RECONSTRUCTION 1863-1877

Introduction:

Reconstruction, in U.S. history, the period (1865–77) that followed the American Civil War the
American civil war fought in the united states between northern nad southern states from 1861-
1865 reconstruction is the name given to the period from 1865-1877 when the federal government
of the united statesreincorporated the south states in the union .during which attempts were made
Attempt to achieve national reunification and reconciliation after the Civil War and to improve the
status of formerslaves (freedmen). this period begin shortly before the end of first civil war April
1865.  The Civil War is over.   The North prevailed during the Civil War. The South prevailed afterthe
war,Parts of the South lay in ruins prostrate at the feet of conquering Union armies.  A president has
been assassinated.  Four million enslaved African Americans are now free.  It is time to rebuild the
nation. to redress the inequities of slavery and its political, social, and economic legacy and to solve
the problems arising from the readmission to the Union of the 11 states that had seceded at or
before the outbreak of war. Long portrayed by many historians as a time when vindictive Radical
Republicans fastened black supremacy upon the defeated Confederacy, Reconstruction has since the
late 20th century been viewed more sympathetically as a laudable experiment in
interracial democracy. Reconstruction witnessed far-reaching changes in America’s political life. At
the national level, new laws and constitutional amendments permanently altered the federal system
and the definition of American citizenship. In the South, a politically mobilized
black community joined with white allies to bring the Republican Party to power, and with it a
redefinition of the responsibilities of government.

Reconstruction (1865-1877), the turbulent era following the Civil War, was the effort to reintegrate
Southern states from the Confederacy and 4 million newly-freed slaves into the United States. Under
the administration of President Andrew Johnson in 1865 and 1866, new southern state legislatures
passed restrictive “black codes” to control the labor and behavior of former slaves and other African
Americans. Outrage in the North over these codes eroded support for the approach known as
Presidential Reconstruction and led to the triumph of the more radical wing of the Republican Party.
During Radical Reconstruction, which began with the passage of the Reconstruction Act of 1867,
newly enfranchised blacks gained a voice in government for the first time in American history,
winning election to southern state legislatures and even to the U.S. Congress. In less than a decade,
however, reactionary forces–including the Ku Klux Klan–would reverse the changes wrought by
Radical Reconstruction in a violent backlash that restored white supremacy in the South.

During the reconstruction the government of the victorious unioun northern directed the
confederated the southern states to rebuild their social institution with a view to those states with
reincorporation into the federal syatem the rights of formla slaves were significant in this process

CONTENTS

1. Emancipation and Reconstruction

 2. Andrew Johnson and Presidential Reconstruction

3. Radical Reconstruction

4. Reconstruction Comes to an End

I.

Four main questions vis-à-vis Reconstruction of the post-Civil War

South:

1. How to rebuild the South after its destruction during the Civil War?

2. What would be the condition of African Americans in the South?

3. How would the South be reintegrated into the Union?

4. Who would control the process: Southern states, president, or

Congress?

period saw the frustruation of federal government attempt to integrate the newely freely slaved into
the American and political system and economic system ,it ended in frustruation disillusionment and
even violence with individuals southern states denying rights to freed slaves preventing them from
voting and largely focusing on forcing them back in to the roles that exploited their labour and
preventing them from gaining from acess to education for much of the 20 th century the pre
dominant view of the reconstruction period wsa that of the dunning school ,which argued that
former slaves were unprepared for the responsibilities of voting and holdin goffices ,and that it was
there incapability of handling such responsibilities and not the racist action of whites that was
largely responsiblr for the failure of the reconstruction period .

eric foners great work reverse those judgemnets former adopts a proble his verdivct that slaves and
freed men wer often key figures who shaped the eventual emergence of a more progressive
americasn democracy is backed up by persusasive reasoning which explain how this result came
about and shows how the wjhite establishment led by president Andrew johnson was primarily
responisblie for the disaster of the reconstruction era.reconstuction generally reflects Americas
racial politicsa revolution to incorporate African americaninto full equality occurred beween 1863-
1877recons is bout black peoples race relation are the significant factors within this complex story of
reconstruction other broadline themes are in addition to freed menremaking of southern society
interaction of freed men carpet beggar republican unionist white planters merchants and yeoman in
in the new south as agrarian commercialisation also the interconnection of racial and
classsreconstruction in context of national context shows how civil war and reconstruction affected
the development of powerful nation stateand in turn how amore activistfederal govt affected the
evolution of reconstruction  How did the US cope with the aftermath of the bloodiest conflict ever
fought on the continent? The reality is that it was enormously difficult to satisfy both these

goals.

  This course examines the aftermath of slavery and the Civil War.  It focuses on three main themes:
the abolition of slavery, the political and economic reconstruction of the South, and the ways these
have been remembered by later generations. 
 In this essay s will seek to understand the fierce debates surrounding Reconstruction.  Some of
these occurred during Reconstruction (over its policies), but many of the fiercest occurred after it
(over its legacy and meaning).   The course starts with a reflection on the historiography of
Reconstruction

Overview of principal Reconstruction proposals and plans:

• 1864-65: Lincoln’s 10% plan

• 1865: 13

th Amendment

• 1865-66: Presidential Reconstruction: Johnson’s version of

Lincoln’s proposal

• 1866-67: Congressional plan: 10% plan with 14th Amendment

• 1867-77: Military Reconstruction (Congress): 14th

Amendment plus black suffrage that was later established

nationwide by the 15

th Amendment.

• Compromise of 1877: ends Reconstruction

Reconstruction usually is associated with the period after the civil war actually it began in 1861 when
Abraham lincon in his inaugural address announced his intenetion to preserve the union and by
implication to restore the seceded the states to the union ,the reconstruction of these states or as
he preferred restoration wa his duty under the constitution by virtue of his levation to the
presidency, for linco it was the indivual bnot the states who were the rebels and barriers for the
unification of the country so he belived that it was the supreme constitutional responsibility of the
president as a commander in chief of American military forceds to supress the rebellion and restore
legimate loyal government in the southern atates. Lincon aim he insisted was to return to the
southern states to their proper practical relation too the union even lincn emancipation policy which
emrged in 1862 63 an eventually became an essential part of his reconstruction plan was designed
to win the war and achived the over arching purpose of restoring the union clearly Lincoln opposed
slavery for moral and human reasons but these concerns were secondary and not primarily in his
justification for the emancipation proclomatioon he justified his action against slavery on the
constitutional ground of military necessity to suppress the southern rebellion.

Most historians usually haveignored or given short shift to political efforts during the war to restore
the southern states to the union general accounts of the civil wwar mention lincolns 1863
proclomaiton as reconstruction outlining his ten % for southern restoration, but they conclude that
this effort was premature and of noo lasting significance eric former viewd Lincoln ten percent
percent plan viewed as reconstruction as adevice to shortn the war and solidify white support
emsancipaction. For Lincoln wartime reconsruction was designed to initiate the restoration of civil
self government in the south according to him the pace of reconstruction would vary with military
and political circumstances in each state he did not believe that a riguid rue should or could be
applied for south as a whole a poin that Lincoln made in his proclamation adreeses on
reconstruction .
 Restoratiobn usually meant restoration of relation between seccesionist states and the federal
government not a reconstruction of society and government as the term suggest today
reconstruction according to this definition included the reorganization of state and local government
by sothern white unionist largely along prewar lines and the acceptance of southern senators and
representwatives by congress though nortehners disagree on what guarantees of future loyalty
should be required of the south most expected few changes in the fundamental laws or the states or
the political rights or rsnaks and file confederates ,as the war progressed an important exception
regarding construction particularly among Lincoln nad republicNS WAS THE ABOOTION OF SLAVERY
IN THE sothern states Lincoln nonethlesssintended the word reconstruction to mean political
resotoration ,not the revamping of southern governmental structures northern radicals on the other
hand belonged to a specific faction in the republican party that particularly as the war progressed sa
the need for s more thorough reconstruction program that incoln advocated ,they supported policies
tthat most contemporaries and later historians have considered radicals for the period ,many
congressional radicals preferred that confiscated property should be sold by the government to pay
for the war others thought that it shouldbe distributed to the blacks and white unionist,by the end
of the war radicals favouredA RECONSTRUCTION POLICY THAT ASLO INCLUDED BLACK POLIITCAL
AND CIVIL EQUlity as aprotection for freedom and loyalty in the south lincolns rejection of a
stringent southern policy dictated from washingotn cause dradicals ot seek congressional control of
reconstruction

All republicans united behind a non compromise policy on the suppression of rebellions and
ultimately on emancipations though conservatives wavered on black freedom unlike congressinla
radicals few soyhtrn radicals like Andrew johnson of tenesses though viewed as extremist at home
did not normally identify with the radical faction in congress despite their passionate hatred of
rebels and their desire to see the confederate leader ship punished and rank and filerebel
disfranchised unlike congressional radicasl few souhetern rsdicsala sever supposed black rights or
the reconstruction theory that the seceding stated had reverted to a territorial status under
congressional control because they belong to no specific national faction erbn northern and border
state conservatives including many non affliated former whigs like lincon fundamentally favoured a
reconstruction policy that would restore republican union government in the south as son as
possible and with minimum federal ntervention along eith staunch southern unionists northern
conservatist generally but not always demanded punishment fofr high ranking confederate laedaers
they expected political and radical and even sovcialc changes to occur in the wakee of
emancipactions and confederate defeat but insisted that south ern unionist acting in stated
converntions and legislative bodies should determine the changes not federal authorities most
conservatists including Lincoln opposed the national consfication of rebel property on constitutional
grounds conservatist also objected to any expansion of federal power except when necessary to
supress the rebellion in the south

Some conservatist whom we can acall the ultra conservatisrts consistently opposed emancipation
determined to sunjugate the south and supress individual liberties in the union states ,though in
most case loyal to the union ultra consefvatists lodged mainly in democratic pary ultra conservatives
labelled all republicsnsas radicals bent upon destruoing the union and undermining theconstituions ,
the president purpose as it had been from the beginning of the war was not to impose a new
political system on south rather Lincoln sought to replace in power those disloyal southerners who
had usurped constitutional authority with royal southerners who would restore legitimate
government in tehir states in addition to pledge of loyalty in his 1853 plan lincon insisted only that
southerners ablish slavery and provide for the education of young blacks such a change though
radical on the surface could hardly be revolutionary as lomng as the white supremacy was not
threatehened by a reconstrucyion atttleemnt neither in his emancipaction policy nor in his
reconstruction plan did Lincoln seek to challenge south er white control

Later in the war the president signed a the freenamen bureau act creating a federal agency to aid
displaced black and white southerners after 1863 lincoln also repeatedly reminded uinionist of the
great need as a warmeasure to abolish slavery in their states only then could the root cause of civil
war be eradicate republican or loyal government could be secured and just a lasting peace be
achieved

II. What should be done with the leaders of the Confederacy?

A. Jefferson Davis imprisoned for two years (others as well);

eventually released.

B. President Johnson pardoned all rebel leaders in December 1868.

III. 13th Amendment (Ratified in December, 1865)

A. Slavery abolished

B. "Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate

legislation.

Use space below for

notes

HistorySage.com APUSH Lecture Notes Page 2

Unit 8.5: Reconstruction

IV. Rebuilding the South

A. Richmond, Charleston, and Atlanta were destroyed

B. Economically the South lay in ruins

1. Banks ruined by runaway inflation

2. Factories were closed or destroyed

3. Transportation system was devastated.

C. Agriculture

1. Cotton fields now fields of weeds

2. Livestock gone after northern invasion

3. Agricultural output did not return to 1860 level until 1870; much

from new Southwest

D. Planter aristocrats devastated

1. Value in slaves disappeared

2. Many mansions destroyed or ruined

V. African Americans in the immediate post-Civil War South

A. Freedmen’s Bureau (created in 1865 by Congress)

1. Headed by Gen. Oliver O. Howard (later founded and served as

president of Howard University in Washington D.C.)

-- Members included many Northerners including former

abolitionists who risked their lives to help freedmen in the

South; one of several northern groups derisively called

"carpetbaggers" by white southern Democrats.

2. Purpose: To help unskilled, uneducated, poverty-stricken exslaves to survive

3. Provided food, clothing, medicine & education to ex-slaves and

poor whites

a. Taught about 200,000 blacks to read; many freedmen eager to

read Bible

b. Negotiated labor agreements between freedmen and planters.

4. Authorized to provide "40 acres and a mule" from confiscated or

abandoned land to black settlers.

a. In certain areas, the Bureau distributed no land.

b. Sometimes collaborated with planters in expelling blacks from

towns and forcing them to sign labor contracts to work for their

former masters.

5. Southern violence against "carpetbaggers" and blacks was

significant.

a. Anyone aiding African American rights in the South during

Reconstruction risked being a victim of violence.

b. In Louisiana in summer and fall of 1868, white Democrats

killed 1,081 people most of whom were either black or white

Republicans.

6. Bureau expired in 1872

-- Johnson had tried to kill it repeatedly as he was a whitesupremacist along with most white
Southerners

5. THE POLITICS

6. OF RECONSTRUCTION

7. The Defeated South

8. Abraham Lincoln’s Plan

9. Andrew Johnson and Presidential

10. Reconstruction

11. The Radical Republican Vision

12. Congressional Reconstruction and the

13. Impeachment Crisis

14. The Election of 1868

15. Woman Suffrage and Reconstruction

16. THE MEANING

17. OF FREEDOM

18. Moving About

19. The African American Family

 20. African American Churches and Schools

21. Land and Labor After Slavery

22. The Origins of African American Politics

23. SOUTHERN POLITICS

24. AND SOCIETY

25. Southern Republicans

26. Reconstructing the States:

27. A Mixed Record

28. White Resistance and “Redemption”

29. White Yeomen, White Merchants,

30. and “King Cotton”

31. RECONSTRUCTING

32. THE NORTH

33. The Age of Capital

34. Liberal Republicans and the Election

35. of 1872

36. The Depression of 1873

37. The Electoral Crisis of 1876

Reconstruction (1865-1877), the turbulent era following the Civil War, was the effort to reintegrate
Southern states from the Confederacy and 4 million newly-freed slaves into the United States. Under
the administration of President Andrew Johnson in 1865 and 1866, new southern state legislatures
passed restrictive “black codes” to control the labor and behavior of former slaves and other African
Americans. Outrage in the North over these codes eroded support for the aReconstruction (1865-
1877), . Under the administration of President Andrew Johnson in 1865 and 1866, new southern
state legislatures passed restrictive “black codes” to control the labor and behavior of former slaves
and other African Americans. Outrage in the North over these codes eroded support for the
approach known as Presidential Reconstruction and led to the triumph of the more radical wing of
the Republican Party

. During Radical Reconstruction, which began with the passage of the Reconstruction Act of 1867,
newly enfranchised blacks gained a voice in government for the first time in American history,
winning election to southern state legislatures and even to the U.S. Congress. In less than a decade,
however, reactionary forces–including the Ku Klux Klan–would reverse the changes wrought by
Radical Reconstruction in a violent backlash that restored white supremacy in the South.

no period of the American experience has, in the last twenty-five years, seen a broadly accepted
point of view so completely overturned as Reconstruction—the dramatic, controversial era that
followed the Civil War. Since the early 1960s, a profound alteration of the place of blacks within
American society,
Emancipation and Reconstruction
At the outset of the Civil War , to the dismay of the more radical
abolitionists in the North, President Abraham Lincoln  did not make
abolition of slavery  a goal of the Union war effort. To do so, he feared,
would drive the border slave states still loyal to the Union into the
Confederacy and anger more conservative northerners. By the
summer of 1862, however, the slaves themselves had pushed the
issue, heading by the thousands to the Union lines as Lincoln’s troops
marched through the South. Their actions debunked one of the
strongest myths underlying Southern devotion to the “peculiar
institution”–that many slaves were truly content in bondage–and
convinced Lincoln that emancipation had become a political and
military necessity. In response to Lincoln’s Emancipation
Proclamation , which freed more than 3 million slaves in the
Confederate states by January 1, 1863, blacks enlisted in the Union
Army in large numbers, reaching some 180,000 by war’s end.

Did you know? During Reconstruction, the Republican Party in the South represented a
coalition of blacks (who made up the overwhelming majority of Republican voters in the
region) along with "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags," as white Republicans from the North
and South, respectively, were known.
Emancipation changed the stakes of the Civil War, ensuring that a
Union victory would mean large-scale social revolution in the South. It
was still very unclear, however, what form this revolution would take.
Over the next several years, Lincoln considered ideas about how to
welcome the devastated South back into the Union, but as the war
drew to a close in early 1865, he still had no clear plan. In a speech
delivered on April 11, while referring to plans for Reconstruction
in Louisiana , Lincoln proposed that some blacks–including free blacks
and those who had enlisted in the military–deserved the right to vote.
He was assassinated three days later, however, and it would fall to his
successor to put plans for Reconstruction in place. So began a period
in which Democrats, like Republicans, proclaimed their realism and
moderation and promised to ease racial tensions II.

What should be done with the leaders of the Confederacy? A.

Jefferson Davis imprisoned for two years (others as well); eventually
released. B. President Johnson pardoned all rebel leaders in
December 1868. III. 13th Amendment (Ratified in December, 1865) A.
Slavery abolished B. "Congress shall have power to enforce this article
by appropriate legislation. Use space below for notes HistorySage.com
APUSH Lecture Notes Page 2 Unit 8.5: Reconstruction IV. Rebuilding
the South A. Richmond, Charleston, and Atlanta were destroyed B.
Economically the South lay in ruins 1. Banks ruined by runaway
inflation 2. Factories were closed or destroyed 3. Transportation
system was devastated. C. Agriculture 1. Cotton fields now fields of
weeds 2. Livestock gone after northern invasion 3. Agricultural output
did not return to 1860 level until 1870; much from new Southwest D.
Planter aristocrats devastated 1. Value in slaves disappeared 2. Many
mansions destroyed or ruined V. African Americans in the immediate
post-Civil War South A. Freedmen’s Bureau (created in 1865 by
Congress) 1. Headed by Gen. Oliver O. Howard (later founded and
served as president of Howard University in Washington D.C.) --
Members included many Northerners including former abolitionists
who risked their lives to help freedmen in the South; one of several
northern groups derisively called "carpetbaggers" by white southern
Democrats. 2. Purpose: To help unskilled, uneducated, poverty-
stricken exslaves to survive 3. Provided food, clothing, medicine &
education to ex-slaves and poor whites a. Taught about 200,000
blacks to read; many freedmen eager to read Bible b. Negotiated labor
agreements between freedmen and planters. 4. Authorized to provide
"40 acres and a mule" from confiscated or abandoned land to black
settlers. a. In certain areas, the Bureau distributed no land. b.
Sometimes collaborated with planters in expelling blacks from towns
and forcing them to sign labor contracts to work for their former
masters. 5. Southern violence against "carpetbaggers" and blacks was
significant. a. Anyone aiding African American rights in the South
during Reconstruction risked being a victim of violence. b. In Louisiana
in summer and fall of 1868, white Democrats killed 1,081 people most
of whom were either black or white Republicans. 6. Bureau expired in
1872 -- Johnson had tried to kill it repeatedly as he was a
whitesupremacist along with most white Southerners

Andrew Johnson and Presidential

Reconstruction
At the end of May 1865, President Andrew Johnson  announced his
plans for Reconstruction, which reflected both his staunch Unionism
and his firm belief in states’ rights. In Johnson’s view, the southern
states had never given up their right to govern themselves, and the
federal government had no right to determine voting requirements or
other questions at the state level. Under Johnson’s Presidential
Reconstruction, all land that had been confiscated by the Union Army
and distributed to the freed slaves by the army or the Freedmen’s
Bureau  (established by Congress in 1865) reverted to its prewar
owners. Apart from being required to uphold the abolition of slavery (in
compliance with the 13th Amendment  to the Constitution ), swear
loyalty to the Union and pay off war debt, southern state governments
were given free rein to rebuild themselves.

As a result of Johnson’s leniency, many southern states in 1865 and

1866 successfully enacted a series of laws known as the “black
codes ,” which were designed to restrict freed blacks’ activity and
ensure their availability as a labor force. These repressive codes
enraged many in the North, including numerous members of Congress,
which refused to seat congressmen and senators elected from the
southern states. In early 1866, Congress passed the Freedmen’s
Bureau and Civil Rights Bills and sent them to Johnson for his
signature. The first bill extended the life of the bureau, originally
established as a temporary organization charged with assisting
refugees and freed slaves, while the second defined all persons born
in the United States as national citizens who were to enjoy equality
before the law. After Johnson vetoed the bills–causing a permanent
rupture in his relationship with Congress that would culminate in
his impeachment  in 1868–the Civil Rights Act became the first major
bill to become law over presidential veto.

Presidential Reconstruction

A. Andrew Johnson 1. Champion of poor whites against planter

aristocrats as a politician in TN. -- Yet, he owned some slaves. 2.
Refused to secede with Tennessee in April of 1861 and remained in
the Senate. -- Served as military governor of TN when Union armies
reconquered the state. 3. Lincoln’s vice presidential candidate for the
Union party in 1864 -- Johnson attractive to War Democrats and other
pro-Southern groups 4. Perhaps the most overtly racist president in
U.S history. -- He knew this type of rhetoric resonated with a large
portion of the electorate (both North and South). B. Presidential
Reconstruction 1. 1863, Lincoln gave his "10 percent" Reconstruction
plan a. 10% of ex-Confederate states’ voters in 1860 election had to
pledge allegiance to U.S. and obey emancipation to be reintegrated
into the Union b. Next step would be creation of a state gov’t which
Lincoln would then recognize. c. Congressional Republicans sharply
rejected the 10% plan claiming it was much too lenient and did not
safeguard Union gains. -- Feared southern planter aristocracy would
regain power and possibly re-enslave African Americans. 2. Wade-
Davis Bill (1864) a. Passed by Republicans b. Required 50% of state’s
voters in 1860 election to take oath of allegiance and imposed stronger
safeguards for emancipation than Lincoln's plan. i. States then would
have a Constitutional convention that would require approval by
Federal gov’t -- "Iron-clad Oath": "Never voluntarily aided the
Confederacy" ii. "State suicide theory" -- Republicans believed
Confederate states had forfeited all their rights by seceding from the
Union. iii. States should be readmitted only as "conquered provinces"
subject to the conditions and wishes of Congress. b. Lincoln vetoed
the bill c. In response, Republicans refused to seat delegates from
Louisiana after it had met the requirements of Lincoln’s 10% plan in
1864. Use space below for notes: HistorySage.com APUSH Lecture
Notes Page 4 Unit 8.5: Reconstruction 3. Two congressional factions
emerged among Republicans a. Majority moderate group agreed with
Lincoln that the Confederate states should be reintegrated ASAP but
on Congress’ terms, not Lincoln’s. b. Minority radical group wanted
South’s social structure uprooted, the planters punished, and blacks
protected before states were restored. 4. Johnson recognized several
of Lincoln’s 10% governments while Congress was not in session. a.
Believed, like Lincoln, that states had never legally been outside the
Union b. May 1865, issued his own Reconstruction proclamation. i.
Disenfranchised certain leading Confederates. -- Yet, granted many
pardons for ex-Confederates ii. Called for special state conventions
required to repeal ordinances of secession, repudiate all Confederate
debts, and ratify the 13th Amendment -- He reluctantly agreed to
include 13th Amendment as a condition c. Pardons of planter
aristocrats soon gave many of them the power to control the
organization of their states during the second half of 1865 d.
Republicans were outraged that planter elite once again controlled
many areas of the South. C. White southerners had a window of
opportunity to get off easy in 1865-66 (while Congress was out of
session) but their actions provoked Congress to react strongly 1.
Former Confederate leaders began being elected to high offices. a.
Alexander Stephens, VP of the Confederacy, now a senator from GA!
b. Confederate generals elected to high office. 2. Black Codes in 1866
(see below) 3. Violence against blacks in South began in
summer1865; massacres in 1866 a. KKK founded in Tennessee --
Southern whites, in effect, fought a guerilla war for white supremacy
that they had been unwilling to wage for the Confederacy. 4. Thus,
Radical Republicanism was a reaction to white supremacy rather than
a desire to arbitrarily punish the South. -- Northerners convinced
Southerners had not learned their lesson from the war. Use space
below for notes HistorySage.com APUSH Lecture Notes Page 5 Unit
8.5: Reconstruction 5. Why did southerners resist so strongly? a.
Blacks left plantations leaving shortages in labor b. Blacks perceived
as "uppety" when they try to negotiate labor contracts c. Vast majority
of occupation forces in the South were black Union soldiers
Black Codes 1. Designed to regulate affairs of freedmen (as the slave
statutes did pre-Civil War.) 2. Purpose: Guarantee stable labor supply
now that blacks were emancipated. a. Severe penalties on blacks that
"jumped" their labor contracts that committed them to work for the
same employer for a year at very low wages. b. Violators could be
made to forfeit back wages or forcibly made to work by a paid "Negro
catcher." 3. Purpose: Restore pre-emancipation system of race
relations (as far as possible) a. Freedom recognized and marital rights
granted but few other rights given b. Forbade blacks to serve on juries
or testify against whites. c. Some forbade blacks from renting or
leasing land. d. Blacks not allowed to vote e. "Vagrancy" -- "Idle"
blacks could be sentenced to work on a chain gang. 4. Forced many
blacks to become sharecroppers (tenant farmers). -- Result: Many
blacks sank to level of indentured servitude where generations
remained on one plot of land, indebted to the plantation owner. VII.
Congressional Reconstruction A. Republicans furious that many ex-
Confederates were elected to Congress. 1. Did not allow Democrats in
on first day of the new Congress in Dec, 1865. a. Feared loss of
political advantage that had yielded Homestead Act, Morrill Tariff,
National Banking Act, and the Pacific Railway Act. -- Free black
population would increase southern representation in Congress and
presidential electoral votes by 12. b. Feared southerners might win
control of Congress by uniting with northern Democrats; perhaps even
the presidency. -- Black codes (or slavery) could then be imposed at
federal level. Use space below for notes: HistorySage.com APUSH
Lecture Notes Page 6 Unit 8.5: Reconstruction B. Civil Rights Bill of
1866 1. Response to Johnson's presidential reconstruction policy and
his veto of Freedman's Bureau in Feb.1866 (Congress overturned his
veto) 2. Provisions: a. Gave blacks citizenship and aimed to destroy
the Black Codes. b. Johnson vetoed it but Congress overturned his
veto in April. c. From then on, Congress frequently overturned
Johnson’s vetoes and assumed effective control on the gov’t. C. 14th
Amendment (Passed by Congress and sent to states in June 1866) 1.
Purpose: Republicans sought to place principles of Civil Rights Bill into
a constitutional amendment as protection against a future southern
takeover of Congress and subsequent removal of Civil Rights Bill with
simple majority. 2. Provisions: a. Gave civil rights including citizenship
(but not including voting rights) to blacks. b. Reduced proportionately
the representation of a state in Congress and in the Electoral College
if it denied blacks voting rights. c. Disqualified from federal and state
office former Confederates who had once held office. d. Guaranteed
the federal debt while repudiating all Confederate debts. D. 1866
Congressional elections centered largely on reconstruction issue. 1.
Johnson asked Southern states to reject 14 th Amendment as he
campaigned for Democrats on his "swing around the circle" tour. -- All
Southern states except TN rejected it putting it in temporary limbo. 2.
Republicans won 2/3 majority ("supermajority") in House & Senate in
Congressional elections of 1866 a. Significance: Republicans now
instituted Military Reconstruction (see below) i. Radicals led in the
Senate by Charles Sumner ii. Radicals led in House by Thaddeus
Stevens from PA. b. Radical Republicans -- Sought to keep out
Southern states from the Union as long as possible & to effectuate
drastic social & economic change in the South. c. Moderate
Republicans (consisted of the majority) -- Preferred policies that kept
states from infringing on citizens’ rights rather than direct federal
intervention in peoples’ lives. Use space below for notes
HistorySage.com APUSH Lecture Notes Page 7 Unit 8.5:
Reconstruction E. Military Reconstruction 1. Military Reconstruction
Act (March, 1867) a. South divided into five military districts, each
commanded by a Union general and policed by the Union army (about
20,000 total) b. Disenfranchised 10s of thousands of former
Confederates. c. Congress also required seceded states to ratify the
14th Amendment before being allowed back into the Union. d. States
had to guarantee in their state constitutions full suffrage for blacks --
Paved the way for easy ratification of the 15th Amendment 2. Did not
give freedmen land or education at federal expense a. Military rule
ended by 1868 in all but three Southern states. b. Did not want to
make federal gov’t directly responsible for protection of black rights. c.
Resulted in a century of institutional discrimination against blacks. 3.
Significantly, Republicans in 1867 could not get northerners to agree
to suffrage for blacks in the North as racist tendencies were strong.
Republicans held a razor thin supermajority and could not push the
suffrage issue lest they be voted out. a. President-elect Grant did not
receive a majority of the white vote in 1868! b. In 1867, Radical
Republicans now wanted Johnson out of office. 4. Johnson is
impeached a. Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act in 1867 over
Johnson’s veto. -- President couldn't remove senate-approved
appointees without the approval of the Senate. b. Purposes: i. Keep
Sec. of War Edwin Stanton in the cabinet who was secretly serving as
a spy for the radicals. ii. Provoke Johnson to break the law thus laying
foundation for impeachment. c. Johnson, believing the act
unconstitutional and depending on support from the Supreme Court,
fired Stanton in early 1868. -- Johnson did not believe the law applied
to Lincoln’s appointees. d. In response, House voted 126 to 47 to
impeach Johnson for "high crimes and misdemeanors," as called for in
the Constitution. i. Main issue: Johnson’s violation of the Tenure of
Office Act. ii. Johnson only president in U.S. history to be impeached
until Bill Clinton in 1998. e. Senate refused to remove Johnson by one
vote (2/3 needed). Use space below for notes HistorySage.com
APUSH Lecture Notes Page 8 Unit 8.5: Reconstruction f. Outcome
was probably beneficial for the country -- Johnson’s removal may have
set a destructive precedent, severely weakening the executive branch.
5. 15th Amendment a. Passed in 1869; ratified in 1870 during Grant’s
presidency b. Purposes: i. Ensure state guarantees of suffrage if
southerners took control of Congress in the future ii. Strengthen
Republican control of southern states; boost Republican votes in the
North. c. Provisions: Suffrage for black males d. Loopholes i. Said
nothing about holding office ii. Voting requirements not uniform
throughout the country. iii. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and property
requirements not addressed -- Literacy tests administered unfairly to
favor illiterate whites. iv. "grandfather clauses" aimed to reduce
number of black voters -- Required citizenship prior to 14th
Amendment v. Gerrymandering (especially in Virginia) vi. Intimidation
-- Lynchings in 1892 (230) all-time high followed by 1884 (211). vii.
Women were excluded -- Female leaders of the abolitionist movement
split from the males. viii. Poor whites also disenfranchised e. Result: i.
Democratic dominance in South assured; 14th and 15 th Amendments
ignored. -- Many southern Republican voters denied suffrage. ii. Full
suffrage for blacks not realized until 1965. 6. Civil Rights Act of 1875
a. Crime for any individual to deny full & equal use of public
conveyances and public places e.g. hotels, trains, railroads, theaters,
and restaurants. b. Prohibited discrimination in jury selection c.
Shortcoming: Lacked a strong enforcement mechanism d. Dismayed
northerners didn’t attempt another civil rights act for 90 years!
HistorySage.com APUSH Lecture Notes Page 9 Unit 8.5:
Reconstruction 7. The end of reconstruction a. By 1870, all former
Confederate states had reorganized their state govt’s and reintegrated
into the Union, having adopted the 14th and 15th Amendments. i.
Once state govt’s ("radical regimes") seemed on solid footing in the
South, Union forces were removed. ii. By 1876, whites again
dominated southern politics b. Northerners now concerned with other
issues rather than helping freedmen. c. Panic of 1873-1879 focused
politics on economic issues d. Compromise of 1877 i. Election
between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Sam Tilden
inconclusive. -- Tilden led popular vote and 184-165 in electoral
college; 187 votes needed to win. -- 20 electoral votes in question due
to fraud & violence in SC, FL, & LA plus questions of voter eligibility in
Oregon. -- 15 member commission eventually gave Hayes all 20 votes
but Democrats filibustered. ii. Compromise: North was allowed to have
Hayes as president while last remaining federal troops to be removed
from SC FL & LA 8. Military Reconstruction resulted in a significant
decline in presidential power. a. Supreme Court had ruled in Ex parte
Milligan (1866) that military tribunals (executive branch) could not try
civilians if civil courts nearby. b. Since desperate times call for
desperate measures, the Supreme Court avoided confronting
Congress about its imposition of martial law. c. During subsequent
Gilded Age presidents would be weak and faceless while Congress
would dominate.

Radical Reconstruction
After northern voters rejected Johnson’s policies in the congressional
elections in late 1866, Radical Republicans in Congress took firm hold
of Reconstruction in the South. The following March, again over
Johnson’s veto, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867,
which temporarily divided the South into five military districts and
outlined how governments based on universal (male) suffrage were to
be organized. The law also required southern states to ratify the 14th
Amendment , which broadened the definition of citizenship, granting
“equal protection” of the Constitution to former slaves, before they
could rejoin the Union. In February 1869, Congress approved the  15th
Amendment  (adopted in 1870), which guaranteed that a citizen’s right
to vote would not be denied “on account of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude.”

By 1870, all of the former Confederate states had been admitted to the
Union, and the state constitutions during the years of Radical
Reconstruction were the most progressive in the region’s history. The
participation of African Americans in southern public life after 1867
would be by far the most radical development of Reconstruction, which
was essentially a large-scale experiment in interracial democracy
unlike that of any other society following the abolition of slavery.
Southern blacks won election to southern state governments and even
to the U.S. Congress during this period. Among the other
achievements of Reconstruction were the South’s first state-funded
public school systems, more equitable taxation legislation, laws
against racial discrimination in public transport and accommodations
and ambitious economic development programs (including aid to
railroads and other enterprises). VI.

. Radical Reconstruction in the South

A. Suffrage policy somewhat hypocritical on the part of the North. --

Most northern states denied suffrage to blacks until 15th Amendment
B. African American suffrage saw temporary gains in the South 1.
Blacks made up the majority of voters in AL, FL, LA, MI, and South
Carolina but only in S.C. did they make up majority in the lower house.
2. No senate had a black majority nor were there any black governors
during the period coined by white southerners as "black
reconstruction." HistorySage.com APUSH Lecture Notes Page 10 Unit
8.5: Reconstruction 3. Yet, many black representatives served with
distinction; some well-educated. -- Two black senators from MI: Hiram
R. Revels and Blanche K. Bruce. C. Corruption in state legislatures 1.
"Scalawags" (term coined by white Southern Democrats) a. Southern
men, formerly Unionists and Whigs, who supported Reconstruction. b.
Hated by former Confederates who exaggerated their corruption and
plundering of Southern treasuries through their political influence. 2.
"Carpetbaggers" a. Mainly Northern Republicans who allegedly packed
all their possessions into a single carpet-bag suitcase and came to the
South to seek their fortune. b. Consisted of Union soldiers, teachers,
and businessmen who arrived in the South before 1867. -- Reaped
benefits during military reconstruction c. Resented by the white South
as federal interference; significant violence. D. Positives from
Reconstruction 1. Steps taken to est. adequate public schools. 2. Tax
systems were improved 3. Public works projects were launched esp. in
transpiration 4. Property rights for women guaranteed. 5.
Apportionment made more equal in state legislatures 6. Property
requirements eliminated for holding office IX.

Reconstruction Comes to an End

After 1867, an increasing number of southern whites turned to violence
in response to the revolutionary changes of Radical Reconstruction.
The Ku Klux Klan  and other white supremacist organizations targeted
local Republican leaders, white and black, and other African
Americans who challenged white authority. Though federal legislation
passed during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant  in
1871 took aim at the Klan and others who attempted to interfere with
black suffrage and other political rights, white supremacy gradually
reasserted its hold on the South after the early 1870s as support for
Reconstruction waned. Racism was still a potent force in both South
and North, and Republicans became more conservative and less
egalitarian as the decade continued. In 1874–after an economic
depression plunged much of the South into poverty–the Democratic
Party won control of the House of Representatives  for the first time
since the Civil War.
Rise of the Ku Klux Klan A. Essentially a rebellion against "radical’
rule; terror wing of Democratic party. 1. Goal: Overthrow
Reconstruction governments in the South and Replace them with white
supremacy oriented Democratic government. 2. Many whites resented
success and efficacy of black legislators as they did the alleged
corruption of Carpetbaggers and Scalawags. 3. KKK, the "Invisible
Empire of the South," founded in TN in 1866 4. Consisted of whites
from all classes in the South B. Used terrorism to intimidate blacks,
Carpetbaggers & Scalawags 1. Flogging, mutilation, or murder became
rampant. 2. Effective in many areas for discouraging blacks from
attaining their rights. HistorySage.com APUSH Lecture Notes Page 11
Unit 8.5: Reconstruction C. Succeeded in decimating Republican
organization in many localities. -- In response, new southern
governments looked to federal gov't for survival. D. Force Acts of 1870
and 1871 (also called Enforcement Acts) – also called the "KKK Act" 1.
Federal troops were sent to quell the KKK’s intimidation while terrorist
groups were outlawed. -- Significance: 1st time federal gov’t protected
individuals, not local authorities 2. Moderately successful in destroying
the KKK yet much KKK intimidation had already had an devastating
impact on blacks. X. Rise of the Solid South A. White supremacist
Solid South dominated by Democrats in each state. 1. Remaining
Republican govt’s in South collapsed 2. Republican party dead in
South for about 100 years. 3. "The Lost Cause": Southern resentment
and humiliation lasted generations. -- Resulted in increased violence
and discrimination toward blacks B. Redeemers: coalition of prewar
Democrats, Union Whigs, 1. Confederate veterans, and individuals
interested in industrial development. -- Rise of many ex-plantation
owners (sometimes called "Bourbons") 2. Sought to undo changes
brought about by the Civil War. 3. Won many local elections in 1870s
vowing to dismantle the "corrupt" Reconstruction system. 4. Policies
affected blacks and poor whites alike -- Exacerbated class strife and
racial violence that followed the Civil War. XI. Purchase of Alaska
(1867) A. Russia overextended in North America; realized another war
with Britain would probably mean British takeover of Alaska. -- Fur
supply exhausted; Alaska a financial liability B. Sec. of State Seward
signed treaty w/ Russia to purchase Alaska for $7.2 million. 1. Many
criticized him for purchasing what seemed to be a wasteland:
"Seward’s Folly" -- U.S. in midst of Reconstruction: antiexpansionist;
economic matters more important. HistorySage.com APUSH Lecture
Notes Page 12 Unit 8.5: Reconstruction 2. Gov’t felt obligated not to
shun Russia’s offer since Russia had been very friendly to the North
during the Civil War. -- In addition, area rumored to be abundant in
furs, fish and gold. C. Alaska was to become a major source of oil for
U.S. and a sizable fishery. XIV Post-Reconstruction Civil Rights: Road
to institutional discrimination A. Reconstruction failed to empower
blacks politically -- The white South openly disregarded the 14th &
15th Amendments for several generations. B. Sharecropping became
a wide-scale practice keeping blacks tied to plantation owners with
crop lien laws, which facilitated the binding of blacks unable pay their
debts. C. Slaughterhouse Cases, 1873 (still during Reconstruction) 1.
14th Amendment protected against federal infringements of abridged
"privileges and immunities," not state infringements. -- Thus, in effect
the states were able to discriminate against their citizens. 2. Molded
interpretation of 14th Amendment for decades. D. Civil Rights Cases,
1883 1. Court claimed 14th Amendment protected individuals from
state action, not individual action. -- Overturned Civil Rights Act of
1875 which protected individuals in states. 2. Significance: a
discouraged Congress didn’t pass another Civil Rights law until 1957.
E. Wholesale disenfranchisement began in 1890 -- achieved by
intimidation, fraud, and trickery. 1. Poll taxes & property requirements;
literacy tests admin. unfairly to favor illiterate whites. 2. "grandfather
clauses" aimed to reduce number of black voters while enfranchising
white voters who did not meet #1 & #2 -- Required citizenship prior to
establishment of 14th Amendment 3. Gerrymandering: Voting districts
redrawn to break up large black voting areas. Resulted in few blacks
being elected to office 4. "Jim Crow" laws in 1890s (beginning in 1881)
intended to segregate blacks in public facilities: e.g., public schools,
railroad cars, restaurants F. Lynchings as a form of intimidation 1.
During 1890s, 200 blacks were lynched per year; 4/5 in the South. 2.
Lynchings in 1892 (230) all-time high followed by 1884 (211). 3. Lynch
law and mob rule competed with justice in many areas. 4. Ida B. Wells-
Barnett: Black journalist who launched an international antilynching
movement; goal was a federal antilynching law. HistorySage.com
APUSH Lecture Notes Page 13 Unit 8.5: Reconstruction G. Booker T.
Washington and education for African Americans a. 44% of non-whites
illiterate in 1900; most from the South. b. Became head of the black
normal & industrial school at Tuskegee, AL, 1881 i. Taught useful
trades as a means toward self-respect and economic equality, rather
than a classical, education. ii. Started with only 40 students who
literally built the school. c. Advocated policy of accommodation in
which he grudgingly accepted segregation in return for the right to
develop economic and educational resources for the black community.
i. Emphasized self-help among black community ii. Urged blacks to
adopt white middle-class standards in speech, dress, and habits so
blacks would gain respect of whites. iii. Ideas put forth in the "Atlanta
Compromise",1895 (paved way or Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896) d.
Ironically, Washington labored secretly against Jim Crow laws and
racial violence, writing letters in code names and protecting blacks
from lynch mobs. -- His efforts, however, were little known in his time.
H. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) capped the failure of Reconstruction by
making it constitutional to segregate the black and white races:
"Separate but equal" 1. Court ruled that separation was legal so long
as facilities were equal. 2. This ruling henceforth applied to schools
and other public places. 3. Remained intact until Brown v. Board of
Education in 1954. I. W.E.B. DuBois: opposed Washington and
demanded immediate social and economic equality for blacks. 1. His
opposition to Washington as well as other blacks led to the formation
of the Niagara Movement (1905-1909) a. Demanded immediate end to
segregation and to discrimination in the unions, courts, and public
facilities. b. Demanded equality of economic and educational
opportunity. c. Laid the groundwork for creation of the NAACP. 2.
DuBois demanded that the "talented tenth" of the black community be
given full and immediate access to the mainstream of American life.
HistorySage.com APUSH Lecture Notes Page 14 Unit 8.5:
Reconstruction J. NAACP (National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People) 1. After Springfield Race Riots in 1909, a group of
white progressives including Jane Addams, John Dewey, William Dean
Howells, and editor Oswald Garrison Villard formed the NAACP (1910)
2. Adopted many of the goals of the Niagara movement 3. DuBois
became director of publicity and research, and editor of their journal,
Crisis. 4. Goal: attainment of equal rights for blacks through the use of
lawsuits in federal courts. 5. Opposed political and economic
subordination of blacks for promoting the leadership of a trained, black
elite

READ MORE: How the 1876 Election Effectively Ended

Reconstruction

When Democrats waged a campaign of violence to take control

of Mississippi  in 1875, Grant refused to send federal troops, marking
the end of federal support for Reconstruction-era state governments in
the South. By 1876, only Florida , Louisiana and South Carolina  were
still in Republican hands. In the contested presidential election that
year, Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes  reached a
compromise with Democrats in Congress: In exchange for certification
of his election, he acknowledged Democratic control of the entire
South. The Compromise of 1876 marked the end of Reconstruction as
a distinct period, but the struggle to deal with the revolution ushered in
by slavery’s eradication would continue in the South and elsewhere
long after that date. A century later, the legacy of Reconstruction
would be revived during the civil rights movement  of the 1960s, as
African Americans fought for the political, economic and social equality
that had long been denied them

The scholarly study of Reconstruction began early in this century with the work of William A.
Dunning, John W. Burgess, and their students. The interpretation elaborated by the

Dunning school

may be briefly summarized as follows: When the Civil War ended, the white South accepted the
reality of military defeat, stood ready to do justice to the emancipated slaves, and desired above all
a quick reintegration into the fabric of national life. Before his death, Abraham Lincoln had
embarked on a course of sectional reconciliation, and during Presidential Reconstruction (1865-67)
his successor, Andrew Johnson, attempted to carry out Lincoln’s magnanimous policies. Johnson’s
efforts were opposed and eventually thwarted by the Radical Republicans in Congress. Motivated by
an irrational hatred of Southern “rebels” and the desire to consolidate their party’s national
ascendancy, the Radicals in 1867 swept aside the Southern governments Johnson had established
and fastened black suffrage on the defeated South.

There followed the sordid period of Congressional or Radical Reconstruction (1867–77),

an era of corruption presided over by unscrupulous “carpetbaggers” from the North, unprincipled
Southern white “scalawags,” and ignorant blacks unprepared for freedom and incapable of properly
exercising the political rights Northerners had thrust upon them. After much needless suffering, the
Souths white community banded together to overthrow these governments and restore “home rule”
white supremacy). All told, Reconstruction was the darkest page in the saga of American history.

Historians view

During the 1920s and 1930s, new studies of Johnson’s career and new investigations of the
economic wellsprings of Republican policy reinforced the prevailing disdain for Reconstruction.
Johnson’s biographers portrayed him as a courageous defender of constitutional liberty whose
actions stood above reproach. From the first appearance of the Dunning School, dissenting voices
had been raised, initially by a handful of survivors of the Reconstruction era and the small fraternity
of black historians. In 1935, the black activist and scholar W. E. B. Du Bois published Black
Reconstruction in America, a monumental study that portrayed Reconstruction as an idealistic effort
to construct a democratic, interracial political order from the ashes of slavery, as well as a phase in a
prolonged struggle between capital and labor for control of the Souths economic resources. His book
closed with an indictment of a profession whose writings had ignored the testimony of the principal
actor in the drama of Reconstruction —the emancipated slave—and sacrificed scholarly objectivity
on the altar of racial bias. “One fact and one alone,” Du Bois wrote, “explains the attitude of most
recent writers toward Reconstruction; they cannot conceive of Negroes as men.” In many ways,
Black Reconstruction anticipated the findings of modern scholarship

If the traditional interpretation reflected, and helped to legitimize, the racial order of a society in
which blacks were disenfranchised and subjected to discrimination in every aspect of their lives,
Reconstruction revisionism bore the mark of the modern civil rights movement.

By the end of the 1960s, Reconstruction was seen as a time of extraordinary social and political
progress for blacks. If the era was “tragic,” it was because change did not go far enough, especially in
the area of Southern land reform. Even when revisionism was at its height, however, its more
optimistic findings were challenged, as influential historians portrayed change in the post-Civil War
years as fundamentally “superficial.” Persistent racism, these postrevisionist scholars argued, had
negated efforts to extend justice to blacks, and the failure to distribute land prevented the freedmen
from achieving true autonomy and made their civil and political rights all but meaningless.

Studies of federal policy in the South portrayed the army and the Freedmen’s Bureau as working
hand in glove with former slaveholders to thwart the freedmen’s aspirations and force them to
return to plantation labor. At the same time, investigations of Southern social history emphasized
the survival of the old planter class and the continuities between the Old South and the New. The
postrevisionist interpretation represented a striking departure from nearly all previous accounts of
the period, for whatever their differences, traditional and revisionist historians at least agreed that
Reconstruction was a time of radical change

. Summing up a decade of writing, C. Vann Woodward observed in 1979 that historians now
understood “how essentially nonrevolutionary and conservative Reconstruction really was.” In
emphasizing that Reconstruction was part of the ongoing evolution of Southern society rather than a
passing phenomenon, the postrevisionists made a salutary contribution to the study of the period.
The description of Reconstruction as “conservative,” however, did not seem altogether persuasive
when one reflected that it took the nation fully a century to implement its most basic demands,
while others are yet to be fulfilled. Nor did the theme of continuity yield a fully convincing portrait of
an era that contemporaries all agreed was both turbulent and wrenching in its social and political
change.

Over a half-century ago, Charles and Mary Beard coined the term “the Second American Revolution”
to describe a transfer in power, wrought by the Civil War, from the South’s “planting aristocracy” to
“Northern capitalists and free farmers.” And in the latest shift in interpretive premises, attention to
changes in the relative power of social classes has again become a central concern of historical
writing. Unlike the Beards, however, who all but ignored the black experience, modern scholars tend
to view emancipation itself as among the most revolutionary aspects of the period.

blacks were active agents in the making of Reconstruction whose quest for individual and
community autonomy did much to establish the era’s political and economic agenda. Although
thwarted in their bid for land, blacks seized the opportunity created by the end of slavery to
establish as much independence as possible in their working lives, consolidate their families and
communities, and stake a claim to equal citizenship. Black participation in Southern public life after
1867 was the most radical development of the Reconstruction years. The transformation of slaves
into free laborers and equal citizens was the most dramatic example of the social and political
changes unleashed by the Civil War and emancipation.

A second purpose of this study is to trace the ways Southern society as a whole was remodeled, and
to do so without neglecting the local variations in different parts of the South. By the end of
Reconstruction, a new Southern class structure and several new systems of organizing labor were
well on their way to being consolidated. The ongoing process of social and economic change,
moreover, was intimately related to the politics of Reconstruction, for various groups of blacks and
whites sought to use state and local government to promote their own interests and define their
place in the region’s new social order. The evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations,
and the complex interconnection of race and class in the postwar South, form a third theme of this
book. Racism was pervasive in mid-nineteenth-century America and at both the regional and
national levels constituted a powerful barrier to change. Yet despite racism, a significant number of
Southern whites were willing to link their political fortunes with those of blacks, and Northern
Republicans came, for a time, to associate the fate of the former slaves with their party’s raison
d’être and the meaning of Union victory in the Civil War. Moreover, in the critical, interrelated issues
of land and labor and the persistent conflict between planters’ desire to reexert control over their
labor force and blacks quest for economic independence, race and class were inextricably linked. As
a Washington newspaper noted in 1868, “It is impossible to separate the question of color from the
question of labor, for the reason that the majority of the laborers … throughout the Southern States
are colored people, and nearly all the colored people are at present laborers.” The chapters that
follow also seek to place the Southern story within a national context. The book’s fourth theme is
the emergence during the Civil War and Reconstruction of a national state possessing vastly
expanded authority and a new set of purposes, including an unprecedented commitment to the
ideal of a national citizenship whose equal rights belonged to all Americans regardless of race.
Originating in wartime exigencies, the activist state came to embody the reforming impulse deeply
rooted in postwar politics. And Reconstruction produced enduring changes in the laws and
Constitution that fundamentally altered federal-state relations and redefined the meaning of
American citizenship. Yet because it threatened traditions of local autonomy, produced political
corruption, and was so closely associated with the new rights of blacks, the rise of the state inspired
powerful opposition, which, in turn, weakened support for Reconstruction. Finally, this study
examines how changes in the North’s economy and class structure affected Reconstruction. That the
Reconstruction of the North receives less attention than its Southern counterpart reflects, in part,
the absence of a detailed historical literature on the region’s social and political structure in these
years. Nonetheless, Reconstruction cannot be fully understood without attention to its distinctively
Northern and national dimensions. This account of Reconstruction begins not in 1865, but with the
Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. I do this to emphasize the Proclamation’s importance in uniting
two major themes of this study—grass-roots black activity and the newly empowered national state
—and to indicate that Reconstruction was not only a specific time period, but also the beginning of
an extended historical process: the adjustment of American society to the end of slavery. The
destruction of the central institution of antebellum Southern life permanently transformed the war’s
character and produced far-reaching conflicts and debates over the role former slaves and their
descendants would play in American life and the meaning of the freedom they had acquired. These
were the questions on which Reconstruction persistently turned.

n a bright Saturday morning in May 1867, 4,000 former slaves eagerly streamed into the town of
Greensboro, the bustling seat of Hale County in west-central Alabama. They came to hear speeches
from two delegates to a recent freedmen’s convention in Mobile and to find out about the political
status of black people under the Reconstruction Act just passed by Congress. Tensions mounted in
the days following this unprecedented gathering, as military authorities began supervising voter
registration for elections to the upcoming constitutional convention that would rewrite the laws of
Alabama. On June 13, John Orrick, a local white, confronted Alex Webb, a politically active freedman,
on the streets of Greensboro. Webb had recently been appointed a voter registrar for the district.
Orrick swore he would never be registered by a black man, and shot Webb dead. Hundreds of armed
and angry freedmen formed a posse to search for Orrick, but failed to find him. Galvanized by
Webb’s murder, 500 local freedmen formed a chapter of the Union League, the Republican Party’s
organizational arm in the South. The chapter functioned as both a militia company and a forum to
agitate for political rights. Violent political encounters between black people and white people were
common in southern communities in the wake of the Civil War. Communities throughout the South
struggled over the meaning of freedom in ways that reflected their particular circumstances. The 4
million freed people constituted roughly one-third of the total southern population, but the black–
white ratio in individual communities varied enormously. In some places, the Union army had been a
strong presence during the war, hastening the collapse of the slave system and encouraging
experiments in free labor. Other areas had remained relatively untouched by the fighting. In some
areas, small farms prevailed; in others, including Hale County, large plantations dominated economic
and political life. West-central Alabama had emerged as a fertile center of cotton production just
two decades before the Civil War. There, African Americans, as throughout the South’s black belt,
constituted more than three-quarters of the population. With the arrival of federal troops in the
spring of 1865, African Americans in Hale County, like their counterparts elsewhere, began to
challenge the traditional organization of plantation labor. One owner, Henry Watson, found that his
entire workforce had deserted him at the end of 1865. “I am in the midst of a large and fertile cotton
growing country,” Watson wrote to a partner. “Many plantations are entirely without labor, many
plantations have insufficient labor, and upon none are the laborers doing their former accustomed
work.” Black women refused to work in the fields, preferring to stay home with their children and
tend garden plots. Nor would male field hands do any work, such as caring for hogs, that did not
directly increase their share of the cotton crop. Above all, freed people wanted more autonomy.
Overseers and owners thus grudgingly allowed them to work the land “in families,” letting them
choose their own supervisors and find their own provisions. The result was a shift from the gang
labor characteristic of the antebellum period, in which large groups of slaves worked under the
harsh and constant supervision of white overseers, to the sharecropping system, in which African
American families worked small plots of land in exchange for a small share of the crop. This shift
represented less of a victory for newly freed African Americans than a defeat for plantation owners,
who resented even the limited economic independence it forced them to concede to their black
workforce. Only a small fraction—perhaps 15 percent—of African American families were fortunate
enough to be able to buy land. 71193_17_ch17_p0566-0603.QXD 4/12/10 3:30 PM Page 568 The
majority settled for some version of sharecropping, while others managed to rent land from owners,
becoming tenant farmers. Still, planters throughout Hale County had to change the old routines of
plantation labor. Local African Americans also organized politically. In 1866, Congress had passed the
Civil Rights Act and sent the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution to the states for ratification;
both promised full citizenship rights to former slaves. Hale County freedmen joined the Republican
Party and local Union League chapters. They used their new political power to press for better labor
contracts, demand greater autonomy for the black workforce, and agitate for the more radical goal
of land confiscation and redistribution. “The colored people are very anxious to get land of their own
to live upon independently; and they want money to buy stock to make crops,” reported one black
Union League organizer. “The only way to get these necessaries is to give our votes to the
[Republican] party.” Two Hale County former slaves, Brister Reese and James K. Green, won election
to the Alabama state legislature in 1869. It was not long before these economic and political gains
prompted a white counterattack. In the spring of 1868, the Ku Klux Klan—a secret organization
devoted to terrorizing and intimidating African Americans and their white Republican allies—came
to Hale County. Disguised in white sheets, armed with guns and whips, and making nighttime raids
on horseback, Klansmen flogged, beat, and murdered freed people. They intimidated voters and
silenced political activists. Planters used Klan terror to dissuade former slaves from leaving
plantations or organizing for higher wages. With the passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act in 1871, the
federal government cracked down on the Klan, breaking its power temporarily in parts of the former
Confederacy. But no serious effort was made to stop Klan terror in the west Alabama black belt, and
planters there succeeded in reestablishing much of their social and political control. The events in
Hale County illustrate the struggles that beset communities throughout the South during the
Reconstruction era after the Civil War. The destruction of slavery and the Confederacy forced African
Americans and white people to renegotiate their old economic and political roles. These community
battles both shaped and were shaped by the victorious and newly expansive federal government in
Washington. In the end, Reconstruction was only partially successful. Not until the “Second
Reconstruction” of the twentieth-century civil rights movement would the descendants of Hale
County’s African Americans begin to enjoy the full fruits of freedom—and even then not without
challenge. RECONSTRUCTION, 1863–1877 CHAPTER 17 569 Competing political plans for
reconstructing the defeated Confederacy Difficult transition from slavery to freedom for African
Americans The political and social legacy of Reconstruction in the southern states Post-Civil War
transformations in the economic and political life of the North