Introduction

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Chapter 16: Reconstruction and the South

Introduction
Even as the Civil War raged, Abraham Lincoln had rather conciliatory and lenient plans, some of which he implemented in Confederate areas under Union control, for readmitting the secessionist states. He was opposed by the Radical Republicans, who were intent on guaranteeing blacks rights and on punishing the Confederacy. Andrew Johnson tried to continue with Lincoln’s plans after the latter’s assassination, but control of the Reconstruction process was wrested from him by the Radical Republicans, who won large congressional majorities in the election of 1866. One of the major issues in the election was the Fourteenth Amendment, which granted blacks political rights in the South and outlawed the Black Codes that had sprung up throughout the former Confederacy. Johnson opposed the measure, but he was repudiated by the public, and, emboldened by their triumph, the Radical Republicans pushed ahead with a number of Reconstruction acts dividing the South into five military districts and setting stringent guidelines for the Confederates’ readmission to the Union. They also tried to impeach Johnson and only narrowly failed. Republican Ulysses Grant took over the presidency in 1868, helped by the votes of newly enfranchised Southern blacks. The Radical Republicans furthermore passed the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed all blacks, including those in the North, the right to vote. Blacks also took advantage of the opportunities presented by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to become involved in politics in the South. Rebuilding the South, however, was difficult because of the damage of the war, and few in government or elsewhere had given much thought to the fates of the newly freed slaves. This and the South’s general lack of industry gave rise to sharecropping and the crop-lien system, which were often little better in practical terms for blacks than slavery. Although black political power was overwhelmingly minimal, white backlash nevertheless occurred, showing up in associations like the Ku Klux Klan, which terrorized blacks. Congress dealt with the Klan with three Force acts (1870–71), but its legacy lived on in conservative Democratic parties, which began to win Southern legislatures in the 1870s. Meanwhile, Northern interest in the problems of the South was waning, and with the Compromise of 1877 that put Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House, Reconstruction ended.

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