Chapter 16

The Crises of Reconstruction 1865-1877

The war wasn’t so great as people suppose. The same observation has been made by a former slave
Felix Heywood who declared: “We soon found out that the freedom could make folks proud but it
didn’t make ‘em rich!”

After the war, Heywood noticed an important change in the African – American community: the
impulse among newly freed people to move somewhere else. Even Felix Heywood himself, like
many other former slaves migrated to the nearest city ( he moved to San Antonio where he found a
job with the waterworks).

The impact of the Civil War

For the nation, the end of the Civil War was a turning point and a moment of uncharted
possibilities. It was also characterized with a rapture in the historical, economic and overall growth
of the U.S. It was a time of unresolved conflicts. Old conflicts remained largely unresolved and
bred new tensions.

The infrastructure of the South was wasted.

The Union had sought not merely military triumph but the return of national unity.

The federal government faced in 1865 several questions:

1) How could the Union be restored and the defeated South reintegrated into the nation?
2) Would the Confederate states be treated as conquered territories or would they quickly
rejoin the Union with the same rights as other states?
3) Would Confederate leaders be punished for treason? And most important.....
4) What would happen to the more than 3,5 million former slaves??

The end of the Civil War, in short, posed two problems that had to be solved simultaneously: how
to readmit the South to the Union and how to define the status of free blacks in American society?

On top of that, death toll was horrific. Around 618,000 people lost their lives in the Civil war, more
than in all the other wars previously fought by America.

Indeed, the crises of reconstruction- the restoration of the former Confederate states to the Union-
reshaped the legacy of the Civil War.

Reconstruction Politics 1865-1868

Intense political conflict dominated the immediate post-war years.

In national politics, disputes produced: new constitutional amendments, a presidential empeachment

and some of the most ambitious domestic legislation enacted by Congress, the Reconstruction Acts
of 1867-1868.

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The major outcome of Reconstruction politics was the enfranchisement of black men.

In 1865 only a small group of politicians supported black suffrage. Led by Senator Charles Sumner
of Massachusetts and Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, Radical Republicans had
fought for the abolition of slavery and a demanding reconstruction policy.

But, the Radicals, outnumbered in Congress by other Republicans and opposed by the Democratic
minority, faced long odds.

Reconstruction policy eventually became bound to black suffrage.

Lincoln’s plan

In December 1863, President Lincoln issued the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction
which outlined a path by which each southern state could rejoin the Union.

Under Lincoln’s plan, a minority of voters (equal to at least 10% of those who had cast ballots in
the election) would have to take an oath of allegiance to the Union and accept emancipation. This
minority could then create a loyal state government.

Lincoln’s plan, however, excluded: Confederate government officials, army and naval officers as
well as those military or civil officers who had resigned from Congress. Also excluded, of course,
were blacks.

Lincoln hoped that his “10 percent plan” would undermine the Confederacy by establishing pro-
Union governments within it.

He, actually, wanted to win the allegiance of southern Unionists (those who had opposed secession)
and to build a Southern Republican party.

Most Republicans, however, agreed that Lincoln’s program was too weak. Thus, in 1864, Congress
passed the Wade-Davis bill (each former Confederate state would be ruled by a military governor).
To qualify as a voter or delegate, a southerner would have to take a second, “ironclad” oath,
swearing that he had never voluntarily supported the Confederacy.

As same as the “10 percent plan” , the congressional plan did not provide for black suffrage.

Lincoln failed to sign the Wade-Davis bill. The bill’s sponsors thought Lincoln’s act as an outrage.

By the war’s end, the president and Congress had come to a dead end.

What Lincoln’s ultimate policy would have been remain unknown, but it didn’t provide for black
suffrage. The Thirteenth Amendment prohibited slavery in the U.S.

Radical Republicans then turned to the 17th President of the U.S. Andrew Johnson of Tennessee.

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 Presidential Reconstruction under Johnson (or: Johnson’s Reconstruction)

He had taken a strong anti-Confederate stand. Above all, Johnson had long sought the destruction of
the planter aristocracy, being a man with a quite humble financial and economic background (this
was his own political agenda).

When emancipation became Union policy he supported it, merely because he hoped that the fall of
slavery would injure southern aristocrats.

Soon, the Republicans discovered that the President’s political agenda did not coincide with theirs.
Many Republicans were shocked when Johnson announced a new plan for the restoration of the
South and it included a string of proclamations managing the seceded states to hold conventions and
elections to re-form their civil governments.

In two proclamations, the president announced that Alabama, Georgian, Florida, Mississippi, North
Carolina, South Carolina and Texas could return to the Union.

Each state convention, Johnson added, would have to proclaim the illegality of secession and ratify
the Thirteenth Amendment.

He offered a pardon to all southern whites except Confederate leaders and wealthy planters (poorer
whites would now be in control), restoring their political rights and all property, except slaves.

But, Presidential Reconstruction had unforeseen consequences, such as: Johnson handed out
pardons to wealthy Southerners liberally; he also dropped plans for the punishment of treason;
Confederate army officers and large planters assumed state offices. Former Confederate
Congressmen, state officials and generals were elected to Congress. Most infuriating to Radical
Republicans were the so-called “black-codes” (that ensured landless, dependent black labour force
and regulated slavery).

Although the 13th Amendment guaranteed the freedmen some basic rights, the codes harshly
restricted freedmen’s behaviour. Some established racial segregation in public places; most
prohibited racial intermarriage, jury service by blacks and court testimony of blacks against whites.
There were also so-called vagrancy laws that banned former slaves from leaving the plantations,
thus, limiting their mobility. Blacks who wanted to enter non-agricultural employment had to obtain
special licences. Otherwise, they would be arrested as vagrants.

The black codes left freedmen no longer slaves but not really liberated either,

The Freedmen’ Bureau ( a federal agency that assisted former slaves) suspended the enforcement of
racially discriminatory provisions of the new laws.

The “black codes” revealed white southern intentions.

Congress Versus Johnson

The status of the southern blacks now became the major issue in Congress.

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Radical Republicans, who hoped to impose black suffrage on the former Confederacy and delay the
readmission of the southern states into the Union, were still a minority in Congress. The same was
with their opponents, the Democrats. Moderate Republicans, who were the majority in Congress,
agreed with the Radicals that Johnson’s plan was too weak.

Johnson’s program would prevail unless the moderates and the Radicals joined forces.

The moderate Republicans supported two proposals (designed by Trumbull) to invalidate the “black
codes”.

In the FIRST, Congress voted to continue the Freedmen’s Bureau that provided relief, rations and
medical care, built schools for the freed blacks, tried to protect their rights as labourers. In 1866,
Johnson vetoed the Freedmen’s Bureau bill.

In March 1860, Congress passed a SECOND measure that made blacks U.S. citizens with the same
civil rights as other citizens. Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights bill, too. He argued that it was against
the white race.

But, Congress overrode his veto and Civil Rights Act of 1866 became the first major law ever
passed over a presidential veto.

Supplementary Freedmen’s Bureau Act was another law enacted over Johnson’s veto.

The president insisted that both bills were illegitimate because southerners had been shut out of the
Congress that passed them. In this way, the president just alienated the moderate Republicans, who
began to work with the Radicals against him.

Once united, the Republicans moved on to a next step: the passage of a constitutional amendment
that would prevent the Supreme Court from invalidating the new Civil Rights Act and would block
Democrats in Congress from repealing it.

The Fourteenth Amendment 1866

In April 1866, Congress adopted the 14th Amendment, proposed by the Joint Committee on
Reconstruction.

 To protect blacks’ rights, the amendment declared in its first clause that all persons born or
naturalized in the U.S. were citizens of the nation and citizens of their states and that no
state could deny them equal protection of the law.
 The amendment guaranteed that if a state denied suffrage to any of its male citizens, its
representation in Congress would be proportionally reduced.
 The amendment disqualified from state and national office all pre-war officeholders who
had supported the Confederacy. In this way, Congress intended to invalidate Johnson’s
distribution of amnesties and pardons.
 The amendment dismiss the Confederate debt and maintained the validity of the federal debt

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Republicans now realized that southern states would not deal fairly with blacks unless forced to do
so.

The 14th Amendment was the first national effort to limit state control of civil and political rights.

Its passage created a firestorm. Abolitionists didn’t like the second clause since it didn’t explicitly
ensure black suffrage. Southern legislatures (except for Tennessee’s) refused to ratify the
amendment and President Johnson denounced it. His defiance backed up the new alliance between
moderate and radical Republicans, turned the Congressional elections of 1866 into a referendum on
the 14th Amendment.

The president failed to create a new National Union party that would sink the 14th Amendment.
Republicans won the congressional elections of 1866. And by doing so, they secured a mandate to
overcome southern resistance to the 14th Amendment and to enact their own reconstruction
program, even if the president vetoed every part of it.

Nevertheless, this Presidential Reconstruction was more favourable to the Southern States than
Congressional Reconstruction (or: the Radical Reconstruction) 1866-1877.