Reconstruction in the South

Reconstruction in the South

From 1863 to 1869, Presidents Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Johnson took a moderate position designed to bring the South back to normal as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the Radical Republicans used Congress to block the moderate approach, impose harsh terms, and upgrade the rights of the freedmen (former slaves). The views of Lincoln and Johnson prevailed until the election of 1866, which enabled the Radicals to take control of policy, remove former Confederates from power, and enfranchise the freedmen. A Republican coalition came to power in nearly all the Southern states and set out to transform the society by setting up a free laboreconomy, with support from the Army and the Freedman's Bureau. The Radicals, upset at President Johnson's opposition to Congressional Reconstruction, filed impeachment charges but the action failed by one vote in the Senate. President Ulysses S. Grantsupported Radical Reconstruction, using both the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. military to suppress white insurgency and support Republican reconstructed states. Southern Democrats, alleging widespread corruption, counterattacked and regained power in each state by 1877. President Rutherford B. Hayes blocked efforts to overturn Reconstruction legislation.

The deployment of the U.S. military was central to the establishment of Southern Reconstructed state governments and the suppression of violence against black and white voters. Reconstruction was a remarkable chapter in the story of American freedom, but most historians consider it a failure because the region became a poverty-stricken backwater, and whites re-established their supremacy, making the freedmen second-class citizens by the start of the twentieth century.

Johnson's Presidential Reconstruction

Northern anger over the assassination of Lincoln and the immense human cost of the Civil War led to vengeful demands for harsh policies for the South. Vice President Andrew Johnson had spoken of hanging rebel Confederates. However, Johnson took a much softer line when he became president, pardoning many Confederates. There were no trials for treason. Only one person, Captain Henry Wirz, the commandant of the prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia, was executed for war crimes.

Andrew Johnson's conservative view of Reconstruction did not include the involvement of former slaves in government. Indeed, he refused to heed Northern concerns when Southern state legislatures implemented Black Codes that lowered the status of the freedmen similar to slavery. Johnson's presidency would be known primarily for the non-enforcement and defiance of Reconstruction laws passed by Congress.

Although resigned to the abolition of slavery, many former Confederates were not willing to accept the social changes or political domination by former slaves. The fears, however, of the mostly conservative planter elite and other leading white citizens were partly assuaged by the actions of President Johnson who ensured that wholesale land redistribution from the planters to the freedman did not occur. Johnson ordered that land forfeited under the Confiscation Acts passed by Congress in 1861 and 1862 and administered by the Freedman's Bureau would not be redistributed to the freedmen but instead returned to pardoned owners.

Radical Reconstruction

Concerned that President Johnson viewed Congress as an "illegal body" and wanted to overthrow the government, Republicans in Congress took control of Reconstruction policies after the election of 1866. Johnson ignored the policy mandate, and he openly encouraged Southern states to deny ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. Radical Republicans in Congress, led by Stevens and Sumner, opened the way to suffrage for male freedmen. They were generally in control, although they had to compromise with the moderate Republicans. Historians generally refer to this period as Radical Reconstruction.

The South's white leaders, who held power in the immediate postwar era before the vote was granted to the freedmen, renounced secession and slavery, but not white supremacy. People who had previously held power were angered in 1867 when new elections were held. New Republican lawmakers were elected by a coalition of white Unionists, freedmen, and Northerners who had settled in the South. Some leaders in the South tried to accommodate to new conditions.

Three Constitutional amendments, known as the Reconstruction Amendments, were adopted. The Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery was ratified in 1865. The Fourteenth Amendment was proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868, guaranteeing United States citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and granting them federal civil rights. The Fifteenth Amendment, proposed in late February 1869 and passed in early February 1870, decreed that the right to vote could not be denied because of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The amendment did not declare the vote an unconditional right; it prohibited these types of discrimination. States would still determine voter registration and electoral laws. The amendments were directed at ending slavery and providing full citizenship to freedmen. Northern Congressmen believed that providing black men with the right to vote would be the most rapid means of political education and training.