Reconstruction: Success or Failure?

 As the Civil War wound to a close, the nation was hurting. Wide swathes of the South were ruined from Sherman’s March to the Sea and many cities lay in ruins from the destruction of war. The nation looked towards the rebuilding of both physical property and national unity, but also faced the problem of the newly freed slaves, which now were without money, land, or jobs in an area of the country that still thought them highly inferior to whites and would do almost anything to keep the freed slaves from becoming anything more than glorified slaves. In the North, the nation started passing laws and constitutional amendments to create and protect the rights of the new freedmen and help both former slaves and poor white men get back on their feet after the devastation of the war. This effort was called Reconstruction, and it lasted approximately from 1865 to 1877, 12 years of effort. The question I will answer is whether this effort was successful at 5 years, and at the end of the effort.

 At the end of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln began reconstruction efforts, which started with the generous terms of surrender he gave to the southern armies at the end of the war. He proposed his 10% plan, a plan that called for 10% of southern voters to swear an oath of loyalty before their state could rejoin the union. Congress, especially the Radical Republicans in Congress, felt that this plan was too lenient on the South, and proposed the Wade-Davis Bill, requiring a majority of voters to swear oaths of loyalty before their state could rejoin the rest of the United States of America and elections could start being held. Lincoln disagreed with this bill, but instead of straight up vetoing it, he used what is called a pocket veto, vetoing the law simply by not signing it within 10 days of it passing. By vetoing it in this way, he did not outright say no to the plan, he just showed he disagreed with it. Lincoln was showing he wanted more lenient terms to make the South more likely to comply. He let Congress pass laws creating the Freedmen’s Bureau, helping freedmen and poor whites by providing medical supplies and health care, along with establishing schools for the former slaves who had no education. We wonder what would have happened if Lincoln had led the Reconstruction effort all the way to the end, but unfortunately we know that did not happen. On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth entered Lincoln’s booth at Ford’s Theater and shot him in the back of the head, jumped onto the stage (broke his leg), and escaped Washington D.C. on horseback. Lincoln was fatally wounded and died the next morning, the first president to be assassinated. Lincoln’s vice president, Andrew Johnson, became the 17th president of the United States.

 When Lincoln had ran for president the second time in 1864, he chose Andrew Johnson to balance the ticket, not as a person who would be a good president. Andrew Johnson lived in Tennessee for most of his life and held a white-supremacist viewpoint, but as a senator at the time of the Civil War, he split with the south and became the only southern senator to retain his seat in the Senate.  When the Union occupied Tennessee in 1862, Andrew Johnson was appointed as the military general by Lincoln. In 1864 Lincoln doubted his chances for reelection. He was facing George B. McClellan, a Democrat whose party was clamoring for peace, even if it meant letting the Confederate States of America continue to exist as a separate country. To balance the ticket, Lincoln chose Andrew Johnson, a southern Democrat, to appeal to the voters that Lincoln didn’t appeal to. McClellan argued that the war was already costly in lives and resources. In addition McClellan argued that the war showed no sign of drawing to a rapid close. However, a string of victories in the summer of 1864 led to Lincoln being reelected by a wide margin, with Andrew Johnson as the Vice President that was never supposed to be anything more. However, on April 15, 1865, following the death of Lincoln, Andrew Johnson was sworn in as the 17th president of the United States. The nation now faced Reconstruction with a southern white supremacist at the helm. Johnson passed his own reconstruction plan, calling for an oath of loyalty (with no set requirements for the number of voters that needed to take the oath) and all Southerners that owned land worth more than $20,000 needed to ask for a presidential pardon, which he gave to almost all who asked. Johnson then declared that Reconstruction was done and the nation could move on.

 In the south, the white southerners passed many laws restricting the abilities of the newly freed blacks in and around the town. These laws were collectively known as Black Codes. Each southern state or city had their own, but they were all similar. On July 3, 1865, the town of Opelousas, Louisiana, passed a Black Code of their own:

“SECTION 1. No Negro shall be allowed to come within the limits of the town of Opelousas without special permission from his employers.

  SECTION 3. No Negro shall be permitted to rent or keep a house within the limits of the town under any circumstances.

  SECTION 7. No freedman who is not in the military service shall be allowed to carry firearms, or any kind of weapons, within the limits of the town of Opelousas without the special permission of his employer, in writing, and approved by the mayor or president of the board of police.”

 As you can see, even though freedmen were technically free, they were restricted almost as much as they were when they were still slaves. Other Black Codes included laws making it illegal for a Negro to be unemployed or own dogs. Some Black Codes also included clauses requiring freedmen to sign a contract for a year of work with an employer.

 A group of Congressmen disagreed with the Black Codes and President Johnson’s decision that Reconstruction was over. They joined together and pushed for further reconstruction, especially in regards to the rights and protection of the rights of freedmen. This group of Congressmen were called the Radical Republicans. The first thing they tried to do was to pass a law extending the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau, whose charter was about to expire. They also tried to pass the Civil Rights Act, an act that would give citizenship and the same rights as whites to all people born in the United States, "without distinction of race or color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude." This gave rights to the slaves born in the United States and made things like Section 7 of the Black Code above unconstitutional (it violates Amendment 2 of the United States Constitution, the right to bear arms). Both laws passed Congress easily, but President Johnson vetoed both, calling them unconstitutional. Both houses of Congress easily had the 2/3rds majority needed to overturn Johnson’s veto on both laws, and Johnson’s attempted veto increased support for the Radical Republicans.

 The Radical Republicans now passed the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, which passed the 14th Amendment (so even if the Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional, it wasn’t now), divided the South (minus Tennessee) into 5 military districts, and required states to ratify the 14th Amendment, rewrite their state constitution to allow blacks to vote, and hold new elections before they could be readmitted into the Union.

Many parts of the Civil Rights Act and previous acts used the military to enforce the acts in the south. Because President Johnson tried to veto every one of the acts passed by Congress, the Radical Republicans worried that Johnson (as commander-in-chief) would fire the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, who was from Lincoln’s cabinet and supportive of Radical Republican policies. The Radical Republicans than passed the Tenure of Office Act, making it required to ask the Senate’s approval before firing any official that required the Senate’s approval to install (Secretaries of war, for example). Because firing Stanton was the only way to get the military to pull out of the south and the Senate would not have approved if he had asked, Johnson fired Stanton anyways. The Radical Republicans quickly impeached Johnson due to his breach of the Tenure of Office Act. The Senate then held a trial, but were one vote away from removing Johnson from office, so Johnson stayed as president. That would have been an awkward time, but thankfully the Election of 1868 came quickly. The Republicans nominated Ulysses S. Grant to run against the Democrat’s choice of Horatio Seymour. The 15th Amendment (people cannot be denied the right to vote based on race) was passed after the election, but the Military Reconstruction Acts (part of the Reconstruction Acts of 1867) allowed many freed slaves to vote in 10 southern states. With all the freed slaves voting for the first time, Ulysses S. Grant won the election easily and was inaugurated on March 4, 1869. On February 3, 1870, the 15th Amendment passed, adding the right to vote for all male citizens to the Constitution.

 As you can see, at 5 years Reconstruction was going great. Freed slaves could now vote, had options for education and health care, and had all the rights of American citizens. It seemed like Reconstruction was almost done at this point. That turned out to not be true.

 Back in 1866, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was formed as a social club in Tennessee, and began terrorizing blacks and white southerners who supported the US government. Soon many of these “terrorist groups” were trying to restore the old political and social order of the south by targeting African Americans, especially the economically successful and the local leaders. Their efforts went almost entirely unpunished by the Southern justice system. In 1871, Congress passed the Enforcement Acts, also called the KKK Act, which protected the rights of African Americans to vote, hold office, serve on juries, and receive the same amount of protection from laws as white citizens, and enabled the federal government to get involved when states didn’t grant those rights to African Americans (which was enforced through the US army).

 By 1873, support for Reconstruction was waning. The programs created to help with Reconstruction were expensive, driving the country into deeper debt while not doing much to end Reconstruction. Many voters in the North were surprised that the Enforcement Acts were still necessary in the South. In addition, the Grant administration was full of scandals. While Grant himself was honest, fraud and political corruption was found in seven federal departments, and some of the scandals hurt the economy for years after. A group of Republicans split from the Republican Party in part because of the scandals but also because of the Enforcement Acts, which were infringing on individual freedoms in the South. This group was called the Liberal Republicans, and they joined with the Democrats to win back Congress. The Democrats who won back their seats in Congress as well as in local governments were called Redeemers. They often drove African American voters away and destroyed ballot boxes. This led to a return to a Democratic south that stayed solidly Democratic for many years. By the presidential election of 1876, the nation was politically divided once again. In the election, the Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes and the Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden for president. Tilden won the popular vote, but 20 electoral votes were contested, so neither Hayes nor Tilden had the required number of votes to win the election. The allocation of the contested votes went to a committee that was mostly Republican. Because Tilden had won the popular vote, his supporters threatened “Tilden or War!” They were saying if the contested votes went to Hayes, they would start another Civil War. The Republican controlled committee gave the contested electoral votes to Hayes, and the nation stood on the brink of another war. Hayes averted the war by agreeing to withdraw the army from the South, effectively ending Reconstruction, which was the Democrat’s aim.

 At the end of Reconstruction, it had failed. The newly freed slaves were now barely any better off. They had to sharecrop, getting stuck in a self-perpetuating economic crisis, loaning money to keep their job to pay off other loans. They had the right to vote and hold office, but terrorist groups like the KKK would brutalize and scare them from voting, and even if they ignored the threats, the South passed laws making it almost impossible for freedmen to vote by instituting literacy tests (freedmen were usually uneducated) and Grandfather clauses (allowing people whose ancestors could vote before 1867 to ignore complex criteria that needed to be met to vote, which in practice applied those criteria almost entirely to freed slaves). The newly freed slaves had the same rights as white citizens, but with the army no longer in the South, the white juries and judges almost never convicted people who committed crimes against freed slaves and almost always convicted freed slaves, even if they were not guilty. This time of near-slavery was referred to by freed slaves as the “era of second slavery” and lasted for years.

 I am initially amazed at the lengths necessary to give basic rights to the freed slaves, but then I consider that slavery was a way of life there for over 100 years and I can better understand the attitudes in the South towards the free slaves. Imagine if you had a horse or donkey that worked for you, your father, your great-grandfather, and your great-great-grandfather, and now after fighting a long bloody war you just want to rebuild. Now imagine your horse or donkey suddenly wants to be paid for his work and wants you to be punished for getting him to work harder by whipping him, which you and your ancestors did frequently with no consequences. You would be confused and would want things to go back to the way you grew up with, where you had free labor to help with your struggles. It takes a long time to change a culture that is that ingrained into people’s heads; even now African Americans are treated differently, regardless of the 150 year in-between. Hopefully we can all work together and end our ingrained racial bias in the years to come.

Lincoln: Needed or Not?

As the Civil War progressed, Abraham Lincoln faced many difficulties and problems as president during this time of crisis. The question we now ask is whether Abraham Lincoln was essential to Union victory; was he the only person who could have led the Union to victory at this time?
 After winning the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as the 16th president of the United States of America in January of 1861. By his inauguration, he was already facing a civil war, with seven states already seceded from the Union. Throughout the war he made many hard decisions, but most (if not all of them) worked out in the end. Some of these decisions included how to fund the war, how much to trust his general's leadership and tactics, what to do with the slaves who were escaping to the Union lines, and what were the terms of surrender for the south.

I think that Lincoln was necessary for Union victory. He made choices throughout the war that were instrumental to Union victory which almost any other political figure at the time would not have made.
 One of the first problems Lincoln faced was near the start of the war. He had to decide how to fund the war, which like all wars was quite costly. Jefferson Davis (the leader of the South) tried burning cotton to try and drive up it’s price in Europe, but that only resulted in Europe looking elsewhere for cotton, not buying the higher priced cotton from the Confederate States of America. Abraham Lincoln decided to sell the grain produced by the North to Europe at the highest price they would buy at, which provided needed funds for the war effort. Lincoln also enacted the first national income tax, which lasted for 10 years before it was repealed, but was enacted again later with the passing of the 16th Amendment, allowing the government to tax people in the United States regardless of census results and state populations. It enabled
 Throughout the war, Lincoln was faced with the issue of how much to trust the Union general’s tactics and experience. In the summer of 1862, Lincoln wanted to attack Richmond right away, but General McClellan thought that the army should wait for reinforcements. Lincoln decided to wait, which allowed Lee to attack and drive the Union army back over seven days, referred to as the Seven Days Battles. While this choice was not the best, throughout the war Lincoln showed the makings of a good politician by making decisions based on the viewpoints of people involved and personal judgment. One example of this decision making is when he decided to fire General McClellan after McClellan failed to pursue General Lee following the battle of Antietam. General McClellan had received information about Lee's strategies, but waited before pursuing Lee and waiting before attacking Lee, giving Lee time to prepare his small army to fight off the Union army, causing an almost certain Union victory to be changed into a military stalemate during the bloodiest day in the whole Civil War.
 As the Union armies advanced further into the south, they were met with slaves fleeing to the Union lines. These slaves were being used to further the southern war effort before they escaped to the northern army camps. In 1861, General Benjamin Butler wrote a letter to his army superiors talking about the slaves assisting the southern war effort and fleeing to Union lines. 

 “In the enemy's hands these negroes, when able-bodied, are of great importance to the enemy’s attacks on us. Without them the batteries could not have been built for many weeks. As a military question it would seem to be a measure of necessity to deprive their masters of their services.”

 Benjamin Butler saw slave labor’s usefulness to the south and thought about taking that help away by giving a larger incentive for slaves from the south to leave their work and join the Union lines. Technically, Union camps that held slaves that had escaped from the south were still bound by the fugitive slave law to return them to their southern owners, an obligation that did not make military sense. The military reasons for freeing southern slaves along with Lincoln’s anti-slavery private beliefs were the main reasons for the Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued on January 1, 1863.
 The Emancipation Proclamation was Lincoln’s most famous choice during the Civil War. It freed slaves in territories still in rebellion (most of the Confederate States of America), which Lincoln technically didn’t have the authority to do because the Confederate States of America had seceded and didn’t recognize his authority over them. In effect, this meant that the slaves in the Confederate States would flee to Union lines and be freed, while the Union would not be required to give them back to their owners in the south. While freeing the slaves slowed the southern war effort, it also was hoped to increase the war effort. Lincoln mentioned this possible use for the freed slaves in the Emancipation Proclamation.

 “And I further declare and make known, that such [freed] persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States...”

 You can see that many military leaders were hoping for black manpower, and they got their wish. The most famous black regiment in the Civil War was the 54th Massachusetts Infantry. At the attack on Fort Wagner, their most famous battle, 600 men of the 1,007 black soldiers and 37 white officers that left Boston on May 28, 1863, charged over the walls of Fort Wagner. The Union generals, however, had miscalculated the confederate force inside the fort and 281 soldiers (including Colonel Shaw) were killed. They did inflict a lot of damage, in fact enough to cause the confederate army to abandon Fort Wagner soon after.
 As the war came to a close, Lincoln was faced with the problem of what the terms of surrender for the south would be. Many close advisors argued for harsh surrender terms because the south had caused so many deaths and tried to abandon the United States of America, but Lincoln was looking ahead and chose to give generous terms as a start to reconstruction and to get the south to not rebel again. This worked out for the better, as Lee surrendered to these terms and then the other armies of the south also began surrendering.
 Other people argue that Lincoln could have been replaced and the Union could have still won. Someone else could have kept the war going to its conclusion, freed slaves, and gave the south generous terms of surrender. I disagree. Most of the political figures at that time would not have done any one of those things, much less all three. In the middle of the war, many people wanted to end the war and let the Confederate States stay a different country. Lincoln kept the war going to the end to preserve the Union, while others would have been inclined ended the war right then and there. And Lincoln freed southern slaves, while almost anyone at the time would be against freeing the slaves. With the high casualty rates throughout the war and the number of relatives killed in the fighting, almost no one else would give the south such generous terms of surrender, but Lincoln chose what was best for the country as a whole above any personal motives.

 I find it amazing that Lincoln could navigate this tumultuous war and emerge as a full United States again. Lincoln had a big job from day one, but he managed to keep up popular support for the war and for himself through the election in the middle of the war. If he had lost the Election of 1864 to George McClellan, George McClellan promised to bring the war to a speedy end, most likely not preserving the Union or ending slavery after the war. Lincoln timed the release of the Emancipation Proclamation until right after a major win in the war (the Battle of Antietam) so the Union moral was high. He put the needs of the nation above anyone’s personal wishes when he gave generous term of surrender to the south despite the deaths caused by this conflict. He truly was the only man at the time that could make the war turn out the way it did.




Ellen Terrell. History of the US Income Tax. https://www.loc.gov/rr/business/hottopic/irs_history.html

History.com. The 54th Massachusetts Infantry. http://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/the-54th-massachusetts-infantry

Why did this awful war start?

    The civil war was the bloodiest war in American history, with an estimated 620,000 soldiers dying on the front lines and hundreds of thousands more wounded or killed by disease. The question I will answer today is a question asked by many people across the years: Why did the Civil War start in the first place?
    Some events that were key to the start of the Civil War include the Compromise of 1850, which kept the balance between slave and free states and passed a harsher Fugitive Slave Law, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise by allowing residents of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves if they wanted to be a slave or free state, and the Election of 1860, when all these matters came to a head with Abraham Lincoln winning the election despite having little to none southern support.

  My answer the question "What caused the Civil War" is a definitive cry of "Slavery!" Slavery was the issue that all other major issues stemmed from. Take the Compromise of 1850, for example. The United States was split on whether to allow slavery in new territories gained from Mexico in the Mexican-American War. In September of 1850, the senate passed a series of bills that admitted California as a free state, banned the slave trade (not slavery) in Washington D.C., took Texas's debts in exchange for taking the New Mexico territory away from Texas, established the New Mexico and Utah Territories with popular sovereignty (white male residents could vote on whether to be slave or free), and passed a much harsher Fugitive Slave Law. This series of bills diffused the tension for a few years, but it was a temporary fix.
  In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This act allowed the inhabitants of the Kansas and Nebraska territories to decide if they wanted slavery or not (another instance of popular sovereignty). This angered the North, because it effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise, which banned slavery in states above the 36° 30' line, which Kansas and Nebraska would both be above. The actual text of the Congressional document that created the Nebraska Territory says,

"[The Missouri Compromise] is hereby declared inoperative and void; it being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States."

 The idea of popular sovereignty also caused a tide of people to flood into Kansas and Nebraska to vote either for or against slavery. Conflicts were frequent and bloody, and soon Kansas earned the nickname "Bleeding Kansas."
  By the time of the Election of 1860, tempers were running high. The Democratic party was split, with Northern Democrats proposing Steven Douglas as their candidate. He was one of the main voices for popular sovereignty and thought that the populations of states should decide on decisive issues. The Southern Democrats nominated John C. Breckinridge, a former Vice-President who was pro-slavery, as their presidential nominee. The newly formed Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln as their candidate, who despite being anti-slavery in his personal life, was only against the expansion of slavery on the political stage. A third party, the Constitutional Union Party ran John Bell as their candidate. The Constitutional Union Party wanted to prevent secession of the South and uphold the United States Constitution as originally written, that is, with slavery. When it came time to vote, Abraham Lincoln had such little support in some southern states that he wasn't even on the ballot in nine states. Despite that, he still won the election due to the large amount of northern support. This caused the South to secede from the United States, starting with South Carolina seceding on December 20, about a month and a half after election day. By Abraham Lincoln's inauguration, seven states had already seceded from the United States. Less than three weeks after Lincoln's inauguration, the American Civil War had started with the Confederate States of American bombarding Fort Sumter.
  Some people argue that there were different reasons for the start of the Civil War, such as economic differences. I think that while that might be a reason for the Civil War, it still ultimately stemmed from slavery. The South's agricultural society was operated in a very large part by slaves and relied heavily on imports and exports, while the North's industrial economy didn't rely on slaves or inter-continental trade. This caused the North to support and help pass tariffs on imported goods, making imported goods more expensive, which sparked a response of the Nullification Crisis, where South Carolina declared the tariffs unconstitutional and void within South Carolina.
  Many Northerners also wanted homesteads available in western territories; land you could get for free if you worked on it. These Northerners didn't want slavery to be allowed in the West, because how could their farms compete with farms that had slave labor doing all the work? As you can see, slavery caused many of the other reasons for the Civil War.

  Personally, I can understand some of the frustration the South was going through. Their population, smaller than the North's, led to a lack of votes for President and House of Representatives. Their economy was largely based on farming, which was based on slavery. The focus on agriculture led to a widespread consumption of imported goods, especially from Britain, and then you have Northerners trying to tax imported goods while they make much of what the use and don't rely on imports. Finally, you have the Election of 1860, where a man opposed to slavery, a necessity for your way of life, wins the election despite not even being on your ballot! I would be angry if I was a Southern plantation owner, maybe even angry enough to secede from my country.
  I feel like the Civil War had been inevitable for years, but Congress passed acts and compromises that put war off for a few years longer. It seems like a large game of Hot Potato, passing the issue of slavery on to your successors, until time ran out and Lincoln was stuck holding the issue of impending war.





Civil War Trust. Civil War Casualties. http://www.civilwar.org/education/civil-war-casualties.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/

Congress. Public Acts of the Thirty Third Congress of the United States. https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=010/llsl010.db&recNum=304