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.