Chp 16 IdentificationsCharles Sumner (MA), Thaddeus Stevens (PA), and the Radical Republicans

In 1856, only a small group of the Radical Republicans, led by Sumner and Stevens, supported black suffrage. The Radicals faced long odds, opposed by other Republicans as well as the Democratic minority.

Still, they were able to gain broad support from the Republicans, and had several of their Reconstruction programs enforced.

Just as Civil War led to emancipation, Reconstruction became bound to black suffrage.

Lincoln's 10 percent plan (Dec 1863)

Background Info: Conflict over Reconstruction began even before the war ended.

In Dec 1863, Lincoln issued the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, also known as the 10 percent plan. A minority of voters (10% of those eligible in 1860) would have to swear an oath to the Union and accept emancipation before being able to create a loyal state govt.

Lincolns plan excluded some southerners, such as Confederate officials and officers. All such persons would instead have to apply for presidential pardons.

Also excluded were blacks, who were not eligible in 1860.

Lincoln had partisan goals too. He wanted to win allegiance of southern Unionists and build a southern Republican Party.

Wade-Davis bill (Jul 1864) Unlike Lincoln, Radical Republicans envisioned a slower readmission process. Most Republicans agreed Lincolns 10 percent plan was too weak, and passed the Wade-Davis bill, which provided each ex-Confederate states with a military governor.

After 50% of eligible voters took an oath, delegates could be elected to a state convention that would repeal secession and abolish slavery.

To qualify as a voter, a southerner would have to take a second oath, swearing he never voluntarily supported the Confederacy.

This plan also did not include black suffrage, only supported by some Radicals.

Sidenote: Unlike Lincolns plan, the Wade-Davis plan would have delayed the readmission process indefinately.

Claiming he did not want to bind himself to a single restoration policy, Lincoln pocket-vetoed (failed to sign within 10 days) the Wade-Davis bill.

By the wars end, the president and Congress had reached an impasse.

4 Upper South states moved towards readmission under variants of Lincolns plan, but Congress refused to seat their delegates. (they had the right to do so)

Lincoln hinted at a more rigorous Reconstruction policy, but was assassinated.

President XVII: Andrew Johnson Andrew Johnson was the only southern senator to remain in Congress when his state seceded, and had become VP under the National Union ticket to broaden its appeal.

Now an accident had made him president. Above all, Johnson sought to destroy the planter aristocracy. When emancipation became Union policy, he reversed his ideas on slavery, hoping that the fall of slavery would injure southern aristocrats.

Background Info: Congress was out of session till December 1865.

A lifelong Democrat, many Republicans voiced shock when Johnson announced a new plan for the restoration of the South in May 1865. In two proclamations, he promised pardons to almost all southerners who pledged allegiance. He also declared that all their property (except slaves) would be restored.

Later, Johnson added that each state convention would have to deem secession illegal, deny state debts incurred from the Confederacy, and ratify an amendment.

Proposed by Congress early in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified in December and abolished slavery.

Finally, Johnson also disqualified well-off ex-Confederates with $20,000 worth or more. This purge, he said, would benefit the humble men...who have been decoyed into rebellion. Poorer whites would now be in control.

But southerners disqualified on the basis of wealth or high position applied for pardons, and Johnson handed out 13k pardons. He also dropped plans to punish treason. By the end of 1865, all seven Lower South states created new civil govts.

Black Codes

All seven Lower South states passed black codes to replace the slave codes.

Under the Thirteenth Amendment, blacks were given basic rights. But they could not serve as jury, marry other races, or testify against whites. Some states segregated blacks. All codes effectively barred former slaves from leaving the plantation.

Most states required annual contracts between landowners and black agricultural workers, who could be arrested without lawful employment and forced into labor.

In short, the codes left freedmen not slaves, but not liberated.

Many codes clauses never took effect as the Union army and Freedmens Bureau swiftly suspended the enforcement of racially discriminant provisions.

But the codes showed southern intentions and northerners denounced it as southern defiance. Republicans in Congress agreed, and refused to seat the delegates of ex-Confederate states when Congress convened in Dec 1865.

The Joint (House-Senate) Committee on Reconstruction was formed and prepared to dismantle the black codes, as well as lock out ex-Confederates power.

Freedmens Bureau Bill (Feb 1866) Background Info: The status of southern blacks became the major issue in Congress, which was split into minorities Radical Republicans (supported black suffrage), Conservative Republicans (favored Johnson), Democrats (favored Johnson), and the larger Moderate Republicans (believed Johnsons plan was too feeble, but did not want to associate themselves with black suffrage).

The moderate Republicans supported two proposals drafted by their own Senator Lyman Trumbull (IL), to invalidate the black codes.

The first proposal, the Freedmens Bureau Bill, would continue the Freedmens Bureau (term was ending) for 3 more years and expand its power: allow special military courts, invalidate forced labor contracts.

Although it achieved wide Republican support and passed Congress, Johnson vetoed the bill in Feb 1866, stating that the Constitution did not sanction military trials of civilians in peacetime, nor support a system to care for indigent persons.

Civil Rights Act of 1866 (Mar~Apr 1866) Congress passed a second measure proposed by Trumbull, which would give blacks the same civil rights as other citizens. The bill also allowed federal intervention in the states to ensure black rights in court.

Johnson vetoed the bill arguing that it would operate in favor of the colored.

In April, Congress overrode his veto, and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 became the first major law to have passed over a presidential veto.

In July, Congress enacted the Supplementary Freedmens Bureau Act over Johnsons veto as well. The president insisted that both bills were illegitimate because southerners had been shut out of Congress.

The president had successfully alienated the majority Moderate Republicans and united them with the Radicals. Some historians view Johnson as a political incompetent, while others argue that he was trying to find a middle ground.

In either case, Johnson underestimated the Republican unity.

Fourteenth Amendment (Apr 1866) Background Info: Once the Republicans became united, they moved for an amendment that would prevent the invalidating or repeal of the new Civil Rights Act.

Adopted by Congress in April, the Fourteenth Amendment declared all persons born or naturalized in the US as citizens of their nation and state. For the first time, the national govt. tried to limit state control of civil and political rights by dictating that no state could cut short rights or deny equal protection of law to any to citizens.

Also, the amendment guaranteed a reduction in representation (in Congress) to a state that denies suffrage to any males. This was the first time the word male was written into the Constitution, and alienated woman suffrage advocates.

Lastly, the amendment disqualified all prewar officeholders who had supported the Confederacy from taking state and federal office. Congress had the power to remove their disqualification with a 2/3 vote.

The amendment was an ambitious step, and revealed Moderates growing receptivity to the Radicals demands, including blacks suffrage.

The Amendment was denied by Johnson, Democrats, and southerners. Only TN ratified the amendment of all the southern legislatures.

Congressional elections of 1866

Johnson set off on a whistle-stop train tour, which backfired as he made fresh enemies and doomed his hope of creating a new National Union Party.

Republicans carried the congressional elections in a landslide. They won almost 2/3 of the house and 4/5 of the Senate.

Now, no matter of the presidents veto, the Republicans could enact not only the Fourteenth Amendment, but also their own Reconstruction program.

Reconstruction Act of 1867

Background Info: Republicans began debating Reconstruction plans starting in Dec 1866. Radical Republicans called for black suffrage, public schools, confiscation of Confederate estates, and an extended military occupation of the South.

After complex legislative maneuvers and late-night sessions, the Moderates adopted parts of the Radicals plans and passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867 in February.

On March 2, Congress passed the act over Johnsons veto.

Sidenote: Congress passed three further Reconstruction acts to refine and enforce the first between 1867 and 1868.

The Reconstruction Act invalidated the state govts. formed under Lincoln/Johnson, accepting only TN back into the Union (TN ratified the Fourteenth Amendment).

The law divided the other 10 Confederate states into 5 temporary military districts. Voters could elect delegates to a convention that would write a state constitution (granting male suffrage), which had to be ratified by Congress and voters.

For any state to be readmitted, they had to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment as well. Once it became part of the federal Constitution, they would be readmitted.

The Act was quite radical as it enfranchised blacks and disfranchised many ex-Confederates. The Radicals goal of delaying readmission was fulfilled.

Yet it could have been harsher. The new law mentioned nothing that would make permanent military rule or exclusion from politics, and did not state confiscation or redistribution of property.

This, the Reconstruction Acts can be considered a compromise.

The Congressional Reconstruction, begun in the spring of 1867, could not be enforced because Johnson, as commander-in-chief, impeded the congressional plan by replacing Radical military officers with conservative ones.

Tenure of Office Act and Army Appropriations Act (Mar 1867) Responding to Johnsons disturbance of the Reconstruction program, the Republicans joined forces to pass tow laws limiting presidential power.

The Tenure of Office Act prohibited the president from removing civil officers without Senate consent and held Cabinet members to the term of the president by whom they may have been appointed, unless fired with the Senates consent.

The goal of the act was to bar Johnson from dismissing Secretary of War, Henry Stanton, a valuable ally to the Radicals and enforcement of Reconstruction acts.

The second law, Army Appropriations Act, barred the president from issuing military orders except through the commanding general (Grant), who could not be removed without the Senates consent.

The Impeachment Crisis (1867-1868) Background Info: The Radicals enmity toward Johnson would not die until he was out of office, and they began to seek grounds on which to impeach him.

The House Judiciary Committee at first could not find any valid charges against Johnson, but Johnson rescued his foes by providing the charges they needed.

In Aug 1867, while Congress was out of session, Johnson suspended Stanton and replaced him with Grant. When the Senate convened and refused to approve Stantons suspension, Grant decided to vacate office.

But Johnson had other ideas, and replaced Stanton with Lorenzo Thomas.

Johnsons defiance forced Moderates into another alliance with the Radicals.

The House approved 11 charges against Johnson.

Johnsons trial began in Mar 1868 had gained immense public attention.

Johnsons lawyers contended that the law did not protect Stanton, an appointee of Lincoln, and that he was guilty of no crime indictable in a regular court. The congressional managers countered that impeachment was a political process.

Some wavering Republicans feared that the balance of power would be destroyed. Others distrusted next-in-line Benjamin Wade (Radical).

Late in May 1868, the Senate voted 35-19, 1 short of impeachment.

7, who had voted against the Republicans, risked political suicide, but also set a precedent against impeachment for decades to follow. And with Johnsons career as president soon to end, the Republicans focused on their last Reconstruction objective: guaranteeing black male suffrage.

Fifteenth Amendment (1869-1870) Background Info: Although the Reconstruction Act had forced southern state legislatures to enfranchise black men, much of the North rejected black suffrage.

To enfranchise northern and border-state blacks and protect against repeal of black suffrage in the South, Congress proposed the Fifteenth Amendment, prohibiting the denial of suffrage because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

The Democrats argued for states right of determining who would vote, but did not control enough states to defeat the amendment. Four of the votes came from delayed Reconstruction states (MS, VA, GA, TX) who had to approve the amendment to be readmitted to the Union.

The South found loopholes that could be used (and would eventually be used). Property requirements and literacy tests were used to deny blacks their vote.

The Question of Woman Suffrage

Background Info: A small group of abolitionists had sought to revive womens rights. Most Radicals did not side with woman suffrage and only advocated black suffrage.

Some argued that black suffrage would pave the way for the womens vote. Douglas stated that blacks deserved priority, for this was the only chance they would get.

Stanton and Anthony disagreed. They saw the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments with disappointment. Using the word male for the first time, and failing to prohibit denial of suffrage on account of sex, Stanton contended that an aristocracy of sex increased womens disadvantages. The Fifteenth Amendment saw womens rights advocates split into the American Woman Suffrage Association (led by Howe and Stone) and the more radical National Woman Suffrage Association (led by Stanton and Anthony).

The American Association kept alliance with male abolitionists, while the National Association denounced once male allies and promoted a woman suffrage amendment.

For the rest of the 1870s, the two group vied for support, but failed to sway legislators other than in WY and UT (where women were enfranchised).

One woman tried to vote in VA in 1872, and sued the registrar who had excluded her.

In Minor v. Happersett (1875), the Supreme Court declared that a state could constitutionally deny women the vote.

Divided and unsupported, woman suffrage advocates braced for a long struggle.

carpetbaggers and scalawags and freedmen Background Info: As Grant became president and congressional momentum slowed, the action now shifted to the South. The Reconstruction Acts of 1867-1868 transformed the southern electorate by enfranchising more than 700k freedmen.

White voters soon found themselves outnumbered by black voters in 5 states.

The new electorate provided a southern base for the Republican party.

Democrats classed southern Republicans into 3: carpetbaggers, scalawags, freedmen.

Northern carpetbaggers moved south in hope of land, factories, or the warmer climate. 20k moved south as teachers, missionaries, or Freedmens Bureau agents.

Many northerners returned by 1867, but those who stayed played a disproportionate part in politics, with 1 of 3 in state offices.

Southern scalawags included some entrepreneurs who praised the Republicans national banking and protective tariffs. Former Whigs, who had opposed secession, also joined. Some prominent politicians joined in order to limit the Radicals.

But most scalawags were small farmers from the Appalachian regions. These men had owned no slaves and simply wished to improve their economic position. Unlike northern carpetbaggers, they did not care about black rights or suffrage.

Scalawags held the most political offices during Reconstruction, but many drifted back to the Democratic fold as time passed.

Freedmen, whom Democrats saw as uneducated prey for Republican manipulators, provided the backbone of southern Republicanism with 80% of the southern votes. It was no surprise that Republican rule lasted longest where blacks were predominant.

New to politics, freedmen sought land, education, civil rights, and political equality.

Although Reconstruction govts. would have collapsed without black votes, blacks held less than 20% of political offices. (only SC had a black majority)

Freedmen usually held local level offices. The black officeholders on the state level formed a political elite, and differed in background (many mulattoes), education (almost all claimed secondary education), wealth (landowning or from cities), and complexion (most had spent time in the North).

Republican Rule in the South

Background Info: Large numbers of blacks participated in government for the first time in constitutional conventions (1867-1868). In SC, blacks gained a majority in their convention, and in LA, half the delegates were freedmen.

Delegates abolished property qualifications, made many appointive offices elective, redistricted state legislatures more equally, and established univ. manhood suffrage.

As in Congress, proposals for land confiscation and redistribution fell to defeat.

Once civil power shifted from the federal army to state govts., Republicans began ambitions programs of public works. Most importantly, they created public-school systems, virtually nonexistent in the South up to that point.

With rebuilding came huge costs. State legislatures increased poll taxes, enacted luxury, sales, and occupation taxes, and imposed property taxes for the first time. (previously only had slave owning property taxes)

Northern tax rates still exceeded southern rates, but landowners resented the new taxes and felt punished when already beset by labor problems and falling land values.

To Reconstructions foes, Republican rule was wasteful and corrupt. Critics could easily point to cases of corruption and bribery.

Vigilantism and challenging black suffrage

As soon as congressional Reconstruction took effect, former Confederates began a troublesome campaign to undermine it.

The Democrats re-mobilized after readmission, and then swung into action, calling themselves Conservatives in order to attract former Whigs.

When their efforts to win over blacks failed, they tried other tactics, and in every southern state, began to make inroads among scalawags.

Vigilante efforts to reduce lack votes also helped the Democrats campaigns. Vigilante groups sprang up spontaneously in all parts of the South.

One group, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), rose to dominance. Begun by six Confederate war veterans as a social club in TN, the Klan, distinguished by elaborate rituals, costumes, and passwords, expanded throughout the south.

Democratic politicians and former Confederate officers took control of all the Klan dens, and by 1868, Klansmen embarked on night raids, intimidating black voters.

The KKK had turned into a widespread terrorist movement that sought to suppress black voting. A violent arm of the Democratic party, its members attacked blacks, white Republicans, Freedmens Bureau officials, and more.

Some Democrats denounced Klan members, but prominent ex-Confederates including Forrest (leader of Fort Pillow Massacre) were known to be active Klansmen.

Drawing on Confederate veterans, the KKK united southern whites of different classes under vigilantism. Where the KKK was inactive, other vigilante groups took its place.

Enforcement Acts

Background Info: Republican legislatures outlawed vigilantism through laws providing for fines and imprisonment, but state militia could not enforce the law.

In May 1870, Congress passed the First Enforcement Act to protect black voters, but witnesses, afraid of vigilantes, did not testify. Local juries refused to convict.

The Second Enforcement Act (Feb 1871) provided federal supervision of elections.

Then, in April, the Third Enforcement Act (also known as Ku Klux Klan Act), strengthened punishments and empowered the president to use federal troops. It even allowed for suspension of the writ of habeus corpus. Grant suspended the writ in 9 SC counties, generating many arrests. Yet most terrorists escaped conviction.

By 1872, the federal govt. had suppressed the Klan, but vigilantism had served its purpose. Only a large military presence could have protected black rights, which DC never provided. Now, federal power in the South began to diminish.

freedom for slaves

Background Info: Landowners found that one slave after another vanished. Field hands, with little skill, were more likely to stay behind, but landowners knew they would move on if they see an opportunity to improve themselves.

Emancipation stirred waves of migration, both to the Lower South (where planters were in dire need and paid high wages) and to cities and towns.

Black population rose 75% across the Souths cities, with some populations tripling.

blacks family life

Freed blacks yearned to find lost family members, prompting lots of movement.

Some reunited with husbands and wives who lived on different plantations.

Many times, even with the Freedmens Bureaus help, blacks could not find lost relatives, or could not resolve multiple entanglements he/she had. Also, many fugitives had died during the war. But there were success stories too.

Once reunited, blacks quickly legalized unions formed under slavery. Legal marriage established the male as head of the family. Wives and children withdrew from the work-force, if they could afford to do so. Many wives had to return to the fields as sharecropper families, or in cities worked as laundresses, cooks, or servants.

Blacks continued to view stable, independent family life as a major blessing. By 1870, 80% of black families were two-parent families, much like the whites.

black churches and schools

Freed blacks desire for independence led them to churches. Freedmen met in churches operated by northern missionaries or formed their own. The African Methodist Episcopal Church also gained many new southern members.

The churches provided relief, raised funds for schools, and supported Republican policies. When Democrats excluded most freedmen from political life, ministers remained the pillars of authority within black communities.

Blacks organized their own schools, with the supervision of the Freedmens Bureau. Northern philanthropic societies paid the wages of instructors (half were women).

By 1872, each southern state had a public-school system. Advanced schools for blacks opened as well, but generally, black education remained limited.

Underfunded, inaccessible to rural blacks, and a target for vigilantes, more than 80% of blacks remained illiterate at the end of Reconstruction. Still, the proportion had declined, and would continue to decline.

segregation and the Civil Rights Act of 1875 Background Info: Generally, blacks and whites went to separate schools.

Segregation and other forms of racial separation continued on public transportation, churches, restaurants, and theaters.

In 1870, Sumner began promoting a bill to desegregate blacks. After death in 1874, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which encompassed many of his ideas.

However, lax enforcement and eventually a Supreme Court ruling in Civil Rights Cases (1883), invalidated the act on grounds that only states, not individuals, could not discriminate its citizens.

White southerners rejected racial integration. Blacks desire to be independent also cast them away from integration, and many preferred segregation. Elite Blacks, serving the black constituencies, also leaned towards segregation.

relationships between freedmen and landowners

Freedmen chiefly wished to have their own piece of land. This promised freedom from plantation labor, white domination, and cotton, as well as economic independence.

Some freedmen did obtain land with help from Union army or Freedmens Bureau.

The federal govt. attempted to provide ex-slaves with land with the Southern Homestead Act (1866), which set aside public land for freedmen and loyal whites. But these land were poor, and few had resources to survive even the first harvest.

By the end of Reconstruction, only a small minority of freedmen owned working farms.

Freedmen lacked capital. Also, white southerners generally opposed selling land blacks, and planters wished to preserve a black labor force.

During presidential Reconstruction (1865-66), black codes limited black mobility. Freedmens wages generally took the shape of or less share of the crop.

But freedmen disliked the new wage system, and linked it to slavery. Planters also complained, contending that shrunk labor forces and blacks unwillingness to labor as they had under slavery accomplished far less than under slavery. To make matters worse, bad harvests and decline in cotton value topped planters woes.

Freedmen and planters began experimenting new schemes. Sharecropping - division of plantations into small tenancies - evolved as the most widespread compromise.

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sharecropping and crop-liens

Under sharecropping, planters rented parts of the plantation to freedmen for 1 year, and usually collected half the crop. Freedmen preferred this system because it represented a step toward independence and gave them a larger fraction of crops.

Landowners also gained, as they retained power over tenants and could refuse to renew leases annually. Most importantly, planters retained control of their land.

A severe depression in 1873 drove many blacks and whites into sharecropping. By 1880, 80% of the land in cotton-producing states had been subdivided into tenancies.

Background Info: When the war ended, the factorage system of middlemen who made long-distance arrangements, collapsed.

With many more tenants, the postwar South demanded a localized network of credit.

Rural merchants stepped in. Because renters had no property to use as collateral, merchants claimed exorbitant interest rates of 50% or more, and forced sharecroppers into a cycle of indebtedness. Many illiterates fell prey to dishonest merchants.

A sharecropper, after paying landowners and merchants, often exceeded the value of his crop, and became tied to cotton and sharecropping.

Sharecropping and crop liens had transformed southern agriculture. Plunging cotton prises meant planters were unable to use crop rotation. In the long run, soil depletion and land erosion locked much of the South into a cycle of poverty.

Election of 1868

Republicans nominated war hero Grant over party leaders. Grant was endorsed by veterans in the North and uninvolved in the bitter feuds of Reconstruction politics.

The Democrats nominated Horatio Seymour (NY), an arch-critic of the Lincoln administration and a foe of Reconstruction.

Grant ran on his popularity and carried all but 8 states, but the popular vote was very close. The newly enfranchised freedmen provided Grants margin of victory.

President XVIII: Ulysses S. Grant and Grantism Grant was a strong leader in war, but he had little skill in politics. Many of his cabinet members were mediocre and corrupt, with scandals plaguing his administration.

In 1869, financier Jay Gould and Jim Fisk attempted to corner the gold market with the help of Grants brother in law who was a NY speculator. When gold prices tumbled, investors were ruined and Grants reputation tarnished.

Grants VP Schuyler Colfax was found to be linked to the Credit Mobilier, a fraudulent construction company that skimmed profits of the Union Pacific Railroad. Colfax was dropped from the Grant ticket in 1872.

Grants private secretary, Orville Babcock, was unmasked in 1875 after taking money from the whiskey ring, a group of distillers who bribed federal agents to avoid taxes.

In 1876, voters learned that William E. Belknap, Grants secretary of war, had taken bribes to sell lucrative Native trading posts in OK. Belknap resigned.

Although uninvolved himself, the scandals led Grants critics to dub Grantism as a word for fraud, bribery, and corruption. For example, the NYC press revealed in 1872 that Democratic boss William M. Tweed led a ring which collected an estimated $200m from the city treasury.

When Mark Twain published the satiric novel The Gilded Age (1873), readers recognized the books characters as familiar types in public life. Since then, the term Gilded Age was used to referred to the time period from 1870s-1890s.

Grant had some success in foreign policy, which saw his secretary of state, Hamilton Fish, secure $15.5m from and international tribunal to compensate for damage done by British-built raiders sold to the Confederacy.

But Grant, like Seward under Johnson had done, tried to annex current-day Dominican Republic, which the senate rejected. This further diminished Grants reputation.

Sidenote: Seward had negotiated to buy Alaska for a bargain price of $7.2m. The press mocked Sewards Ice Box, but the purchase also kindled expansionists hopes.

Liberal Republicans and the Election of 1872 Background Info: As the election approached, Republicans feared that Grantism would ruin the party. Dissidents took action.

Led by former Radicals and other Republicans left out of Grants Great Barbecue, the presidents critics formed their own party. The Liberal Republican Party marked a turning point in Reconstruction by undermining support for Republican southern policy.

The Liberals attacked the regular Republicans, denouncing Grantism, demanding civil-service reform to bring the best politicians (including ex-Confederates), and denouncing high tariffs and supporting free trade.

They believed that Reconstruction had achieved its purpose, and that corruption in govt. posed a greater threat.

The Liberal Republican Party nominated New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley. Greeley had inconsistently supported both Reconstruction and leniency toward former rebels. The Democrats also endorsed Greeley, and rallied: Anything to beat Grant.

Grant Republicans, to deprive the Liberals of a campaign issue, passed the Amnesty Act, which allowed all but a few hundred ex-Confederates to hold office.

Greeley proved so diligent a campaigner that he worked himself to death, dying few weeks after the election. Grant, who won 56% of the popular vote, carried most states. But the division among Republicans affected Reconstruction.

Panic of 1873

Background Info: The postwar brought industrialization and economic expansion, prompting investors to rush to profit from seemingly boundless opportunities. Railroads provided the biggest lure. In May 1869, the first transcontinental railroad heralded a new era. By 1873, 400 corporations existed.

Philadelphia banker Jay Cooke had helped finance the Union effort with his wartime bond campaign, and had taken over the Northern Pacific in 1869. Nortern Pacific securities sold well, but in 1873, the construction costs outran new investments, and in Sept, he had to close his bank, the largest in the nation.

Other firms and the stock market collapsed, triggering a 5-year long panic. 18k businesses and 3m were out of jobs by 1878. Those who still had work suffered repeated wage cuts. Labor protests mounted, and industrial violence spread.

The depression also fed a dispute over currency that had begun after the war.

During the war, Americans had used both national bank notes (IOUs) and paper greenbacks. Some favored the sound-money policy to stabilize the postwar currency, but others, such as indebted farmers, depended on easy credit.

Once the depression began, demands for more easy money rose, dividing both parties along with the question of how to repay the federal debt.

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John Sherman (OH) and the public credit Background Info: During the war, the Union govt. had borrowed large sums of money on whatever terms it could get them, mainly through sale of war bonds (IOUs).

By 1869, war-debt repayment afflicted the Republicans. Senator Sherman and other leaders obtained passage of the Public Credit Act (1860), which promised to pay the war debt in gold or silver, although many had paid their bonds with greenbacks!

With investors assured, Congress swapped the old short-term bonds for new ones payable over the next decade. In 1872, another bill dropped the traditional silver dollar and accepted only gold coin. Sherman, through ingenious compromises as such, was able to preserve the public credit and Republican unity.

Republican leaders had acted just in time, as when Democrats gained control of the House in 175, a verbal storm broke out over silver dollar. The free-silver advocates secured passage of the Bland-Allison Act (1878), partially restoring silver coins.

In 1876, other expansionists formed the Greenback Party, which adopted the debtors cause and fought to keep greenbacks in circulation. But Greenback congressmen failed to go even as far as the free-silver people had.

The controversial money question never resolved, and gave politicians and voters another reason to forget about the southern question and focus on the North.

Ex parte Milligan (1866) and Texas v. White (1869) Background Info: During the war few cases of note had come before the Court, but constitutional questions were rife after the war.

In the first major case, the Court declared that a military commission could not try civilians in areas remote from war, where civil courts were functioning.

This doomed the Supplementary Freedmens Bureau Act and was the first sign that the Court did not support congressional laws to protect freedmens rights.

Unlike in Ex parte Milligan, the Court ruled in Texas v. White that Reconstruction was valid, even if secession was legally impossible, protecting the Reconstruction plan.

Slaughterhouse cases (1873) Background Info: In 1869, the LA legislature had granted a monopoly over the NO slaughterhouse business. The excluded butchers brought suit.

The excluded butchers claimed that the state had deprived them of the Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed that no state could cut short privileges of US citizens.

The Supreme Court began chipping away at the Fourteenth Amendment by upholding the LA legislature.

The court issued a doctrine of dual citizenship and declared that the Fourteenth Amendment only protected the rights of national citizenship such as interstate and international issues, and not basic civil rights that came from state citizenship.

Then cases, although derived from business, came close to nullifying the real intent of the Fourteenth Movement - to secure freemen rights against state encroachment.

US v Reese (1876), US v Cruikshank (1876), and retreat from Reconstruction The Supreme Court again backed away from Reconstruction in the two 1876 cases and undercut the effectiveness of the Enforcement Act of 1870.

By 1883, the Supreme Court had fully retreated from Reconstruction by invalidating both the Civil Rights Act of 1875 and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.

These decisions dismantled the Reconstruction policies and confirmed rising northern feelings that Reconstructions goals could not be enforced.

Decline of Reconstruction policies

Since Grant in 1868, the Republicans gradually moved away from Reconstruction.

Grant defended Reconstruction, but shared with Americans a belief in decentralized govt. He was also reluctant to assert federal authority in local/state affairs.

As military presence in the South shrank, Republican idealism waned in the North. The Liberals revolt in 1872 eroded radicalism. By 1875, Chase, Stevens, and Sumner (Radical leaders) were all dead. Most regular Republicans continued to support Reconstruction, but held ambivalent views.

As northern commercial and industrial interests began to dominate the parties, reviving wartime animosity struck most Republicans as counterproductive.

Party leaders reported that voters were sick of the southern question and found it pointless to continue the expensive policy of military intervention.

Finally, Republicans generally agreed with southern Democrats that blacks were inferior to whites, and to support absolute equality would be political suicide.

Intimidation, Mississippi Plan, and Redemption

After 1872 where ex-Confederates were able to take office again, the Republicans collapse in the South accelerated. Some carpetbaggers gave up and returned North, while others shifted to the Democratic Party. Even more scalawags, who had joined to moderate radicalism, left to join Democrats and home rule.

Democrats were divided - businessmen who envisioned an industrialized South and opposed Bourbons, the planter elite - but shared the goal of beating Republicans.

Furthermore, as Democrats mobilized white voters, they also used intimidation to drive off black Republican voters. In LA, the White League, a vigilante organization formed in 1874, undermined the Republicans hold.

In 1875, under the Mississippi plan, Democrats armed their members, dispersed Republican meetings, patrolled registration places, and marched through black areas.

In 1876, SCs Rifle Clubs and Red Shirts continued the scare tactic.

The Democrats deprived Republicans of enough black votes to win state elections.

Unable to enforce the Enforcement Acts, intimidation and economic pressure (from landowners) succeeded. Redemption, as the Democrats called it to describe their return to power, introduced sweeping changes.

All states lowered taxes and revised tax systems to relieve landowners. State courts limited rights of tenants and sharecroppers, and ensured a stable black labor force.

Local ordinances also restricted blacks from hunting, fishing, and gun carrying, and made trespassing and theft liable to five years of hard labor.

"Exodus" movement

Devastated from redemption, freedmen, if they could afford to do so, started an exodus movement in the late 1870s. In Kansas fever (1879), 4k exodusters from MS and LA joined 10k others who had reached Kansas earlier.

But the vast majority did not have the resources to migrate, and became stuck in a crop-lien society.

Election of 1876, Compromise of 1877, and end of Reconstruction

Background Info: By the autumn of 1876, both parties moved to disregard section conflict and move toward reunion.

The Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes, 3 time OH governor, who had wide support with Republicans. He called himself a moderate on southern policy. He favored home rule and civil/political rights for all, 2 contradictory platforms.

The Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden (NY), who campaigned against fraud.

Both candidates favored sound money and decried corruption. Ironically, the election was extremely corrupt. Tilden won 51% of PV. He had 184 EVs secured, 1 away from the 185 needed to guarantee victory. Then the corruption began.

Republicans challenged returns from SC, FL, and LA, while Democrats challenged 1 single vote in OR that would bring Tilden victory. Republicans controlled the electoral machinery, and threw away enough Democratic ballots to declare Hayes the winner. Democrats had illegally prevented freedmen from voting!

In Jan 1877, Congress decided to form a special commission that would decide the fate of the 20 EVs. (Remember, Tilden only needed 1!) 7 to 7 and having 1 independent, Justice David Davis refused to run for the Senate, Congress replaced him with a Republican, which gave Hayes the election 8 to 7.

But since Congress controlled the House and threatened a filibuster with inauguration day looming, both sides looked for a compromise.

In a series of informal negotiations, Republicans agreed to remove federal troops from SC and LA and to support internal improvements/railroads. Democrats would drop the filibuster, accept Hayes as president, and treat blacks fairly.

Hayes, once in office, fulfilled some promises, such as withdrawal of federal troops, leading to the end of Reconstruction. Other elements, such as Democratic promises to treat blacks fairly and Hayes pledges to ensure freedmens rights, were forgotten.

Douglass, in 1876, had questioned whether promises in the Constitution would be fulfilled. The answer provided by the election was No and black rights would remain an issue for decades to come.

2011 SeungJoon Sung

Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for any wrong information that may be present.