Chapter 15 -- Reconstruction

The Problems of Peacemaking

• With the war almost over, no one knew what to do
• no precedent existed
• could not enter into a treaty
• The Aftermath of War and Emancipation
• the infrastructure of the South was destroyed
• 20% of the men killed
• fortunes lost
• mourning becomes a ritual
• romanticized about their “lost cause”
• Confederate heroes become religious figures
• their loss made them more determined to hold on to what remained
• but compared to whites, who had it bad, the 4 million blacks who were now free, had it worse
• hundred of thousands left the plantations
• no where to go
• tramped around
• no land, no possessions
• “for blacks and whites, Reconstruction became a struggle to define the meaning of freedom – but the former slaves and the defeated whites had very different conceptions of what freedom meant”
• Competing Notions of Freedom
• an end to slavery?
• an end to humiliation?
• an end to injustice?
• live like a white man?
• How to achieve freedom
• redistribution of property?
• “… all earned by the sweat of our brows”
• legal equality
• given the same opportunities as white citizens they could advance successfully in American society
• all wanted independence from white control
• established their own communities
• churches
• created fraternal, benevolent, and mutual aid societies
• schools – when they could
• for white Southerners, freedom meant the of noninterference from the North
• a restoration of their antebellum society
• continue slavery in some other form
• preserve local autonomy
• preserve white supremacy
• Union soldiers occupied the South to keep order and protect freedmen
• March ’65 – Congress est. the Freedmen’s Bureau
• O.O. Howard
• food
• schools
• settle Blacks on their own land
• also helped whites who became destitute by the war
• could only operate for one year
• really too little to have much impact
• Issues of Reconstruction
• Republicans in Congress
• readmit the South – and Democrats
• would weaken the Republicans
• they must protect their measures that were gained with the Demos gone
• How should they be readmitted?
• emotions ran strong
• Punished?
• Conservatives
• admit the abolition of slaves
• Radicals
• civil and military leaders be punished
• large numbers of Southern whites be disenfranchised
• protect the legal rights of blacks
• white property of the wealthy be confiscated and given to the freedmen
• give freedmen the vote
• but few Northern states gave blacks the right to vote
• Moderates
• supported, at least, some concessions to protect Black rights
• Plans for Reconstruction
• Lincoln leaned with the Conservatives and Moderates
• a lenient Reconstruction plan might draw southern unionists and former Whigs to the Republican Party
• and keep the Demos weak
• Lincoln’s Reconstruction plan was announced in December 1863 (the 10% Plan)
• offered general amnesty to white Southerners (except high officials of the Confederacy)
• pledge loyalty to the government
• accept the abolition of slavery
• when 10% of the voting population accepted this, then they could form state governments
• Lincoln also wanted to allow educated, property-owning blacks, and who had served in the Union army allowed to vote
• by 1864, three ex-Confederate states had reestablished loyal governments and rejoined the Union
• Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee
• Radicals objected to Lincoln’s plan
• kept the Congressmen from the reconstructed states from sitting
• refused to count their elector votes in the 1864 election
• but were unsure, at that time, on what specific plan they should follow
• their first plan was known as the Wade-Davis Plan
• Pres. appoints a provisional governor for each conquered state
• when a majority of the white males of the state pledge their allegiance to the Union, the governor could summon a state constitutional convention
• elected by those who had sworn to an “iron-clad” oath – that they had never taken up arms against the north
• the new constitutions had to abolish slavery, disfranchise Confederate civil and military leaders, and repudiate debts accumulated by the state governments during the war
• only after the state had met these conditions could they come back into the Union
• similar to Lincoln’s plan, the states would determine what rights blacks would exercise
• Lincoln vetoes the bill
• “enrages” the Radicals
• he realizes he would have to meet at least some of their demands in a new Reconstruction plan
• the Death of Lincoln
• the fact that it was conspiratorial aided the militant Republicans and doom plans for an easy peace
• Johnson and “Restoration”
• he attempts to implement it when Congress was adjourned
• amnesty to those Southerners who would take an oath of allegiance
• High ranking confederate officials and any white Southerner with land worth $20,0000 or more would have to apply to the president for individual pardons
• for each state the President appointed a provisional governor
• who was then to “invite” qualified voters to elect delegates to a constitutional convention
• was not clear how many voter there should be, but Johnson implied that it should be a majority
• in many respects, similar to Wade-Davis
• for a state to be readmitted to Congress a state must
• revoke its ordinance of succession
• abolish slavery
• ratify the 13^th Amend
• repudiate the Confederate and state war debts
• elect a state government and representatives to Congress
• by the end of ’65 all states had either followed Lincoln’s plan or Johnson’s plan
• but the Radicals refused to recognize either plan and again would not allow Southern delegates to sit
• Radicals were outraged when Georgia elected Alex. Stephens to the Senate

Radical Reconstruction

• Joint Committee on Reconstruction
• formed to draft a plan of Reconstruction for Congress
• results in Congressional Reconstruction or Radical Reconstruction
• Black Codes
• in the meantime, Southern states were passing Black Codes
• Congress responds by drafting the first civil rights act in the history of the US (and extending the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau
• civil rights act gave the federal government power to intervene in states affairs to protect the rights of citizens
• although Johnson vetoes, Congress overrode it
• the 14^th Amendment
• the Joint Committee drafts a new amendment
• Congress approves and send to the state (early summer of ’66)
• the first constitutional definition of citizenship
• everyone born in the US
• everyone naturalized (living in the US for five years)
• was therefore to be considered automatically a citizen and entitled to all the “privileges and immunities” guaranteed by the Constitution, including equal protection under the laws by both the state and federal governments
• there could be no other requirements for citizenship
• penalties
• reduction of representation in Congress and in the electoral college – on any state that denied suffrage to its citizens
• also forbid any former Southerner who had aided the Confederacy from holding any state or federal office unless two-thirds of Congress voted to pardon them
• In order for states to be readmitted, they must ratify the Amendment
• only Tennessee did
• no others, including Delaware and Kentucky
• race riots in the South were breaking out
• Congressional elections of ’66 made Radicals stronger
• were now ready to override any presidential veto
• The Congressional Plan
• in the form of three separate bills
• each of which Johnson vetoed and Congress overrode
• came two years after the war
• in the meantime Tennessee had been admitted (after it ratified the 14^th Ad)
• Congress rejected all other governments under the Lincoln-Johnson plans
• of those ten states… they were divided into five military districts
• a military commander governed each
• the military commander had orders to register qualified voters
• “all adult black males and those white males who had not participated in the rebellion”
• Once “qualified” voters were registered, they would elect conventions to write constitutions
• must include provisions for black suffrage
• voters must ratify state constitutions
• state legislatures must ratify the 14^th Amendment
• then would be readmitted to the Union
• in 1869 after seven states had been readmitted, Congress added an additional requirement for re-admittance – the 15^th Amendment
• forbade the sates and the federal government to deny suffrage to any citizen on account of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”
• passage of the Tenure of Office Act and the Command of the Army Act
• purpose was to keep Johnson for interfering in what Congress was doing
• and also to protect Secretary of War Stanton from being replaced
• Besides trying to keep the President from interfering with their plan, they blocked the Supreme Court as well
• in 1866 the Court declared in the case of Ex parte Milligan that the use of military courts were unconstitutional in those areas where civil courts were functioning
• the problem with the civil courts was that they were controlled by southerners and therefore blacks could not get a fair trial
• Congress attempted to reduce the power of the Supreme Court through three controversial bills:
• the first bill would require 2/3’s of a majority over any cases
• would deny the Court jurisdiction in Reconstruction cases
• would reduce its membership to three
• there was even talk of abolishing it
• the affect was that the Court refused to accept jurisdiction in any cases involving Reconstruction for the next two years and Congress dropped the bills it was considering
• The Impeachment of the President
• Johnson still represented a hurdle for the Reconstruction legislation and Congress needed to get rid of him
• when he fires Stanton as his Sec of War
• House impeached the President
• Senate tries and votes
• when the Senate goes to vote for removal, the Moderates, who were losing faith in Reconstruction programs, joined Demos and the vote was 35 to 19, one vote shy of the 2/3rds majority needed for removal

The South Reconstruction

• each side (the South and the North and blacks) have different opinions on why Reconstruction was a failure
• South
• governments were corrupt and inefficient
• North and blacks
• governments did not go far enough to guarantee freedmen even the most elemental rights of citizenship – which then resulted in a “harsh new system of economic subordination”
• The Reconstruction Governments
• of the ten states under Reconstruction, 25% of the white males were disenfranchised
• produced black majorities in SC, Miss, and Louisiana
• but blacks WERE THE MAJORITIES IN THOSE STATES ANYWAY!!!!!
• after voting restrictions were dropped (on the whites) the only way Republicans held on to their control of the states was with the help of “scalawags”
• many scalawags had been Whigs, who were never comfortable within the Democratic party
• others hoped to gain something economically
• Whites from the North (“carpetbaggers”) served as Republican leaders in the South
• in reality, most of them were middle-class; doctors, lawyers and teachers who looked at the South as a “new frontier”
• most numerous Republicans in the South were the freedmen
• held “colored conventions”
• played an important role in politics in the South at this time
• served as delegates to Constitutional conventions
• held public offices of every kind
• two served as Senators to Miss
• “Negro Rule”?
• see notes on blacks in government
• Corruption?  See other notes
• Education
• most dramatic of the accomplishments benefiting blacks and whites
• many blacks and whites came down from the North to help
• Freedmen’s Bureau and Northern private philanthropic organizations
• Southern whites feared that educated blacks would result in giving blacks “a false notion in equality”
• 4,000 schools for blacks and 9,000 teachers (half black), 200,000 students (only 12% of the school age population of blacks)
• Fisk, Morehouse and Atlanta University
• developing into two separate systems – black and white
• efforts to integrate became a failure
• Freedmen’s schools were open to whites – but they did not attend
• Landownership and Tenancy
• one goal was land reform – but fails
• only in some areas did we see large amounts of land redistributed
• Sea Islands of SC and Georgia and areas of Miss. (where Jeff Davis lived)
• “40 acres and a mule” is what most dreamed
• 10,000 black families did benefit
• mostly from abandoned plantations
• by June of ’65 many whites were returning and demanding their confiscated land returned
• Distribution of land ownership in the South change considerable after the war
• 80% of all whites owned land before the war
• fell to 67% after
• lost land due to taxes or debt
• others left marginal lands for more fertile areas
• blacks who owned land before the war were ~0% rose to 20%
• Freedman’s Bank
• effort by antislavery whites to promote black ownership
• failed
• most blacks and a growing minority of whites did not own land
• sharcroppers
• it was at least better than the gang-labor system they had experienced as slaves
• Crop-Lien System
• besides redistribution of land ownership in the South, there was a remarkable redistribution of wealth that occurred
• as slaves, blacks earned about 22% of the profits on plantations
• by the end of Reconstruction they were earning 56%
• worked harder?  or was the plantation system inefficient?
• in per capita income, blacks experienced a 46% rise in income between ’57-’79, while whites experienced a 35% decline
• “represented one of the most significant redistributions of income in American history
• but although black incomes were increasing, Southern agriculture was in decline
• blacks working 1/3^rd less than as a slave
• but still the same as whites
• and black per capita income rose 25% of white per capita income to about one-half in the first few years after the war 
• but then there is no change after this initial increase
• New system of credit – Crop-lien
• local country stores
• owned by planters  and others
• farmers had to rely on credit from the merchant
• merchants, who had no competition, could charge 50%-60% interest rates
• a “lien” is a claim the merchant has on a farmer’s crop for the loan
• many farmers could become trapped in debt
• cotton farming was becoming a failure due to soil giving out
• The African-American Family in Freedom