws rejected the notion that citizenship was reserved only for whites. Their guarantees of legal equality affected discriminatory laws in all states, North and South.

The new amendments also changed the relationship between states and the federal government. The Bill of Rights had assumed that the central government threatened liberties, but the Reconstruction amendments assumed that only the national government could protect individual rights. They made the Constitution an instrument by which vulnerable minorities could make claims for freedom and against government misconduct at all levels. Many important twentieth-century Supreme Court decisions were based on the Fourteenth Amendment, such as the 1954 Brown ruling outlawing school segregation.

B: The Amendments of Reconstruction:

13th Amendment — Dec. 1865

Forbade slavery

14th Amendment — July 1868

15th Amendment — Feb. 1870

vote cannot be withheld because of color or race.

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Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition

The First Vote,

an engraving from

Harper’s Weekly

Radical Reconstruction

The “Great Constitutional Revolution”

The new amendments also transformed relationship between federal government and the states.

Radical Reconstruction

Boundaries of Freedom

Even Republicans did not believe “universal rights” extended to all races.

There was widespread discrimination against Asians.

Reconstruction recast the boundaries of American freedom. Exclusions that limited citizenship and its privileges to white men had long defined American democratic practice. Even Republicans committed to universal rights did not want to extend rights to all races. Some Republicans, like Frederick Douglass and Charles Sumner, wanted to end discrimination against Asians in the nation’s immigration law. When, in 1870, Sumner tried to strike the word “white” from naturalization requirements, western states’ senators made Africans eligible for naturalization but barred Asians from becoming naturalized citizens. Up into the twentieth century, Asian immigrants could not become citizens, while their American-born children became citizens automatically.

The Rights of Women

Destruction of slavery led feminists to search for ways to make the promise of free labor real for women.

Some feminists (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony) opposed Fifteenth Amendment because it did not enfranchise women.

Women’s rights advocates discovered the limits of Reconstruction-era egalitarianism. They saw the expansion of federal power and rights as a moment to advance women’s equality. But their demands, especially the demand for women’s suffrage, found little support among male politicians, even among Radical Republicans, who considered Reconstruction an opportunity to benefit black men.

The Rights of Women

The divisions among feminists led to creation of two women’s rights organizations that would not reunite until the 1890s.

Despite their limitations Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and Reconstruction Act of 1867 marked a radical departure in American and world history.

The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments specifically benefited men, not women, and caused a division within the feminist camp and between feminists and Radical Republicans. Some, like Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, opposed the Fifteenth Amendment because it did not enfranchise women. They tried to sever women’s rights from abolitionism and even appealed to racism to demand rights for women. Other abolitionist-feminists, such as Abby Kelley and Lucy Stone, argued that the Reconstruction amendments, while limited, were advances toward universal suffrage and should be supported. These two sides split into two groups, the National Women Suffrage Association, representing the former, the American Women Suffrage Association, representing the latter.

Despite drawing the boundaries at freedom at gender, Reconstruction marked the only society in the world in which emancipation had been followed by the extension of citizenship rights to former slaves.

Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition

A Delegation of Advocates of Woman Suffrage

Addressing the House

Radical Reconstruction
in the South

Among former slaves:

the passage of the Reconstruction Act inspired an outburst of political organization.
Blacks used direct action to remedy long-standing grievances.
The Union League aided blacks in the public sphere.
By 1870 the Union had been restored and southern states had Republican majorities.

The Reconstruction Act sparked great political activity among former slaves in the South, who held mass meetings, went on strike, and tried to desegregate public transportation. Thousands of southern blacks joined the Union League, an organization tied to the Republican Party, and the vast majority of eligible black voters registered to vote. In the words of one former slave turned political leader, blacks had heard “the tocsin of freedom.”

By 1870, all former Confederate states had been readmitted to the Union and most were under Republican control. Their new state constitutions, drafted in 1868 and 1869 in conventions with substantial black representation, were an improvement over the old state constitutions. They created state-funded systems of free public education, penitentiaries, and orphan and insane asylums where none existed before. They guaranteed equality of civil and political rights and abolished antebellum practices such as whipping as a criminal punishment, property qualifications for officeholding, and imprisonment for debt.

Electioneering at the South, an engraving from Harper’s Weekly

Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition

From the Plantation to the Senate

Sen. Hiram Rhodes Revels

United States Senator
from Mississippi
In office
February 23, 1870 – March 3, 1871

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Radical Reconstruction
in the South

The Black Officeholder

Two thousand African Americans held public offices during Reconstruction.

Fourteen elected to U.S. House of Representatives

Two elected to U.S. Senate

Though blacks were the majority of Republican voters, white Republicans controlled the state Republican parties and held most political offices. Only South Carolina, with a high percentage of blacks in the population, had a majority-black legislature. But the 2,000 African Americans who held public office in Reconstruction represented a radical shift of power in the South. Two blacks were elected to the U.S. Senate, fourteen were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and one served as the first black governor, in Louisiana. Many blacks served in state legislatures and more blacks than ever before held lower offices such as sheriff, tax assessor, and policeman. Most were former slaves.

The Operations of the Registration Laws and

Negro Suffrage in the South

Carpetbaggers and Scalawags

Scalawags were southern-born white Republicans.

Some were wealthy (e.g., James Alcorn, a Mississippi planter).

Most had been up-country non-slaveholders before the Civil War and some had been Unionists during the war.

Most white Republicans, however, were from the South and were despised by former Confederates, who saw them as treasonous “scalawags.” While a few were wealthy whites, most were non-slaveholding small white farmers from the southern upcountry. Many had been Unionists during the war or hoped Reconstruction governments would pass laws favoring indebted farmers.

Radical Reconstruction
in the South

Southern Republicans in Power

Southern Republican governments established the South’s first state-supported public schools.

The new governments also pioneered civil rights legislation.

Republican governments took steps to strengthen the position of rural laborers and to promote the South’s economic recovery.

The Reconstruction governments’ greatest accomplishment was establishing state-supported public schools that served both black and white children, although usually in segregated schools. They also passed civil rights laws that made it illegal for railroads, hotels, and other institutions to discriminate by race. Some states also strengthened the economic power of rural blacks by passing laws favoring agricultural workers and sharecroppers.

Black students outside a schoolhouse in a post–Civil

War photograph. The teacher is seated at the far right.

Radical Reconstruction
in the South

The Quest for Prosperity

During Reconstruction, every state helped to finance railroad construction.

Investment opportunities in the West lured more northern investors than southern investors.

Economic development remained weak in South.

However, Reconstruction governments did not try to promote economic prosperity through land distribution, as many blacks had once hoped, but rather tried by developing railroads, which they hoped would spur industrialization, urbanization, and diversified agriculture. Every southern state tried to finance railroad construction and attract industry through tax and subsidy policies, but a revitalized southern economy failed to take shape. Nevertheless, Radical Reconstruction transformed the South by empowering poor whites, northern migrants, and former slaves.

The Overthrow of Reconstruction

The Liberal Republicans

The North’s Retreat

The Triumph of the Redeemers

Jim Crow & Segregation for African Americans

Northern commitment to Reconstruction declined in the 1870s. Radicals such as Thaddeus Stevens passed away or otherwise left politics, and they were replaced by figures less dedicated to equal rights for blacks. Northerners more and more felt the South should solve its own problems without continuous federal involvement. Many in the North believed that now that the national government had freed the slaves, made them citizens, and given them the vote, blacks had to depend on themselves.

In 1872, an influential group of Republicans angered by corruption in the Grant administration and, believing that federal power needed to be reduced formed their own party, calling themselves the Liberal Republicans. They nominated Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, for president. They repeated Democratic criticisms of Radical Reconstruction as encouraging corruption and preventing the rule of the “best men” in the South, that region’s “natural leaders.” Democratic leaders embraced the Republican split and endorsed Greeley. But many rank and file Democrats could not stomach Greeley, a former Whig and Republican, and Grant won a second term to the presidency by a great margin. Nonetheless, Liberal Republicans and Democrats in the North could now agree on rolling back Reconstruction.

Northern critics stepped up their often openly racist attacks on southern governments as dens of corruption and misgovernment ruined by black rule. A severe depression beginning in 1873 also distracted Northern Republicans from southern issues. Democrats were widely successful in the 1874 elections and took control of the House of Representatives, but before this new Congress met, legislators passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which barred racial discrimination in public accommodations such as hotels and theaters. The Supreme Court also signaled a retreat from Reconstruction in the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), in which it held that the federal government could not effectively protect the legal and civil rights of individuals in the states, effectively mitigating the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Overthrow of Reconstruction

Reconstruction’s Opponents

Corruption existed during Reconstruction but it was not confined to a race, region, or party.

Opponents could not accept the idea of former slaves voting, holding office, and enjoying equality before the law.

The South’s traditional leadership—planters, merchants, and Democratic politicians—condemned the new governments as corrupt and inefficient examples of “black supremacy.” But corruption, which existed in Reconstruction governments, was confined to no single race, region, or party. The rapid growth of state budgets allowed many to enrich themselves at public expense. But corruption was greatest elsewhere, in the Whiskey Ring, involving Grant administration officials, and New York’s infamous Tweed Ring, controlled by Democrats. Rising taxes needed for schools and railroad development also sparked opposition to Reconstruction, including among poor whites who had initially supported the Republicans but bolted to the Democrats when their economic situation did not improve. Southern whites opposed Reconstruction primarily because they could not accept that blacks should vote, hold political office, or enjoy legal equality. They thought Reconstruction should be overthrown in order for white supremacy to return and planters to have a disciplined and dependable workforce.

Winslow Homer’s 1876 painting

Murder of Louisiana, an 1873 cartoon

Overthrow of Reconstruction

“A Reign of Terror”
Secret societies sprang up in the South with the aims of preventing blacks from voting and destroying the organization of the Republican Party.

The Ku Klux Klan was organized in 1866.

It launched what one victim called a “reign of terror” against black and white Republican leaders.

Example: Colfax, Louisiana massacre (1873)

Violence was endemic in the Reconstruction-era south. At first it was local and unorganized, with blacks being assaulted and murdered for refusing to make way for whites on sidewalks or trying to purchase land. But the establishment of Republican state governments after 1867 ignited organized campaigns of violence against supporters of Radical Reconstruction. Secret societies, most notably the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), tried to prevent blacks from voting and tried to destroy the Republican Party by assassinating local leaders and public officials. The KKK, a terrorist organization started in 1866 in Tennessee that soon spread throughout the South, functioned as the military arm of the Democratic Party in that region. In many counties, it started a “reign of terror” against black and white Republican leaders. But blacks were especially targeted, particularly blacks who held office or exercised political rights.

Terror:

- the Ku Klux Klan

D: White Resistance in the South

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A Prospective Scene in the City of Oaks

The Overthrow of Reconstruction

“A Reign of Terror”

With passage of three Enforcement Acts in 1870 and 1871 -
Congress and President Grant put an end to the Ku Klux Klan by 1872.

The new southern governments could not suppress the KKK, and in 1870 and 1871 Congress adopted Enforcement Acts that outlawed terrorist groups, allowed the president to use the army against them, and defined acts that deprived citizens of civil and political rights as federal crimes. President Grant dispatched federal marshals and troops to suppress the KKK, and by 1872 most areas of the South were peaceful.

Overthrow of Reconstruction

The Liberal Republicans
The North’s commitment to Reconstruction waned during the 1870s.

Some Republicans, alienated from Grant by corruption in his administration, formed the Liberal Republican Party.
Horace Greeley

Changes in graphic artist Thomas Nast’s depiction of blacks in Harper’s Weekly

Overthrow of Reconstruction

North’s Retreat
The Liberal attack on Reconstruction contributed to a resurgence of racism in the North.

1873 depression also distracted the North from Reconstruction.

Supreme Court whittled away at Congress’s guarantees of black rights.
Slaughterhouse Cases (1873)
United States v. Cruikshank (1876)

Map 15.4 Reconstruction in the South, 1867–1877

The Overthrow of Reconstruction

Triumph of the Redeemers

Redeemers claimed to have “redeemed” the white South from corruption, misgovernment, and northern and black control.

By the mid-1870s, Reconstruction was under serious assault. Democrats regained control of states with large white voting majorities, such as Tennessee, North Carolina, and Texas, and called themselves “Redeemers” for having redeemed the white South from corruption, misgovernment, and northern and black control. Violence flared in states where Reconstruction governments persisted, and the Grant administration now refrained from protecting besieged governments and Republicans. In 1875 and 1876, armed Democrats on Election Day simply destroyed ballots and drove blacks away from the polls, capturing states such as Mississippi and South Carolina.

The Overthrow of Reconstruction

Disputed Election and Bargain of 1877

Contest between Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican) and Samuel Tilden (Democrat) was very close, with disputed electoral votes from Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina.

Congress set up a special Electoral Commission to determine the winner of the disputed votes.

Events in South Carolina directly shaped the outcome of the 1876 presidential elections. Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, who ran against the Democrats’ Samuel J. Tilden, New York’s governor. By 1876, only South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana were still controlled by Republicans, and the election was so close that whoever carried these states, which both parties claimed to have won, would become president. Congress tried to resolve this impasse by appointing an electoral commission which, with a republican majority, decided that Hayes had carried the critical southern states and been elected.

Map 15.5 The Presidential Election of 1876

The Overthrow of Reconstruction

Disputed Election & Bargain of 1877

Behind the scenes, Hayes made a bargain to allow southern white Democrats to control the South if his election was accepted.

The compromise led to Hayes’s election and gave the Democrats a free hand in the South.

But to secure this result, behind the scenes Republicans negotiated with the Democrats, agreeing to recognize Democratic control of the South and refrain from future federal interference in southern affairs. Democrats promised to respect black rights and not dispute Hayes’ right to office. This became known as the Bargain of 1877. Hayes quickly ordered federal troops to stand down, which allowed Democrats in Louisiana and South Carolina to occupy the state governments there.

The Overthrow of Reconstruction

The End of Reconstruction
Reconstruction ended in 1877.

It would be nearly a century before the nation again tried to bring equal rights to the descendants of slaves.

Reconstruction, defined as America’s adjustment to the end of slavery, continued long after 1877. Blacks still voted and, in some states, held office well into the 1890s. But a distinct period in which Republicans controlled much of the South, blacks held some political power, and the federal government protected the basic rights of all American citizens came to an end in 1877. Only a century later, in the civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s, would the federal government finally act to secure the rights of all, regardless of race.

The Second Reconstruction:

Civil Rights Era - (1950s- 1960s)

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Is This a Republican Form of Government?

This concludes the lecture presentation for

For more learning resources, head to our StudySpace at: http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/give-me-liberty3-brief/

Chapter 15: "What Is Freedom?": Reconstruction, 1865–1877

Reviewing the American People’s
Core Freedoms:

(the freedoms we do have)

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The Jewels in Our Crown of Freedoms
(with us all being the royalty :)

13th Amendment (ending Slavery)
14th Amendment
Bill of Rights (Amendments 1-10)
Constitutional Court
George Washington giving us Civilian Government
Separation of Power
Broad Franchise

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Broadened Franchise
includes:

14th & 15th Amendment
19th Amendment
24th Amendment
Civil Rights Acts (1960s)
Including the Voting Rights Acts

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Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition

Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner, an engraving by Thomas

Nast from Harper’s Weekly