Chapter 22: The Ordeal of Reconstruction (1865-1877) PDF

Chapter 22 The Ordeal of Reconstruction r 1865–1877 With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in th...

Chapter 22 The Ordeal of Reconstruction r 1865–1877 With malice toward 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 orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural, March 4, 1865 T he battle was done , the buglers silent. Bone- weary and bloodied, the American people, North and South, now faced the staggering challenges of peace. Four questions loomed large. How would the Not only had an age perished, but a civilization had collapsed, in both its economic and its social structure. The moonlight-and-magnolia Old South, largely imagi- nary in any case, had forever gone with the wind. South, physically devastated by war and socially revolu- Handsome cities of yesteryear, such as Charleston tionized by emancipation, be rebuilt? How would liber- and Richmond, were rubble-strewn and weed-choked. ated blacks fare as free men and women? How would An Atlantan returned to his once-fair hometown and the Southern states be reintegrated into the Union? And remarked, “Hell has laid her egg, and right here it who would direct the process of Reconstruction—the hatched.” Southern states themselves, the president, or Congress? Economic life had creaked to a halt. Banks and businesses had locked their doors, ruined by runaway inflation. Factories were smokeless, silent, dismantled. The Problems of Peace The transportation system had broken down com- pletely. Before the war five different railroad lines had Other questions also clamored for answers. What converged on Columbia, South Carolina; now the near- should be done with the captured Confederate ring- est connected track was twenty-nine miles away. Efforts leaders, all of whom were liable to charges of treason? to untwist the rails corkscrewed by Sherman’s soldiers During the war a popular Northern song had been proved bumpily unsatisfactory. “Hang Jeff Davis to a Sour Apple Tree,” and even inno- Agriculture—the economic lifeblood of the South— cent children had lisped it. Davis was temporarily was almost hopelessly crippled. Once-white-carpeted clapped into irons during the early days of his two-year cotton fields now yielded a lush harvest of nothing imprisonment. But he and his fellow “conspirators” but green weeds. The slave-labor system had collapsed, were finally released, partly because the odds were that seed was scarce, and livestock had been driven off by no Virginia jury would convict them. All rebel leaders plundering Yankees. Pathetic instances were reported of were finally pardoned by President Johnson as a sort men hitching themselves to plows, while women and of Christmas present in 1868. But Congress did not children gripped the handles. Not until 1870 did the remove all remaining civil disabilities until thirty years seceded states produce as large a cotton crop as that later and only posthumously restored Davis’s citizen- of the fateful year 1860, and much of that yield came ship more than a century later. from new acreage in the Southwest. Dismal indeed was the picture presented by the The princely planter aristocrats were humbled war-racked South when the rattle of musketry faded. by the war—at least temporarily. Reduced to proud 465 Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 466 Chapter 22 The Ordeal of Reconstruction, 1865–1877 poverty, they faced charred and gutted mansions, lost as they swam across the river that marked the county investments, and almost worthless land. Their invest- line. The next day trees along the riverbank were bent ments of more than $2 billion in slaves, their primary with swinging corpses—a grisly warning to others form of wealth, had evaporated with emancipation. dreaming of liberty. Other planters resisted emancipa- Beaten but unbent, many high-spirited white South- tion more legalistically, stubbornly protesting that slav- erners remained dangerously defiant. They cursed the ery was lawful until state legislatures or the Supreme “damnyankees” and spoke of “your government” in Court declared otherwise. For many slaves the shackles Washington instead of “our government.” One South- of bondage were not struck off in a single mighty blow; ern bishop refused to pray for President Andrew John- long-suffering blacks often had to wrench free of their son, though Johnson proved to be in sore need of divine chains link by link. guidance. Conscious of no crime, these former Confed- The variety of responses to emancipation, by erates continued to believe that their view of secession whites as well as blacks, illustrated the sometimes star- was correct and that the “lost cause” was still a just war. tling complexity of the master-slave relationship. Loy- One popular anti-Union song ran, alty to the plantation master prompted some slaves to resist the liberating Union armies, while other slaves’ I’m glad I fought agin her, I only wish we’d won, pent-up bitterness burst forth violently on the day of And I ain’t axed any pardon for anything I’ve done. liberation. Many newly emancipated slaves, for exam- Such attitudes boded ill for the prospects of pain- ple, joined Union troops in pillaging their masters’ pos- lessly binding up the Republic’s wounds. sessions. In one instance a group of Virginia slaves laid twenty lashes on the back of their former master—a painful dose of his own favorite medicine. Freedmen Define Freedom Prodded by the bayonets of Yankee armies of occu- pation, all masters were eventually forced to recognize Confusion abounded in the still-smoldering South their slaves’ permanent freedom. The once-commanding about the precise meaning of “freedom” for blacks. planter would assemble his former human chattels in Emancipation took effect haltingly and unevenly in front of the porch of the “big house” and announce their different parts of the conquered Confederacy. As Union liberty. Though some blacks initially responded to news armies marched in and out of various localities, many of their emancipation with suspicion and uncertainty, blacks found themselves emancipated and then re- they soon celebrated their newfound freedom. Many enslaved. A North Carolina slave estimated that he had took new names in place of the ones given by their mas- celebrated freedom about twelve times. Blacks from ters and demanded that whites formally address them one Texas county fleeing to the free soil of the liber- as “Mr.” or “Mrs.” Others abandoned the coarse cottons ated county next door were attacked by slaveowners that had been their only clothing as slaves and sought Charleston, South Carolina, in Ruins, April 1865 Rebel troops evacuating Charleston blew up military supplies to deny them to General William Tecumseh Library of Congress Sherman’s forces. The explosions ignited fires that all but destroyed the city. Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  From Slavery to Freedom 467 Tuskegee University Archives Educating Young Freedmen and Freedwomen, 1870s Freed slaves in the South regarded schooling as the key to improving their children’s lives and the fulfillment of a long-sought right that had been denied blacks in slavery. These well-dressed school- children are lined up outside their rural, one-room schoolhouse alongside their teach- ers, both black and white. silks, satins, and other finery. Though many whites per- The church became the focus of black community ceived such behavior as insubordinate, they were forced life in the years following emancipation. As slaves, to recognize the realities of emancipation. “Never before blacks had worshiped alongside whites, but now they had I a word of impudence from any of our black folk,” formed their own churches pastored by their own minis- wrote one white Southerner, “but they are not ours any ters. Black churches grew robustly. The 150,000-member longer.” Tens of thousands of emancipated blacks took to the roads, some to test their freedom, others to search Houston H. Holloway, age twenty at the time of his for long-lost spouses, parents, and children. Emanci- emancipation, recalled his feelings upon hearing of his pation thus strengthened the black family, and many freedom: newly freed men and women formalized “slave mar- riages” for personal and pragmatic reasons, including the desire to make their children legal heirs. Other “ I felt like a bird out of a cage. Amen. Amen. Amen. I could hardly ask to feel any better than I blacks left their former masters to work in towns and did that day.... The week passed off in a blaze cities, where existing black communities provided pro- tection and mutual assistance. Whole communities sometimes moved together in search of opportunity. of glory. ” The reunion of long-lost relatives also inspired joy; one Union officer wrote home, From 1878 to 1880, some twenty-five thousand blacks from Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi surged in a mass exodus to Kansas. The westward flood of these “Exo- dusters” was stemmed only when steamboat captains “ Men are taking their wives and children, fam- ilies which had been for a long time broken up are united and oh! such happiness. I am glad I refused to transport more black migrants across the Mississippi River. am here. ” Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  Examining the Evidence Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master, 1865 W hat was it like to experience the transition from slavery to freedom? Four million Southern blacks faced this exhilarating and formidable prospect with the end of the war. For historians, recovering the African American perspective on emancipation is challenging. Unlike their white masters, freed blacks left few written records. But one former slave captured in a letter to his “Old Master” (whose surname he bore) the heroic determination of many blacks to build new independent and dignified lives for themselves and their families. During the war Jourdon Anderson escaped slavery in Tennessee with his wife and two daughters. After relocat- ing to the relative safety of Ohio, he received a communi- cation from his former owner asking him to return. In his bold reply, reportedly “dictated by the old servant” him- self, Anderson expressed his family’s new expectations for life as free people and an uneasiness about his former master’s intentions. He made reference to his “comfort- able home,” his daughters’ schooling, the church that he and his wife were free to attend regularly, and the peace of mind that came with knowing that “my girls [would not be] brought to shame by the violence and wicked- ness of their young masters.” To test the white man’s sin- cerity, Anderson and his wife asked for the astronomical figure of $11,680 in back wages from decades as slaves. He closed by reiterating that “the great desire of my life is to give my children an education and have them form virtuous habits.” This rare letter demonstrates that many black correspondents may have been illiterate, but they were hardly inarticulate. And they asserted themselves as parents, workers, and citizens not only from the distance of a former free state like Ohio but also deep within the former slave states of the South. Was the tone of Ander- son’s letter (and postscript) serious or tongue-in-cheek? What did “freedom” mean for Anderson and other blacks in the months following emancipation? How did the eventual accomplishments of Reconstruction correspond with the initial expectations of people like Anderson and his former owner? New York Tribune, Tuesday, August 22, 1965 468 Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  Johnson's Plans for the South 469 black Baptist Church of 1850 reached 500,000 by 1870, The bureau achieved its greatest successes in edu- while the African Methodist Episcopal Church quadru- cation. It taught an estimated 200,000 blacks how to pled in size from 100,000 to 400,000 in the first decade read. Many former slaves had a passion for learning, after emancipation. These churches formed the bed- partly because they wanted to close the gap between rock of black community life, and they soon gave rise themselves and whites and partly because they longed to other benevolent, fraternal, and mutual aid societ- to read the Word of God. In one elementary class in ies. All these organizations helped blacks protect their North Carolina sat four generations of the same family, newly won freedom. ranging from a six-year-old child to a seventy-five-year- Emancipation also meant education for many old grandmother. blacks. Learning to read and write had been a privi- But in other areas, the bureau’s accomplishments lege generally denied to them under slavery. Freed- were meager—or even mischievous. Although the men wasted no time establishing societies for bureau was authorized to settle former slaves on forty- self-improvement, which undertook to raise funds to acre tracts confiscated from the Confederates, little purchase land, build schoolhouses, and hire teachers. land actually made it into blacks’ hands. Instead local One member of a North Carolina education society administrators often collaborated with planters in asserted that “a schoolhouse would be the first proof of expelling blacks from towns and cajoling them into their independence.” Southern blacks soon found, how- signing labor contracts to work for their former mas- ever, that the demand outstripped the supply of quali- ters. Still, the white South resented the bureau as a fied black teachers. They accepted the aid of Northern meddlesome federal interloper that threatened to upset white women sent by the American Missionary Associ- white racial dominance. President Andrew Johnson, ation, who volunteered their services as teachers. They who shared the white supremacist views of most white also turned to the federal government for help. The Southerners, repeatedly tried to kill it, and it expired in freed blacks were going to need all the friends—and 1872. power—they could muster in Washington.  The Freedmen’s Bureau Johnson: The Tailor President Few presidents have ever been faced with a more per- Abolitionists had long preached that slavery was a plexing sea of troubles than that confronting Andrew degrading institution. Now the emancipators were Johnson. What manner of man was this medium-built, faced with the brutal reality that the freedmen were dark-eyed, black-haired Tennessean, now chief execu- overwhelmingly unskilled, unlettered, without prop- tive by virtue of the bullet that killed Lincoln? erty or money, and with scant knowledge of how to No citizen, not even Lincoln, has ever reached survive as free people. To cope with this problem the White House from humbler beginnings. Born to throughout the conquered South, Congress created the impoverished parents in North Carolina and orphaned Freedmen’s Bureau on March 3, 1865. early, Johnson never attended school but was appren- On paper at least, the bureau was intended to be ticed to a tailor at age ten. Ambitious to get ahead, he a kind of primitive welfare agency. It was to provide taught himself to read, and later his wife taught him to food, clothing, medical care, and education both to write and do simple arithmetic. Like many another self- freedmen and to white refugees. Heading the bureau made man, he was inclined to overpraise his maker. was a warmly sympathetic friend of blacks, Union gen- Johnson early became active in politics in Tennes- eral Oliver O. Howard, who later founded and served see, where he had moved when seventeen years old. as president of Howard University in Washington, D.C. He shone as an impassioned champion of poor whites against the planter aristocrats, although he himself ulti- mately owned a few slaves. He excelled as a two-fisted stump speaker before angry and heckling crowds, who Women from the North enthusiastically embraced the on occasion greeted his political oratory with cocked opportunity to go south and teach in Freedmen’s pistols, not just cocked ears. Elected to Congress, he Bureau schools for emancipated blacks. One attracted much favorable attention in the North (but volunteer explained her motives: not the South) when he refused to secede with his “ I thought I must do something, not having money at my command, what could I do but own state. After Tennessee was partially “redeemed” by Union armies, he was appointed war governor and served courageously in an atmosphere of danger. give myself to the work.... I would go to them, and give them my life if necessary. ” Political exigency next thrust Johnson into the vice presidency. Lincoln’s Union party in 1864 needed to Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 470 Chapter 22 The Ordeal of Reconstruction, 1865–1877 Crushed by the Constitution President Andrew Johnson Granger Collection revered the U.S. Constitution but eventually felt its awesome weight in his impeachment trial. attract support from the War Democrats and other pro- believed that the Southern states had never legally Southern elements, and Johnson, a Democrat, seemed withdrawn from the Union. Their formal restoration to to be the ideal man. Unfortunately, he appeared at the the Union would therefore be relatively simple. Accord- vice-presidential inaugural ceremonies the following ingly, Lincoln in 1863 proclaimed his “10 percent” March in a scandalous condition. He had recently been Reconstruction plan. It decreed that a state could afflicted with typhoid fever, and although not known be reintegrated into the Union when 10 percent of its as a heavy drinker, he was urged by his friends to take voters in the presidential election of 1860 had taken an a stiff bracer of whiskey. This he did—with unfortunate oath of allegiance to the United States and pledged to results. abide by emancipation. The next step would be formal “Old Andy” Johnson was no doubt a man of parts— erection of a state government. Lincoln would then rec- unpolished parts. He was intelligent, able, forceful, and ognize the purified regime. gifted with homespun honesty. Steadfastly devoted to Lincoln’s proclamation provoked a sharp reaction duty and to the people, he was a dogmatic champion in Congress, where Republicans feared the restoration of states’ rights and the Constitution. He would often of the planter aristocracy to power and the possible re- present a copy of the document to visitors, and he was enslavement of blacks. Republicans therefore rammed buried with one as a pillow. through Congress in 1864 the Wade-Davis Bill. The Yet the man who had raised himself from the bill required that 50 percent of a state’s voters take the tailor’s bench to the president’s chair was a misfit. A oath of allegiance and demanded stronger safeguards Southerner who did not understand the North, a Ten- for emancipation than Lincoln’s as the price of read- nessean who had earned the distrust of the South, a mission to the Union. Lincoln “pocket-vetoed” this bill Democrat who had never been accepted by the Repub- by refusing to sign it after Congress had adjourned. licans, a president who had never been elected to the Republicans were outraged. They refused to seat del- office, he was not at home in a Republican White egates from Louisiana after that state had reorganized House. Hotheaded, contentious, and stubborn, he was its government in accordance with Lincoln’s 10 percent the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. plan in 1864. A Reconstruction policy devised by angels might well The controversy surrounding the Wade-Davis have failed in his tactless hands. Bill had revealed deep differences between the presi- dent and Congress. Unlike Lincoln, many in Congress insisted that the seceders had indeed left the Union— Presidential Reconstruction had “committed suicide” as republican states—and had therefore forfeited all their rights. They could be read- Even before the shooting war had ended, the political mitted only as “conquered provinces” on such condi- war over Reconstruction had begun. Abraham Lincoln tions as Congress should decree. Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  The Black Codes 471 Table 22.1 Principal Reconstruction Proposals and Plans Year Proposal or Plan 1864–1865 Lincoln’s 10 percent proposal 1865–1866 Johnson’s version of Lincoln’s proposal 1866–1867 Congressional plan: 10 percent plan with Fourteenth Amendment 1867–1877 Congressional plan of military Reconstruction: Fourteenth Amendment plus black suffrage, later established nationwide by Fifteenth Amendment This episode further revealed differences among more than $20,000, though they might petition him Republicans. Two factions were emerging. The majority for personal pardons. It called for special state conven- moderate group tended to agree with Lincoln that the tions, which were required to repeal the ordinances of seceded states should be restored to the Union as sim- secession, repudiate all Confederate debts, and ratify ply and swiftly as reasonable—though on Congress’s the slave-freeing Thirteenth Amendment. States that terms, not the president’s. The minority radical group complied with these conditions, Johnson declared, believed that the South should atone more painfully for would be swiftly readmitted to the Union. its sins. Before the South should be restored, the radi- Johnson, savoring his dominance over the high- cals wanted its social structure uprooted, the haughty toned aristocrats who now begged his favor, granted planters punished, and the newly emancipated blacks pardons in abundance. Bolstered by the political resur- protected by federal power. rection of the planter elite, the recently rebellious states Some of the radicals were secretly pleased when the moved rapidly in the second half of 1865 to organize assassin’s bullet felled Lincoln, for the martyred presi- governments. But as the pattern of the new governments dent had shown tenderness toward the South. Spite- became clear, Republicans of all stripes grew furious. ful “Andy” Johnson, who shared their hatred for the planter aristocrats, would presumably also share their desire to reconstruct the South with a rod of iron. Johnson soon disillusioned them. He agreed with The Baleful Black Codes Lincoln that the seceded states had never legally been Among the first acts of the new Southern regimes sanc- outside the Union. Thus he quickly recognized several tioned by Johnson was the passage of the iron-toothed of Lincoln’s 10 percent governments, and on May 29, Black Codes. These laws were designed to regulate the 1865, he issued his own Reconstruction proclamation affairs of the emancipated blacks, much as the slave (see Table 22.1). It disfranchised certain leading Con- statutes had done in pre–Civil War days. Mississippi federates, including those with taxable property worth passed the first such law in November 1865, and other Southern states soon followed suit. The Black Codes varied in severity from state to state (Mississippi’s was the harshest and Georgia’s the most lenient), but they Before President Andrew Johnson (1808–1875) had much in common. The Black Codes aimed, first of softened his Southern policy, his views were radical. all, to ensure a stable and subservient labor force. The Speaking on April 21, 1865, he declared, crushed Cotton Kingdom could not rise from its weeds “ until the fields were once again put under hoe and It is not promulgating anything that I have plow—and many whites wanted to make sure that they not heretofore said to say that traitors must be retained the tight control they had exercised over black made odious, that treason must be made odi- field hands and plow drivers in the days of slavery. ous, that traitors must be punished and impov- Dire penalties were therefore imposed by the codes erished. They must not only be punished, but on blacks who “jumped” their labor contracts, which their social power must be destroyed. If not, usually committed them to work for the same employer they will still maintain an ascendancy, and for one year, and generally at pittance wages. Violators may again become numerous and powerful; could be made to forfeit back wages or could be forc- for, in the words of a former Senator of the ibly dragged back to work by a paid “Negro-catcher.” In United States, ‘When traitors become numer- Mississippi the captured freedmen could be fined and ous enough, treason becomes respectable.’ ” then hired out to pay their fines—an arrangement that closely resembled slavery itself. Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 472 Chapter 22 The Ordeal of Reconstruction, 1865–1877 of impoverished former slaves slipped into the status Early in 1866 one congressman quoted a Georgian: of sharecropper farmers, as did many landless whites. “ The blacks eat, sleep, move, live, only by the tolerance of the whites, who hate them. The Luckless sharecroppers gradually sank into a morass of virtual peonage and remained there for generations. Formerly slaves to masters, countless blacks as well as blacks own absolutely nothing but their bodies; poorer whites in effect became slaves to the soil and their former masters own everything, and will to their creditors. Yet the dethroned planter aristocracy sell them nothing. If a black man draws even a resented even this pitiful concession to freedom. Share- bucket of water from a well, he must first get the cropping was the “wrong policy,” said one planter. “It permission of a white man, his enemy.... If he makes the laborer too independent; he becomes a part- asks for work to earn his living, he must ask it of ner, and has a right to be consulted.” a white man; and the whites are determined to The Black Codes made an ugly impression in the give him no work, except on such terms as will North. If the former slaves were being re-enslaved, peo- make him a serf and impair his liberty. ” ple asked one another, had not the Boys in Blue spilled their blood in vain? Had the North really won the war? The codes also sought to restore as nearly as pos- sible the pre-emancipation system of race relations. Congressional Reconstruction Freedom was legally recognized, as were some other These questions grew more insistent when the con- privileges, such as the right to marry. But all the codes gressional delegations from the newly reconstituted forbade a black to serve on a jury; some even barred Southern states presented themselves in the Capitol in blacks from renting or leasing land. A black could be December 1865. To the shock and disgust of the Repub- punished for “idleness” by being sentenced to work on licans, many former Confederate leaders were on hand a chain gang. Nowhere were blacks allowed to vote. to claim their seats. These oppressive laws mocked the ideal of freedom, The appearance of these ex-rebels was a natural so recently purchased by buckets of blood. The Black but costly blunder. Voters of the South, seeking able Codes imposed terrible burdens on the unfettered representatives, had turned instinctively to their expe- blacks, struggling against mistreatment and poverty rienced statesmen. But most of the Southern leaders to make their way as free people. The worst features were tainted by active association with the “lost cause.” of the Black Codes would eventually be repealed, but Among them were four former Confederate gener- their revocation could not by itself lift the liberated als, five colonels, and various members of the Rich- blacks into economic independence. Lacking capi- mond cabinet and Congress. Worst of all, there was tal, and with little to offer but their labor, thousands the shrimpy but brainy Alexander Stephens, ex–vice Sharecroppers Picking Cotton Although many freed slaves found themselves picking cotton on their former masters’ plantations, they took comfort that they were at least paid wages and could work as a family unit. In time, however, they became ensnared in the web of National Archives debt that their planter bosses spun to keep a free labor force tightly bound to them. Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  Johnson Versus Congressional Republicans 473 president of the Confederacy, still under indictment for resolutely vetoed this forward-looking measure on con- treason. stitutional grounds, but in April congressmen steam- The presence of these “whitewashed rebels” infu- rollered it over his veto—something they repeatedly riated the Republicans in Congress. The war had been did henceforth. The hapless president, dubbed “Sir fought to restore the Union, but not on these kinds of Veto” and “Andy Veto,” had his presidential wings terms. The Republicans were in no hurry to embrace clipped, as Congress increasingly assumed the domi- their former enemies—virtually all of them Demo- nant role in running the government. One critic called crats—in the chambers of the Capitol. While the South Johnson “the dead dog of the White House.” had been “out” from 1861 to 1865, the Republicans in Republicans now feared that the Southerners might Congress had enjoyed a relatively free hand. They had one day win control of Congress and repeal the hated passed much legislation that favored the North, such as civil rights law. So the lawmakers undertook to rivet the Morrill Tariff, the Pacific Railroad Act, and the the principles of the Civil Rights Bill into the Constitu- Homestead Act. Now many Republicans balked at giv- tion as the Fourteenth Amendment. The proposed ing up this political advantage. On the first day of the amendment, approved by Congress and sent to the congressional session, December 4, 1865, they banged states in June 1866 and ratified in 1868, was among the shut the door in the face of the newly elected Southern most sweeping amendments ever passed, and proved delegations. to be a major pillar of constitutional law ever after. It Looking to the future, the Republicans were alarmed to realize that a restored South would be stron- ger than ever in national politics. Before the war a black slave had counted as three-fifths of a person in appor- tioning congressional representation. Now the slave was five-fifths of a person. Eleven Southern states had seceded and been subdued by force of arms. But now, owing to full counting of free blacks, the rebel states were entitled to twelve more votes in Congress, and twelve more presidential electoral votes, than they had previously enjoyed. Again, angry voices in the North raised the cry, Who won the war? Republicans had good reason to fear that ultimately they might be elbowed aside. Southerners might join hands with Democrats in the North and win control of Congress or maybe even the White House. If this happened, they could perpetuate the Black Codes, vir- tually re-enslaving blacks. They could dismantle the economic program of the Republican party by lowering tariffs, rerouting the transcontinental railroad, repeal- ing the free-farm Homestead Act, and possibly even repudiating the national debt. President Johnson thus deeply disturbed the congressional Republicans when he announced on December 6, 1865, that the recently rebellious states had satisfied his conditions and that in his view the Union was now restored. Johnson Clashes with Congress A clash between president and Congress was now inevi- table. It exploded into the open in February 1866, when the president vetoed a bill (later repassed) extending the life of the controversial Freedmen’s Bureau. Aroused, the Republicans swiftly struck back. In An Inflexible President, 1866 This Republican cartoon March 1866 they passed the Civil Rights Bill, which shows Johnson knocking blacks out of the Freedmen’s conferred on blacks the privilege of American citizen- Bureau by his veto. Library of Congress ship and struck at the Black Codes. President Johnson Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 474 Chapter 22 The Ordeal of Reconstruction, 1865–1877 (1) conferred civil rights, including citizenship but his high office sank to a new low, as the old charges of excluding the franchise, on the freedmen; (2) reduced drunkenness were revived. proportionately the representation of a state in Con- As a vote-getter, Johnson was highly successful— gress and in the Electoral College if it denied blacks for the opposition. His inept speechmaking heightened the ballot; (3) disqualified from federal and state office the cry “Stand by Congress” against the “Tailor of the former Confederates who as federal officeholders had Potomac.” When the ballots were counted, the Republi- once sworn “to support the Constitution of the United cans had rolled up more than a two-thirds majority in States”; and (4) guaranteed the federal debt, while repu- both houses of Congress. diating all Confederate debts. (See the text of the Four- teenth Amendment in the Appendix.) The radical faction was disappointed that the Four- teenth Amendment did not grant the right to vote, but Republican Principles and Programs all Republicans were agreed that no state should be The Republicans now had a veto-proof Congress and welcomed back into the Union fold without first ratify- virtually unlimited control of Reconstruction policy. ing the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet President Johnson But moderates and radicals still disagreed over the best advised the Southern states to reject it, and all of the course to pursue in the South. “sinful eleven,” except Tennessee, defiantly spurned The radicals in the Senate were led by the courtly the amendment. Their spirit was reflected in a South- and principled idealist Charles Sumner, long since ern song: recovered from his prewar caning on the Senate floor, who tirelessly labored not only for black freedom but And I don’t want no pardon for what I was or am, for racial equality. In the House the most powerful I won’t be reconstructed and I don’t give a damn. radical was Thaddeus Stevens, crusty and vindictive congressman from Pennsylvania. Seventy-four years old in 1866, he was a curious figure, with a protrud- Swith winging ‘Round the Circle Johnson ing lower lip, a heavy black wig covering his bald head, and a deformed foot. An unswerving friend of blacks, he had defended runaway slaves in court without fee As 1866 lengthened, the battle grew between the Con- and, before dying, insisted on burial in a black cem- gress and the president. The root of the controversy was etery. His affectionate devotion to blacks was matched Johnson’s “10 percent” governments that had passed by his vitriolic hatred of rebellious white Southerners. the most stringent Black Codes. Congress had tried to A masterly parliamentarian with a razor-sharp mind temper the worst features of the codes by extending and withering wit, Stevens was a leading figure on the the life of the embattled Freedmen’s Bureau and pass- Joint (House-Senate) Committee on Reconstruction. ing the Civil Rights Bill. Both measures Johnson had Still opposed to rapid restoration of the Southern vetoed. Now the issue was Southern acceptance of the states, the radicals wanted to keep them out as long as principles enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment. possible and apply federal power to bring about a dras- The Republicans would settle for nothing less. Indeed, tic social and economic transformation in the South. they soon insisted on even more. But moderate Republicans, more attuned to the time- The crucial congressional elections of 1866—more honored principles of states’ rights and self-government, crucial than some presidential elections—were fast recoiled from the full implications of the radical pro- approaching. Johnson was naturally eager to escape gram. They preferred policies that restrained the states from the clutch of Congress by securing a majority from abridging citizens’ rights, rather than policies that favorable to his soft-on-the-South policy. Invited to dedicate a Chicago monument to Stephen A. Douglas, he undertook to speak at various cities en route in sup- port of his views. Representative Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868), in a Johnson’s famous “swing ‘round the circle,” begin- congressional speech on January 3, 1867, urged the ning in the late summer of 1866, was a seriocomedy of ballot for blacks out of concern for them and out of errors. The president delivered a series of “give ‘em hell” bitterness against Southern whites: speeches, in which he accused the radicals in Congress of having planned large-scale antiblack riots and mur- der in the South. As he spoke, hecklers hurled insults at him. Reverting to his stump-speaking days in Tennes- “ I am for Negro suffrage in every rebel state. If it be just, it should not be denied; if it be nec- essary, it should be adopted; if it be a punish- see, he shouted back angry retorts, amid cries of “You be damned” and “Don’t get mad, Andy.” The dignity of ment to traitors, they deserve it. ” Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Andrew D. Lytle Collection, Mss.893, 1254, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Republicans Campaigning in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1868 Valley Collection, LSU Libraries, Louisiana State University The soldiers’ caps and regimental flags demonstrate the continuing federal military presence in the Reconstruction South. Radical Republican congressman Thad- deus Stevens said that Recon- struction must “revolutionize Southern institutions, habits, and manners.... The foundation of their institutions... must be broken up and relaid, or all our blood and treasure have been spent in vain.” directly involved the federal government in individual Yet the act, reflecting moderate sentiment, stopped lives. The actual policies adopted by Congress showed short of giving the freedmen land or education at fed- the influence of both these schools of thought, though eral expense. The overriding purpose of the moderates the moderates, as the majority faction, had the upper was to create an electorate in Southern states that would hand. And one thing both groups had come to agree on vote those states back into the Union on acceptable by 1867 was the necessity to enfranchise black voters, terms and thus free the federal government from direct even if it took federal troops to do it. responsibility for the protection of black rights. As later events would demonstrate, this approach proved woe- fully inadequate to the cause of justice for blacks. Reconstruction by the Sword The radical Republicans were still worried. The danger loomed that once the unrepentant states were Against a backdrop of vicious and bloody race riots that readmitted, they would amend their constitutions so had erupted in several Southern cities, Congress passed as to withdraw the ballot from blacks. The only iron- the Reconstruction Act on March 2, 1867 (see Map clad safeguard was to incorporate black suffrage in the 22.1). Supplemented by later measures, this drastic leg- federal Constitution. A pattern was emerging: just as islation divided the South into five military districts, the Fourteenth Amendment had constitutionalized each commanded by a Union general and policed by the principles of the Civil Rights Bill, now Congress blue-clad soldiers, about twenty thousand all told. The sought to provide constitutional protection for the suf- act also temporarily disfranchised tens of thousands of frage provisions in the Reconstruction Act. This goal former Confederates. was finally achieved by the Fifteenth Amendment, Congress additionally laid down stringent con- passed by Congress in 1869 and ratified by the required ditions for the readmission of the seceded states. The number of states in 1870 (see the Appendix). wayward states were required to ratify the Fourteenth Military Reconstruction of the South not only Amendment, giving the former slaves their rights as cit- usurped certain functions of the president as com- izens. The bitterest pill of all to white Southerners was mander in chief but set up a martial regime of dubious the stipulation that they guarantee in their state consti- legality. The Supreme Court had already ruled, in the tutions full suffrage for their former adult male slaves. case Ex parte Milligan (1866), that military tribunals 475 Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 476 Chapter 22 The Ordeal of Reconstruction, 1865–1877 Boundaries of the five VA. 1868 Military Districts 1870 Tennessee escaped MILITARY 1870 Date refers to year of military regime. DISTRICT 1 readmission to the Union General Schofield N.C. 1868 TENNESSEE MILITARY ARKANSAS 1866 DISTRICT 2 1868 General Sickles 1872 MILITARY S.C. DISTRICT 4 GEORGIA 1868 General Ord ALABAMA 1870 1868 TEXAS MISS. 1870 1870 MILITARY DISTRICT 3 General Pope MILITARY DISTRICT 5 General Sheridan FLORIDA LOUISIANA 1876 1868 1868 Years “Redeemer” governments established Established 1869 –1871 Established 1873 –1874 Established 1876 –1877 Presidential electoral vote by party Independent Democratic Republican Democratic Map 22.1 Military Reconstruction, 1867 (five districts and commanding generals) For many white Southerners, military Reconstruction amounted to turning the knife in the wound HMCoofMap defeat. An often-repeated story of later yearsNo had a Southerner remark, “I was bleeds sixteen yearsThe Kennedy, oldAmerican before I Pageant discovered that 14/e, damnyankee was two words.” © Cengage Learning ©2010 Military Reconstruction, 1867 (five districts and commanding generals) Kennedy_22_01_Ms00380 trim -not could 42p0 x 22p0 try civilians, even during wartime, in areas and had been accorded full rights (see Table 22.2). The Final proof: 8/8/08 where the civil courts were open. Peacetime military hated “bluebellies” remained until the new Republican rule seemed starkly contrary to the spirit of the Consti- regimes—usually called “radical” regimes—appeared tution. But the circumstances were extraordinary in the to be firmly entrenched. Yet when the federal troops Republic’s history, and for the time being the Supreme finally left a state, its government swiftly passed back Court avoided offending the Republican Congress. into the hands of white Redeemers, or “Home Rule” Prodded into line by federal bayonets, the South- regimes, which were inevitably Democratic. Finally, in ern states got on with the task of constitution making. 1877, the last federal muskets were removed from state By 1870 all of them had reorganized their governments politics, and the “solid” Democratic South congealed. At a constitutional convention in Alabama, freed No Women Voters people affirmed their rights in the following The passage of the three Reconstruction-era Amend- declaration: ments—the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth— delighted former abolitionists but deeply disappointed “ We claim exactly the same rights, privileges and immunities as are enjoyed by white men— advocates of women’s rights. Women had played a prominent part in the prewar abolitionist movement we ask nothing more and will be content with and had often pointed out that both women and blacks nothing less.... The law no longer knows white lacked basic civil rights, especially the crucial right to nor black, but simply men, and consequently we vote. The struggle for black freedom and the crusade are entitled to ride in public conveyances, hold for women’s rights, therefore, were one and the same office, sit on juries and do everything else which in the eyes of many women. Yet during the war, femi- we have in the past been prevented from doing nist leaders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan solely on the ground of color. ” B. Anthony had temporarily suspended their own demands and worked wholeheartedly for the cause of Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  Amending the Constitution 477 Table 22.2 Southern Reconstruction by State Home Rule (Democratic or Readmitted to “Redeemer” Regime) State Representation in Congress Reestablished Comments Tennessee July 24, 1866 Ratified Fourteenth Amendment in 1866 and hence avoided military Reconstruction* Arkansas June 22, 1868 1874 North Carolina June 25, 1868 1870 Alabama June 25, 1868 1874 Florida June 25, 1868 1877 Federal troops restationed in 1877, as result of Hayes-Tilden electoral bargain Louisiana June 25, 1868 1877 Same as Florida South Carolina June 25, 1868 1877 Same as Florida Virginia January 26, 1870 1869 Mississippi February 23, 1870 1876 Texas March 30, 1870 1874 Georgia [June 25, 1868] July 15, 1870 1872