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22

The Ordealof Reconstruction

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1865–1877

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in theright as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the

work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him whoshall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphan, to do all

which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace amongourselves and with all nations.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, SECOND INAUGURAL, MARCH 4, 1865

The battle was done, the buglers silent. Bone-weary and bloodied, the American people,North and South, now faced the staggering chal-lenges of peace. Four questions loomed large. Howwould the South, physically devastated by war andsocially revolutionized by emancipation, be rebuilt?How would the liberated blacks fare as free men andwomen? How would the Southern states be reinte-grated into the Union? And who would direct theprocess of Reconstruction—the Southern statesthemselves, the president, or Congress?

The Problems of Peace

Other questions also clamored for answers. Whatshould be done with the captured Confederate ring-leaders, all of whom were liable to charges of trea-son? During the war a popular Northern song hadbeen “Hang Jeff Davis to a Sour Apple Tree,” andeven innocent children had lisped it. Davis was tem-porarily clapped into irons during the early days ofhis two-year imprisonment. But he and his fellow

477

“conspirators” were finally released, partly becausethe odds were that no Virginia jury would convictthem. All rebel leaders were finally pardoned byPresident Johnson as sort of a Christmas present in1868. But Congress did not remove all remainingcivil disabilities until thirty years later and onlyposthumously restored Davis’s citizenship morethan a century later.

Dismal indeed was the picture presented by thewar-racked South when the rattle of musketryfaded. Not only had an age perished, but a civiliza-tion had collapsed, in both its economic and itssocial structure. The moonlight-and-magnolia OldSouth, largely imaginary in any case, had forevergone with the wind.

Handsome cities of yesteryear, such asCharleston and Richmond, were rubble-strewn andweed-choked. An Atlantan returned to his once-fairhometown and remarked, “Hell has laid her egg,and right here it hatched.”

Economic life had creaked to a halt. Banks andbusiness houses had locked their doors, ruined byrunaway inflation. Factories were smokeless, silent,dismantled. The transportation system had brokendown completely. Before the war five different rail-

road lines had converged on Columbia, South Car-olina; now the nearest connected track was twenty-nine miles away. Efforts to untwist the railscorkscrewed by Sherman’s soldiers proved bumpilyunsatisfactory.

Agriculture—the economic lifeblood of theSouth—was almost hopelessly crippled. Once-whitecotton fields now yielded a lush harvest of nothing butgreen weeds. The slave-labor system had collapsed,seed was scarce, and livestock had been driven off byplundering Yankees. Pathetic instances were reportedof men hitching themselves to plows, while womenand children gripped the handles. Not until 1870 didthe seceded states produce as large a cotton crop asthat of the fateful year 1860, and much of that yieldcame from new acreage in the Southwest.

The princely planter aristocrats were humbledby the war—at least temporarily. Reduced to proudpoverty, they faced charred and gutted mansions,lost investments, and almost worthless land. Theirinvestments of more than $2 billion in slaves, theirprimary form of wealth, had evaporated withemancipation.

Beaten but unbent, many high-spirited whiteSoutherners remained dangerously defiant. They

478 CHAPTER 22 The Ordeal of Reconstruction, 1865–1877

cursed the “damnyankees” and spoke of “your gov-ernment” in Washington, instead of “our govern-ment.” One Southern bishop refused to pray forPresident Andrew Johnson, though Johnson provedto be in sore need of divine guidance. Conscious ofno crime, these former Confederates continued tobelieve that their view of secession was correct andthat the “lost cause” was still a just war. One popularanti-Union song ran,

I’m glad I fought agin her, I only wish we’d won,And I ain’t axed any pardon for anything I’ve

done.

Such attitudes boded ill for the prospects of pain-lessly binding up the Republic’s wounds.

Freedmen Define Freedom

Confusion abounded in the still-smoldering Southabout the precise meaning of “freedom” for blacks.Emancipation took effect haltingly and unevenly indifferent parts of the conquered Confederacy. AsUnion armies marched in and out of various locali-ties, many blacks found themselves emancipatedand then re-enslaved. A North Carolina slave esti-mated that he had celebrated freedom about twelvetimes. Blacks from one Texas county fleeing to the

free soil of the liberated county next door wereattacked by slaveowners as they swam across theriver that marked the county line. The next day, treesalong the riverbank were bent with swingingcorpses—a grisly warning to others dreaming of lib-erty. Other planters resisted emancipation morelegalistically, stubbornly protesting that slavery waslawful until state legislatures or the Supreme Courtdeclared otherwise. For many slaves the shackles ofbondage were not struck off in a single mighty blow;long-suffering blacks often had to wrench free oftheir chains link by link.

The variety of responses to emancipation, bywhites as well as blacks, illustrated the sometimesstartling complexity of the master-slave relation-ship. Loyalty to the plantation master promptedsome slaves to resist the liberating Union armies,while other slaves’ pent-up bitterness burst forthviolently on the day of liberation. Many newlyemancipated slaves, for example, joined Uniontroops in pillaging their master’s possessions. In oneinstance a group of Virginia slaves laid twenty lasheson the back of their former master—a painful doseof his own favorite medicine.

Prodded by the bayonets of Yankee armies ofoccupation, all masters were eventually forced torecognize their slaves’ permanent freedom. Theonce-commanding planter would assemble his for-mer human chattels in front of the porch of the “big

The Impact of War on the South 479

house” and announce their liberty. Though someblacks initially responded to news of their emanci-pation with suspicion and uncertainty, they sooncelebrated their newfound freedom. Many took newnames in place of the ones given by their mastersand demanded that whites formally address themas “Mr.” or “Mrs.” Others abandoned the coarse cot-tons that had been their only clothing as slaves andsought silks, satins, and other finery. Though manywhites perceived such behavior as insubordinate,they were forced to recognize the realities of eman-cipation. “Never before had I a word of impudencefrom any of our black folk,” wrote one white South-erner, “but they are not ours any longer.”

Tens of thousands of emancipated blacks tookto the roads, some to test their freedom, others tosearch for long-lost spouses, parents, and children.Emancipation thus strengthened the black family,and many newly freed men and women formalized“slave marriages” for personal and pragmatic rea-sons, including the desire to make their childrenlegal heirs. Other blacks left their former masters towork in towns and cities, where existing black com-munities provided protection and mutual assis-tance. Whole communities sometimes movedtogether in search of opportunity. From 1878 to1880, some twenty-five thousand blacks fromLouisiana, Texas, and Mississippi surged in a massexodus to Kansas. The westward flood of these “Exo-dusters” was stemmed only when steamboat cap-

tains refused to transport more black migrantsacross the Mississippi River.

The church became the focus of black commu-nity life in the years following emancipation. Asslaves, blacks had worshiped alongside whites, butnow they formed their own churches pastored bytheir own ministers. The black churches grewrobustly. The 150,000-member black Baptist Churchof 1850 reached 500,000 by 1870, while the AfricanMethodist Episcopal Church quadrupled in sizefrom 100,000 to 400,000 in the first decade afteremancipation. These churches formed the bedrockof black community life, and they soon gave rise toother benevolent, fraternal, and mutual aid soci-eties. All these organizations helped blacks protecttheir newly won freedom.

Emancipation also meant education for manyblacks. Learning to read and write had been a privi-lege generally denied to them under slavery. Freed-men wasted no time establishing societies forself-improvement, which undertook to raise fundsto purchase land, build schoolhouses, and hireteachers. One member of a North Carolina educa-tion society asserted that “a schoolhouse would bethe first proof of their independence.” Southernblacks soon found, however, that the demand out-stripped the supply of qualified black teachers. Theyaccepted the aid of Northern white women sent bythe American Missionary Association, who volun-teered their services as teachers. They also turned tothe federal government for help. The freed blackswere going to need all the friends—and the power—they could muster in Washington.

The Freedmen’s Bureau

Abolitionists had long preached that slavery was adegrading institution. Now the emancipators werefaced with the brutal reality that the freedmen wereoverwhelmingly unskilled, unlettered, withoutproperty or money, and with scant knowledge ofhow to survive as free people. To cope with thisproblem throughout the conquered South, Con-gress created the Freedmen’s Bureau on March 3,1865.

On paper at least, the bureau was intended tobe a kind of primitive welfare agency. It was to pro-vide food, clothing, medical care, and educationboth to freedmen and to white refugees. Heading


Houston H. Holloway, age twenty at the timeof his emancipation, recalled his feelingsupon hearing of his freedom:

“I felt like a bird out of a cage. Amen. Amen.Amen. I could hardly ask to feel any betterthan I did that day. . . . The week passed offin a blaze of glory.”

The reunion of long-lost relatives alsoinspired joy; one Union officer wrote home,

“Men are taking their wives and children,families which had been for a long timebroken up are united and oh! suchhappiness. I am glad I am here.”

the bureau was a warmly sympathetic friend of theblacks, Union general Oliver O. Howard, who laterfounded and served as president of Howard Univer-sity in Washington, D.C.

The bureau achieved its greatest successes ineducation. It taught an estimated 200,000 blackshow to read. Many former slaves had a passion forlearning, partly because they wanted to close the

gap between themselves and the whites and partlybecause they longed to read the Word of God. In oneelementary class in North Carolina sat four genera-tions of the same family, ranging from a six-year-oldchild to a seventy-five-year-old grandmother.

But in other areas, the bureau’s accomplish-ments were meager—or even mischievous. Al-though the bureau was authorized to settle formerslaves on forty-acre tracts confiscated from the Con-federates, little land actually made it into blacks’hands. Instead local administrators often collabo-rated with planters in expelling blacks from townsand cajoling them into signing labor contracts towork for their former masters. Still, the white Southresented the bureau as a meddlesome federal inter-loper that threatened to upset white racial domi-nance. President Andrew Johnson, who shared thewhite-supremacist views of most white Southern-ers, repeatedly tried to kill it, and it expired in 1872.

Johnson: The Tailor President

Few presidents have ever been faced with a moreperplexing sea of troubles than that confrontingAndrew Johnson. What manner of man was thismedium-built, dark-eyed, black-haired Tennessean,now chief executive by virtue of the bullet that killedLincoln?

No citizen, not even Lincoln, has ever reachedthe White House from humbler beginnings. Born toimpoverished parents in North Carolina and earlyorphaned, Johnson never attended school but wasapprenticed to a tailor at age ten. Ambitious to getahead, he taught himself to read, and later his wifetaught him to write and do simple arithmetic. Likemany another self-made man, he was inclined tooverpraise his maker.

Johnson early became active in politics in Ten-nessee, where he had moved when seventeen yearsold. He shone as an impassioned champion of thepoor whites against the planter aristocrats, althoughhe himself ultimately owned a few slaves. Heexcelled as a two-fisted stump speaker before angryand heckling crowds, who on occasion greeted hispolitical oratory with cocked pistols, not just cockedears. Elected to Congress, he attracted much favor-able attention in the North (but not the South) whenhe refused to secede with his own state. After Ten-nessee was partially “redeemed” by Union armies,

From Slavery to Freedom 481

Women from the North enthusiasticallyembraced the opportunity to go south andteach in Freedmen’s Bureau schools foremancipated blacks. One volunteerexplained her motives:

“I thought I must do something, not havingmoney at my command, what could I do butgive myself to the work. . . . I would go tothem, and give them my life if necessary.”

he was appointed war governor and served coura-geously in an atmosphere of danger.

Political exigency next thrust Johnson into thevice presidency. Lincoln’s Union party in 1864 neededto attract support from the War Democrats and otherpro-Southern elements, and Johnson, a Democrat,

seemed to be the ideal man. Unfortunately, heappeared at the vice-presidential inaugural cere-monies the following March in a scandalous condi-tion. He had recently been afflicted with typhoidfever, and although not known as a heavy drinker, hewas urged by his friends to take a stiff bracer ofwhiskey. This he did—with unfortunate results.

“Old Andy” Johnson was no doubt a man ofparts—unpolished parts. He was intelligent, able,forceful, and gifted with homespun honesty. Stead-fastly devoted to duty and to the people, he was adogmatic champion of states’ rights and the Consti-tution. He would often present a copy of the docu-ment to visitors, and he was buried with one as apillow.


Yet the man who had raised himself from thetailor’s bench to the president’s chair was a misfit. ASoutherner who did not understand the North, aTennessean who had earned the distrust of theSouth, a Democrat who had never been accepted bythe Republicans, a president who had never beenelected to the office, he was not at home in a Repub-lican White House. Hotheaded, contentious, andstubborn, he was the wrong man in the wrong placeat the wrong time. A Reconstruction policy devisedby angels might well have failed in his tactlesshands.

Presidential Reconstruction

Even before the shooting war had ended, the politi-cal war over Reconstruction had begun. AbrahamLincoln believed that the Southern states had neverlegally withdrawn from the Union. Their formalrestoration to the Union would therefore be rela-tively simple. Accordingly, Lincoln in 1863 pro-claimed his “10 percent” Reconstruction plan. Itdecreed that a state could be reintegrated into theUnion when 10 percent of its voters in the presiden-tial election of 1860 had taken an oath of allegianceto the United States and pledged to abide by eman-cipation. The next step would be formal erection ofa state government. Lincoln would then recognizethe purified regime.

Lincoln’s proclamation provoked a sharp reac-tion in Congress, where Republicans feared therestoration of the planter aristocracy to power andthe possible re-enslavement of the blacks. Republi-cans therefore rammed through Congress in 1864the Wade-Davis Bill. It required that 50 percent of astate’s voters take the oath of allegiance anddemanded stronger safeguards for emancipationthan Lincoln’s as the price of readmission. Lincoln“pocket-vetoed” this bill by refusing to sign it afterCongress had adjourned. Republicans were out-raged. They refused to seat delegates from Louisianaafter that state had reorganized its government inaccordance with Lincoln’s 10 percent plan in 1864.

The controversy surrounding the Wade-Davis Billhad revealed deep differences between the presidentand Congress. Unlike Lincoln, many in Congressinsisted that the seceders had indeed left the Union—had “committed suicide” as republican states—and

had therefore forfeited all their rights. They could bereadmitted only as “conquered provinces” on suchconditions as Congress should decree.

This episode further revealed differencesamong Republicans. Two factions were emerging.The majority moderate group tended to agree withLincoln that the seceded states should be restoredto the Union as simply and swiftly as reasonable—though on Congress’s terms, not the president’s. Theminority radical group believed that the Southshould atone more painfully for its sins. Before theSouth should be restored, the radicals wanted itssocial structure uprooted, the haughty planterspunished, and the newly emancipated blacks pro-tected by federal power.

Some of the radicals were secretly pleased whenthe assassin’s bullet felled Lincoln, for the martyredpresident had shown tenderness toward the South.Spiteful “Andy” Johnson, who shared their hatred forthe planter aristocrats, would presumably alsoshare their desire to reconstruct the South with arod of iron.

Johnson soon disillusioned them. He agreedwith Lincoln that the seceded states had neverlegally been outside the Union. Thus he quickly recognized several of Lincoln’s 10 percent gov-ernments, and on May 29, 1865, he issued his own Reconstruction proclamation. It disfranchised

Johnson’s Plans for the South 483

Before President Andrew Johnson (1808–1875)softened his Southern policy, his views wereradical. Speaking on April 21, 1865, hedeclared,

“It is not promulgating anything that I havenot heretofore said to say that traitors mustbe made odious, that treason must be madeodious, that traitors must be punished andimpoverished. They must not only bepunished, but their social power must bedestroyed. If not, they will still maintain anascendancy, and may again becomenumerous and powerful; for, in the words ofa former Senator of the United States, ‘Whentraitors become numerous enough, treasonbecomes respectable.’ ”

certain leading Confederates, including those withtaxable property worth more than $20,000, thoughthey might petition him for personal pardons. Itcalled for special state conventions, which wererequired to repeal the ordinances of secession,repudiate all Confederate debts, and ratify the slave-freeing Thirteenth Amendment. States that com-plied with these conditions, Johnson declared,would be swiftly readmitted to the Union.

Johnson, savoring his dominance over the high-toned aristocrats who now begged his favor, grantedpardons in abundance. Bolstered by the politicalresurrection of the planter elite, the recently rebel-lious states moved rapidly in the second half of 1865to organize governments. But as the pattern of thenew governments became clear, Republicans of allstripes grew furious.

The Baleful Black Codes

Among the first acts of the new Southern regimessanctioned by Johnson was the passage of the iron-toothed Black Codes. These laws were designed toregulate the affairs of the emancipated blacks,much as the slave statutes had done in pre–Civil Wardays. Mississippi passed the first such law inNovember 1865, and other Southern states soon fol-lowed suit. The Black Codes varied in severity from

state to state (Mississippi’s was the harshest andGeorgia’s the most lenient), but they had much incommon. The Black Codes aimed, first of all, toensure a stable and subservient labor force. Thecrushed Cotton Kingdom could not rise from itsweeds until the fields were once again put underhoe and plow—and many whites wanted to makesure that they retained the tight control they hadexercised over black field hands and plow drivers inthe days of slavery.

Dire penalties were therefore imposed by thecodes on blacks who “jumped” their labor contracts,which usually committed them to work for the sameemployer for one year, and generally at pittancewages. Violators could be made to forfeit backwages or could be forcibly dragged back to work bya paid “Negro-catcher.” In Mississippi the capturedfreedmen could be fined and then hired out to paytheir fines—an arrangement that closely resembledslavery itself.

The codes also sought to restore as nearly aspossible the pre-emancipation system of race rela-tions. Freedom was legally recognized, as weresome other privileges, such as the right to marry.But all the codes forbade a black to serve on a jury;some even barred blacks from renting or leasingland. A black could be punished for “idleness” bybeing sentenced to work on a chain gang. Nowherewere blacks allowed to vote.

These oppressive laws mocked the ideal of free-dom, so recently purchased by buckets of blood. TheBlack Codes imposed terrible burdens on the unfet-tered blacks, struggling against mistreatment andpoverty to make their way as free people. The worstfeatures of the Black Codes would eventually berepealed, but their revocation could not by itself liftthe liberated blacks into economic independence.Lacking capital, and with little to offer but theirlabor, thousands of impoverished former slavesslipped into the status of sharecropper farmers, asdid many landless whites. Luckless sharecroppersgradually sank into a morass of virtual peonage andremained there for generations. Formerly slaves tomasters, countless blacks as well as poorer whites ineffect became slaves to the soil and to their creditors.Yet the dethroned planter aristocracy resented eventhis pitiful concession to freedom. Sharecroppingwas the “wrong policy,” said one planter. “It makesthe laborer too independent; he becomes a partner,and has a right to be consulted.”


Early in 1866 one congressman quoted aGeorgian:

“The blacks eat, sleep, move, live, only by thetolerance of the whites, who hate them. Theblacks own absolutely nothing but theirbodies; their former masters own everything,and will sell them nothing. If a black mandraws even a bucket of water from a well, hemust first get the permission of a whiteman, his enemy. . . . If he asks for work toearn his living, he must ask it of a whiteman; and the whites are determined to givehim no work, except on such terms as willmake him a serf and impair his liberty.”

The Black Codes made an ugly impression inthe North. If the former slaves were being re-enslaved, people asked one another, had not theBoys in Blue spilled their blood in vain? Had theNorth really won the war?

Congressional Reconstruction

These questions grew more insistent when the con-gressional delegations from the newly reconstitutedSouthern states presented themselves in the Capitolin December 1865. To the shock and disgust of theRepublicans, many former Confederate leaderswere on hand to claim their seats.

The appearance of these ex-rebels was a naturalbut costly blunder. Voters of the South, seeking ablerepresentatives, had turned instinctively to theirexperienced statesmen. But most of the Southern

leaders were tainted by active association with the“lost cause.” Among them were four former Confed-erate generals, five colonels, and various membersof the Richmond cabinet and Congress. Worst of all,there was the shrimpy but brainy AlexanderStephens, ex–vice president of the Confederacy, stillunder indictment for treason.

The presence of these “whitewashed rebels”infuriated the Republicans in Congress. The war hadbeen fought to restore the Union, but not on thesekinds of terms. The Republicans were in no hurry toembrace their former enemies—virtually all of themDemocrats —in the chambers of the Capitol. Whilethe South had been “out” from 1861 to 1865, theRepublicans in Congress had enjoyed a relatively freehand. They had passed much legislation that favoredthe North, such as the Morrill Tariff, the Pacific Rail-road Act, and the Homestead Act. Now many Repub-licans balked at giving up this political advantage. Onthe first day of the congressional session, December4, 1865, they banged shut the door in the face of thenewly elected Southern delegations.

Looking to the future, the Republicans werealarmed to realize that a restored South would bestronger than ever in national politics. Before thewar a black slave had counted as three-fifths of aperson in apportioning congressional representa-tion. Now the slave was five-fifths of a person.Eleven Southern states had seceded and been sub-dued by force of arms. But now, owing to full count-ing of free blacks, the rebel states were entitled totwelve more votes in Congress, and twelve morepresidential electoral votes, than they had previ-ously enjoyed. Again, angry voices in the Northraised the cry, Who won the war?

Republicans had good reason to fear that ulti-mately they might be elbowed aside. Southernersmight join hands with Democrats in the North andwin control of Congress or maybe even the WhiteHouse. If this happened, they could perpetuate theBlack Codes, virtually re-enslaving the blacks. Theycould dismantle the economic program of theRepublican party by lowering tariffs, rerouting thetranscontinental railroad, repealing the free-farmHomestead Act, possibly even repudiating thenational debt. President Johnson thus deeply dis-turbed the congressional Republicans when heannounced on December 6, 1865, that the recentlyrebellious states had satisfied his conditions andthat in his view the Union was now restored.

The Black Codes 485

Johnson Clashes with Congress

A clash between president and Congress was nowinevitable. It exploded into the open in February1866, when the president vetoed a bill (laterrepassed) extending the life of the controversialFreedmen’s Bureau.

Aroused, the Republicans swiftly struck back. InMarch 1866 they passed the Civil Rights Bill, whichconferred on blacks the privilege of American citi-zenship and struck at the Black Codes. PresidentJohnson resolutely vetoed this forward-lookingmeasure on constitutional grounds, but in Aprilcongressmen steamrollered it over his veto—some-

thing they repeatedly did henceforth. The haplesspresident, dubbed “Sir Veto” and “Andy Veto,” hadhis presidential wings clipped, as Congress increas-ingly assumed the dominant role in running thegovernment. One critic called Johnson “the deaddog of the White House.”

The Republicans now undertook to rivet theprinciples of the Civil Rights Bill into the Constitu-tion as the Fourteenth Amendment. They fearedthat the Southerners might one day win control ofCongress and repeal the hated law. The proposedamendment, as approved by Congress and sent tothe states in June 1866, was sweeping. It (1) con-ferred civil rights, including citizenship but exclud-ing the franchise, on the freedmen; (2) reduced


proportionately the representation of a state inCongress and in the Electoral College if it deniedblacks the ballot; (3) disqualified from federal andstate office former Confederates who as federalofficeholders had once sworn “to support the Con-stitution of the United States”; and (4) guaranteedthe federal debt, while repudiating all Confederatedebts. (See text of Fourteenth Amendment in theAppendix.)

The radical faction was disappointed that theFourteenth Amendment did not grant the right tovote, but all Republicans were agreed that no stateshould be welcomed back into the Union fold with-out first ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment. YetPresident Johnson advised the Southern states toreject it, and all of the “sinful eleven,” except Ten-nessee, defiantly spurned the amendment. Theirspirit was reflected in a Southern song:

And I don’t want no pardon for what I was oram,

I won’t be reconstructed and I don’t give a damn.

Swinging ’Round the Circle with Johnson

As 1866 lengthened, the battle grew between theCongress and the president. The root of the contro-versy was Johnson’s “10 percent” governments thathad passed the most stringent Black Codes. Con-gress had tried to temper the worst features of thecodes by extending the life of the embattled Freed-men’s Bureau and passing the Civil Rights Bill. Bothmeasures Johnson had vetoed. Now the issue waswhether Reconstruction was to be carried on withor without the Fourteenth Amendment. The Repub-licans would settle for nothing less.

The crucial congressional elections of 1866—more crucial than some presidential elections—were fast approaching. Johnson was naturally eagerto escape from the clutch of Congress by securing a

majority favorable to his soft-on-the-South policy.Invited to dedicate a Chicago monument toStephen A. Douglas, he undertook to speak at vari-ous cities en route in support of his views.

Johnson’s famous “swing ’round the circle,”beginning in the late summer of 1866, was a serio-

Johnson Versus Congressional Republicans 487

Principal Reconstruction Proposals and Plans

Year Proposal or Plan

1864–1865 Lincoln’s 10 percent proposal1865–1866 Johnson’s version of Lincoln’s proposal1866–1867 Congressional plan: 10 percent plan with Fourteenth Amendment1867–1877 Congressional plan of military Reconstruction: Fourteenth Amendment

plus black suffrage, later established nationwide by Fifteenth Amendment

comedy of errors. The president delivered a series of“give ’em hell” speeches, in which he accused theradicals in Congress of having planned large-scaleantiblack riots and murder in the South. As hespoke, hecklers hurled insults at him. Reverting tohis stump-speaking days in Tennessee, he shoutedback angry retorts, amid cries of “You be damned”and “Don’t get mad, Andy.” The dignity of his highoffice sank to a new low, as the old charges of drunk-enness were revived.

As a vote-getter, Johnson was highly success-ful—for the opposition. His inept speechmakingheightened the cry “Stand by Congress” against the“Tailor of the Potomac.” When the ballots werecounted, the Republicans had rolled up more than atwo-thirds majority in both houses of Congress.

Republican Principles and Programs

The Republicans now had a veto-proof Congressand virtually unlimited control of Reconstructionpolicy. But moderates and radicals still disagreedover the best course to pursue in the South.

The radicals in the Senate were led by thecourtly and principled idealist Charles Sumner, longsince recovered from his prewar caning on the Sen-ate floor, who tirelessly labored not only for blackfreedom but for racial equality. In the House themost powerful radical was Thaddeus Stevens, crustyand vindictive congressman from Pennsylvania.Seventy-four years old in 1866, he was a curious fig-ure, with a protruding lower lip, a heavy black wig

covering his bald head, and a deformed foot. Anunswerving friend of blacks, he had defended run-away slaves in court without fee and, before dying,insisted on burial in a black cemetery. His affection-ate devotion to blacks was matched by his vitriolichatred of rebellious white Southerners. A masterlyparliamentarian with a razor-sharp mind and with-ering wit, Stevens was a leading figure on the Joint(House-Senate) Committee on Reconstruction.

Still opposed to rapid restoration of the South-ern states, the radicals wanted to keep them out aslong as possible and apply federal power to bringabout a drastic social and economic transformationin the South. But moderate Republicans, moreattuned to time-honored principles of states’ rightsand self-government, recoiled from the full implica-tions of the radical program. They preferred policiesthat restrained the states from abridging citizens’rights, rather than policies that directly involved the


Representative Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868),in a congressional speech on January 3, 1867,urged the ballot for blacks out of concern forthem and out of bitterness against the whites:

“I am for Negro suffrage in every rebel state.If it be just, it should not be denied; if it benecessary, it should be adopted; if it be apunishment to traitors, they deserve it.”

federal government in individual lives. The actualpolicies adopted by Congress showed the influenceof both these schools of thought, though the moder-ates, as the majority faction, had the upper hand.And one thing both groups had come to agree on by1867 was the necessity to enfranchise black voters,even if it took federal troops to do it.

Reconstruction by the Sword

Against a backdrop of vicious and bloody race riotsthat had erupted in several Southern cities, Con-gress passed the Reconstruction Act on March 2,1867. Supplemented by later measures, this drasticlegislation divided the South into five military dis-tricts, each commanded by a Union general andpoliced by blue-clad soldiers, about twenty thou-sand all told. The act also temporarily disfranchisedtens of thousands of former Confederates.

Congress additionally laid down stringent con-ditions for the readmission of the seceded states. Thewayward states were required to ratify the Four-teenth Amendment, giving the former slaves theirrights as citizens. The bitterest pill of all to whiteSoutherners was the stipulation that they guaranteein their state constitutions full suffrage for their for-mer adult male slaves. Yet the act, reflecting moder-ate sentiment, stopped short of giving the freedmenland or education at federal expense. The overridingpurpose of the moderates was to create an electoratein Southern states that would vote those states backinto the Union on acceptable terms and thus free thefederal government from direct responsibility for theprotection of black rights. As later events woulddemonstrate, this approach proved woefully inade-quate to the cause of justice for blacks.

The radical Republicans were still worried. Thedanger loomed that once the unrepentant stateswere readmitted, they would amend their constitu-tions so as to withdraw the ballot from the blacks.The only ironclad safeguard was to incorporate blacksuffrage in the federal Constitution. This goal wasfinally achieved by the Fifteenth Amendment, passedby Congress in 1869 and ratified by the requirednumber of states in 1870. (For text, see the Appendix.)

Military Reconstruction of the South not onlyusurped certain functions of the president as com-mander in chief but set up a martial regime of dubi-

ous legality. The Supreme Court had already ruled,in the case Ex parte Milligan (1866), that military tri-bunals could not try civilians, even during wartime,in areas where the civil courts were open. Peacetimemilitary rule seemed starkly contrary to the spirit ofthe Constitution. But the circumstances were extra-ordinary in the Republic’s history, and for the timebeing the Supreme Court avoided offending theRepublican Congress.

Prodded into line by federal bayonets, theSouthern states got on with the task of constitutionmaking. By 1870 all of them had reorganized theirgovernments and had been accorded full rights. Thehated “bluebellies” remained until the new Republi-can regimes—usually called “radical” regimes—appeared to be firmly entrenched. Yet when thefederal troops finally left a state, its governmentswiftly passed back into the hands of white“Redeemers,” or “Home Rule” regimes, which wereinevitably Democratic. Finally, in 1877, the last fed-eral muskets were removed from state politics, andthe “solid” Democratic South congealed.

No Women Voters

The passage of the three Reconstruction-eraAmendments—the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fif-teenth—delighted former abolitionists but deeplydisappointed advocates of women’s rights. Womenhad played a prominent part in the prewar aboli-tionist movement and had often pointed out thatboth women and blacks lacked basic civil rights,especially the crucial right to vote. The struggle forblack freedom and the crusade for women’s rights,therefore, were one and the same in the eyes ofmany women. Yet during the war, feminist leaderssuch as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.Anthony had temporarily suspended their owndemands and worked wholeheartedly for the causeof black emancipation. The Woman’s Loyal Leaguehad gathered nearly 400,000 signatures on petitionsasking Congress to pass a constitutional amend-ment prohibiting slavery.

Now, with the war ended and the ThirteenthAmendment passed, feminist leaders believed thattheir time had come. They reeled with shock, how-ever, when the wording of the Fourteenth Amend-ment, which defined equal national citizenship, for

Military Reconstruction 489


Military Reconstruction, 1867 (five districts and commanding generals) For many whiteSoutherners, military Reconstruction amounted to turning the knife in the wound of defeat. An often-repeated story of later years had a Southerner remark, “I was sixteen years old before I discovered that damnyankee was two words.”

Southern Reconstruction by State

Readmitted to Home Rule (Democratic Representation or “Redeemer” Regime)

State in Congress Reestablished Comments

Tennessee July 24, 1866 Ratified Fourteenth Amendment in 1866 and hence avoided military Reconstruction*

Arkansas June 22, 1868 1874North Carolina June 25, 1868 1870Alabama June 25, 1868 1874Florida June 25, 1868 1877 Federal troops restationed in 1877, as result of

Hayes-Tilden electoral bargainLouisiana June 25, 1868 1877 Same as FloridaSouth Carolina June 25, 1868 1877 Same as FloridaVirginia January 26, 1870 1869Mississippi February 23, 1870 1876Texas March 30, 1870 1874Georgia [June 25, 1868] 1872 Readmitted June 25, 1868, but returned to

July 15, 1870 military control after expulsion of blacks from legislature

*For many years Tennessee was the only state of the secession to observe Lincoln’s birthday as a legal holiday. Many southern states still observe the birthdays of Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee.

the first time inserted the word male into the Con-stitution in referring to a citizen’s right to vote. BothStanton and Anthony campaigned actively againstthe Fourteenth Amendment despite the pleas ofFrederick Douglass, who had long supportedwoman suffrage but believed that this was “theNegro’s hour.” When the Fifteenth Amendment pro-posed to prohibit denial of the vote on the basis of“race, color, or previous condition of servitude,”Stanton and Anthony wanted the word sex added tothe list. They lost this battle, too. Fifty years wouldpass before the Constitution granted women theright to vote.

The Realities of Radical Reconstruction in the South

The blacks now had freedom, of a sort. Their friendsin Congress had only haltingly and somewhat belat-edly secured the franchise for them. Both PresidentsLincoln and Johnson had proposed to give the ballotgradually to selected blacks who qualified for itthrough education, property ownership, or militaryservice. Moderate Republicans and even many radi-cals at first hesitated to bestow suffrage on thefreedmen. The Fourteenth Amendment, in manyways the heart of the Republican program forReconstruction, had fallen short of guaranteeing theright to vote. (It envisioned for blacks the same sta-tus as women—citizenship without voting rights.)

But by 1867 hesitation had given way to a harddetermination to enfranchise the former slaveswholesale and immediately, while thousands ofwhite Southerners were being denied the vote. Byglaring contrast most of the Northern states, beforeratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870,withheld the ballot from their tiny black minorities.White Southerners naturally concluded that theRepublicans were hypocritical in insisting thatblacks in the South be allowed to vote.

Having gained their right to suffrage, Southernblack men seized the initiative and began to organ-ize politically. Their primary vehicle became theUnion League, originally a pro-Union organizationbased in the North. Assisted by Northern blacks,freedmen turned the League into a network of polit-ical clubs that educated members in their civicduties and campaigned for Republican candidates.The league’s mission soon expanded to includebuilding black churches and schools, representingblack grievances before local employers and gov-ernment, and recruiting militias to protect blackcommunities from white retaliation.

Though African-American women did notobtain the right to vote, they too assumed new polit-ical roles. Black women faithfully attended theparades and rallies common in black communitiesduring the early years of Reconstruction and helpedassemble mass meetings in the newly constructedblack churches. They even showed up at the consti-tutional conventions held throughout the South in1867, monitoring the proceedings and participatingin informal votes outside the convention halls.

But black men elected as delegates to the stateconstitutional conventions held the greater politicalauthority. They formed the backbone of the blackpolitical community. At the conventions, they satdown with whites to hammer out new state consti-tutions, which most importantly provided for uni-versal male suffrage. Though the subsequentelections produced no black governors or majoritiesin state senates, black political participationexpanded exponentially during Reconstruction.Between 1868 and 1876, fourteen black congress-men and two black senators, Hiram Revels andBlanche K. Bruce, both of Mississippi, served inWashington, D.C. Blacks also served in state govern-ments as lieutenant governors and representatives,and in local governments as mayors, magistrates,sheriffs, and justices of the peace.

Radical Regimes in the South 491

The prominent suffragist and abolitionistSusan B. Anthony (1820–1906) was outragedover the proposed exclusion of women fromthe Fourteenth Amendment. In aconversation with her former male alliesWendell Phillips and Theodore Tilton, shereportedly held out her arm and declared,

“Look at this, all of you. And hear me swearthat I will cut off this right arm of minebefore I will ever work for or demand theballot for the negro and not the woman.”

The sight of former slaves holding office deeplyoffended their onetime masters, who lashed outwith particular fury at the freedmen’s white allies,labeling them “scalawags” and “carpetbaggers.” Theso-called scalawags were Southerners, often formerUnionists and Whigs. The former Confederatesaccused them, often with wild exaggeration, ofplundering the treasuries of the Southern statesthrough their political influence in the radical gov-ernments. The carpetbaggers, on the other hand,were supposedly sleazy Northerners who hadpacked all their worldly goods into a carpetbag suit-case at war’s end and had come South to seek per-sonal power and profit. In fact, most were formerUnion soldiers and Northern businessmen and pro-fessionals who wanted to play a role in modernizingthe “New South.”

How well did the radical regimes rule? The radi-cal legislatures passed much desirable legislationand introduced many badly needed reforms. For thefirst time in Southern history, steps were takentoward establishing adequate public schools. Taxsystems were streamlined; public works werelaunched; and property rights were guaranteed towomen. Many welcome reforms were retained by

the all-white “Redeemer” governments that laterreturned to power.

Despite these achievements, graft ran rampantin many “radical” governments. This was especiallytrue in South Carolina and Louisiana, where con-


At a constitutional convention in Alabama,freed people affirmed their rights in thefollowing declaration:

“We claim exactly the same rights, privilegesand immunities as are enjoyed by whitemen—we ask nothing more and will becontent with nothing less. . . . The law nolonger knows white nor black, but simplymen, and consequently we are entitled toride in public conveyances, hold office, sit onjuries and do everything else which we havein the past been prevented from doing solelyon the ground of color.”

scienceless promoters and other pocket-paddersused politically inexperienced blacks as pawns. Theworst “black-and-white” legislatures purchased, as“legislative supplies,” such “stationery” as hams,perfumes, suspenders, bonnets, corsets, cham-pagne, and a coffin. One “thrifty” carpetbag gover-nor in a single year “saved” $100,000 from a salary of$8,000. Yet this sort of corruption was by no meansconfined to the South in these postwar years. Thecrimes of the Reconstruction governments were nomore outrageous than the scams and felonies beingperpetrated in the North at the same time, espe-cially in Boss Tweed’s New York.

The Ku Klux Klan

Deeply embittered, some Southern whites resortedto savage measures against “radical” rule. Manywhites resented the success and ability of black legislators as much as they resented alleged “cor-ruption.” A number of secret organizations mush-roomed forth, the most notorious of which was the“Invisible Empire of the South,” or Ku Klux Klan,founded in Tennessee in 1866. Besheeted nightrid-

ers, their horses’ hoofs muffled, would approach thecabin of an “upstart” black and hammer on thedoor. In ghoulish tones one thirsty horseman woulddemand a bucket of water. Then, under pretense ofdrinking, he would pour it into a rubber attachmentconcealed beneath his mask and gown, smack hislips, and declare that this was the first water he hadtasted since he was killed at the Battle of Shiloh. Iffright did not produce the desired effect, force wasemployed.

Such tomfoolery and terror proved partiallyeffective. Many ex-bondsmen and white “carpet-baggers,” quick to take a hint, shunned the polls.Those stubborn souls who persisted in their“upstart” ways were flogged, mutilated, or evenmurdered. In one Louisiana parish in 1868, thewhites in two days killed or wounded two hundredvictims; a pile of twenty-five bodies was found half-buried in the woods. By such atrocious practiceswere blacks “kept in their place”—that is, down. TheKlan became a refuge for numerous bandits andcutthroats. Any scoundrel could don a sheet.

Congress, outraged by this night-riding lawless-ness, passed the harsh Force Acts of 1870 and 1871.Federal troops were able to stamp out much of the“lash law,” but by this time the Invisible Empire had

The Ku Klux Klan 493

already done its work of intimidation. Many of theoutlawed groups continued their tactics in the guiseof “dancing clubs,” “missionary societies,” and “rifleclubs.”

White resistance undermined attempts toempower the blacks politically. The white South, for many decades, openly flouted the Fourteenthand Fifteenth Amendments. Wholesale disfran-chisement of the blacks, starting conspicuouslyabout 1890, was achieved by intimidation, fraud,and trickery. Among various underhanded schemeswere the literacy tests, unfairly administered bywhites to the advantage of illiterate whites. In the eyes of the white Southerners, the goal of

white supremacy fully justified these dishonorabledevices.

Johnson Walks the Impeachment Plank

Radicals meanwhile had been sharpening theirhatchets for President Johnson. Annoyed by theobstruction of the “drunken tailor” in the WhiteHouse, they falsely accused him of maintainingthere a harem of “dissolute women.” Not contentwith curbing his authority, they decided to removehim altogether by constitutional processes.* Under


*For impeachment, see Art. I, Sec. II, para. 5; Art. I, Sec. III,paras. 6, 7; Art. II, Sec. IV, in the Appendix.

The following excerpt is part of a heartrendingappeal to Congress in 1871 by a group ofKentucky blacks:

“We believe you are not familiar with the de-scription of the Ku Klux Klans riding nightlyover the country, going from county tocounty, and in the county towns, spreadingterror wherever they go by robbing,whipping, ravishing, and killing our peoplewithout provocation, compelling coloredpeople to break the ice and bathe in thechilly waters of the Kentucky River.

“The [state] legislature has adjourned.They refused to enact any laws to suppressKu-Klux disorder. We regard them [the Ku-Kluxers] as now being licensed to continuetheir dark and bloody deeds under cover ofthe dark night. They refuse to allow us totestify in the state courts where a white manis concerned. We find their deeds are per-petrated only upon colored men and whiteRepublicans. We also find that for ourservices to the government and our race wehave become the special object of hatred andpersecution at the hands of the DemocraticParty. Our people are driven from theirhomes in great numbers, having no redressonly [except] the United States court, which is in many cases unable to reach them.”

existing law the president pro tempore of the Sen-ate, the unscrupulous and rabidly radical “BluffBen” Wade of Ohio, would then become president.

As an initial step, Congress in 1867 passed theTenure of Office Act—as usual, over Johnson’s veto.Contrary to precedent, the new law required thepresident to secure the consent of the Senate beforehe could remove his appointees once they had beenapproved by that body. One purpose was to freezeinto the cabinet the secretary of war, Edwin M. Stan-ton, a holdover from the Lincoln administration.Although outwardly loyal to Johnson, he was secretlyserving as a spy and informer for the radicals.

Johnson provided the radicals with a pretext tobegin impeachment proceedings when he abruptlydismissed Stanton early in 1868. The House of Representatives immediately voted 126 to 47 toimpeach Johnson for “high crimes and misde-meanors,” as required by the Constitution, charginghim with various violations of the Tenure of OfficeAct. Two additional articles related to Johnson’s ver-bal assaults on the Congress, involving “disgrace,ridicule, hatred, contempt, and reproach.”

A Not-Guilty Verdict for Johnson

With evident zeal the radical-led Senate now sat as acourt to try Johnson on the dubious impeachmentcharges. The House conducted the prosecution. Thetrial aroused intense public interest and, with onethousand tickets printed, proved to be the biggest

show of 1868. Johnson kept his dignity and sobrietyand maintained a discreet silence. His battery ofattorneys argued that the president, convinced thatthe Tenure of Office Act was unconstitutional, hadfired Stanton merely to put a test case before theSupreme Court. (That slow-moving tribunal finallyruled indirectly in Johnson’s favor fifty-eight yearslater.) House prosecutors, including oily-tonguedBenjamin F. Butler and embittered ThaddeusStevens, had a harder time building a compellingcase for impeachment.

On May 16, 1868, the day for the first voting inthe Senate, the tension was electric, and heavybreathing could be heard in the galleries. By a mar-gin of only one vote, the radicals failed to muster thetwo-thirds majority for Johnson’s removal. Sevenindependent-minded Republican senators, coura-geously putting country above party, voted “notguilty.”

Several factors shaped the outcome. Fears ofcreating a destabilizing precedent played a role, asdid principled opposition to abusing the constitu-tional mechanism of checks and balances. Politicalconsiderations also figured conspicuously. As thevice presidency remained vacant under Johnson,his successor would have been radical RepublicanBen Wade, the president pro tempore of the Senate.Wade was disliked by many members of the busi-ness community for his high-tariff, soft-money, prolabor views, and distrusted by moderate Repub-licans. Meanwhile, Johnson indicated through hisattorney that he would stop obstructing Republicanpolicies in return for remaining in office.

Die-hard radicals were infuriated by their fail-ure to muster a two-thirds majority for Johnson’sremoval. “The Country is going to the Devil!” criedthe crippled Stevens as he was carried from the hall.But the nation, though violently aroused, acceptedthe verdict with a good temper that did credit to its political maturity. In a less stable republic, anarmed uprising might have erupted against thepresident.

The nation thus narrowly avoided a dangerousprecedent that would have gravely weakened one ofthe three branches of the federal government. John-son was clearly guilty of bad speeches, bad judg-ment, and bad temper, but not of “high crimes andmisdemeanors.” From the standpoint of the radi-cals, his greatest crime had been to stand inflexiblyin their path.

The Impeachment Crisis 495

A black leader protested to whites in 1868,

“It is extraordinary that a race such as yours,professing gallantry, chivalry, education, andsuperiority, living in a land where ringingchimes call child and sire to the Gospel ofGod—that with all these advantages on yourside, you can make war upon the poordefenseless black man.”

The Purchase of Alaska

Johnson’s administration, though largely reduced toa figurehead, achieved its most enduring success inthe field of foreign relations.

The Russians by 1867 were in a mood to sell thevast and chilly expanse of land now known asAlaska. They had already overextended themselvesin North America, and they saw that in the likelyevent of another war with Britain, they probablywould lose their defenseless northern province tothe sea-dominant British. Alaska, moreover, hadbeen ruthlessly “furred out” and was a growing eco-nomic liability. The Russians were therefore quiteeager to unload their “frozen asset” on the Ameri-cans, and they put out seductive feelers in Washing-ton. They preferred the United States to any otherpurchaser, primarily because they wanted tostrengthen further the Republic as a barrier againsttheir ancient enemy, Britain.

In 1867 Secretary of State William Seward, anardent expansionist, signed a treaty with Russia thattransferred Alaska to the United States for the bar-gain price of $7.2 million. But Seward’s enthusiasmfor these frigid wastes was not shared by his igno-rant or uninformed countrymen, who jeered at“Seward’s Folly,” “Seward’s Icebox,” “Frigidia,” and

“Walrussia.” The American people, still preoccupiedwith Reconstruction and other internal vexations,were economy-minded and anti-expansionist.

Then why did Congress and the American pub-lic sanction the purchase? For one thing Russia,alone among the powers, had been conspicuouslyfriendly to the North during the recent Civil War.Americans did not feel that they could offend theirgreat and good friend, the tsar, by hurling his walrus-covered icebergs back into his face. Besides,


Alaska and the Lower Forty-eight States (a size comparison)

the territory was rumored to be teeming with furs,fish, and gold, and it might yet “pan out” prof-itably—as it later did with natural resources, includ-ing oil and gas. So Congress and the countryaccepted “Seward’s Polar Bear Garden,” somewhatderisively but nevertheless hopefully.

The Heritage of Reconstruction

Many white Southerners regarded Reconstructionas a more grievous wound than the war itself. It lefta festering scar that would take generations to heal.They resented the upending of their social andracial system, political empowerment of blacks, andthe insult of federal intervention in their localaffairs. Yet few rebellions have ended with the vic-tors sitting down to a love feast with the vanquished.Given the explosiveness of the issues that hadcaused the war, and the bitterness of the fighting,the wonder is that Reconstruction was not farharsher than it was. The fact is that Lincoln, John-son, and most Republicans had no clear picture atwar’s end of what federal policy toward the Southshould be. Policymakers groped for the right poli-cies, influenced as much by Southern responses todefeat and emancipation as by any plans of theirown to impose a specific program on the South.

The Republicans acted from a mixture of ideal-ism and political expediency. They wanted both toprotect the freed slaves and to promote the fortunesof the Republican party. In the end their effortsbackfired badly. Reconstruction conferred onlyfleeting benefits on the blacks and virtually extin-guished the Republican party in the South for nearlyone hundred years.

Moderate Republicans never fully appreciatedthe extensive effort necessary to make the freedslaves completely independent citizens, nor thelengths to which Southern whites would go to pre-

serve their system of racial dominance. Had Thad-deus Stevens’s radical program of drastic economicreforms and heftier protection of political rightsbeen enacted, things might well have been differ-ent. But deep-seated racism, ingrained Americanresistance to tampering with property rights, andrigid loyalty to the principle of local self-govern-ment, combined with spreading indifference in theNorth to the plight of the blacks, formed too formi-dable an obstacle. Despite good intentions byRepublicans, the Old South was in many ways moreresurrected than reconstructed.

Reconstruction’s Legacy 497

The remarkable ex-slave Frederick Douglass(1817?–1895) wrote in 1882,

“Though slavery was abolished, the wrongs ofmy people were not ended. Though theywere not slaves, they were not yet quite free.No man can be truly free whose liberty isdependent upon the thought, feeling, andaction of others, and who has himself nomeans in his own hands for guarding,protecting, defending, and maintaining thatliberty. Yet the Negro after his emancipationwas precisely in this state of destitution. . . .He was free from the individual master, butthe slave of society. He had neither money,property, nor friends. He was free from theold plantation, but he had nothing but thedusty road under his feet. He was free fromthe old quarter that once gave him shelter,but a slave to the rains of summer and thefrosts of winter. He was, in a word, literallyturned loose, naked, hungry, and destitute,to the open sky.”


VARYING VIEWPOINTS

How Radical Was Reconstruction?

Few topics have triggered as much intellectualwarfare as the “dark and bloody ground” ofReconstruction. The period provoked questions—sectional, racial, and constitutional—about whichpeople felt deeply and remain deeply divided eventoday. Scholarly argument goes back conspicuouslyto a Columbia University historian, William A. Dun-ning, whose students, in the early 1900s, publisheda series of histories of the Reconstruction South.Dunning and his disciples were influenced by theturn-of-the-century spirit of sectional conciliationas well as by current theories about black racial infe-riority. Sympathizing with the white South, theywrote about the Reconstruction period as a kind ofnational disgrace, foisted upon a prostrate region byvindictive and self-seeking radical Republican

politicians. If the South had wronged the North byseceding, the North had wronged the South byreconstructing.

A second cycle of scholarship in the 1920s wasimpelled by a widespread suspicion that the CivilWar itself had been a tragic and unnecessary blun-der. Attention now shifted to Northern politicians.Scholars like Howard Beale further questioned themotives of the radical Republicans. To Beale andothers, the radicals had masked a ruthless desire toexploit Southern labor and resources behind a falsefront of “concern” for the freed slaves. Moreover,Northern advocacy of black voting rights wasmerely a calculated attempt to ensure a Republicanpolitical presence in the defeated South. The unfor-tunate Andrew Johnson, in this view, had valiantly

Chronology

1863 Lincoln announces “10 percent”Reconstruction plan

1864 Lincoln vetoes Wade-Davis Bill

1865 Lincoln assassinatedJohnson issues Reconstruction proclamationCongress refuses to seat Southern

congressmenFreedmen’s Bureau establishedSouthern states pass Black Codes

1866 Congress passes Civil Rights Bill overJohnson’s veto

Congress passes Fourteenth AmendmentJohnson-backed candidates lose

congressional electionEx parte Milligan caseKu Klux Klan founded

1867 Reconstruction ActTenure of Office ActUnited States purchases Alaska from Russia

1868 Johnson impeached and acquittedJohnson pardons Confederate leaders

1870 Fifteenth Amendment ratified

1870-1871 Force Acts

1872 Freedmen’s Bureau ended

1877 Reconstruction ends

Varying Viewpoints 499

tried to uphold constitutional principles in the faceof this cynical Northern onslaught.

Following World War II, Kenneth Stampp,among others, turned this view on its head. Influ-enced by the modern civil rights movement, heargued that Reconstruction had been a nobleattempt to extend American principles of equityand justice. The radical Republicans and the carpet-baggers were now heroes, whereas Andrew Johnsonwas castigated for his obstinate racism. By the early1970s, this view had become orthodoxy, and it gen-erally holds sway today. Yet some scholars, such asMichael Benedict and Leon Litwack, disillusionedwith the inability to achieve full racial justice in the1960s, began once more to scrutinize the motives ofNorthern politicians immediately after the CivilWar. They claimed to discover that Reconstructionhad never been very radical and that the Freedmen’sBureau and other agencies had merely allowed thewhite planters to maintain their dominance overlocal politics as well as over the local economy.

More recently, Eric Foner has powerfullyreasserted the argument that Reconstruction was atruly radical and noble attempt to establish aninterracial democracy. Drawing upon the work ofblack scholar W. E. B. Du Bois, Foner emphasizesthe comparative approach to American Reconstruc-tion. Clearly, Foner admits, Reconstruction did notcreate full equality, but it did allow blacks to formpolitical organizations and churches, to vote, and to establish some measure of economic independ-ence. In South Africa, the Caribbean, and otherareas once marked by slavery, the freed slaves neverreceived these opportunities. Many of the benefitsof Reconstruction were erased by white southernersduring the Gilded Age, but in the twentieth century,the constitutional principles and organizationsdeveloped during Reconstruction provided thefocus and foundation for the modern civil rightsmovement—which some have called the secondReconstruction.

For further reading, see page A16 of the Appendix. For web resources, go to http://college.hmco.com.

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