Reconstruction: The
“Unfinished Revolution”
1863-77
American History 244
African Americans and the
Meaning of Freedom
 January, 1865: Union General William Sherman issues
Special Field Order 15, setting aside areas along the
Carolina/Georgia coast for the settlement of black families.
By June, 40,000 freed slaves lived and worked on the land,
and it seemed possible that the end of slavery would include
the economic independence that would secure freedom.
 For African Americans, freedom not only meant the right to
their own land, it also meant freedom from physical
punishment, freedom to assemble, freedom of movement,
access to education, and the uniting of families. In short, all
the freedoms that had been denied by slavery.
Family
 The family unit became the central node of postemancipation communities. Many blacks took to the
roads in an effort to locate family members and
reassemble that which slavery had destroyed.
 Emancipation remade the workings of black families. In
slavery, every member worked in fields. With freedom,
black women retreated into the domestic sphere to care
for their families—until financial hardship would force
them back to the field.
Church and School
 With emancipation, black churches become the major
institutional base of the black community. In addition to
worship, churches also served as schools and places for
social and political gatherings. 250 black ministers would
hold office throughout the South during Reconstruction.
 Freedmen also displayed a hunger for education, which was
viewed as essential preparation for dealing with the
marketplace and (after 1867) for political writes. Schools
established by Northern missionaries and the Freedman’s
Bureau are well attended, and black colleges like Howard
University in Washington, D.C. and Fisk University in TN are
founded.
Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men
 For many former slaves, freedom was directly tied to
owning their own land, and they insisted that years of
unpaid labor had given them a right to that land.
 Other elements of black’s vision of freedom, economic
independence, family security, religious liberty, political
participation, the entire process of transforming their
lives from slavery to freedom, was linked to land
ownership.
White Southern Reaction
 The former Confederacy is devastated by the war,
260,000 soldiers dead, property values destroyed, and
their slaves freed.
 Many understand black freedom only to apply in a
limited sense. Emancipation did not equate to rights to
own land, or political participation. As one journalist
noted “they readily admit that the government has
made [blacks] free, but appear to believe they have the
right to exercise the same old control.”
“The Great Labor Question From a Southern Point of
View”
Republican Visions
 In the worldview of Northern Republicans, freedmen
would labor with the same chance for improvement as
northern white workers, and Northern investments
would help transform the South into something
resembling the free-labor North.
 This vision of freedom directly contrasted with the
narrow white Southern vision of a society as close to
slavery as possible.
The Freedmen’s Bureau
 Established in March, 1865 under the direction of O.O.
Howard, to oversee the creation of a free-labor South.
 The Bureau sought to establish schools, provide aid,
settle land disputes, and secure equal treatment for
blacks in the courts. With only about 1,000 agents for
the whole South, and resistance from white
Southerners, the Bureau faced a “Hercules task.”
Freedmen’s Bureau Part II
 During the Bureau’s short life (1865-70), it helped coordinate
and finance nearly 3,000 schools, and provided medical
care.
 In the summer of 1865, President Andrew Johnson ordered
almost all the federally confiscated land returned to former
owners. Because land redistribution ends before it begins,
the majority of rural freedmen remain poor and without
property during Reconstruction. Thus, blacks become
trapped in a system of unskilled labor, many working for
their former masters, without any hope of advancement or
wage accumulation.
Labor System in the South
 Sharecropping developed first as a compromise
between black desires for land and planters’ insistence
on labor discipline. It allowed each black family to rent
a part of a plantation, and the crop was divided
between the worker and owner at the end of the year.
 Sharecropping gave planters a stable labor force, and
former slaves preferred it to gang labor, because it
freed them from white supervision. But sharecropping
became increasingly oppressive over time, especially
as declining prices for southern crops limited
opportunities for sharecroppers
Andrew Johnson
 Lincoln’s successor, rose from poverty to represent TN
in Congress, was the only Senator from a seceded
state to remain in the Union. In return, he was made
the military governor of TN during the war.
 Johnson lacks Lincoln’s political dexterity and
shrewdness, and while he supported emancipation he
also believed blacks should play no role in
Reconstruction.
Presidential Reconstruction,
1865-67
 May, 1865: Johnson issues proclamations offering pardons to nearly
all white Southerners who would swear an oath of allegiance. It
exempts Confederate leaders and wealthy planters (owning $20,000
prewar), but they are soon granted individual pardons. Johnson also
appoints provisional governors and orders them to call state
conventions (no blacks allowed). Apart from abolishing slavery,
repudiating secession, and Confederate war debt, this means white
southerners (and former rebels) would have free reign in controlling
local Reconstruction.
 Most alarming were black codes: laws passed by southern
governments to regulate behavior of the slaves. They denied blacks
the right to testify, serve on juries, or vote, and declared those who did
not sign yearly labor contracts could be arrested, and sold to pay their
fines. These laws provoked outrage from many Northern Republicans,
and helped usher in Radical Reconstruction.
Radical Reconstruction
 Radical Republicans such as Charles Sumner and Thaddeus
Stevens react with horror to the establishment of these new state
governments, call for their dissolution, and the establishment of
new ones where former Confederates are excluded and blacks
included.
 In early 1866, Republicans in Congress began to create their own
Reconstruction plan around two bills. One sought to extend the life
of the Freedman’s Bureau. The other, the Civil Rights Bill, defined
all persons born in the US as citizens, and spelled out specific
rights to be enjoyed regardless of race (right to make contracts,
bring lawsuits, equal protection of person and property). Johnson
vetoes both bills, arguing that they gave too much power to the
federal government, and that blacks did not deserve citizenship.
The 14th Amendment and
Reconstruction Act
 Congress overrides Johnson’s veto of the Civil Rights Bill (April 1866), and
proceeds on its own plan for Reconstruction.
 The 14th Amendment (June, 1866, ratified 1868) placed in the Constitution the
right to citizenship for all persons born in the US, and empowered the
government to protect the rights of all Americans. The amendment banned the
states from abridging the “privileges and immunities” of citizens or denying
them the “equal protection of the law.” This language allowed future
congresses and federal courts to give meaning to this promise of legal
equality.
 The off-year Congressional elections become something of a referendum on
the 14th Amendment. Johnson goes barnstorming around the country to whip
up support for himself and Democrats, but is undermined by his own
ineptitude along with white violence against blacks in the South.
 In March, 1867, Congress passes the Reconstruction Act, dividing the South
into five military districts and calling for new state governments with black men
being given the right to vote.
The End of Johnson and the
Beginning of Grant
 In March, 1867, Congress passes The Tenure of Office Act,
barring a president from removing officeholders w/out
senate consent. Johnson responds by removing Sec. of War
(and Radical ally) Edwin Stanton, and Congress responds
by attempting to impeach the president. Johnson misses
being convicted by one vote, but his political career is all but
over.
 In the election of 1868, former Union General Ulysses Grant
beats Democrat Horatio Seymour. Republicans charged
Democrats with being the party of secession (“waving the
bloody shirt”), while Democrats blast Reconstruction as
unconstitutional and use race-baiting tactics to play on fears
of fears of blacks.
The 15th Amendment
 Responding to their electoral victory, Republicans pass the final
“Reconstruction Amendment,” which prohibits state and federal
government from denying the vote because of race. Denounced by
Democrats, the amendment was ratified in 1870. The Fifteenth
Amendment enabled states to make suffrage restrictions not
based on race, such as literacy tests, property requirements, and
poll taxes, and did not give the vote to women, but it represented
the culmination of abolitionism.
 Together, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments transform the
Constitution from a document concerned with federal-state
relations, and property rights to a document that would protect the
rights of vulnerable citizens. In other words, these amendments redefined the meaning of freedom in America.
A “Hothouse” of Political
Activity
 Passage of the Reconstruction Act prompts an outburst of
political organization and activity among blacks.
 Key to this activity were the Union Leagues. These
organizations were closely tied to the Republican Party and
assisted blacks with registering to vote, educating them on
political issues, and even helping with labor issues such as
contract disputes and strikes.
 New state constitutions, drafted in 1868-1869, are
constructed with substantial black participation. They
guarantee civil/political rights, abolish property qualifications
for office holding, imprisonment for debt and establish
publicly funded systems of public education.
Black Leaders
 2,000 African Americans hold public office during
Reconstruction.
 While a few (Hiram Revels, Blance Bruce) hold office
nationally, the vast majority are local officials such as
sheriffs, justices of the peace, and local legislators.
Black officeholders (and their white allies) help ensure
blacks accused of crimes are tried before juries, and
assist in areas such poor relief, labor disputes, and tax
assessments.
Carpetbaggers and
Scalawags
 Many Reconstruction officials were white Northerners who
made their homes in the South after the war. Though some
were corrupt fortune seekers, most were former Union
soldiers who had decided to remain in the South. Some
sought to combine the chance for investment (railroads) in
the Southern economy with the chance to help the South
transition from slave to free labor.
 Scalawags-native Southerners who join the Republican
party. Many had been wartime Unionists, and they hoped to
either prevent the former rebels from recapturing power, or
thought the Republicans held the best hope for economic
recovery from the war.
What Reconstruction
Accomplished
 Established state supported schools, pioneer civil rights
legislation, making it illegal for hotels, railroads, and
other public accommodations to discriminate based on
race.
 Biracial government functions in many parts of the
South; the power of elite slaveholders is broken—for a
time. Reconstruction did not promote prosperity
through land distribution (as blacks hoped), but rather
pinned their hopes on railroads, which might promote
industrialization and agricultural diversification.
White Backlash
 Most white Southerners refused to accept black voting, office
holding, and equality before the law. To restore “order” or “redeem”
the South, the turned to extra-legal political violence.
 The most well-known of these organizations was the Ku Klux Klan
founded in 1866. The Klan terrorized blacks and white
Republicans alike, assaulting and murdering either at will.
 Violence sometimes reached massive proportions. Massacres at
Meridian, Mississippi in 1871, and Colfax Louisiana in 1873,
helped force action by the Federal Government. In 1870-71
Congress passed the Enforcement Acts, outlawing societies like
the Klan and authorizing the President to use federal troops to
destroy their power.
Northern Abandonment of
Reconstruction
 Despite the horror at the violence in the South, by the early 1870’s many
Northerners were becoming convinced that they had “done enough” for
blacks, and racist assumptions suggested that the South’s problems came
from the inability of blacks to govern themselves. Figures like Stevens and
Sumner pass away, and are replaced by politicians who are not as committed
to racial equality.
 Republicans are also hampered by disaffection in their ranks. In 1872,
“Liberal” Republicans, discouraged by corruption in the Grant administration,
and demanding a reduction in federal power, form their own party, and
nominate Horace Greeley. Democrats also endorse Greeley, and both believe
the South should be left in the hands of its “natural leaders.” Greeley loses to
Grant, but two major political groups are now committed to scaling back
Reconstruction
 Economic depression beginning in 1873 further distracts from involvement in
Reconstruction. It also destroys the hope for Republican sponsored economic
revival in the South.
The Supreme Court
 In the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873) and the US v.
Cruikshank (1876), the Supreme Court narrows the
federal guarantees of black rights. In the former, the
court rejected the claim that exclusion of two Louisiana
butchers from a state sponsored monopoly violated the
right to equality before the law. In the latter, the court
threw out the convictions of some of those responsible
for the Colfax Massacre, effectively rendering the
Enforcement Acts null and void.
Redemption and the Election of
1876
 By the mid-1870’s, Democrats had already regained control
in TN, NC, and TX. Perhaps more importantly, the federal
government showed no inclination to intervene in racial
violence in states like MS, and SC. Without federal
intervention to counter the intimidation of blacks,
Reconstruction was all but doomed.
 In the election of 1876, Republican Rutherford Hayes faced
Democrat Samuel Tilden. The election was so close, that
whomever captured SC, FL, and LA, the only Southern
states still under Republican control, would win.
Unsurprisingly, both parties claimed to have won all three
states.
Election of 1876, part II
 In January 1877, Congress appointed an electoral
commission to resolve the problem. Republicans held an 8-7
majority on the commission, and decided Hayes had won all
three states and the election.
 In secret negotiations, Hayes agreed to recognize
Democratic control of the South, place a southerner in the
cabinet and work for federal aid to support a Southern RR.
Democrats promised not to contest Hayes right to the
presidency, and respect the civil/political rights of blacks.
Although blacks continued to hold office and vote into the
1890’s, the election of 1876 effectively ended
Reconstruction.