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Reconstruction: The “Unfinished Revolution” 1863- 77 American History 244

Reconstruction: The “Unfinished Revolution” 1863-77 American History 244

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Page 1: Reconstruction: The “Unfinished Revolution” 1863-77 American History 244

Reconstruction: The “Unfinished

Revolution” 1863-77American History 244

Page 2: Reconstruction: The “Unfinished Revolution” 1863-77 American History 244

African Americans and the Meaning of Freedom

January, 1865: Union General William Sherman issues Special Field Order 15, setting aside areas along the Carolina/Georgia coast for the settlement of black families. By June, 40,000 freed slaves lived and worked on the land, and it seemed possible that the end of slavery would include the economic independence that would secure freedom.

For African Americans, freedom not only meant the right to their own land, it also meant freedom from physical punishment, freedom to assemble, freedom of movement, access to education, and the uniting of families. In short, all the freedoms that had been denied by slavery.

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Page 4: Reconstruction: The “Unfinished Revolution” 1863-77 American History 244

FamilyThe family unit became the central node of post-

emancipation communities. Many blacks took to the roads in an effort to locate family members and reassemble that which slavery had destroyed.

Emancipation remade the workings of black families. In slavery, every member worked in fields. With freedom, black women retreated into the domestic sphere to care for their families—until financial hardship would force them back to the field.

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Page 6: Reconstruction: The “Unfinished Revolution” 1863-77 American History 244

Church and SchoolWith emancipation, black churches become the major

institutional base of the black community. In addition to worship, churches also served as schools and places for social and political gatherings. 250 black ministers would hold office throughout the South during Reconstruction.

Freedmen also displayed a hunger for education, which was viewed as essential preparation for dealing with the marketplace and (after 1867) for political writes. Schools established by Northern missionaries and the Freedman’s Bureau are well attended, and black colleges like Howard University in Washington, D.C. and Fisk University in TN are founded.

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Page 8: Reconstruction: The “Unfinished Revolution” 1863-77 American History 244

Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men

For many former slaves, freedom was directly tied to owning their own land, and they insisted that years of unpaid labor had given them a right to that land.

Other elements of black’s vision of freedom, economic independence, family security, religious liberty, political participation, the entire process of transforming their lives from slavery to freedom, was linked to land ownership.

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Page 10: Reconstruction: The “Unfinished Revolution” 1863-77 American History 244

White Southern ReactionThe former Confederacy is devastated by the

war, 260,000 soldiers dead, property values destroyed, and their slaves freed.

Many understand black freedom only to apply in a limited sense. Emancipation did not equate to rights to own land, or political participation. As one journalist noted “they readily admit that the government has made [blacks] free, but appear to believe they have the right to exercise the same old control.”

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“The Great Labor Question From a Southern Point of View”

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Republican VisionsIn the worldview of Northern Republicans,

freedmen would labor with the same chance for improvement as northern white workers, and Northern investments would help transform the South into something resembling the free-labor North.

This vision of freedom directly contrasted with the narrow white Southern vision of a society as close to slavery as possible.

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The Freedmen’s Bureau Established in March, 1865 under the direction

of O.O. Howard, to oversee the creation of a free-labor South.

The Bureau sought to establish schools, provide aid, settle land disputes, and secure equal treatment for blacks in the courts. With only about 1,000 agents for the whole South, and resistance from white Southerners, the Bureau faced a “Hercules task.”

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Freedmen’s Bureau Part IIDuring the Bureau’s short life (1865-70), it helped

coordinate and finance nearly 3,000 schools, and provided medical care.

In the summer of 1865, President Andrew Johnson ordered almost all the federally confiscated land returned to former owners. Because land redistribution ends before it begins, the majority of rural freedmen remain poor and without property during Reconstruction. Thus, blacks become trapped in a system of unskilled labor, many working for their former masters, without any hope of advancement or wage accumulation.

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Labor System in the SouthSharecropping developed first as a compromise

between black desires for land and planters’ insistence on labor discipline. It allowed each black family to rent a part of a plantation, and the crop was divided between the worker and owner at the end of the year.

Sharecropping gave planters a stable labor force, and former slaves preferred it to gang labor, because it freed them from white supervision. But sharecropping became increasingly oppressive over time, especially as declining prices for southern crops limited opportunities for sharecroppers

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Andrew JohnsonLincoln’s successor, rose from poverty to

represent TN in Congress, was the only Senator from a seceded state to remain in the Union. In return, he was made the military governor of TN during the war.

Johnson lacks Lincoln’s political dexterity and shrewdness, and while he supported emancipation he also believed blacks should play no role in Reconstruction.

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Page 18: Reconstruction: The “Unfinished Revolution” 1863-77 American History 244

Presidential Reconstruction, 1865-67

May, 1865: Johnson issues proclamations offering pardons to nearly all white Southerners who would swear an oath of allegiance. It exempts Confederate leaders and wealthy planters (owning $20,000 prewar), but they are soon granted individual pardons. Johnson also appoints provisional governors and orders them to call state conventions (no blacks allowed). Apart from abolishing slavery, repudiating secession, and Confederate war debt, this means white southerners (and former rebels) would have free reign in controlling local Reconstruction.

Most alarming were black codes: laws passed by southern governments to regulate behavior of the slaves. They denied blacks the right to testify, serve on juries, or vote, and declared those who did not sign yearly labor contracts could be arrested, and sold to pay their fines. These laws provoked outrage from many Northern Republicans, and helped usher in Radical Reconstruction.

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Radical Reconstruction Radical Republicans such as Charles Sumner and Thaddeus

Stevens react with horror to the establishment of these new state governments, call for their dissolution, and the establishment of new ones where former Confederates are excluded and blacks included.

In early 1866, Republicans in Congress began to create their own Reconstruction plan around two bills. One sought to extend the life of the Freedman’s Bureau. The other, the Civil Rights Bill, defined all persons born in the US as citizens, and spelled out specific rights to be enjoyed regardless of race (right to make contracts, bring lawsuits, equal protection of person and property). Johnson vetoes both bills, arguing that they gave too much power to the federal government, and that blacks did not deserve citizenship.

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The 14th Amendment and Reconstruction Act

Congress overrides Johnson’s veto of the Civil Rights Bill (April 1866), and proceeds on its own plan for Reconstruction.

The 14th Amendment (June, 1866, ratified 1868) placed in the Constitution the right to citizenship for all persons born in the US, and empowered the government to protect the rights of all Americans. The amendment banned the states from abridging the “privileges and immunities” of citizens or denying them the “equal protection of the law.” This language allowed future congresses and federal courts to give meaning to this promise of legal equality.

The off-year Congressional elections become something of a referendum on the 14th Amendment. Johnson goes barnstorming around the country to whip up support for himself and Democrats, but is undermined by his own ineptitude along with white violence against blacks in the South.

In March, 1867, Congress passes the Reconstruction Act, dividing the South into five military districts and calling for new state governments with black men being given the right to vote.

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The End of Johnson and the Beginning of Grant

In March, 1867, Congress passes The Tenure of Office Act, barring a president from removing officeholders w/out senate consent. Johnson responds by removing Sec. of War (and Radical ally) Edwin Stanton, and Congress responds by attempting to impeach the president. Johnson misses being convicted by one vote, but his political career is all but over.

In the election of 1868, former Union General Ulysses Grant beats Democrat Horatio Seymour. Republicans charged Democrats with being the party of secession (“waving the bloody shirt”), while Democrats blast Reconstruction as unconstitutional and use race-baiting tactics to play on fears of fears of blacks.

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Page 23: Reconstruction: The “Unfinished Revolution” 1863-77 American History 244

The 15th Amendment Responding to their electoral victory, Republicans pass the

final “Reconstruction Amendment,” which prohibits state and federal government from denying the vote because of race. Denounced by Democrats, the amendment was ratified in 1870. The Fifteenth Amendment enabled states to make suffrage restrictions not based on race, such as literacy tests, property requirements, and poll taxes, and did not give the vote to women, but it represented the culmination of abolitionism.

Together, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments transform the Constitution from a document concerned with federal-state relations, and property rights to a document that would protect the rights of vulnerable citizens. In other words, these amendments re-defined the meaning of freedom in America.

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A “Hothouse” of Political Activity

Passage of the Reconstruction Act prompts an outburst of political organization and activity among blacks.

Key to this activity were the Union Leagues. These organizations were closely tied to the Republican Party and assisted blacks with registering to vote, educating them on political issues, and even helping with labor issues such as contract disputes and strikes.

New state constitutions, drafted in 1868-1869, are constructed with substantial black participation. They guarantee civil/political rights, abolish property qualifications for office holding, imprisonment for debt and establish publicly funded systems of public education.

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Black Leaders2,000 African Americans hold public office

during Reconstruction.

While a few (Hiram Revels, Blance Bruce) hold office nationally, the vast majority are local officials such as sheriffs, justices of the peace, and local legislators. Black officeholders (and their white allies) help ensure blacks accused of crimes are tried before juries, and assist in areas such poor relief, labor disputes, and tax assessments.

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Carpetbaggers and Scalawags

Many Reconstruction officials were white Northerners who made their homes in the South after the war. Though some were corrupt fortune seekers, most were former Union soldiers who had decided to remain in the South. Some sought to combine the chance for investment (railroads) in the Southern economy with the chance to help the South transition from slave to free labor.

Scalawags-native Southerners who join the Republican party. Many had been wartime Unionists, and they hoped to either prevent the former rebels from recapturing power, or thought the Republicans held the best hope for economic recovery from the war.

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What Reconstruction Accomplished

Established state supported schools, pioneer civil rights legislation, making it illegal for hotels, railroads, and other public accommodations to discriminate based on race.

Biracial government functions in many parts of the South; the power of elite slaveholders is broken—for a time. Reconstruction did not promote prosperity through land distribution (as blacks hoped), but rather pinned their hopes on railroads, which might promote industrialization and agricultural diversification.

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White Backlash Most white Southerners refused to accept black voting,

office holding, and equality before the law. To restore “order” or “redeem” the South, the turned to extra-legal political violence.

The most well-known of these organizations was the Ku Klux Klan founded in 1866. The Klan terrorized blacks and white Republicans alike, assaulting and murdering either at will.

Violence sometimes reached massive proportions. Massacres at Meridian, Mississippi in 1871, and Colfax Louisiana in 1873, helped force action by the Federal Government. In 1870-71 Congress passed the Enforcement Acts, outlawing societies like the Klan and authorizing the President to use federal troops to destroy their power.

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Page 30: Reconstruction: The “Unfinished Revolution” 1863-77 American History 244

Northern Abandonment of Reconstruction

Despite the horror at the violence in the South, by the early 1870’s many Northerners were becoming convinced that they had “done enough” for blacks, and racist assumptions suggested that the South’s problems came from the inability of blacks to govern themselves. Figures like Stevens and Sumner pass away, and are replaced by politicians who are not as committed to racial equality.

Republicans are also hampered by disaffection in their ranks. In 1872, “Liberal” Republicans, discouraged by corruption in the Grant administration, and demanding a reduction in federal power, form their own party, and nominate Horace Greeley. Democrats also endorse Greeley, and both believe the South should be left in the hands of its “natural leaders.” Greeley loses to Grant, but two major political groups are now committed to scaling back Reconstruction

Economic depression beginning in 1873 further distracts from involvement in Reconstruction. It also destroys the hope for Republican sponsored economic revival in the South.

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The Supreme CourtIn the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873) and the US

v. Cruikshank (1876), the Supreme Court narrows the federal guarantees of black rights. In the former, the court rejected the claim that exclusion of two Louisiana butchers from a state sponsored monopoly violated the right to equality before the law. In the latter, the court threw out the convictions of some of those responsible for the Colfax Massacre, effectively rendering the Enforcement Acts null and void.

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Redemption and the Election of 1876

By the mid-1870’s, Democrats had already regained control in TN, NC, and TX. Perhaps more importantly, the federal government showed no inclination to intervene in racial violence in states like MS, and SC. Without federal intervention to counter the intimidation of blacks, Reconstruction was all but doomed.

In the election of 1876, Republican Rutherford Hayes faced Democrat Samuel Tilden. The election was so close, that whomever captured SC, FL, and LA, the only Southern states still under Republican control, would win. Unsurprisingly, both parties claimed to have won all three states.

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Election of 1876, part II In January 1877, Congress appointed an electoral

commission to resolve the problem. Republicans held an 8-7 majority on the commission, and decided Hayes had won all three states and the election.

In secret negotiations, Hayes agreed to recognize Democratic control of the South, place a southerner in the cabinet and work for federal aid to support a Southern RR. Democrats promised not to contest Hayes right to the presidency, and respect the civil/political rights of blacks. Although blacks continued to hold office and vote into the 1890’s, the election of 1876 effectively ended Reconstruction.