| Home |
 |
Student Resources |
|
Chapter 16 |
|
After the Civil War, the South and the nation as a whole faced a difficult period of rebuilding its government and economy and of dealing with the newly freed African Americans.
The President Versus Congress
In the absence of constitutional guidelines, the president and Congress struggled over how best to reconstruct the Union. The fight was colored by a debate over how far the federal government should go to secure equality and civil rights for the four million African Americans freed by the war.
Wartime Reconstruction
By 1863, Lincoln and Congress had begun to debate two divisive issues: the reconstruction of the southern states and former Confederates and the status of the freedmen. Lincoln proposed a moderate program to restore the southern states to the Union, but by 1865 showed some willingness to compromise with Congress’s more radical plan for reconstruction. With Lincoln’s death, the issue of Reconstruction remained unresolved.
Andrew Johnson at the Helm
The ascent of Andrew Johnson, a Southerner, to the presidency eventually led to a bitter clash with Congress. Though Congress and Johnson agreed that slavery should be abolished and that the power of the planter class had to be broken down, Congress supported federal guarantees for Black citizenship while Johnson insisted that the South should be permitted to reestablish White supremacy.
Congress Takes the Initiative
Determined to crush the old southern ruling class, the Republican-led Congress extended the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau and passed a civil rights bill to grant equal benefits and protection to the freedmen. Fearing that Johnson would not enforce the civil rights act, Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing equal rights under the law to all Americans and defining national citizenship. After Johnson vetoed the two Reconstruction bills and the southern states rejected the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress initiated its own more radical program.
Congressional Reconstruction Plan Enacted
Often called Radical Reconstruction, Congressional Reconstruction began with the passage of the First Reconstruction Act of 1867 over Johnson’s veto. This act temporarily placed the South under military rule and allowed for the re-admittance of southern states, only once African-American suffrage was legitimized. Congress assumed that once freedmen could vote, they could protect themselves.
The Impeachment Crisis
When Jackson obstructed the plan’s implementation, Congress retaliated by trying to remove him from office. Johnson narrowly escaped, preserving the office from congressional domination, but insuring that Congress would have the upper hand in reconstruction.
Reconstructing Southern Society
The South was devastated and demoralized after the war. Though slavery was dead, the region was dominated by southern Whites who strived to deny all rights to freedmen. At the same time, southern Blacks tried to make their freedom meaningful by becoming land owners, acquiring education, and exercising the right to vote. These two opposing goals resulted in chaos and violence.
Reorganizing Land and Labor
Despite the desire of some radical Republicans for land redistribution, Congress failed to enact such a program, except among a very few families. Facing vast tracts of land with no one to work them, Southern landowners initiated a contract labor system that forced freedmen into virtual peonage. While some ex-slaves resisted returning to work for their former masters, most had no alternative. Evolving alongside of and eventually supplanting the contract labor system, sharecropping became the dominant agricultural system in the South. Although African Americans initially viewed sharecropping as step up from wage labor, they soon learned that it trapped them in a cycle of poverty and dependence.
Black Codes: A New Name for Slavery?
While sharecropping extended Black servitude and economic dependence on the farm, African Americans in southern towns and cities found themselves increasingly segregated from Whites by Black Codes, community pressure, or physical intimidation. At their root, the Black Codes were meant to control the Black population and insure White supremacy and privilege.
Republican Rule in the South
Politically, Reconstruction established southern governments made up of Republican business people (many of whom were from the North), poor Whites (many of whom had been Unionists during the war), and the freedmen. Although often corrupt, these radical regimes initiated significant progressive reforms, including establishing the South’s first public school systems, democratizing state and local governments, appropriating funds for an enormous expansion of public services, constructing internal improvements, and fostering economic development. They failed, however, to achieve interracial equality, and contributed to the hostility of southern Whites toward southern Blacks.
Claiming Public and Private Rights
Outside of the political process of Reconstruction, southern Blacks also reconstructed their lives in various ways, giving meaning to their freedom. They negotiated with employers and utilized the Freedmen’s Bureau and the courts to assert their rights against Whites as well as other Blacks. In the private realm, they established their own families, churches, political organizations, and community institutions and sought education for themselves, and more importantly, their children.
Retreat from Reconstruction
Serving during one of the most difficult periods in American history, Grant lacked the strong principles, consistency, and sense of purpose to be an effective administrator. His election marks the beginning of the end of Reconstruction as other political issues moved to forefront of Americans’ minds.
Rise of the Money Question
What to do with the greenbacks (paper money issued during the war) became a major problem by 1868. Hard money advocates clashed with “green backers” who wanted government-sponsored inflation. The panic of 1873 intensified the argument, and the Sherman Specie Resumption Act in 1874 failed to please either the inflationists or the hard-money advocates.
Final Efforts of Reconstruction
Republican efforts to secure Black rights culminated in the passage of the fifteenth amendment. The legislation was weakly-worded, however, leaving a great deal of room for violation of the spirit of the law. The amendment also split the age-old tie between Black rights and Woman rights and effectively divided the women’s suffrage movement. Many feminists were irate that women were denied the right to vote even as suffrage was extended to Black men.
A Reign of Terror Against Blacks
In the South, Grant’s administration failed to sustain Black suffrage against violent groups bent on restoring White supremacy. Organizations like the Ku Klux Klan used terrorism, insurrection, and murder to intimidate southern Republican governments and prospective Black voters. With the Fifteenth Amendment and Republican rule in the South severely threatened, Congress passed the “Force” Acts, allowing the president to use military force to quell insurrections.
Spoilsmen Versus Reformers
The idealism of radical republicanism waned as new leaders—“spoilsmen”—came to power determined to further their own private interests. The Credit Mobilier scandal, the “Whiskey Ring,” and the impeachment of Secretary of War Belknap for accepting bribes left liberal reform Republicans aghast and the Grant administration in shambles.
Reunion and the New South
The reconciliation of the sections came at the expense of southern Blacks and poor Whites, and despite the rhetoric of the New South, the region remained poor and open to exploitation by northern business efforts.
The Compromise of 1877
In the 1876 presidential election, Samuel Tilden, the Democratic candidate, won the popular majority as well as the uncontested electoral vote. But disputed returns in the three Republican-controlled southern states threw the election into turmoil. The Compromise of 1877 ended military rule, insured that conservative “home rule” would be restored in the South, and effectively abandoned southern Blacks to their former masters. With southern Democratic acquiescence, Republican candidate Rutherford Hayes assumed the presidency, though he did so under a cloud of suspicion.
“Redeeming” a New South
In the South, upper-class “Redeemers” took power in the name of White supremacy and laissez-faire government, initiating a “New South.” As industrialism gained strength in the 1880s, the southern economy became dominated by northern capital and southern employers, landlords, and creditors. Though Redeemer governments were more economical than their Republican predecessors, cutting back funding for education and other public services, they were no less corrupt. Most hurt by the Redeemers were southern Blacks and poor Whites who were caught in the poverty of sharecropping.
The Rise of Jim Crow
Beginning in 1876 and culminating in the 1890s, southern governments began codifying the de facto segregation and discrimination of southern Blacks through the enactment of the infamous Jim Crow system. Economic and physical coercion, including hundreds of lynchings in the name of southern White womanhood, effectively disfranchised people of color while the convict-lease system reduced Blacks convicted of petty crimes to a system of forced labor that was often more cruel than slavery. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, the federal government did little to stem or even alleviate racial oppression in the South and the Supreme Court effectively condoned it through a series of court decisions including Plessy v. Ferguson.
Conclusion: Henry McNeal Turner and the “Unfinished Revolution”
Some Blacks like Henry McNeal Turner became justifiably bitter at the depth of White racism and the lack of action on the part of the federal government. They supported Black nationalism and emigration to Africa as a solution. Most Blacks, however, chose to struggle for their rights within American society. By the 1880s, Reconstruction was over, the nation was reunified, and Blacks were sentenced to oppression that would not be challenged for another century.
|