Reconstruction: Rebuilding a Divided Nation Background The South was the main battleground of the Civil War and its largest casualty. Hardly a farm or a family remained unscarred by the time soldiers began straggling home. A northern journalist described the once-gracious city of Charleston, South Carolina: A city of ruins, of desolation, of vacant houses, of widowed women, of rotting wharfs, of deserted warehouses, of weed-wild gardens, of grass grown streets. The federal government s controversial effort to repair the damage to the South and restore southern states to the Union is known as Reconstruction. The Reconstruction program was carried out from 1865 to 1877 and involved four American Presidents. The War s At the start of Reconstruction, it was clear that the nation especially the South had been changed forever by the war. The changes reached into families and farms. The Physical Toll War had destroyed two thirds of southern shipping and 9,000 miles of railroads. It had devoured farmland, farm buildings, and farm machinery; work animals and one third of all livestock; bridges, canals, and levees; and thousands of miles of roads. Factories, ports, and cities lay smoldering. The value of southern farm property had plunged 70%. The Human Toll The Civil War destroyed a generation of young, healthy men fathers, brothers and husbands. The North lost 364,000 soldiers, including more than 38,000 African Americans. The South lost 260,000 soldiers, one fifth of its adult white men. One out of three southern men were killed or wounded. Many of the survivors were permanently scarred in mind or body. In addition, the North s decision to destroy southern homes, property and industry, known as total war, resulted in countless civilian deaths. Children were made orphans; brides became widows. Southerner s Hardships The postwar South was made up three major groups of people. Each group faced its own hardships and fears. Southern Blacks - Some 4 million freed people were starting their new lives in a poor region with slow economic activity. As slaves, they had received food and shelter, however inadequate. Now, after a lifetime of forced labor, many found themselves homeless, jobless and hungry.
Plantations owners Planters lost slave labor worth about $3 billion. In addition the Captured and Abandoned Property Act of 1863 allowed the federal government to seize $100 million in southern plantations and cotton. With worthless Confederate money, some farmers couldn t afford to hire workers. Others had to sell their property. Poor white southerners Many white laborers could not find work anymore because of the new job competition from freedmen. Poor white families began migrating to frontier lands such as Mississippi and Texas to find new opportunities. Three Reconstruction Plans Most southerners accepted the war s outcome and focused on rebuilding their lives. In Washington, however, peacetime launched new battles so fierce that some historians call Reconstruction an extension of the Civil War. The fall of the Confederacy and the end of slavery raised tough questions. How and when should southern states be allowed to resume their role in the Union? Should the South be punished for its actions, or be forgiven and allowed to recover quickly? Now that black southerners were free, would the races have equal rights? If so, how might those rights be protected? Did the Civil War itself point out a need for a stronger federal government? At stake were basic issues concerning the nation s political system. Yet it was not even clear which branch of government had the authority to decide these matters. On these key questions, the Constitution was silent. The Framers had made no provisions for solving the problems raised by the Civil War. President Lincoln s Plan With no road map for the future, Lincoln had begun postwar planning as early as December 1863, when he proposed the ten percent plan for Reconstruction. The plan was forgiving to the South: 1) It offered a pardon, an official forgiveness of a crime, to any Confederate who would take an oath of allegiance to the Union and accept federal policy on slavery. 2) It denied pardons to all Confederate military and government officials and to southerners who had killed African American war prisoners. 3) It permitted each state to hold a constitutional convention only after 10 percent of voters in the state had sworn allegiance to the Union. 4) States could then hold elections and resume full participation in the Union. Lincoln s plan did not require the new constitutions to give voting rights to black Americans. Nor did it readmit southern states to the Union, since in Lincoln s view, their secession had not been constitutional.
Congress, however, saw Lincoln s Reconstruction plan as a threat to congressional authority. Much of Lincoln s opposition came from a group of congressmen from his own party. The group, known as the Radical Republicans, believed that the Civil War had been fought over the moral issue of slavery. Therefore the Radicals insisted that the main goal of Reconstruction should be a total restructuring of society to guarantee black people true equality. The Radical Republicans viewed Lincoln s plans as too lenient. Johnson s Reconstruction Plan With Lincoln s death, Reconstruction was now in the hands of a onetime slave owner from the South: the former Vice President, Andrew Johnson. Johnson had a profound hatred of rich planters and found strong voter support among poor white southerners. Johnson was the only southern senator to remain in Congress after secession. Hoping to attract Democratic voters, the Republican Party chose Johnson as Lincoln s running mate in 1864. When Johnson took office in April 1865, Congress was in recess until December. During those eight months, Johnson pursued his own plan for the South. His plan, known as Presidential Reconstruction, included these provisions: 1) It pardoned southerners who swore allegiance to the Union. 2) It permitted each state to hold a constitutional convention (without Lincoln s 10 percent allegiance requirement) 3) States were required to void secession, abolish slavery, and ratify the 13 th Amendment, outlawing slavery in America. 4) States could then hold elections and resume participation in the Union. Presidential Reconstruction reflected the spirit of Lincoln s Ten Percent Plan, but was more generous to the South. Although officially it denied pardons to all Confederate leaders, in reality Johnson often issued pardons to those who asked him personally. In 1865 alone, he pardoned 13,000 southerners. Radical Republicans Reconstruction Defeat in war had not changed the fact that white people still dominated southern society. Southern states met Johnson s demands and were restored to the Union. The first order of business in these new, white-run governments was to enact black codes, laws that restricted freedman s rights. These codes established rules such as curfews, labor contracts and violent punishment for unemployment. Women were forced to work rather than stay home with their children. Freed people couldn t rent land or homes in towns or cities. They were forced to live on plantations. Congress introduced the 14 th Amendment stated that all citizens of the United States are entitled to the privileges of citizenship and that no state shall make a law depriving any person
of life, liberty or property, without due process of law. Everyone was entitled to equal protection of the laws. The congressional Republicans who drafted the 14 th Amendment consisted of two major groups. One group was the Radical Republicans. Radicals were small in number by increasingly influential. Most Republicans saw themselves as moderates. In politics, a moderate is someone who supports the mainstream views of the party, not the more extreme. Moderates and radicals opposed Johnson s Reconstruction policies, the spread of black codes, and favored expansion of their party in the South. Radicals, however, had the goal of granting African Americans their civil rights, citizens personal liberties guaranteed by law, such as voting rights and equal treatment. Moderate were hesitant to give in to these demands. This reluctance began to dissolve in early 1866, as word spread of new violence against African Americans. Despite public outrage against the brutality, Johnson continued to oppose equal rights for African Americans. He even urged states not to ratify the 14 th Amendment. People responded by overwhelming Congress with Radical Republicans, rather than Democrats. Now, Radicals Republicans could put their own Reconstruction plans into action. Strict Laws Imposed Calling for reform, not revenge, Radicals in Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867. These are its key provisions: 1) It put the South under military rule, dividing it into five districts, each governed by a northern general. 2) It ordered Southern states to hold new elections for delegates to create new state constitutions. 3) It required states to allow all qualified male voters, including African Americans, to vote in elections. 4) It temporarily barred southerners who had supported the Confederacy from voting. 5) It required southern states to guarantee equal rights to all citizens 6) It required the states to ratify the 14 th Amendment. The Reconstruction Act ignited a power struggle between the President and the Radical Republicans of Congress. This crisis led Congress to look for any reason to impeach Johnson. President Johnson violated a law set to restrict who he can appoint to government positions. This malpractice led to his impeachment. He then was tried for high crimes and misdemeanors, which, if convicted, he would have been removed from office. He narrowly escaped a guilty verdict. This event set the precedent for impeachment it would take a serious crime for a president to be removed from office, not a disagreement with Congress. The Radical Republicans had another victory a few years later with the passage of the 15 th Amendment which gave African Americans the right to vote.
Reconstruction Ends President Grant, who won reelection in 1872, continued to pursue the goals of Reconstruction, sometimes with energy. However, the widespread corruption in his administration reminded voters of all that was wrong with Reconstruction. By the mid-1870s, voters had grown weary of Republicans and their decadelong concern with Reconstruction. As federal troops were removed from the South, Reconstruction came to an end in 1877. Historians cite several reasons for this shift: 1. Reconstruction legislatures taxed and spent heavily placing southern states into more debt. 2. Reconstruction came to symbolize corruption, greed and poor government. 3. As federal troops withdrew from the South, more and more freedmen were prevented from voting, allowing white southerners to regain control of state governments. 4. White-dominated southern stats blacked Reconstruction policies. 5. Northern voters never fully supported the Radicals goal of racial equality. 6. A nationwide economic downturn turned Americans attention away from equal rights. Until recently, historians saw Reconstruction as a dismal failure, a time simply of corrupt and incompetent government in the South. Today most historians argue that the truth is more complex. The Reconstruction era included several important accomplishments. The Republicans carried out their goals of rebuilding the Union and repairing the wartorn South. It stimulated economic growth in the South and created new wealth in the North. The 14 th and 15 th amendments guaranteed African Americans the rights of citizenship, equal protection under the law, and suffrage. New schools, housing and jobs were created for the newly freed African American population. Yet the Reconstruction era had a number of failures as well. As the era of slavery, most black southerners remained in a cycle of poverty that allowed no escape. They lacked property, economic advantage and political power. In addition, after the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, southern state governments and terrorist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan effectively denied African Americans the right to vote. Racist attitudes toward African Americans continued, in both the North and South. Many white southerners resented the federal government s treatment of southern states during Reconstruction. Despite attempts to rebuild the southern
economy, the South remained predominantly agricultural and failed to fully industrialize.