Reconstruction refers to the period following the Civil War of rebuilding the United States. How were for former Confederate leaders, considered traitors by many in the North, to be dealt with? After the Civil War, the Radical Republicans pushed for full implementation of emancipation through the immediate and unconditional establishment of civil rights for formerly enslaved persons. Reconstruction definition, the act of reconstructing, rebuilding, or reassembling, or the state of being reconstructed: the gigantic task of reconstruction after a fire. Congress quickly passed the Civil Rights Bill; the Senate on February 2 voted 33–12; the House on March 13 voted 111–38. Outrages upon the former slaves in the South there were in plenty. [163] Civil rights prosecutions continued but with fewer yearly cases and convictions. Palmer, Beverly Wilson; Byers Ochoa, Holly; eds. By early 1865, the Confederate dollar was worth little due to high inflation. Foner, for example, does this in his general history of the United States, Give Me Liberty! Historian Ralph Morrow reports:[187][188][189], A War Department order of November 1863, applicable to the Southwestern states of the Confederacy, authorized the Northern Methodists to occupy "all houses of worship belonging to the Methodist Episcopal Church South in which a loyal minister, appointed by a loyal bishop of said church, does not officiate. Key to this deal was the understanding that federal troops would no longer interfere in Southern politics despite substantial election-associated violence against Blacks. "[128], During the Civil War, many in the North believed that fighting for the Union was a noble cause–for the preservation of the Union and the end of slavery. The committee completed its 13-volume report in February 1872. [166] To placate the South, in May 1872, Grant signed the Amnesty Act, which restored political rights to former Confederates, except for a few hundred former Confederate officers. By late 1866, the opposing faction of Radical Republicans was skeptical of Southern intentions. In early 1866 Congress passed the Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights Bills and sent them to Johnson for his signature. Historian Harold Hyman says that in 1866 congressmen "described the oath as the last bulwark against the return of ex-rebels to power, the barrier behind which Southern Unionists and Negroes protected themselves". They started many new Black Baptist churches and soon, new Black state associations. Generally, elementary and a few secondary schools were built in most cities, and occasionally in the countryside, but the South had few cities.[198][199]. [211] Former Congressman John R. Lynch, a Black Republican leader from Mississippi, later wrote:[202]. As disciples of Charles A. The 10 Southern state governments were re-constituted under the direct control of the United States Army. People had to resort to bartering services for goods, or else try to obtain scarce Union dollars. [138] The Democrats advocated the immediate restoration of former Confederate states to the Union and amnesty from "all past political offenses". However, the growing political power of Black people provoked a violent backlash from many White people who struggled to hold on to their supremacy. Republicans in Congress, refusing to accept Johnson's lenient terms, rejected and refused to seat new members of Congress, some of whom had been high-ranking Confederate officials a few months before. Many congressional elections in the South were contested. Conservative opponents called the Republican regimes corrupt and instigated violence toward freedmen and Whites who supported Reconstruction. Rather, emancipation was a historical tragedy and the end of Reconstruction was a clear sign of God's favor. Democrats and many Northern Republicans agreed that Confederate nationalism and slavery were dead—the war goals were achieved—and further federal military interference was an undemocratic violation of historical Republican values. He supported Henry W. Grady's vision of a New South during Grady's time as editor from 1880 to 1889. Eventually, a group called "Redeemers" took control of the party in the Southern states. As an Alabama scalawag explained: "Our contest here is for life, for the right to earn our bread, ... for a decent and respectful consideration as human beings and members of society. A decision needed to be made whether to allow just some or all former Confederates to vote (and to hold office). During the Civil War, Union forces had confiscated vast areas of farmland owned by Southern plantation owners. [87] The Black Codes outraged Northern opinion. How should republicanism operate in the South? (2005). They could not own firearms, serve on a jury in a lawsuit involving whites, or move about without employment. The lynchings were used for intimidation and social control, with a frequency associated more with economic stresses and the settlement of sharecropper accounts at the end of the season, than for any other reason. The party lost support steadily as many scalawags left it; few recruits were acquired. Most of all, they could form their own churches, associations, and conventions. The old paper currency issued by state banks had been withdrawn, and Confederate currency was worthless. [155] These were criminal codes that protected the freedmen's right to vote, to hold office, to serve on juries, and receive equal protection of laws. "[28] Johnson broke decisively with the Republicans in Congress when he vetoed the Civil Rights Act in early 1866. The Radicals sought out a candidate for president who represented their viewpoint. [141] He lost Louisiana and Georgia primarily due to Ku Klux Klan violence against African-American voters. Stampp, Kenneth M.; Leon M. Litwack; eds. They also disrupted political organizing and terrorized Blacks to bar them from the polls. The victims of this violence were overwhelmingly African American, as in the Colfax Massacre of 1873. Pursuing a policy of "malice toward none" announced in his second inaugural address,[25] Lincoln asked voters only to support the Union. Reconstruction also refers to the attempt to transform the 11 South… He believed that he would not succeed in passing legislation to disenfranchise illiterate Whites who already had the vote. The most bitter contest took place inside the Republican Party in Arkansas, where the two sides armed their forces and confronted each other in the streets; no actual combat took place in the Brooks–Baxter War. The national debt stood at $2.8 billion. "The Reconstruction Era (1865–1877)." [254] His solution was to concentrate on building the economic infrastructure of the Black community, in part by his leadership and the Southern Tuskegee Institute. The Reconstruction Era (1865–1877). (1986): Earl F. Woodward, "The Brooks and Baxter War in Arkansas, 1872–1874". [16] The transportation infrastructure lay in ruins, with little railroad or riverboat service available to move crops and animals to market. Lincoln also urged compensated emancipation for the slaves as he thought the North should be willing to share the costs of freedom. Eric Foner's textbook of national history Give Me Liberty is an example. Some wanted high tariffs and some low. Reconstruction changed the means of taxation in the South. There were no trials on charges of treason. Reconstruction Amendments change definitions of freedom, citizenship, and democracy? These institutions offered self-help and racial uplift, and provided places where the gospel of liberation could be proclaimed. Now controlling both the House of Representatives and the Senate, Radical Republicans were assured the votes needed to override any of Johnson’s vetoes to their soon-to-come Reconstruction legislation. Grant made up for the defections by new gains among Union veterans and by strong support from the "Stalwart" faction of his party (which depended on his patronage), and the Southern Republican Party. Reconstruction continued in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida until 1877. The outcome of the 1876 presidential election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, was decided by disputed vote counts from those three states. [77], Lincoln continued to advocate his Louisiana Plan as a model for all states up until his assassination on April 15, 1865. A 2019 study found that counties that were occupied by the U.S. Army to enforce enfranchisement of emancipated slaves were more likely to elect Black politicians. Over the next several years the commission negotiated treaties with tribes that resulted in additional re-locations to Indian Territory and the de facto creation (initially by treaty) of an unorganized Oklahoma Territory. [168] The initial bill was created by Senator Charles Sumner. Lincoln had supported a middle position: to allow some Black men to vote, especially U.S. Army veterans. [154], Congress and Grant passed a series (three) of powerful civil rights Enforcement Acts between 1870 and 1871, designed to protect blacks and Reconstruction governments. Lash, Jeffrey N. 1993. [10], Reconstruction addressed how the 11 seceding rebel states in the South would regain what the Constitution calls a "republican form of government" and be re-seated in Congress, the civil status of the former leaders of the Confederacy, and the constitutional and legal status of freedmen, especially their civil rights and whether they should be given the right to vote. The foundations of their institutions ... must be broken up and relaid, or all our blood and treasure have been spent in vain. [8] However, in his 1988 monograph specializing on the situation in the South, titled Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877, he begins in 1863. With the emancipation of the Southern slaves, the entire economy of the South had to be rebuilt. R.E.M. Grant was so adamant about the passage of the Klu Klux Klan Act, he earlier had sent a message to Congress, on March 23, 1871, in which he said: "A condition of affairs now exists in some of the States of the Union rendering life and property insecure, and the carrying of the mails and the collection of the revenue dangerous. Public support for Reconstruction policies, requiring continued supervision of the South, faded in the North with the rise of the Liberal Republicans in 1872 and after the Democrats (who also strongly opposed Reconstruction) regained control of the House of Representatives in 1874. Conservative reaction continued in both the North and South; the White Liners movement to elect candidates dedicated to White supremacy reached as far as Ohio in 1875.[226][227]. The issue of loyalty emerged in the debates over the Wade–Davis Bill of 1864. The direct costs to the Confederacy in human capital, government expenditures, and physical destruction from the war totaled $3.3 billion. Congress, on December 4, 1865, rejected Johnson's moderate presidential Reconstruction, and organized the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, a 15-member panel to devise Reconstruction requirements for the Southern states to be restored to the Union. This tax was often assessed in a way to discourage a free labor market, where a slave was assessed at 75 cents, while a free White was assessed at a dollar or more, and a free African American at $3 or more. Railroad building was seen as a panacea since Northern capital was needed. The issues were multiple: Who should decide, Congress or the president? Red Shirts paraded with arms behind Democratic candidates; they killed Blacks in the Hamburg and Ellenton, South Carolina massacres. In the Coushatta Massacre in 1874, the White League assassinated six White Republican officeholders and five to 20 Black witnesses outside Coushatta, Red River Parish. [12] Most of the "Radical" Republicans in the North were men who believed in integrating African Americans by providing them civil rights as citizens, along with free enterprise; most were also modernizers and former Whigs. Both certified their own slates for local parish offices in many places, causing local tensions to rise. The Confiscation Acts were only having a minimal effect to end slavery. They were the African Methodist Episcopal Church; the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, both independent Black denominations founded in Philadelphia and New York, respectively; the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church (which was sponsored by the White Methodist Episcopal Church, South) and the well-funded Methodist Episcopal Church (predominantly White Methodists of the North). Johnson was following the moderate Lincoln presidential Reconstruction policy to get the states readmitted as soon as possible. Between 1868 and 1877, and accelerating after the Depression of 1873, national interest in Reconstruction dwindled as economic issues moved to the foreground. Much more important was the calculus of class conflict. Land was returned that would have been forfeited under the Confiscation Acts passed by Congress in 1861 and 1862. African-Americans remained involved in Southern politics, particularly in Virginia, which was run by the biracial Readjuster Party.[251]. In Tennessee alone, over 80,000 former Confederates were disenfranchised.[40]. [161] By 1872, Grant had crushed the Klan, while African Americans voted peacefully in record numbers in elections in the South. The last moderate proposal was the Fourteenth Amendment, whose principal drafter was Representative John Bingham. The disputed election in Louisiana in 1872 found both Republican and Democratic candidates holding inaugural balls while returns were reviewed. However, Congress refused to count any of the votes from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee, in essence rejecting Lincoln's moderate Reconstruction plan. After Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won the disputed 1876 presidential election, the national Compromise of 1877 (a corrupt bargain) was reached. [131] Grant opposed President Johnson by supporting the Reconstruction Acts passed by the Radicals. [269], Instead, they emphasized that suppression of the rights of African Americans was a worse scandal, and a grave corruption of America's republicanist ideals. In the 1866 mid-term congressional elections, Northern voters overwhelmingly rejected President Johnson’s Reconstruction policies, giving Radical Republicans nearly total control of Congress. The Union (the Northern states) had defeated the Confederacy (the Southern states that had left the Union). Washington.[239]. Some Northern states that had referendums on the subject limited the ability of their own small populations of Blacks to vote.