Reconstruction

RECONSTRUCTION

Birth of a Nation	In 1915, 50 years after the end of the Civil War, D.W. Griffith, released his epic film "Birth of a Nation." The greatest blockbuster of the silent era, "Birth of a Nation" was seen by an estimated 200 million Americans by 1946. Based on a novel by a Baptist preacher named Thomas Dixon, the film painted Reconstruction, the period following the Civil War, as a time when vengeful former slaves, opportunistic white scalawags, and corrupt Yankee carpetbaggers plundered and oppressed the former Confederacy until respectable white Southerner rose up and restored order. A "scalawag" was a southern white who supported the Republican party; a "carpetbagger" was a northern-born Republican who had migrated to the South. The film depicted a vindictive northern Congressman, modeled on a Pennsylvania Republican member of Congress, Thaddeus Stevens, and a power-hungry mulatto eager to marry the Congressman's daughter. The film's hero is an aristocratic Confederate veteran who joins the Ku Klux Klan and at the film's climax rescues the woman from armed freedmen. President Woodrow Wilson reportedly described the film as "history written with lightning." During the twentieth century, far more Americans probably learned about Reconstruction from Hollywood rather than from history books or lectures. Films like "Birth of a Nation" and "Gone With the Wind" depicted Reconstruction as a misguided attempt to overturn the South's "natural" order by giving political power former slaves. Even though the Confederacy lost the Civil War, it succeeded, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in winning the ideological war that determined how Americans viewed the Civil War era. For much of the twentieth century, the dominant view of Reconstruction, repeated in many high school and college textbooks, was that it was a period of "bayonet rule," when vindictive northern carpetbaggers and their white and black puppets engaged in an orgy of corruption and misrule. According to this view, a courageous President Johnson, seeking to carry out Lincoln's policy of reconciliation, was confronted by a hostile Congress trying to punish the defeated South. In recent years, this interpretation of Reconstruction has been thoroughly dismantled. It is now clear that Reconstruction was a failed, but admirable, attempt to adjust to the realities of emancipation: To guarantee the civil and political rights of former slaves and forge a more just society citizenship out of the ruins of slavery. President Johnson's reconstruction policy, far from being a continuation of Lincoln's, was steadfastly opposed to protecting the rights of African Americans. Reconstruction was the most daring experiment in American history. It represented an attempt to transform the institutions and patterns of social relations of the Old South. It gave black Americans in the South their first taste of political power. Out of Reconstruction came constitutional amendments that extended citizenship and voting rights to African Americans. This era also witnessed the federal government's first efforts to create social welfare programs. In the end, Reconstruction failed establish a less racially divided society. Its failure doomed the South to decades of relative economic underdevelopment and ensured that the South would be dominated by a single political party. It also left the entire country with the unfinished task of achieving full economic and political equality to the descendants of slaves.
A New Birth of Freedom: The Day of Jubilee	The North's victory in the Civil War produced a social revolution in the South. Four million slaves were freed and a quarter million southern whites had died, one fifth of the male population. $2.5 billion worth of property had been lost. Slave emancipation did not come in a single moment. In coastal South Carolina and parts of Louisiana and Florida, some slaves gained their freedom as early as the fall of 1861, when Union generals like John C. Fremont, without presidential or Congressional authorization, proclaimed slaves in their conquered districts to be free. During the war, slaves, by the tens of thousands, abandoned their plantations and flocked to Union lines. Black soldiers in the Union Army and their families automatically gained freedom. Many slaves in Texas did not formally hear about freedom until June 19, 1865, which is why "Juneteenth" continues to be celebrated as emancipation day throughout the Southwest. Many slaves in the border states that remained in the Union--Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri--were not freed until December 1865, eight months after the end of the Civil War, when the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, was ratified. For former slaves, emancipation was a moment of exhilaration, fear, and uncertainty. While some greeted the announcement of freedom with jubilation, others reacted with stunned silence. Responses to the news of emancipation ranged from exhilaration and celebration to incredulity and fear. In Choctaw County, Mississippi, former slaves whipped a planter named Nat Best to retaliate for his cruelties. In Richmond, Virginia, some 1,500 ex-slaves gathered in the Free African church to sing hymns. A parade in Charleston attracted 10,000 spectators and featured a black-draped coffin bearing the words "Slavery is Dead." A northern journalist met an ex-slave in North Carolina who had walked 600 miles searching for his wife and children who had been sold four years before. But many freed men and women felt a deep uncertainty about their status and rights. Ex-slaves expressed their newly-won freedom in diverse ways. Many couples, forbidden to marry during slavery, took the opportunity to formalize their unions. Others, who had lived apart from their families on separate plantations, were finally free to reside with their spouses and children. As an expression of their freedom, many freedmen dropped their slave names, adopted new surnames, and insisted on being addressed as "mister" or misses." Many black women withdrew from field labor to care for their families. Many ex-slaves left farms or plantations for towns or cities "where freedom was free-er." Across the South, former slaves left white-dominated churches and formed independent black congregations; founded schools; and set up mutual aid societies. They also held freedmen's conventions to air grievances, discuss pressing issues, and press for equal civil and political rights. Shocked at seeing former slaves transformed into free women and men, many southern whites complained of "betrayal" and "ingratitude" when freedmen left their plantations. Revealing slaveowners' capacity for self-deception, one former master complained that "those we loved best, and who loved us best--as we thought--were the first to leave us." In many parts of the South, the end of the war was followed by outbursts of white rage. White mobs whipped, clubbed, and murdered ex-slaves. In contrast, the vast majority of former slaves refrained from vengeance against former masters. Instead their struggled to achieve social and independence by forming separate lodges, newspapers, and political organizations. Reconstruction was a time of testing, when freedmen probed the boundaries and possibilities of freedom. Every aspect of southern life was subject to redefinition, from forms of racial etiquette to the systems of labor that would replace slavery.
Emancipation in Comparative Perspective	The American South was the only region in the world, except for Haiti, in which slavery was overthrown by force of arms. It was the only area in which large slaveowners were deprived of the right to hold public office. It was also the only place in which slave owners received no compensation for the loss of their slave property. Altogether, slaveowners lost $2.5 billion in slave property. Most important of all, the American South was the only region in which former slaves received civil and political rights, including full citizenship rights as well as the right to vote and hold elective office. The South was also the only post-emancipation society in which former slaves formed successful political alliances with whites. Yet for all of its uniqueness, reconstruction in the South ultimately followed many of the same patterns found elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere. In the end, southern planters managed to hold onto their land, which formed the basis of their economic and political power. By 1877, the Democratic party, the party of white supremacy, had regained political control over each of the former Confederate states. Throughout the western hemisphere, the end of slavery was followed by a period of reconstruction in which race relations were redefined and new systems of labor emerged. In former slave societies throughout the Americas, ex-slaves sought to free themselves from the gang system of labor on plantations and establish small, self-sufficient farms. Meanwhile, planters and local governments tried to restore the plantation system. The outcome, in almost all former slave societies, was the emergence of a caste system of race relations and a system of involuntary labor such as peonage, debt bondage, apprenticeship, contract labor, tenant farming, and sharecropping. In every post-emancipation society, the abolition of slavery resulted in acute labor shortages and declining productivity, spurring efforts to restore plantation discipline. Even in Haiti, where black revolution had overthrown slavery, repeated attempts were made to restore the plantation system. On Caribbean islands like Barbados, where land was totally controlled by whites, the plantation system was re-imposed. In other areas like Jamaica, where former slaves were able to squat on unsettled land and set up subsistence farms, staple production fell sharply. To counteract a sharp decline in sugar production, the British government imported thousands of "coolie" laborers from Asia into the Caribbean. To force former slaves to work on plantations, Caribbean governments imposed heavy taxes and enforced strict vagrancy laws. Similar efforts to re-impose forced labor under new names also occurred in the post-Civil War South, but with a crucial difference. Having defeated the Confederacy and emancipated the slaves, many northern Republicans were convinced that securing the peace and protecting the civil rights of former slaves required unprecedented extensions of federal power. A titanic struggle took place between President Johnson, who permitted the establishment in 1865 of all-white governments that restricted the rights of ex-slaves, and Congress over the Republicans' determination to protect the basic rights of former slaves. The Republican commitment to free labor would prevent the planters from re-imposing slavery in a new guise. But if the freedmen were not reduced to servitude, neither would many become independent landowners. Instead, landlords and laborers would compromise their differences by adopting a system of sharecropping that would perpetuate southern poverty for decades. Reconstruction also had a more positive legacy. It was during this period that African Americans in the South established churches and schools that would provide the institutional basis for later challenges to inequality. And the constitutional amendments ratified during Reconstruction would provide the legal basis for the attack on racial segregation during the 1940s, '50s, and '60s Like an earthquake that shakes the ground and then subsides, Reconstruction came and went. But it did fundamentally alter the nation's landscape.
Sharecropping	What the freed men and women wanted above all else was land on which they could support their own families. During and immediately after the war, many former slaves established subsistence farms on land that had been abandoned to the Union army. But President Andrew Johnson, a Democrat and a former slaveowner, restored this land to its former owners. The failure to redistribute land reduced many former slaves to economic dependency on the South's old planter class and new landowners. During Reconstruction, former slaves--and many small white farmers--became trapped in a new system of economic exploitation known as sharecropping. Lacking capital and land of their own, former slaves were forced to work for large landowners. Initially, planters, with the support of the Freedmen's Bureau, sought to restore gang labor under the supervision of white overseers. But the freedmen, who wanted autonomy and independence, refused to sign contracts that required gang labor. Ultimately, sharecropping emerged as a sort of compromise. Instead of cultivating land in gangs supervised by overseers, landowners divided plantations into 20- to 50 acre plots suitable for farming by a single family. In exchange for land, a cabin, and supplies, sharecroppers agreed to raise a cash crop (usually cotton) and to give half the crop to their landlord. The high interest rates landlords and sharecroppers charged for goods bought on credit (sometimes as high as 70 percent a year) transformed sharecropping into a system of economic dependency and poverty. The freedmen found that "freedom could make folks proud but it didn't make 'em rich." Nevertheless, the sharecropping system did allow freedmen a degree of freedom and autonomy far greater than that experienced under slavery. As a symbol of their newly won independence, freedmen had teams of mules drag their former slave cabins away from the slave quarters into their own fields. Wives and daughters sharply reduced their labor in the fields and instead devoted more time to childcare and housework. For the first time, black families could divide their time between fieldwork and housework in accordance with their own family priorities.
The Politics of Reconstruction	The failure of Reconstruction was not inevitable. There were moments of possibility when it seemed imaginable that former slaves might achieve genuine freedom. Immediately following the war, all-white southern legislatures enacted "black codes," designed to force ex-slaves to work on plantations, where they would be put to work on gangs. These codes denied African Americans the right to purchase or even rent land. Vagrancy laws allowed authorities to arrest blacks "in idleness" (including many children) and assign them to a chain gang or auction them off to a planter for as long as a year. The more stringent black codes also bar ex-slaves from owning weapons, marrying whites, and assembling after sunset. Other statutes required blacks to have written proof of employment and barred them from leaving plantations. The Freedmen's Bureau, which was established in March 1865 to aid former slaves, helped enforce laws against vagrancy and loitering and refused to allow ex-slaves to keep land that they occupied during the war. It ordered freed slaves to sign labor contracts with former masters and other white landowners. In many instances, these contracts did not require the payment of wages. One black army veteran asked rhetorically: "If you call this Freedom, what did you call Slavery?" Many African Americans in the South defied these efforts to reduce them to virtual reenslavement by staging strikes and other protests. But lacking land of their own, most ex-slaves were eventually forced to become tenant farmers.
Presidential Reconstruction	After helping to push through the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, President sought to quickly restore the rebel states to the Union. He considered Reconstruction a "restoration" and wanted to quickly readmit the former Confederate states after they had repudiated their ordinances of secession, accepted the 13th Amendment, repudiated the Confederate debt, and pledged loyalty to the Union. Johnson's vision of Reconstruction clashed with that of many Republicans. He vetoed a string of Republican-backed measures, including an extension of the Freedman's Bureau and the first Civil Rights bill. He ordered black families evicted from land on which they had been settled by the U.S. Army. He acquiesced in the Black Codes which southern state governments enacted to reduce former slaves to the status of dependent plantation laborers.
Congressional Reconstruction	In early 1866, Congressional Republicans (so-called "radical Republicans"), appalled by mass killing of ex-slaves and adoption of restrictive black codes, seized control of Reconstruction from President Johnson. Congress denied representatives from the former Confederate states their Congressional seats and passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and wrote the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, extending citizenship rights to African Americans and guaranteeing them equal protection of the laws. The 14th Amendment also reduced representation in Congress of any southern state that deprived African Americans of the vote. In 1870, the country went even further by ratifying the Fifteenth Amendment, which gave voting rights to black men. The most radical proposals advanced during Reconstruction--to confiscate plantations and redistribute portions to the freemen--were defeated. In 1867, Congress overrode a presidential veto and passed an act that divided the South into military districts and placed the former Confederate states under martial law pending their adoption of constitutions guaranteeing civil liberties to former slaves. The Reconstruction Act of 1867 gave African American men in the South the right to vote three years before ratification of the 15th Amendment. With the vote came representation. Freedmen served in state legislatures and Hiram Revels became the first African American to sit in the U.S. Senate. Although the law empowered him to remove recalcitrant southern officeholders, President Johnson refused. He also forbade the Army from trying violations of federal law in its courts or to prohibit activities that were not in specific violation of federal or local statutes. Many Republicans regarded the president's actions as a systematic effort to thwart the will of Congress and lend aid and comfort to enemies of the Union hot-tempered Johnson labeled the Republicans scoundrels in the treasonous tradition of Benedict Arnold. To prevent the president from obstructing its reconstruction program, Congress passed several laws restricting presidential powers. These laws prevented him from appointing Supreme Court justices and restricted his authority over the army. The Tenure of Office Act barred him from removing officeholders, appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate, without Senate approval. In August 1867, Johnson tested the Tenure of Office Act by removing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, prompting Republicans in Congress to seek to impeach and remove the president.
The Impeachment of President Andrew Johnson	Officially, Johnson was impeached for violating the Tenure of Office Act, which had been passed over Johnson's veto, which prohibited the president from dismissing certain federal officials without Senate approval, and for denouncing Congress as unfit to legislate. But those reasons masked the issues that were more important to Congressional Republicans. Johnson had vetoed 20 Reconstruction bills and had urged southern legislatures to reject the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing equal protection of the laws. He had ordered African American families evicted from land on which they had been settled by the U.S. Army. Johnson's lawyers sought to portray the dispute as a partisan attack made to look like a legal proceedings. His opponents insisted he had abused his powers and flouted the will of Congress. The House voted 126-47 to impeach Johnson on 11 separate articles. The proceedings were intensively partisan. One Republican Representative even suggested that Johnson, as vice president, had been involved in the plot to assassinate President Lincoln, just so he could succeed him. The chief of the Secret Service gave false reports that the president had an affair with a woman seeking to obtain pardons for former Confederates. Johnson's attorneys argued the Tenure of Office Act applied to officials appointed by the president, and since Secretary of War Stanton was appointed by Lincoln, not Johnson, he was not covered by the act. The final vote was 35 to 19, one short of the two-thirds needed for conviction and removal from office. Seven Republicans voted to acquit. The Senate voted on two more articles of impeachment, each again just one vote shy of conviction. The chamber never voted on the remaining eight impeachment articles Johnson had been defamed. In the future, he no longer obstructed Congress' Reconstruction policies. President Johnson spent the rest of life seeking vindication. He actively pursued the 1868 Democratic presidential nomination but in the end lost the nomination to New York governor Horatio Seymour, who subsequently lost the election to Republican candidate Ulysses S. Grant. Johnson then moved back to Tennessee, where he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 1869 and the House in 1872. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1874 and was greeted by the Senators with thunderous applause, his desk strewn with roses. After a few months, however, he suffered a series of strokes and died. His wife placed a copy of the U.S. Constitution under his head in his coffin.
Proceed to:	Reconstruction Two
Source	Digital History, Reconstruction, accessed 12-05-2003.