Reconstruction and the
New South




How do you account for the failure of Reconstruction (1865 – 1877) to
bring social and economic equality of opportunity to the former slaves?
(83)
Discuss the political, economic, and social reforms introduced in the South
between 1864 and 1877. To what extent did these reforms survive the
Compromise of 1877?
(92)
Analyze the economic consequences of the Civil War with respect to any
TWO of the following in the United States between 1865 and 1880.:
Agriculture
Transportation Labor
Industrialization (97)
Following Reconstruction, many southern leaders promoted the idea of a
“New South.” To what extent was this “New South” a reality by the time of
the First World War? In your answer be sure to address TWO of the
following: Economic development, Politics, Race relations
I. From Presidential to
Congressional Reconstruction



Johnson follows spirit of AL’s 10%
Plan (general leniency)
AJ: blacks incapable self-gov
supervised by + subord. to whites
Refuses use Pres power help blacks
(allows Black Codes) + some in
Congress “tyrants” and “traitors”
moderate Repub. pushed into
Radical camp (led T. Stevens)

1868:Tenure of Office impeach (no
convict)
II. Congressional Reconstruction:
Radical or Conservative?


Concern: upset constitutional balance State
+ Fed (precedent)?
Basis for action?:



1) Conquered territory
2) Congress’ war powers (“grasp of war”)


Temporary (regain rights + powers when
readmitted):
Permanent:
3) Const. guarantee republican gov’t

Rejected by most S would have to willingly
reconstruct conditions key
A. Radical Steps
1) Freedman’s Bureau: aid blacks: education, land,
supplies, food
2) Civil Rights: enforce 13th: all treated same
before law, cases tried Federal courts

Essentially 14th Amend
3) Fed troops defend rights (register blacks vote
pre-15th)
 J. Garfield: “Congress shall place civil
Government before these people of the rebel
States, and a cordon of bayonets behind them.”


Guarantee republican gov’t by guaranteeing
Republican gov’t
Blacks vote Republican influence gov’t more
$ schools


True freedom= land: dependence on whites
repudiate freedom


School attendance rises (black + white)
Some: planters on wrong side confiscate (e.g.
Tories): too close to socialism
Blacks try buy auction (failure pay taxes), but
little cash carpetbaggers
B. Unfinished Revolution






1) Southern opposition: a) KKK unwilling
refight CW, b) insidious
2) Northern racism
3) Corruption + cost
4) Splinter Repub’s: AJ out + fulfillment limited
goals mods w/conservatives
5) Resistance to radicalism: fear labor
movement, Const. rev., moving too fast
 loss econ. support blacks dependent white
landowners
III. The New South, 18651914: Rhetoric and
Reality
 How did the Civil War and Radical
Reconstruction change the South?
 No slavery
 No secession
 New political and economic realities
A. The New South Creed
 Weaknesses of Old South
 Slavery
 Political system rigged for planters
 Dependence on agriculture
 1. “Out Yankee the Yankee”





industrialize/modernize
2. Emphasized historical commonalities N+S
3. Slavery unfortunate accident; never condemn
for brutality real sin South economically
backward
4. CW liberates S obsolete labor system
5. “Race Question”: by 1870s, North tired of it
NS spokesmen say put in hands of southerners:
white southerners “know the Negro best”
(modern descendants of mythical, kindly slave
owners)
New South Creed middle-ground Radical
Republicans and Klan
 Rhetoric of “New South,” reformed and
modern, masked deep conservatism
 Little change in race relations
 Little help for poor
 Late 1860s: Railroad workers paid $1.75-$2 a day
 Plantation workers: 50 cents a day
B. Realities of the New South
1. Colonial Economy
 Industry grew considerably
 # industrial shops more than tripled: 50,000 to 180,000
 Income from agriculture declined
 # manufacturing workers increased (esp. textiles)
 Better pay
 Industrialization of Agriculture
 Mechanization + opens up
 Pre-Civil War: 90% of cotton grown by blacks
 1875: 40% picked by white tenant farmers
 Urbanization
 Reconstruction of railroads
 South still far behind the North, colonial
economy:
 Raw materials exported to more industrialized
North
 Dominated by foreign capital (Northern and
European)
 Similar to Latin American nations
 Profit from unity of North and South elite:
low taxes, keep workers down
C. “The Lost Cause”
 Southern nationalism thin: few believed should be
more like North
 No desire for another war, but emphasized cultural
distinctiveness and superiority
 Nostalgia for the Old South




1889: United Confederate Veterans
1895: United Daughters of the Confederacy
Monuments to the Confederacy
4th of July: Confederate soldiers parade
 Controlling the image of the past grants power over
the present and future
 “Birth of a Nation;” “Gone with the Wind”
IV. The New South: Blacks
1880-1910: The Nadir in Race
Relations
The new State Constitutions initially were more
democratic and protective of women’s + blacks’
rights than most in the North.
A. Economic Disenfranchisement
 Blacks lost the gains made during RR


40 acres and a mule never materialized
Economic dependence, workplace segregation

Same room

Segregation serves factory owners

Stops racial union
 Why
unions eventually backs Civil Rights in the
1940s loss of jobs from North to low-wage South
Keeps wages down: divide and conquer
 Confers psychological benefit on whites: don’t
feel as exploited race trumps class

 Richard
Wright, Black Boy: whites make blacks
fight each other, place bets



Sharecropping:
tenants pay debts
share of crop
Blacks still primarily
ag. workers well into
the 20th century
Disproportionate
power landowners +
creditors
lack Percentage
f Population
Blacks not much better off than slaves
 1. Debt Peonage:

Blacks work 1/4 to 1/3 share of crop (mostly
cotton)
 Seed and supplies debt general store (often
owned land owner)
 Overpriced, interest often 50% (usury)
 Falling agricultural prices (mechanization +
overproduction glut)

Sharecroppers not break even more
debt crop lien debt peonage
 Fraud (black illiteracy)
2. Laws passed stop blacks seeking better
conditions

 Illegal
whites offer blacks new jobs
 Breach of contract arrest
B. Political Disenfranchisement
After RR dramatic decline black participation
 LA: 1870s+80s: 100,000+ black voters
 1900: 5,320
 Influence in State and Federal government

South got around 15th Amendment with:







1. Poll taxes (pay in cash, receipt presented months
later)
2. Literacy tests
3. Gerrymandering
4. Polling locations distant
5. Ferry operators
6. Last-minute relocation
7. Shot-guns at the polling places

Colfax Massacre, 1873; 150 blacks killed; U.S. v. Cruikshank

Some whites also potentially
disenfranchised by laws
Grandfather clause
 Leniency with enforcement

C. Social Disenfranchisement
Under-fund black education (teachers paid
less)
Would only create “uppity” blacks:
 “To educate a [black person] is to spoil a field
hand”

 Williams
billion
v. California (2000): settlement for $1

Social segregation

Denied equal access to public facilities:
 Theaters
 Schools
 Trains

Federal Government complicity:

1896: Plessy v. Ferguson: “separate but
equal”
D. Legal Disenfranchisement


Courts backbone white supremacy: all white
juries, different enforcement
“worse than slavery”



Convict Lease System
Incarcerate black men and lease out as slave
labor
Petty + trumped up charges:


Black death not expensive: no owners
Mississippi “Pig Law”: grand larceny: more than $10
(cost of a pig); 5 years
Specific purpose: labor
Jim Crow Criminal System
Sam Hose
 Convict lease system


“the live nigger is worth more than the dead
one”
“If a nigger kills a white man, that’s
murder. If a white man kills a nigger,
that’s justifiable homicide. If a nigger kills
a nigger, that’s one less nigger.”
 “Whose nigger are you?”

SC Gov Cole Blease on commutating
death sentence (1913)

“This defendant was convicted of killing another
negro. I am naturally against electrocuting or
hanging one negro for killing another, because,
if a man had two fine mules running loose in a
lot and one went mad and kicked and killed the
other he certainly would not take his gun and
shoot the other mule, but would take that mule
and work it and try to get another mule;
therefore, I believe that when one negro kills
another, that he should be put in the Penitentiary
and made to work for the State.”




"In 82% of the studies [reviewed], race of the victim was found to
influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or
receiving the death penalty, i.e., those who murdered whites were
found more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered
blacks."
- United States General Accounting Office, Death Penalty Sentencing,
February 1990
Nationally, over 80% of murder victims in cases resulting in an
execution were White, even though only 50% of murder victims
generally are White
96% of states conducting reviews of race and the death penalty have
discovered a pattern of either race-of-victim or race-of-defendant
discrimination, or both
98% of the Chief district attorneys in death penalty states are White




Jury selection procedures: 1986 Batson v. Kentucky
A Philadelphia study found that Blacks received the death penalty at a
38% higher rate than others when comparing similar defendants and
similar crimes
A North Carolina study found that the odds of receiving a death
sentence rose by 3.5 times among those defendants whose victims
were White
Since 1976, executions: White Defendant / Black Victim (15)
Black Defendant / White Victim (223)
E. The Democratic Party at Night:
Context of Violence
System of oppression: black + white
 Legal, political, economic, social, cultural
not enough rope + shotgun
 1880-1910: dramatic rise in lynching
 http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/themap/
map.html


Year
Being “suspected” of
raping a white woman
a common excuse
Race
Murder
Murder
Rape
Total
Lynchings
1896
31
24
31
86
1897
46
55
22
123
1898
39
47
16
102
1899
56
23
11
90
1900
57
30
16
103
Total
229
179
96
505
Others lynched for crossing some
boundary they shouldn’t have: economic,
social, physical
 Racial etiquette: informal set of rules

Blacks give up the sidewalk
 Don’t look whites (esp. women) in the eyes
 Whites are Mister and Missus, blacks never
are


Economic success was
crossing a boundary
 Ida B. Wells:
economics real
cause
 Booker T.
Washington vs.
W.E.B. DuBois:
could economic
strength lift blacks?
 Tuskegee vs.
Talented Tenth
Listen to the NPR program “Remembering
Jim Crow”
 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p
hp?storyId=1138738

But…



Blanche Kelso Bruce,
elected 1875 Senator
from Mississippi
Held local offices (tax
collector, etc.):
Republicans example;
Democrats
pacification
Served out term,
unable go back Miss