The Case Against 'Radical' Reconstruction
Critics of radical Reconstruction objected to strong federal intervention in the South. In particular, they
opposed placing the South under military control, which they said amounted to martial law and essentially
continued the Civil War. Johnson and other opponents disagreed with the Radical Republican premise that
lawful governments did not exist in the South. "Over every State comprised in these five military districts,
life, and property are secured by State laws and Federal laws, and the National Constitution is every where in
force and every where obeyed. What, then is the ground on which the bill proceeds?" Johnson asked in a
speech to the House explaining his veto of the 1867 Reconstruction Act.
Critics also argued that the federal government did not have the authority to force the South to adopt
measures favored by the North. In his speech about the Reconstruction Act, Johnson asserted:
The military rule which it establishes is plainly to be used, not for any purpose of order or for the prevention of
crime but solely as a means of coercing the people into the adoption of principles and measures to which it is
known that they are opposed and upon which they have an undeniable right to exercise their own judgment.
[The act is] in its whole character, scope, and object without precedent and without authority, in palpable
conflict with the plainest provisions of the Constitution.
Furthermore, some asserted, the Southern states had never actually left the Union; the states had attempted
to secede, they noted, but were foiled in that attempt by losing the Civil War. Rather than conquering a
territory, Representative William Finck (D, Ohio) stated, the federal government "reestablished firmly the
jurisdiction of the United States, not over any new territory, not over territory conquered from a foreign
enemy, but we reestablished the jurisdiction of the United States over what had been and what continued to
be during the war; a part of the territory comprised within the boundaries of the United States."
Consequently, opponents argued, the South could not be treated as a conquered enemy.
Other critics argued that military rule was unnecessary in the South. For one thing, they said, the freedmen
did not need to be "protected." Labor was so desperately needed to cultivate Southern lands, Representative
John Leftwich (D, Tennessee) maintained, that the freedmen were better treated and received better wages
than similar workers anywhere else in the world. Leftwich contended that conditions in the South were
highly exaggerated by the North. "I desire distinctly to repeat there is no necessity for this or any other
protection for loyal white or black people in the southern States beyond the laws already in practical
operation there," he asserted. "These raw-head-and-bloody-bone stories that have imposed on the credulity
of northern minds till they have become ridiculous in the estimation of the unprejudiced are in the main
false, made of whole-cloth, and are concocted and promulgated for base and designing purposes."
Opponents of radical Reconstruction also objected to what they said was the punitive nature of
Reconstruction. They maintained that the focus should be not on punishing the South but rather on healing
the nation. They supported a more lenient policy, agreeing with the sentiments expressed by Lincoln in his
second inaugural address in 1865. "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right,
as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds,"
Lincoln had said.
Overall, the Reconstruction policy put forth by Radical Republicans was motivated by irrational hatred of
Southerners, opponents argued. They warned against legislating out of revenge against the South.
"Legislation induced by passion should never be the legislation of a free people in a free republic,"
Representative Charles Sitgreaves (D, New Jersey) declared in House debate over the Reconstruction Act.
Suppose we should succeed in giving an ascendancy to party or in crippling the South in her resources; what is
the life of a man or a party when compared with the life of an empire. Parties are ephemeral. The places that
now know the men of the South, the actors in the late conflict, in a few years 'will know them no more forever,'
but the Republic should and will (if sustained by wise legislation) endure forever.
Sitgreaves further argued that adopting a Reconstruction policy intended to punish the South was
unconstitutional. He pointed out that the Constitution prohibited the passage of bills of attainder (defined as
special acts "as inflict capital punishment upon persons supposed to be guilty of high offenses, such as
treason or felony without any conviction in the ordinary course of judicial proceedings"), and argued that
effectively disenfranchising white Southerners as punishment fit the "spirit and effect" of a bill of attainder.
Rather than "reconstruction," many critics of called for "restoration," with a focus on rebuilding the South
economically. That would benefit both Southern blacks and whites, they asserted. In fact, Leftwich argued
that if the freedmen were polled, the results would find that the vast majority would prefer the removal of a
cotton tax, which directly affected their livelihoods, to being given the right to vote.
Some critics, Northern as well as Southern, were also opposed to the increased role of blacks that
Northerners were forcing on the South. "White men alone must manage the South," Johnson declared.
Sitgreaves warned against effectively disenfranchising Southern whites in favor of Southern blacks:
Yet with the knowledge of all this, that we cannot build a republic without intelligence, the radical would put
the ballot in the hands of millions imbruted by slavery, with intelligence but little beyond the brute creation,
possessing the vices of treachery and dissimulation, and by so doing give them the political power, in some
States the actual numerical majority, in almost all, the balance of power, and yet profess that he does so 'to
guaranty a republican form of government.'
Many white Southerners were also bitterly opposed to Reconstruction governments set up by
"carpetbaggers" and "scalawags." Not only did their presence serve as a constant reminder of the South's
defeat by the North, opponents asserted, but the added tax burden caused by "government and social
improvements," such as new roads and schools, was not only uneconomically harmful but unconstitutional
as well, since Southerners had no say in the matter.
Detractors also asserted that there was widespread corruption under the carpetbaggers, scalawags and
ignorant freedmen who ruled state governments. Reconstruction foes pointed out that even Republican
South Carolina Governor Daniel Chamberlain admitted that the carpetbagger state governments were out of
control. Chamberlain noted: "Corruption ran riot; dishonesty flourished in shameless effrontery;
incompetency was the rule in public offices." That was in part, they said, because black politicians in the
South became vulnerable to corruption and would follow the lead of the Northern politicians and do what
the latter told them to do.