Reconstruction

Reconstruction

• a political and social project:
  • re-incorporating rebel states into the Union
  • rebuilding the southern society without slavery
• the 12 year period (1865-77) when these projects dominated national politics
• critical period of nation-building, even a “second founding”
  • amendments 13, 14, 15 re-made the United States Constitution
  • individual, equal national citizenship and male suffrage
  • federal power over the states
  • they were imperfect and incomplete, but laid the groundwork of modern citizenship and governance in United States
• two key problems:
  • what would freedom mean in practice for African Americans?
  • how would white southern rebels be treated and reincorporated?
• this was bitterly contested in the government and on the ground

Wartime Reconstruction

• reconstruction began under Lincoln administration
  • emancipation and abolition, but reluctant to do more for racial equality
  • leniency to rebels, rapid re-incorporation of states
  • “radical” republicans wanted more
• Congress established Freedman’s Bureau, March 3, 1865, renewed until 1872
  • Freedman’s Bureau: an agency of the war department set up in 1865 to assist formerly enslaved people, freed from slavery by emancipation
  • chronically underfunded
  • first, humanitarian relief
  • later on…
    • mediators between black and white southerners
    • education and social work for freed people
• Lincoln was assassinated days after Lee’s surrender, April, 14, 1865
• reconstruction fell to Vice President Andrew Johnson and Congress
• the Reconstruction Act of 1867 divided the south into five military districts ran by the army
• President Andrew Johnson granted pardons to many Confederate leaders
• the combination of white intimidation, a large economic depression, and the Democratic Party winning control of the House of Representatives resulted in Reconstruction failing
• white southerners who joined the republican party and helped with eh reconstruction were called scalawags
• the goal of the wartime reconstruction was to encourage the states to stop fighting and rejoin the Union
  • he hoped that the simplicity and kindness of his plan would bring an early end to the war