Reconstruction Era Notes

Reconstruction, 1863-1877

Relevance to Exam & Writing Assignment

Exam: This lecture is related to the exam question on the impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on different groups in the South.
Writing Assignment: Documents from Reading the American Past will be discussed throughout the lecture. After the lecture, chapter 16 comparative questions will be discussed.

Introduction: What the Civil War Resolves and Does Not Resolve

Resolves:
- Secession question.
- Slavery.
Does Not Resolve:
- What will happen to former slaves?
- What will happen to leaders of the Confederacy?
- Who will lead the process: Congress or the President?

Competing Reconstruction Visions and Agendas

Radical Republicans
Moderate Republicans
Yeoman
Planters
Former Slaves
Women

Presidential Reconstruction Programs: Lincoln

Lincoln’s Reconstruction Plan is difficult to know because he was assassinated.
He had discussed “healing war wounds.”

Pres. Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan: (Johnson was a loyalist Democrat)

Appoint a governor.
Call a state convention to ratify the 13th amendment.
Void secession.
Repudiate war debts.
Elect new members to Congress (elected only by whites).
State/local governments autonomy in local governance.

Pres. Johnson’s Pardons

Pardons those who swear loyal to the Union.
Johnson returns their property (except for slaves).
Excludes leaders of the Confederacy and those worth over $20,000$ from pardons.
But gives them individual pardons.

Southern Response to Johnson’s Reconstruction:

The Black Codes.
Reelection of prominent Confederates to Congress.
Confederate Invasion from Mexico?

Black Codes (vary from state to state)

Grant certain rights to Blacks, like marriage and property.
But bar from some professions.
Compulsion to work via vagrancy laws.
Year-long labor contracts that can’t be broken.
Control over children whose parents can’t provide for them.
Blacks can’t testify in court against whites.
Not able to vote.
Not able to serve on militias.

Report on Southern Attitudes

Doc. 16-1: Schurz on the conditions in the South, p. 267.
Schurz observes:
- Those who rebelled return to power and have influence.
- Treason does not appear odious.
- Want compensation for slaves.
- “Negro will not work without physical compulsion.”
- “Negro exists for the special object of raising cotton.”

Confederate “invasion” from Mexico?

Confederate exodus to Mexico, Central America, and Brazil.
Perhaps 10,000.
Influential Confederates go to Mexico (Jefferson Davis failed attempt).
US (unfounded) fear: a Confederate “Invasion” from Mexico.

Maximilian reaches out to Confederates

Maximilian attracts Confederates because he has no political base.
Tax exemptions.
Free land.
Posts in government (as engineers, etc.).
Able to bring their “apprentices” (i.e., slaves).
Not able to set up colony on border (fear another “Texas”).

Backlash against southern intransigence

Black codes depicted as the auction block.
Radical Republicans given more influence because of intransigence.
Congress takes power over reconstruction in 1867.
Johnson has no more power to stop Radical Republicans in Congress.

Congressional Reconstruction achievements: Military Reconstruction Act of 1867

Military Reconstruction Acts of 1867.
Divides Confederacy into 5 military districts.
The Creation of new State Constitutions.
Require Black Male suffrage.

Dominance Republican Party in the South

Republican Party in the South:

Freed blacks.
Carpetbaggers (northerners travel south).
Scalawags: mostly non-slave holding white farmers who had been Unionists (some supported secession).
Cooperate to prevent “rebels” from coming back to power.
Democratizing politics: reduce aristocratic privilege for holding office.

Republican cartoon attacking Democrats 1868

1868 Republican cartoon identifies Democratic candidate Horatio Seymour with KKK violence and with Confederate soldiers.

Negative Depiction of Carpetbaggers

Thomas Nast attacking Democratic Party Confederate sympathizers.

African American Male Suffrage

14th amendment
15th amendments

Depiction of African Americans voting

African Americans vote for the first time, depicted in 1867 on Harper's magazine, by A R. Waud.
The text describing the image: “the good sense and discretion, and above all modesty, which the freedmen have displayed in the exercise” of their franchise.”

African American Politicians

Rise of black politicians: 2,000 black politicians, represented at all levels of government; at national level, 14 in House, 2 in Senate
Only makes about 6%.
Reason we don’t have more, in part, is because Republican Party has the black vote and is attempting to attract the white vote in the South.

Photo of African Americans in South Carolina Legislature

Photo composite of 65 "Radical Republicans" in the 1868 South Carolina Legislature during the Reconstruction era.

Educational Gains of Reconstruction

Over 3,000 schools built.
Public education for all.
Freedmen’s Bureau (1000 agents) aids greatly in this.
In some states integrated schools forbidden.
But in some we do have integrated schools.

Freedom of movement: reunite with families

Document 16-2:
Former Slaves seek to reunite with their families.
Advertisement from Christian Recorder, 1865-1870.
The fact that ex-slaves wanted to reunite with their families shows that claim (made by planters and others) that blacks didn’t care about family was false.

Citizenship broadened to include blacks

Civil Rights Act (1866):

Defines people born in US as citizens; defines their rights.
States cannot enact laws that discriminate against blacks.

14th Amendment:

“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges of citizens of the US.”
“No state shall deny citizens life, liberty, or property without due process.”

State’s expanded social role

Orphan asylums
Homes for mentally ill
Prohibit corporal punishment (whipping, etc.)
Freedmen’s Bureau

Inspiration for Civil Rights Act: Memphis Riot

In months before riot we have brutality against black Union soldiers stationed nearby.
Eventually turns violent when blacks resist arrest on disorderly conduct charge.
Blacks initially escape but whites return and kill 48 blacks in a 40-hour rampage.

Reconstruction’s limits: Outline

From Slaves to Sharecroppers
Emergence of the KKK (1866)
Weakening of the Republican Party in the South
Reemergence of conservativism and “redeemers”
Women and the 14th and 15th Amendments

From slaves to sharecroppers

Sherman’s “40 acres and a mule” unrealized.
Johnson returned lands that had been redistributed.
Poor whites join blacks against old planter elite; want land redistribution.
Northern Republicans don’t support redistribution (not a central issue).

Black and White Sharecroppers Statistics:

30% yeomen become tenants/sharecroppers
1860: 90% cotton grown by blacks
1890: 60% grown by blacks

Crop lien and debt

Few banks
The crop lien system utilized so sharecroppers can get credit for tools, supplies, etc.
Makes it difficult to escape sharecropping
Part crop goes to landlord and rest to lender

Exceptions to the rule of sharecropping

Some land redistributed
In S. Carolina 14,000 families receive homesteads
In some other parts South we have high taxes on uncultivated lands to promote redistribution

A contract labor system, document 16-3

Planter Louis Manigault Visits his Plantations and Former Slaves, 1867
Former “negro” driver is foreman
Manigault says slaves happy to see him (still call him master)

Labor System on Manigault’s Plantations

Harrison rents 390 acres, which is split into 5 divisions
A foreman is in charge of each division; foreman hires 10 workers
Harrison doesn’t interact with the workers

Reconstruction’s limits: Women and 14th Amendment

14th Amendment reduces representation on race but not gender
Cady Stanton says she cannot trust men
14th Amendment separates women’s movement from reform/black rights movement
Owing to 14th amendment, we have the emergence of the first women’s movement that does not rely on men

Women and 15th Amendment

Stanton and Susan B. Anthony oppose 15th amendment, further breaking the feminist-abolitionist alliance
Stanton says white women are more educated so more deserving of suffrage
The Agitator is a women’s journal that calls for equal pay for equal work, liberalizing divorce laws, and women’s control over their body (includes domestic violence protection and the right to what is later called birth control)

1869 emergence of 2 women’s movements

Stanton and Anthony’s independent feminism (National Women’s Suffrage)
American Women’s Suffrage Association (which is linked to earlier reform tradition)

Reconstruction’s economic limits. “Gospel of Prosperity”

Hope Reconstruction would help poor regain war-time losses by suspending debt collection and enacting laws to prevent them from losing land to creditors
Hope Republicans will create a “New South” that is modernized and provides more opportunities
“Gospel Prosperity”: increased spending on education, railroads, etc.

“Gospel of Prosperity” never realized

Wartime losses
There are massive expenditures, which lead to a financial crisis and end access to credit
Depressed cotton prices owing to oversupply
All this impedes the “gospel of prosperity” from being realized

Emergence KKK: paramilitary wing Democratic Party

Tennessee, 1866: elites dominate; all sectors involved
Prominent where blacks are a minority and Democratic and Republican Parties about equal
But also in the deep South
Military arm of Democratic Party
Attack education
Attack educated/literate blacks

Document 16-4: Klan Violence Against Blacks

Testimony before Congressional Committee Investigating the KKK
Who is Elias Hill?
Why do they target Hill?
What do they want him to do?
Why these specific actions (rather than killing him)?

KKK weakened, but after it had already helped Democrats regain power

KKK Act (1871)
From 1870-72 the government take actions, arresting 6000
First time Federal Government prosecutes as opposed to state governments

Republican Party and the end of Reconstruction: outline

1873 Depression
From moral reform to economic development
Worker unrest in the North
Compromise of 1877

Republican Party’s shift away from Reconstruction. Why?

From a party of reform to a party of economic development:

Economic development always part of the party’s platform
Depression 1873 and greater focus on the economy
Support for land grants to railroads
Greater attention to industry
Settle/develop western cattle and mining frontiers
But no more support for Freedmen’s Bureau

Radicalism in North also inspires Republicans to abandon Reconstruction

Reconstruction’s radical rhetoric radicalizes labor and creates tensions in capital-labor relations in the North

Wave of strikes in the mid-1870s
Republicans use force to repress strikes and restore order
Hence, Labor activism dampens Republicans call for reform

Another factor: Radical Republicans had always been a minority

Radicals had always been a minority
Most Republicans think Reconstruction did its job
Most Republicans don’t see it as government’s job to remake the South
Hence, Radicals outsized influence only lasts for a few years

Compromise of 1877

Republican Hayes gets the nomination since not tainted by corruption
Hayes given 3 contested southern states
Backroom deal: pull military out and provide funds for Southern development
Democrats do not care who is in the Whitehouse as long as they have home rule (end “bayonet rule”)
Poor implementation: military only pulled out of 2 states and funds don’t meet expectations

Explanation of image (16-5)

Nast drew this image when it appeared Tilden, the Democrat, had won, before the election was settled for Republican Hayes
Nast supported Republicans, including black suffrage
Nast depicting northern Irish Democrats and southern blacks Republicans balancing each other out at the polls, depicting both as ignorant.
This is a critique of both parties via critique of their constituents

Reemergence Conservativism in the South: Redeemers

Redeemers emerge in mid-1870s (sometimes before)
Redeemers are part of the old planter class and will regain power
Bring a wave of conservatism and roll back Reconstruction

Roll back social and political reforms

Jim Crow: legal segregation in public places; Plessey vs. Ferguson, 1896
Voting restrictions: literacy tests; grandfather clause
Reinstitute coercive labor systems

Chapter 16 Comparative questions

1) How do the views of Southern whites as reported by Schurz differ from those expressed by Manigault? To what extent do they contrast with the meaning of freedom documented in Christian Recorder?
2) To what extent did the Klan’s campaign of terror against black Republicans confirm or contradict Schurz’s report on race relations in the South?
3) How did the activities of Hill and other Republicans compare with those of the freedmen and women on Manigault’s plantations? How did they compare with the voters’ activities as depicted in the cartoon about the 1876 election?
4) In what ways did Schurz’s conclusions about the South differ from those presented in the other documents in the chapter? What explains differences? How does race factor into differences?