Wartime and Presidential Reconstruction

I. Reconstruction

  • Generally understood as spanning years 1865-1877
    • Although it really begins in 1863
  • Definition: Legal, social and political processes by which the S. was brought back into the Union
  • Major questions:
    • Who gets the vote?
    • What legal rights would former slaves have?
    • How, or should, former Confederates be punished?
    • What should happen to confiscated lands?
  • Source of bitter conflict
    • Between Southern whites and freed people
    • Between Democrats and Republicans
      • And even between different factions within the Republican Party
    • Between the President and Congress
  • Who prevails is enormously important: One of the most fateful moments in US history

II. Ultimate outcome

  • By the late 1870s, North had abandoned the South
  • KKK launched a reign of terror
  • White Democrats were using a variety of means to take away civil rights gained by African Americans
  • Ultimately, a new system of racial segregation is implemented
  • By the end of Reconstruction, sharecropping has emerged as the dominant agriculture system
    • South will remain far behind the rest of the nation in terms of per capita income, education, health, etc.

 II. Lincoln’s 10% Plan 

  • Announced in December 1863
    • Right before the Emancipation Proclamation took effect
  • Offered rebels a full pardon and restoration of citizenship if they swore allegiance to the US government and accepted emancipation
  • When the number of “loyal” (white) southerners reached 10% of the number of votes cast in 1860, these men could form a new state government
    • New constitutions had to ban slavery
    • Barred high-ranking Confederates from government offices
    • Did not guarantee African-Americans new rights, aside from the freedom from bondage

III. What was Lincoln thinking? How should we view this plan?

  • Plan should be seen as a war measure
    • He wanted to give loyal or ambivalent southerners a way back to the Union
  • Political calculations
    • Worried about the 1864 presidential election
    • Feared that, if Democrats won, they would overturn emancipation
  • Reflected his view that he was fighting a rebellion, not a civil war
    • Continued to maintain that states should not have to go through an elaborate process, because they never really left the Union

IV. Reactions to Lincoln’s plan

  • Anticipated the battle lines that would later harden
  • Many Democrats thought it went too far
    • Still supported states’ rights
    • Still wanted reunion without an end to slavery
  • Radical Republicans thought it didn’t go far enough
    • They wanted to punish Confederates
    • And to really reconstruct the South
    • Frederick Douglass warned that the government would “hand the Negro back to the political power of his master, without a single element of strength to shield himself from the vindictive spirit sure to be roused against the whole colored race.”
  • Three Union-occupied states qualified under AL’s plan before war’s end, but Congress refused to seat their representatives
    • LA, AK, TN

V. Wade-Davis Bill

  • Congress passed in July 1864
  • Challenged Presidential control
    • Gave Senate veto power over provisional southern governors
    • Senate (as well as Pres.) would approve new state constitutions
  • Much harsher toward Confederates
    • Required 50% of 1860 electors to sign loyalty oath
    • Only those who swore a “Ironclad Oath” could design new state constitutions
    • Excluded colonels and higher-ranking officers in the Conf. Army from voting
  • Lincoln pocket-vetoed the bill

VI. What would Lincoln have done in the end?

  • We’ll never know, but what’s most likely is that Congress and the President would have negotiated a solution
  • Reconstruction thus might never have evolved into a “radical” phase
  • Final cabinet meeting, in response to Stanton’s suggest that there might need to be a military occupation: “We can’t undertake to run state governments in all these states. The people must do that – though I reckon that at first some of them may do it badly.”
  • Lincoln assassinated on April 14, 1865 by J.W. Booth, a Confederate sympathizer

VII. Reactions to Lincoln’s death

  • Lee had surrendered just 4 days before
  • Most people saw Lincoln’s death as in providential terms
  • Funeral procession began in Washington, made its way around the country
    • As many as 50 percent of all Americans are estimated to have at least caught a glimpse of the train
  • Booth and alleged conspirators hung
  • Jefferson Davis eventually captured and sent to prison until mid-1867
  • But in general, federal government does remarkably little to punish the Confederates

VIII. Andrew Johnson

  • Devout Unionist
  • Despised “slave power”
  • No formal schooling
  • TN Senator
    • Did not vacate his seat when TN seceded
    • War Democrat

IX. Johnson’s plans for reconstruction

  • To some extent, resembled the Wade-Davis Bill
    • Denied amnesty to more people than AL
    • Disenfranchised essentially all elites
    • Wanted to retain confiscated land
  • BUT
    • He offered personal pardons
    • He did not require any percentage of electors in to take a loyalty oath before forming new governments
    • Ended up being very lenient
    • Handed out some 13,500 pardons
    • Proved to be an old-line Democrat
      • Uncomfortable with imposing federal authority
    • No interest in securing rights for freed people
  • Why?
    • Racism
    • Re-election concerns: trying to build a new coalition
    • Personal/class resentment
    • He loved giving pardons to his social “betters

X. Postwar South

  • Physical devastation and social collapse
  • Rise in criminality, violence
    • No functioning court system
  • Whites horrified at behavior of freedmen and women
    • Acquiring previously banned goods (alcohol, guns, etc)
    • Holding meetings; separate church services
    • Refusing to follow racial “etiquette”
  • Black mobility
    • 1865-70: Black population in southern cities doubled

XI. Struggle over Labor

  • Black women refusing to perform domestic work for whites—withdrawing their labor
  • Black refusing to stay on plantations; refusing to submit to discipline
  • White southerners understood that in order to revive the economy, they had to gain control of the workforce
    • Some attempts to import immigrant workers from Asia and Europe, but doesn’t pan out

XII. Ex-Confederate Defiance

  • All states passed “Black Codes” designed to perpetuate subordination of African Americans
  • Banned from carrying firearms, consuming alcohol, marrying whites, etc.
  • Vagrancy laws
  • Elected ex-Confederate soldiers and politicians to office (state and national)
  • First men elected to serve in Congress: 10 generals, 6 cabinet officers, 58 Congressmen and the former VP!