Three (?) Versions of Reconstruction

1. Presidential Reconstruction (Abe)–Declaration of Amnesty and

Reconstruction–“10% Plan”–“Lincoln governments”–Quick, lenient, and Presidential

Three (?) Versions of Reconstruction

2. Congressional/RADICAL Reps–Sumner and Stevens–Wade/Davis Bill/Manifesto:

7/4/1864–“Ironclad Oath” 50%

Lincoln and Congressional Reps

Successful Compromises• Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and

Abandoned Lands: March 3, 1865(Freedmen’s Bureau)• 13th Amendment: ratified Dec 1865

The Thirteenth Amendment

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Three (?) Versions of Reconstruction

3. Pres. Reconstruction under AJ• “The Constitution as it is and the

Union as it was” • “amazing leniency”• “that portion…who are loyal”• “Johnson governments”• $20,000 exemption

“Government by veto”

• Joint Committee on Reconstruction• 1866 Civil Rights Act• Freedmen’s Bureau renewed• Reconstruction Amendments (13th,

14th, 15th)• Reconstruction Acts (1st-4th)

Fourteenth Amendment

• Birthright citizenship• Confederate war debt• Confederate disfranchisement• Black suffrage?• Equal protection of civil rights?• Slave seats?

14th Amendment - Section 1.

“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.”

14th Amendment - Section 2.

“Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, 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.”

14th Amendment - Section 3.

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

14th Amendment – Section 4.

“The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.”

Johnson vs. the Radicals

• Black Codes• 1866 Memphis/New Orleans race

riots• Campaign/Election of 1866• Johnson’s “swing around the circle”• “Waving the Bloody Shirt(s)”

1st Reconstruction Act

“Whereas no legal State governments or adequate protection for life and property now exists in the rebel States…”

1st Reconstruction Act, Sec. 1

AJ Impeached, Feb-May 1868

• 11 articles of impeachment• Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton• Tenure of Office Act• Command of the Army Act• Senate President Pro Tempore

Benjamin Wade, R-OH

“I stand on the Constitution”

Election of 1868

Republican ticket• “Unconditional Surrender” Grant• “I shall have no policy of my own to

interfere against the will of the people.”• “Let us have peace.”

Election of 1868

Democratic ticket• Pres: Horatio Seymour, fmr NY gov–Peace Democrat–Pro NY draft rioters, 1863–McClellan backer 1864

• VP: Francis Blair, MO white supremacist• …and the Klan

Results

Fifteenth Amendment

“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.”

Fifteenth Amendment

• Does not prevent states from disfranchising voters on other grounds, such as through–Literacy tests–Poll taxes–Grandfather clause

• Does nothing for the ladies!

The Economics of Land and Labor

“The emancipated slaves own nothing because nothing but freedom has been given to them”

-Confederate Brig. Gen. Robert V. Richardson, American Cotton Planters

Association meeting, Dec 1865

“It’s owed before it’s growed”

The southern economy1. No “freedom dues”2. Cash- and credit-starved economy3. White hostility to black economic

independence

Reconstruction on the ground

• Tenant farming• Sharecropping• Crop-lien system• Furnishing merchants• Debt peonage

Experiments in economic rights

• Freedman’s Bank 1865-1874• Sherman’s Land: 400,000 acres• South Carolina Land Commission• 1st southern public schools

The Southern Republican coalition

• Freedmen – 268 delegates to state const conventions– 680 state reps, 112 state senators– 41 sherriffs– 5 mayors– Sen. Hiram Revels, R-MS– Rep. John Roy Lynch, R-MS (and 15 others)

• Scalawags– Gen. James Longstreet

• Carpetbaggers

Republican rule in the south

Myths•Lost Cause•bayonet rule•black rule•carpetbag rule

The white counterrevolution

• Memphis police riot, May 1866• New Orleans riot, July 1866• Colfax Massacre, Easter 1873• Mississippi Plan/Shotgun Policy

April 14, 1873

•Colfax, LA•Grant Parish•Calhoun’s Landing•80-150+ killed?•James Beckwith, US Attorney•William Cruikshank, defendant

Enforcing Reconstruction?

Ku Klux Klan Acts/Enforcement Acts• Criminalize interference with voting

rights• Federal supervision of elections• Military force and suspension of

habeas corpus

Judicial retreat from Reconstruction

• Slaughterhouse cases–National vs. state citizenship–9/14/1873

• US v. Cruikshank–March 1876–“Due process” and “equal

protection” for state actions only

Grant and the money question

• Coinage Act/Crime of ’73–de facto gold standard for $

• Panic/Depression of 1873• Specie Resumption Act 1875

Grantism = graft

• Black Friday/Gold Scandal• Whiskey Ring• Salary grab• Crédit Mobilier of America

Reconstruction fatigue

• Deaths/retirement of original Radicals• Election of 1874• Election of 1876• Compromise of 1877

Leftovers…sorry!

• Henry W. Grady and the New South… how new did it get?• Jim Crow and “separate but equal”• Plessy v. Ferguson 1896