Hist 110
American Civilization I
Instructor: Dr. Donald R. Shaffer
Upper Iowa University
Lecture 15
The Issues of Reconstruction

The Civil War left significant issues to
be resolved
The war had cost 62o,ooo lives and
maimed many more
Devastated much of the South
It had brought a final end to the
institution of slavery, leaving nearly 4
million former slaves glad to be free but
wondering how they would live

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Issues that needed to be resolved in
Reconstruction
Status of former slaves: would they be
full citizens or something less?
 How would Southern economy be
rebuilt?
 Political relationship of the South to rest
of the United States? Would they get
treated as a conquered nation? Would
the southern states revert to territories?
Or would they return to the Union with
the same status as before the war?

Escaped slaves fleeing to
northern-controlled territory
Harper’s Weekly, 23 February 1863
Lecture 15
Presidential Reconstruction

Lincoln: believed there should be a
lenient Reconstruction that quickly
restored the South to full status


Congress: dominated by Radical
Republicans wanted the South
punished and under federal control

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
10 Percent Plan (December 1863):
Confederate states would be restored
when 10 percent of 1860 voters swore a
new oath of allegiance to the U.S.
Wade-Davis bill (1864): demanded 50
percent of 1860 voters be able to swear
the “Ironclad Oath”—that they had
never voluntarily supported the
Confederacy
Lincoln pocket vetoed the Wade-Davis
bill—angling for a compromise prior to
his assassination
Andrew Johnson continued Lincoln’s
lenient policy through an amnesty
program for ex-Confederates that
allowed them to retain/regain control
over southern state governments
Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio
and Rep. Henry W. Davis of
Maryland, the principal sponsors
of the Wade-Davis Bill
Andrew
Johnson
Lecture 15
The Meaning of Freedom
 Former slaves had their own
Reconstruction aspirations
 Freedom was not an abstract concept for
them—but had tangible meanings
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Throwing off “badges of servitude”: this
meant avoiding behaviors characteristic
of being a slave
 Freed people tried to dress nicer,
refused to treat white persons
deferentially, etc
Taking new names, usually to assert
family connections
 Black men often took a last name they
associated with their father, since free
men inherited their father’s surname
Reuniting families separated under
slavery
Leaving plantations where they had been
enslaved
Learning to read and write
Becoming land owners
Freedmen’s School
Harper’s Weekly, 23 June 1866
Note that parents are learning
side by side with their children
Lecture 15
Congress Challenges Johnson
 When Congress came back into
session in December 1865, they were
angry with President Johnson for his
lenient treatment of the South
 They passed bills to give citizenship to
African Americans and extend the life
of the Freedmen’s Bureau, which
Johnson then vetoed
 The 1866 midterm election gave
Republicans veto-proof majorities
which they used to ram through their
agenda
 A majority northern public was upset
with Johnson for his leniency, which
they believed had allowed the old
Confederate leadership to regain
power and had revived southern
intransigency, leading to violence
against occupation authorities and
African Americans
Alexander Stephens, Vice
President of the Confederacy,
whose attempt in Dec. 1865 to
claim a seat in the U.S. Senate
became a symbol of the revival of
the old Confederate elite
Lecture 15
Congressional Reconstruction
 Reconstruction Act of 1867
 Dissolved Johnson/Lincoln state
governments
 Put South under military occupation,
except Tenn.
 To regain status, states had to ratify
14th amendment and give black men
suffrage
 14th Amendment (Ratified 1868)
 Put into the Constitution a variety of
Radical Republican goals, but most
significantly created a national
definition of citizenship that granted
African Americans citizenship rights
 15th Amendment (Ratified 1870)
 Granted black men voting rights
 This amendment divided the nascent
women’s suffrage movement because it
did not include women—some women
were willing to wait, others not
Black men vote in the South for
the first time under the provisions
of the Reconstruction Act of 1867
Harper’s Weekly, 16 November 1867
Lecture 15
Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
 Andrew Johnson did not sit by meekly as
Congress took over Reconstruction
 After 1866, he could not veto laws passed
by Congress but he could still use his
executive power, especially his role as
commander-in-chief, to interfere with
their implementation
 Tenure of Office Act (1867)


Law passed by Congress over Johnson’s
veto which made it illegal for the
president to replace officials without
Congressional approval
Aimed at protecting friends of Congress
inside Johnson’s administration, most
especially Secretary of War Edwin M.
Stanton
 Johnson fired Stanton in Feb. 1868 in
defiance of Congress

He was impeached by Congress for
violating the Tenure of Office Act, but
acquitted by one vote
Andrew Johnson’s impeachment
trial took place in the U.S. Senate
and lasted 11 weeks (and was the
hottest ticket in town)
Lecture 15
Economic Reconstruction
 Three groups had a significant stake in
and a vision of what should be the
outcome of economic Reconstruction
White Southern planters: wanted slavery
back or tight control of black laborers
 Former slaves: wanted to become land
owners to achieve independence
 Northern occupation authorities: wanted
to keep the plantation system but
substitute free labor for slave labor

 Black Codes: during Presidential
Reconstruction the planters tried to
impose their solution through laws
forcing blacks to sign annual contracts as
field workers or servants and threatening
them with arrest if they didn’t
 Congressional Reconstruction ended the
Black Codes and soon sharecropping
emerged largely on its own

Former slaves worked the land and paid
the planter ½ to 1/3 of the crop after the
harvest as rent
While sharecropping gave former slaves
day-to-day control over their labor,
It essentially forced them to give up
the dream of land redistribution as the
path to landownership
Lecture 15
Vulnerability of Reconstruction

Reconstruction was vulnerable because
it attempted to impose biracial
democracy on the South
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For example, not only did black men
receive the vote, at least 1,465 served in
elective or appointive political office
between 1867 and 1877
Including 2 U.S. Senators and 14 men in
the U.S. House of Representatives
About 60 percent of these black
officeholders had been slaves before the
Civil War
Such a radical overturning of order of
the Old South made white Southerners
determined to overthrow it by any
means necessary

A few white Southerners—called
“scalawags” supported the new order, but
the biggest failure of Reconstruction was
its failure to obtain significant white
support
Black members of the 41st and 42nd
Congress (1869-1873)
Lecture 15
Other Reasons Reconstruction Failed
 Factionalism
Republicans in South wasted energy
fighting for dominance within the party
 Black-white tensions
 Intra-racial factionalism
 Disorder plays into hands of opponents
who suggested they would bring order
back to politics

 Corruption
Republican regimes in South were
undeniably corrupt (as was most politics
across the nation at this time)
 Reputation for corruption also benefited
opponents—they presented themselves
as reformers

 Violence
The biggest single reason for
Reconstruction’s end
 Goals of violence
 Weaken the Republican party in the
South
 Terrorize former slaves into
submission
 Ku Klux Klan: secret society and terrorist
paramilitary group--one of many socalled “regulators”
 Whites used violence because it was
effective and they could get away with it

Cartoon by Thomas Nast in
Harper’s Weekly, 14 March 1874
What does it suggest about public
opinion in the North concerning
Reconstruction by the mid-1870s?
Lecture 15
The Election of 1876 and Compromise of 1877
 1876 was arguably the most controversial
election in American history
 Candidates
Samuel J. Tilden (D)
 Rutherford B. Hayes (R)

 Initial Outcome
Tilden won the popular vote
 Electoral College: Tilden (184) and Hayes
(166)
 19 disputed electoral votes in Florida, S.
Carolina, and Louisiana

 Congress established an electoral
commission—which awarded the
disputed votes to Hayes meaning he
became President
 Compromise of 1877
Democrats mollified with the promise
Reconstruction in the South would end
 Hayes sweetened the deal by appointing a
Democrat to his cabinet and promising
the South federal development funds

Samuel J.
Tilden
Rutherford
B. Hayes
Lecture 15
The Legacy of Reconstruction
 With the Compromise of 1877,
Republicans abandoned blacks in the
South
African Americans were the biggest losers
in the compromise
 Exodusters: some African Americans left
the South for Kansas or elsewhere rather
than resubmit to racial subordination

 Black position declined
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Disfranchisement: southern states
gradually took away black voting rights
through poll taxes, literacy tests, and the
“grandfather clause”
Rise of Jim Crow: formal segregation
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): U.S. Supreme
Court gave its blessing to segregation laws
Crop-Lien system: forced sharecroppers
to assume more risk for crop failures,
sometimes leading to debt peonage
Lynching: over 1700 blacks killed between
1889-1909
 African Americans managed to retain
some of their Reconstruction gains
Independent institutions, especially the
black church
 Autonomous family life: no longer could
family members be sold away from one
another

Lynching (extralegal execution)
became the ultimate means of
enforcing white supremacy in
the South