Robert E. Lee s surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia in 1865 brought an end to the Civil War, and the Reconstruction Era immediately followed. Reconstruction was the federal government s plan to rebuild and re-establish the states of the former Confederacy. In short, Reconstruction was the period when the federal government tried to rebuild the South and restore the Union after the Civil War.
"Reconstruction of the South." In this idealized portrait of the free soil and free labor America of the north, Federal generals lead the way toward peace. George Thomas beats swords into plows while Philip Sheridan holds a scythe ready for the harvest. Other generals work a bellows, turn a cannon into water piping to run a mill, and offer jobs to skilled laborers. The freedmen run to educator George Peabody and the white children at his feet who proclaim "Come here and learn to be a citizen." The South would be reconstructed in the mold of this modern America; the patriarchal, agricultural South was to be no more. 1867 lithograph by John Smith of Philadelphia.
The Civil War and Reconstruction resulted in Southern white resentment (irritation) toward both Northerners and Southern African- Americans. Reconstruction ultimately led to the political, economic, and social control of the South by whites. Unfortunately, the economic and political gains of former slaves were temporary. "We Accept the Situation." A Reconstruction political cartoon which depicts the freedman going to cast his vote while the disenfranchised former Confederate glumly looks on. Many southern whites bitterly resented the transfer of political power to their former slaves. Thomas Nast cartoon.
A Thomas Nast cartoon regarding Reconstruction. Here, Columbia is replacing the seceded states in the Union. She has laid down her sword and shield and now proclaims "Let us have peace." She advances under the banner "Equal Rights, With Malice Towards None And Charity To All." This was the symbolic picture of the U.S. now that the war was over and Reconstruction begun. Lincoln believed that since secession was illegal, Confederate governments in the Southern states were illegitimate (not legal governments) and the states had never really left the Union. As a result, Lincoln believed that Reconstruction in the Southern states was a matter of quickly restoring legitimate state governments that were loyal to the Union.
Lincoln also believed that once the war was over, the federal government should not punish the South. Instead, it should reunify the nation as quickly as possible. In his second inaugural address President Lincoln outlined how he believed the United States government should act during Reconstruction. President Abraham Lincoln entering Richmond on April 4, 1865, one day after Federal troops had captured the city. Touring the still smoldering ruins of the Confederate capital, Lincoln first visited the Richmond home of Jefferson Davis and sat at his desk. Then, with an escort of only ten sailors, he walked the streets of Richmond, where he was soon surrounded by a crowd of former slaves shouting "Glory to God! Glory! Glory! Glory!" Some reached out to touch Lincoln to make sure he was real. Engraving by J. C. Buttre.
Lincoln said, With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Just a few days after Lee s surrender at Appomattox, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln at Ford s Theatre in Washington, D.C.
The executions of Lewis Paine, George Atzerodt, David Herold, and Mary Surratt for their roles in the conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln. A military tribunal was set up to try eight people accused of being Booth's accomplices. All eight were found guilty of having participated in the plot to varying degrees. Three were given life sentences in prison and a fourth was sentenced to six years. The other four (including Mrs. Surratt, who was probably innocent) were sentenced to die by hanging. Their sentence was carried out on July 7, 1865. The others convicted (with the exception of one who had died in prison) were pardoned by President Andrew Johnson in 1869. Accused conspirator John Surratt was extradited from Egypt in 1866, but was acquitted.
Vice President Andrew Johnson succeeded Lincoln as president. Lincoln s assassination enabled Radical Republicans to gain control of Reconstruction. The Radical Republicans were members of the Republican party, who wanted to punish the former Confederate states for causing the Civil War.
First, the Radical Republicans refused to allow the Confederate states to reenter the Union until they had undergone a period of military occupation. In other words, the former Confederate states were under the rule of a general in the United States army, and American military troops remained stationed in the South.
The Military Reconstruction Act of 1867 divided the former Confederate states into five military districts. The occupation forces were to guarantee that Federal Reconstruction policies were followed. A southern legislature during the "Carpetbagger" days. An engraving from a drawing by A. Bertall. This legislation also turned out the sitting state governments which had very closely resembled the southern state governments of 1861. New elections were scheduled and new state constitutions were to be drawn up, incorporating the 13th and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution and giving freedmen the vote, before the states could be readmitted to the Union.
Second, the Radical Republicans also believed in aggressively guaranteeing voting and other civil rights to African-Americans. A primary school for freedmen at Vicksburg, Mississippi. An important part of Radical Reconstruction was the passage of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill. Established on March 3, 1865, this Bureau played an important role in helping the former slaves adjust to their new lives.
The Radical Republicans, who controlled Congress, repeatedly clashed with President Andrew Johnson over the issue of civil rights for freedmen (freed slaves). Johnson, who had succeeded Lincoln as president, was a native of Tennessee, racially prejudiced, and unwilling to extend citizenship rights to former slaves. The Provost Guard in New Orleans rounding up vagrant former slaves, 1864. What alarmed many Radical Republicans about the state governments created under Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction plans was their treatment of newly freed African Americans. Such persons' freedom was sharply curtailed in states like Louisiana by codes and vagrancy laws that were designed to keep freedmen under tight control, working primarily as unskilled laborers.
The Radical Republicans became so frustrated with Johnson s efforts to prevent their program on behalf of freedmen that the House of Representatives impeached him. However, the United States Senate failed by one vote to remove President Johnson from office.
Impeachment is the process of bringing an official to trial for misconduct in office. Under the Constitution the House of Representatives may impeach bring formal charges against a president for treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. The United States Senate then sits as the jury at the president s impeachment trial. If two-thirds of the senators vote to convict the president, then he is removed from office.
To carry out their program to help African- Americans the Radical Republicans added three amendments to the United States Constitution. These three amendments, known as the Civil War Amendments, were a major political result of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
The Thirteenth Amendment permanently abolished (ended) African-American slavery in the United States. The House of Representatives on January 31, 1865, as it voted for the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery. Proposed early in 1865 as the Civil War was winding down, it was ratified by three-fourths of the states on December 18, 1865, removing any lingering doubt about the legality of emancipation. President Andrew Johnson, who had succeeded Lincoln as president, reluctantly agreed to include ratification of this amendment as a requirement for readmission of the former Confederate states to the Union as part of his reconstruction plan.
A New York City African-American parade in support of the 15th Amendment, April 1870. The Fourteenth Amendment granted American citizenship to all African- Americans and said no state could deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. In other words, the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited the states from denying any American equal rights under the law.
The Fifteenth Amendment gave African-American males the right to vote by guaranteeing voting rights regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude (slavery).
Corey Street, Richmond. When the Confederate authorities abandoned Richmond on April 2, 1865, they burned numerous facilities to keep them out of Union hands. Some of the fires raged out of control and destroyed substantially more than was intended. Here, a Richmond street still smolders. Union cavalry horses are tethered to the iron fence in the foreground. Photographs such as this are grim portents of the total wars of the 20th century.
The Civil War and Reconstruction also had an important economic and social impact on the United States. First, the Southern states were left embittered and devastated by the Civil War. Farms, railroads, and factories had been destroyed throughout the South, and the cities of Richmond and Atlanta lay in ruins.
Sherman's men tearing up rails. After capturing Atlanta, Sherman marched southeast toward Savannah, intent on destroying the Confederate morale and ability to make war. His men developed a special talent for ruining railroad equipment and facilities as they marched across Georgia and South Carolina. Gathering and burning railroad ties, Sherman's men would place the rails in the fire until their centers were red hot, and then twist them into unusable shapes, frequently bending the rail around a tree and creating the "Sherman bowtie.
As a result, the South would remain a backward, agriculturebased economy and the poorest section of the nation for many decades afterward. This 1884 scene on a Mississippi cotton plantation reflected southern agricultural practices and a society that had changed little since before the war.
Second, the North and Midwest emerged from the war with strong and growing industrial economies. This development laid the foundation for the sweeping industrialization of the nation (other than the South) during the next half-century and the emergence of the United States as a global economic power by the beginning of the twentieth century.
Finally, the completion of the nation s first transcontinental (across the continent) railroad at Promontory, Utah soon after the war ended (1869) connected the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts. This transportation development intensified (increased) the westward movement of settlers into the states between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean. A Union Pacific Railroad advertisement for the grand opening of the first transcontinental railroad, May 10, 1869. The railroad barons' race to complete a transcontinental rail passage was interrupted by the Civil War, but resumed almost immediately after Appomattox.
The Reconstruction period ended following the extremely close presidential election of 1876. In return for support in the electoral vote from Southern Democrats, the Republicans agreed to end the military occupation of the South. A cartoon about Rutherford B. Hayes' election as president in 1877. Called the "Let 'em alone policy," it shows Hayes bringing an end to Reconstruction by plowing under the carpetbag and bayonet rule in the South. The cotton bales being loaded and the factory with smoke coming from its chimney are symbolic of the New South, which rose from the ashes of Confederate defeat and military Reconstruction.
A map of the votes in the 1876 election. The election was extremely close, resting on the contested election returns from four states. Under the Constitution, the electoral college is the group of people who cast the official votes that elect the President and Vice President. A state s number of electoral votes equals its total representation in Congress, which is its number of members in the House of Representatives plus two for its U.S. senators.
Known as the Compromise of 1877, this political deal enabled former Confederates who controlled the Democratic party to regain power in the Southern states. To win the support they needed, the Republicans met with several key southern congressmen and drew up the Compromise of 1877, promising to remove the remaining federal troops from the South if Hayes were elected. The southern Democrats promised in turn to support Hayes' election and not to infringe upon the rights of African Americans in the South. The deal was struck, Hayes was elected and Reconstruction came to an end.
It opened the door to the Jim Crow Era, the period in which Southern states required racial segregation (separation) of blacks and whites in public schools, transportation, and other public facilities. This sharecropper plowing his field in 1901 would have been disenfranchised by poll taxes and "grandfather clauses," and rigidly segregated by "Jim Crow" laws in schools, hotels, hospitals, and other public facilities.
During the era of Jim Crow, African-Americans in the South lost most of the political gains they had made during Reconstruction, including the right to vote and sit on juries. In short, Reconstruction s end marked the beginning of a long period in which African- Americans in the South were denied the full rights of American citizenship. Established in 1866 as a social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, the Klan soon took on a more sinister role as the terror arm of the Democratic party in the South. Made up of white men from all classes of southern society, its members disguised themselves, in robes and hoods, intimidating and killing African Americans and white members of the Republican party. The Klan's goal was to reestablish white supremacy by overthrowing the Reconstruction governments.