Reconstruction

Reconstruction was almost a complete failure economically, politically, and socially. While there were a few isolated, mostly temporary successes like social advances for African Americans (before Republicans lost interest and allowed the blacks to sink back into inequality and oppression), public education, and the Freedman’s Bureau.

As the Civil War drew to a close, President Lincoln initiated a program aimed at the rapid reconstruction of the South and the healing of sectional bitterness. With the exclusion of only a few Confederate officials, he offered amnesty to all white Southerners who swore allegiance to the government and accepted the termination of slavery. Once ten percent of the citizens of any state (who had voted in 1860) had taken this oath, a state could then set up a state government and resume home rule. After Lincoln’s assassination, Andrew Johnson further accelerated the pace of reconciliation. In his even more lenient plan for “Restoration”, southern states resumed home rule and elected scores of prominent leaders of the recent Confederacy as state officials and representatives to Congress (including the former Confederate vice president, Alexander H. Stephens).

One of the most urgent tasks taken up these new home rule governments was the determination and definition of the status of African Americans. State after state adopted black codes which bore an amazing resemblance to those of slavery days and that were specifically designed to give whites substantial control over former slaves. Unemployed blacks could be apprehended for vagrancy, and then hired out to private employers to satisfy the fine. Some even forbade blacks to own or lease farms or to take any jobs other than as plantation workers or domestic servants. Although the Thirteenth Amendment had made slavery illegal, the South was trying to recreate the ‘peculiar institution’, simply under a different name.

Radical Republicans in Congress were outraged both at the unrepentant obstinacy of the South and at the lenience of both Lincoln and Johnson’s plans for reconstruction. After refusing to seat many of the Southern delegates to Congress, the Radical Republicans went on to pass civil rights legislation aimed at protecting the ex-slave from the black codes. President Johnson vetoed these bills, as well as the Fourteenth Amendment (which offered the first constitutional definition of American citizenship). An enraged Congress overrode his veto and passed the civil rights legislation as well as the amendment, and also came within one vote of impeaching the President. Although impeachment failed, Johnson lost his leadership in the government and Congress began Reconstruction all over again. Congress further acted to remove home rule from the Southern states and divided the area into five military districts. Even the Southerners who had already received pardons were now required to swear a stricter oath in order to regain their rights to vote. The oath of allegiance required a citizen to swear that he was now, and always had been loyal to the Union. These new Southern reconstruction governments operated under the protection of the Army and with the encouragement of the Federal Government.

During Reconstruction blacks played a significant political role throughout the South. Besides voting in large numbers, they were elected to local, state, and federal offices. Between 1869 and 1901, two became U.S. Senators and twenty were members of the House of Representatives. White Democrats in the South were so outraged that the one thing they did when they regained power was to disenfranchise the blacks. The passionate and widespread belief of white superiority and a desperate fear of black retaliation caused many whites to resort to physical intimidation to achieve their purposes. The Ku Klux Klan was the most notorious of a large number of similar organizations that spread throughout the South and used terrorism to achieve their means. Organizations like the Ku Klux Klan were not nearly as effective in discouraging black political power as the weapon of economic pressure. Many blacks were refused work, credit, and land to rent. Although Reconstruction did protect some of the political and civil rights of African Americans, it achieved almost nothing in improving their social and economic