Radical Reconstruction

I. Quick recap

  • Andrew Johnson
    • Pardoned basically all who ask (including Jefferson Davis!)
    • Not interested in rights for former slaves
    • Returns confiscated lands to pardoned owners
  • Southern defiance
    • Black codes
    • Election of Confederate officials

II. Showdown (1866)

  • Congress passed two important bills in early 1866
    • Extending the Freedman’s Bureau
      • Agency designed to assist ex-slaves
    • Civil Rights Act
      • Outlawed states laws that discriminated against blacks
      • Nullified states’ black codes
  • Johnson vetoed both bills
  • Congress passed new laws overriding AJ’s veto
  • Johnson’s obstinacy and southern intransigence help to radicalize moderate Republicans

III. 14th Amendment

  • Designed to give black men citizenship
    • Proposed in 1866; ratified in 1868
  • Remains the single most significant change to the Constitution since the Bill of Rights
  • Provided a broad definition of citizenship
    • Protected citizens from having their rights violated by state governments
    • Overturned the infamous Dred Scott case (1857)
  • Hedged on suffrage
    • Did not outright guarantee the vote; instead, punished states that denied citizens the right to vote by reducing their representative power in Congress
    • Benefited the Republican Party14th Amendment

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

  “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers…. But when the right to vote at any election…is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.”

IV. Controversy over the 14th Amendment

  • Many women’s rights advocates opposed it, because it introduced the word “male” into the Constitution
    • They wanted freedmen and women both to gain rights of full citizenship
    • Felt betrayed by former abolitionist allies like Frederick Douglass
      • Proclaimed it the “Negro’s Hour”
  • Johnson and many Democrats opposed it on entirely different grounds
  • Became the major campaign issue of 1866 election
  • But overwhelming Republican victory

V. 15th Amendment

  • Designed to enfranchise former male slaves: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
    • Does not include “sex” as a protected status
    • Proposed in 1869; ratified in 1870

VI. Congressional Reconstruction (mid-1866 through 1876)

  • Far-reaching but short-lived revolution
  • South put under military control
    • Divided into 4 districts
  • Black men got all the rights of citizenship
  • Throughout the South, black men served as elected officials in greater numbers than even today
  • Literacy rates for blacks soared

VII. Freed people’s vision

  • Land
    • Subsistence farming
  • Family autonomy and security
    • On plantations, they relocated their cabins
    • Withdrew black and children women from agricultural work
  • Education

VIII. Weakness of Republicans

  • Blacks not the majority in most of the South
    • Only in SC, parts of LA and MS
    • Must ally with scalawags (Southern Republicans)
    • Northern carpetbaggers (maybe 2% of pop.)
      • These men are not as radical as freedman
      • Want to court white votes
  • Economic power remained in hands of landed elites

IX. Rise of the KKK

  • Formed as early as 1866
    • Pulaski, TN; former Confederate officers
  • Most active period 1868-72
  • Reign of terror and intimidation
    • Targeted numerous black office holders, officials and Republicans
  • Federal government finally acted in 1870-71
    • Enforcement Laws (there were 3 separate laws in 1870-71)
      • Allowed federal government to enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments (to intervene when states failed to protect African Americans’ rights to vote, hold office, serve on juries)
    • Grand juries indicted more than 3000 Klansmen
      • Only about 600 convicted

X. Northern ambivalence

  • Commitment to limited government
  • No tradition of “social engineering”
  • Long traditions of racism, localism, state power
  • Many Democrats blamed violence on Republican “meddling”

XI. Why did Reconstruction fail?

  • Violent white supremacy
    • Refusal on the part of the federal government to uphold the rule of law
  • Lack of meaningful land redistribution
    • Without greater economic power, freedmen’s political rights were vulnerable
    • Failure of Northern will