1. In what ways was Reconstruction a success? A failure? Explain.
Reconstruction was a success in that it restored the United States as a unified nation: by
1877, all of the former Confederate states had drafted new constitutions, acknowledged the
Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and pledged their loyalty to the U.S.
government. Reconstruction also finally settled the states’ rights vs. federalism debate that had
been an issue since the 1790s.
However, Reconstruction failed by most other measures: Radical Republican legislation
ultimately failed to protect former slaves from white persecution and failed to engender
fundamental changes to the social fabric of the South. When President Rutherford B. Hayes
removed federal troops from the South in 1877, former Confederate officials and slave owners
almost immediately returned to power. With the support of a conservative Supreme Court, these
newly empowered white southern politicians passed black codes, voter qualifications, and other
anti-progressive legislation to reverse the rights that blacks had gained during Radical
Reconstruction. The U.S. Supreme Court bolstered this anti-progressive movement with
decisions in the Slaughterhouse Cases, the Civil Rights Cases, and United States v. Cruikshank
that effectively repealed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the Civil Rights Act of
1875.
Meanwhile, the sharecropping system—essentially a legal form of slavery that kept
blacks tied to land owned by rich white farmers—became widespread in the South. With little
economic power, blacks ended up having to fight for civil rights on their own, as northern whites
lost interest in Reconstruction by the mid-1870s. By 1877, northerners were tired of
Reconstruction, scandals, radicals, and the fight for blacks’ rights. Reconstruction thus came to a
close with many of its goals left unaccomplished.
2. Some historians have suggested that had Lincoln not been assassinated, Radical
Republicans in the House might have impeached him instead of Andrew Johnson. Defend
this argument.
Radical Republicans in Congress might have impeached President Lincoln after the Civil
War, had he not been assassinated, because he and Congress had contrasting visions for handling
postwar Reconstruction. Ultimately, however, Congress ended up impeaching President Andrew
Johnson, who followed many parts of Lincoln’s blueprint for Reconstruction.
In 1863, Lincoln wanted to end the Civil War as quickly as possible. He feared that
strong northern public support for the war would wane if the fighting continued and knew that
the war was also taking an enormous toll on northern families and resources. Lincoln worried
that if the war dragged on, a settlement would be reached that would leave the North and South
as two separate nations. As it turned out, his fears were justified: by late 1863, an increasing
number of Democrats were calling for a truce and peaceful resolution to the conflict.
As a result, in the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction of 1863, Lincoln drafted
lenient specifications for secessionist states for readmission into the Union—an attempt to entice
Unionists and those tired of fighting in the South to surrender. His Ten-Percent Plan, part of the
proclamation, called for southern states to be readmitted into the Union after 10 percent of the
voting public swore a loyalty oath to the United States. In addition, he offered to pardon all
Confederate officials and pledged to protect southerners’ private property. Lincoln did not want
Reconstruction to be a long, drawn-out process; rather, he wanted the states to draft new
constitutions so that the Union could be quickly restored.
Radical Republicans, on the other hand, wanted the South to pay a price for secession and
believed that Congress, not the president, should direct the process of Reconstruction. The
Radical Republicans saw serious flaws in Civil War–era southern society and were adamant that
the South needed full social rehabilitation to resemble the North. Many Republican Congressmen
also aimed to improve education and labor conditions to benefit all of the oppressed classes in
southern society, black and white. To quicken this transformation of the South, Congress passed
a series of progressive legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the First and Second
Reconstruction Acts, the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and the
Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
In the end, Radical Republicans in the House impeached President Andrew Johnson in
1868 because he repeatedly blocked their attempt to pass radical legislation. For example,
Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Freedmen’s Bureau charter, and the ratification
of the Fourteenth Amendment, all of which were progressive, “radical” bills. Had Lincoln
remained alive, he might have been in the same position himself: he wanted Reconstruction to
end quickly and did not necessarily favor progressive legislation. Indeed, Lincoln had made it
clear during the Civil War that he was fighting to restore the Union, not to emancipate slaves. It
is likely that Lincoln thus would have battled with Congress over the control of Reconstruction,
blocked key Reconstruction policies, and met as vindictive a House as Johnson did 1868.
3. Explain how three of the following shaped northern politics during Reconstruction: a)
black codes b) the Depression of 1873 c) Crédit Mobilier d) the “Swing Around the Circle”
speeches e) the Resumption Act of 1875
The Crédit Mobilier scandal, the Depression of 1873, and the Resumption Act of 1875
focused attention away from the South and onto political and economic woes in the North. All
three thus played a role in ending Reconstruction.
In the 1860s, executives of the Union Pacific Railroad created a dummy construction
company called Crédit Mobilier and then hired themselves out as contractors at high rates to earn
large profits. The executives bribed dozens of Congressmen and cabinet members in Ulysses S.
Grant’s administration, including Grant’s vice president, to allow the scam to work. The scheme
was eventually exposed, and many politicians were forced to resign. Along with other scandals,
such as the Fisk-Gould gold scandal and the Whiskey Ring, Crédit Mobilier distracted northern
voters’ attention away from southern Reconstruction and toward corruption and graft problems
in the North.
When the Depression of 1873 struck, northern voters became even less interested in
pursuing Reconstruction efforts. Unemployment climbed to 15 percent, and hard currency
became scarce. With pressing economic problems, northerners did not have time to worry about
helping former slaves, punishing the Ku Klux Klan, or readmitting southern states into the
Union.
Moreover, the Republican Party’s adherence to unpopular, strict monetary policies in
response to the depression—such as the Resumption Act of 1875—opened the door for the
Democratic Party to make large political gains, accelerating the end of Reconstruction. The
Resumption Act reduced the amount of currency circulating in the economy in an effort to curb
inflation caused by the depression. Although the act improved economic conditions in the long
run, it made for harder times in both the North and South in the short run. The Act was
Republican-sponsored, so Democrats were able to capitalize on its unpopularity to rally support
for their party. This increased popularity translated into election victories that enabled Democrats
to retake the South, bringing Reconstruction to a close.
4. What effect did Reconstruction have on blacks? Were they better off after
Reconstruction than they were before the Civil War?
Reconstruction was the period after the Civil War that extended from roughly 1865-1877
in the span of American history immediately following the Civil War and involved the reintegration of states of the Confederacy. It was a highly volatile time because while many
Northerners saw this as a chance to completely end slavery and have the South integrated back
into the Untied States, many in the South saw this period as a further insult added to the injury of
the loss of the Civil War.
Abraham Lincoln was president during the beginning era of Reconstruction and although
he did have plans to free more slaves and grant more sweeping freedoms, some groups, such as
the Radical Republicans, thought the process was moving along too slow. Eventually, there was
some progress made but at the end of the Reconstruction era, the freedoms granted under the
13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were not entirely effective. With Reconstruction, slaves were
freed and although there were supposed to be radical reforms that would grant them equality,
racism persisted and some argue that the anti-slavery goals of the Reconstruction were not fully
realized until the Civil Rights era in the 1950s and 1960s when African Americans were finally
granted full rights enjoyed by whites rather than the “separate but equal” clause that emerged
from Plessy versus Ferguson.
While Reconstruction began with a positive push to grant freedom to blacks in the South,
this was not an easy process and there were many complications. For instance, even thought
Abraham Lincoln might have been moving too slow for some of the Radical Republicans. His
efforts to peacefully reintegrate the South without a great deal of hostility worked, albeit it a little
slowly. After his assassination, Andrew Johnson took over and the process became confused and
less efficient. Johnson forgave a number of ex-Confederates and did not take the same steady
approach as his predecessor did. It was under Johnson that the “black codes” were allowed to be
passed which only lowered the status of African Americans and did not give them the right to
vote, even if they had fought in the war. It should also be noted that Johnson vetoed passage of a
renewal of a new Freedman’s Bureau, which had served as a positive organization for African
Americans, which would have allowed free black war veterans to vote. One can only wonder if
Reconstruction might have been more successful if only Lincoln had been able to see his patient
plan through.
It seems that Johnson had a devastating effect on the initial goals set forth by Lincoln’s
vision of Reconstruction. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 would have guaranteed blacks protection
and equality yet again; Johnson stepped in and vetoed this as well. Luckily, the veto was
eventually blocked, but the fact remains that the leader of the United States had shown himself to
not be committed to the ideas of his predecessor. This is a strange set of circumstances because
while he was the Vice President for Lincoln, Johnson took a pushy (although not radical)
approach to the Reconstruction efforts, yet under the political pressure, he did not carry through
with the ideas about freedom that he initially touted.
Although Johnson’s efforts to block some of the bills and movements that might have
significantly helped blacks failed, he did have success again when it came time to vote for the
Fourteenth Amendment because he used his political influence to block a few of the states from
ratifying it, thus blocking the majority and causing the proposal to stagnate. Finally, in 1867, the
Reconstruction Act was passed and it seemed, at least for a while, as though there was going to
be some success in achieving the goals of Reconstruction since one of the provisions of the Act
eliminated some of Johnson’s plans. Reconstruction failed in 1877 as Hayes and the new order of
government took over control. Many Confederates were granted amnesty and the many of the
goals were no longer pursued. After this time there was no great movement that was politically
successful for African Americans and it can easily be argued that Reconstruction died until it
was revived again in the twentieth-century Civil Rights era.
The Radical Republicans generally thought that the Reconstruction efforts were moving
along too slowly and that the freeing of slaves should take place instantly. Abraham Lincoln, on
the other hand, wanted to preserve relations with the South after slavery and did not want to
generate too much animosity by moving ahead with the plans too drastically. The Radical
Republicans also were enemies of the Andrew Johnson and if it were left to them, the hardly
anything he did would have passed (or been blocked, such as the Civil Rights Act). The regular
Republicans during this time also advocated change with their plans of Reconstruction, but these
changes were to meted out over a longer period of time and work harder to treat the South a little
more gently. Eventually, the Radical Republicans became carpetbaggers and scalawags and they
tried to bring their own politics to the South whereas the Republicans were a bit more
conservative in their approach. It was the Radical Republicans who finally led the movement to
impeach Johnson and after this time they gained greater numbers in Congress and were able to
make some progress before the end of Reconstruction with the 13th, 14th, and the 15th
Amendments that Johnson might have otherwise blocked or vetoed.
It does not seem that the United States was too much better off after the end of
Reconstruction. While it was certainly positive that the slaves had been freed, even with the new
Amendments, they still were treated like second-class citizens. For example, the 14th
Amendment granted civil rights to every citizen, regardless of color, but this almost seems like
empty words without the policies or actions to back them up and institutionalize them. In fact, it
wasn’t until after the modern Civil Rights movement that these full rights that were supposed to
be guaranteed were truly carried out as the “separate but equal” paradigm existed. With the
election of Hayes and the move to politics that seemed more committed to helping America’s
booming industrial sector, the Reconstruction ideas seemed to have lost some momentum.
Again, as stated earlier, it is interesting to consider whether or not Reconstruction would have
succeeded if only President Lincoln would have been alive to see it through. With the shift in
power to Andrew Johnson, however, the efforts became confused and mired in politics as usual,
thus the Reconstruction failed and was never seen to its conclusion. It was up to those fighting
for civil rights in what came to be known as the Second Reconstruction, which finalized the
ideas that were initially behind the first one after the end of the Civil War.