VOL. 3 EPISODE 1: RECONSTRUCTION
The Civil War shattered the nation; during Reconstruction (1865-1877), America had to put itself back together. It was an era of experimentation and corruption, of Civil Rights and racial violence. We discuss the struggle to control the legacy of the Civil War.
INTRODUCTION [00:00-03:35]
Union General William Tecumseh Sherman led his army through Georgia in the winter of 1864. His “March to the Sea” cut a swath of destruction 60 miles wide, 200 miles long. From Atlanta to Savannah, the 60,000-man army destroyed all they could.
Enslaved African American men and women watched the destruction of their owners’ property with joy and flocked to the army by the thousands.
On January 12, 1865, Sherman met with leaders from the African American community in Savannah. Most of the men were ministers, and most had been born into slavery. Sherman asked them what they understood freedom to mean. Garrison Frazier, their spokesman, responded “placing us where we could reap the fruit of our own labor…the way we can take care of ourselves is to have land.”
Four days after the meeting, Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15 and designated land on Georgia’s sea islands and in the Low Country of South Carolina for freedmen. Each family would receive 40 acres. He also had the army help them acquire loans so they might get mules to help work the land.
Sherman was no philanthropist nor humanitarian. He harbored his own deep racial prejudices. And it wasn’t clear whether this settlement would be permanent or not. But by June of 1865, after the war had ended, some 40,000 freedmen had settled on the land.1
Reconstruction was the era which immediately followed the Civil War. As the name suggests, America had to literally reconstruct itself.
But what would the reconstructed nation look like? Who would control it? What would freedom mean for the four million African Americans freed from slavery? In the 12 years after the war, the Nation struggled to put itself back together and define and protect the rights of freedmen and women.
“Forty Acres and a Mule” represented one vision, one dream for what Reconstruction might be—offering reparations to freedmen for their years of bondage. A conflicting vision was held by white Southerners who sought to redeem their defeated states and preserve their way of life as best they could, racial prejudice and all. Meanwhile, those within the federal government contested with each other to control the process and debated which rights African Americans should have.
Reconstruction was a time of possibilities, of experimentation. It produced three constitutional amendments and the first attempt to impeach a president. It was also an era of political corruption and domestic terrorism.
It’s a complicated, amazing, and tragic story.
Let’s dig in.
—Intro Music—
[Welcome to American History Remix, the podcast about the overlooked and underexplored parts of American history. We’re glad you’re here!]
WARTIME RECONSTRUCTION [03:36-07:03]
The first thing to understand about Reconstruction is that it’s really complicated. The Constitution offers no guidance for reuniting the Nation. The founders did not leave a contingency plan for civil war because they did not anticipate one.
So…how do you do it? How do you actually put the states back into the Union? Who would control the process—the President? Congress?2
This brings us to a deeper set of questions, what was the South? Did it actually secede from the country?
Abraham Lincoln believed that secession never legally happened. The South may have acted as if it had left, but in reality it was not possible for a state to leave the Union. Reconstruction was therefore a process of readmitting states back into a normal relationship with the federal government. Lincoln, as president, would oversee the process.
The so-called “Radical” Republicans represented another wing of the Republican party. Led by Charles Sumner in the Senate and Thaddeus Stevens in the House, they not only wanted to end slavery but also wanted to ensure racial equality.3
Thaddeus Stevens. Mathew Benjamin Brady, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
On the issue of secession, the Radicals differed from Lincoln. They believed that the Southern states did secede and had taken up arms against the US government. The US had conquered them, and they should therefore be treated like the unorganized territories of the West. And the Constitution gives Congress jurisdiction over the territories.4 Their solutions depended on their different understandings of the problem.
To make things even more confusing, Reconstruction actually began during the war.
As the US Army regained control of the South, occupied states like Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana were ready to be readmitted as early as 1862.5
Lincoln announced his plan for Reconstruction in December of 1863. If Southerners were willing to accept Emancipation and swear an oath of loyalty, they would be pardoned. When 10% of eligible voters had taken the oath, they could form a new state government.
How exactly his plan would have worked…I don’t know. It was incredibly lenient—10% loyalty is a very small number. But the context may help explain Lincoln’s goal. His plan was announced during the war. He was trying to appeal to war-weary Southerners who wanted to end the conflict. Had Lincoln survived, he very likely would have offered a revised plan after the war.6
In the meantime, the Radical Republicans in Congress thought Lincoln’s plan was way too lenient. In July of 1864, they proposed their own plan called the Wade-Davis Bill. Instead of 10%, it required 50% of voters to sign an oath of loyalty before being readmitted in the Union.
The states could then hold new constitutional conventions, but only men who had never served in the Confederacy would be able to vote for delegates.7 Their plan was a bit harsher than Lincoln’s.
LINCOLN & THE RADICALS [07:04-11:21]
But despite their differences, Lincoln and the Radicals often worked together—they were members of the same party after all. Most significantly, they worked together on the 13th Amendment. The Emancipation Proclamation, issued in 1863, had freed slaves in rebellious states, but it came from Lincoln’s wartime powers. It could possibly have been revoked by another president.8 A constitutional amendment guaranteeing freedom was the most secure way to kill slavery.
Together, Lincoln and the Radicals pushed the 13th Amendment through Congress in 1865. It was ratified by the states later that year.
Section One of the Amendment states: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”9
With its ratification, slavery was legally dead.
…But was that enough?
The Radicals believed more needed to be done. Even after the destruction of slavery, wealthy Southerners owned large estates. So long as those wealthy landowners were in need of laborers and committed to white supremacy, the rights of freed people were in jeopardy.10
In the reverse of today’s political landscape, the Democratic Party at the time favored states’ rights, and the Republican Party favored a more active federal government.
The Radicals challenged an older view of federalism—the idea that the states remain sovereign. From the Radicals’ point of view, the Confederate States were now conquered enemies, and the federal government had the power and right to transform the South. “The whole fabric of Southern society must be changed,” said Thaddeus Stevens.11
The creation of the Freedman’s Bureau in March of 1865 represented an innovative change in the role and activity of the federal government.12 The Bureau was tasked with providing food and fuel to freedmen and white refugees of war. It also had the power to provide confiscated land to former slaves—40 acres per family. The land would be rented until the federal government could sell it.13
The Bureau, however, had some significant limitations. The language in the bill which created it was purposefully vague, conveying the unclear constitutionality of confiscating land. The Freedmen’s Bureau was also not intended to be a permanent agency. It was a temporary measure to help Southern Blacks in the transition to freedom. The original bill limited its existence to one year. And it did not have its own budget, it drew from the War Department.14
Nevertheless, it represented another vision of Reconstruction, another possibility for what the role and purpose of government could be.
The passage of the 13th Amendment and the creation of Freedmen’s Bureau demonstrate that Lincoln and the Radicals, despite their differences, could and often did work together. They likely would have found some way to compromise and bridge their differing plans for political Reconstruction.
Abraham Lincoln. Alexander Gardner, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
But on April 14th, 1865, less than one week after the South surrendered, President Lincoln, while attending a play at Ford’s Theater, was shot in the back of the head by John Wilkes Booth. He died the following morning.15
The Nation would have to go through Reconstruction without him.
ANDREW JOHNSON [11:22-13:58]
Following Lincoln’s assassination, his Vice President Andrew Johnson became president.
Johnson was not Lincoln’s first VP. When Lincoln ran for reelection in 1864, he chose Johnson to be his running mate largely for political reasons.16 Johnson was a Democratic senator from Tennessee and was the only senator from a seceding state to remain loyal to the Union.17 With him on the ticket, they could appeal to the border states and war-weary Southerners.
Johnson believed in states’ rights but did not believe states had the right to secede from the Union. He considered secessionists to be traitors.18 So, he was a unionist and a states rightist.
Johnson had grown up poor and came to loathe the unofficial aristocracy of plantation owners who dominated the South.19 He was more concerned with class than race. He accepted emancipation as a necessity of war, but he was not concerned with equal rights. He believed giving Blacks the right to vote would produce “a tyranny such as this continent has never yet witnessed.”20 To Johnson, freedom did not mean equality.
Andrew Johnson. Mathew Benjamin Brady, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Congress was not in session during the spring and summer of 1865, which left Johnson free to guide political Reconstruction himself. In May, he issued a proclamation which offered broad pardons for ex-Confederates if they would accept Emancipation and pledge their loyalty to the Union. High ranking Confederate leaders, however, were not included and would have to appeal to Johnson for a personal pardon, as would those wealthy Southerners whom Johnson disliked.
Those not yet pardoned could not vote, but otherwise voting in the Southern states would return to its pre-war standards—which, of course, excluded African Americans.
Then, over the summer, Johnson issued thousands of personal pardons to Southerners not included in the general pardon.21 White Southerners gathered for their state constitutional conventions and held elections. With minimal interference from the federal government, they were left to do as they wished. They elected Confederate generals. Even Alexander Stephens, who had been the vice president of the Confederacy, won a seat in Congress.22 Never mind that all those men had just committed treason.
FREEDMEN [13:59-15:51]
The four million former slaves living in the South had a very different dream for Reconstruction.
The Black community saw themselves as heirs to the promises of America’s founding. One Black convention stated, “we claim exactly the same rights, privileges and immunities as are enjoyed by white men—we ask nothing more and will be content with nothing less.”25
Freedmen believed that education was necessary to protect their rights and their labor. As one contemporary described it, “a school-house would be the first proof of their independence.”26
Freedmen's School, James Plantation, North Carolina, 1866. See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Many Black parents moved their families to cities where their children could attend school.27 Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy, was captured by the Union in early April 1865. By the end of the month, Black churches and a missionary society founded a school which educated 1000 Black children and another 75 adults.28
Before Emancipation, Congressmen Ebon Ingersoll predicted “Abolish slavery and school-houses will rise upon the ruins of the slave mart.”29 He was right. After the war, African Americans in the South founded schools in abandoned warehouses and pool halls. In Savannah and New Orleans, former slave markets did in fact become schools.30
BLACK CODES [15:52-17:54]
But Johnson’s disregard for civil rights and his lax federal policies restored political power to former Confederates.
In their own ways, each Southern state enacted new laws, called the Black Codes, to govern and control the African American population.31
Mississippi led the way and made it illegal for Blacks to rent property in urban areas. They fined Blacks for “vagrancy,” which meant they were arrested for not having a job. They could be punished for vague crimes like “mischief” or preaching the Gospel without a license. For any of these offenses, if Blacks could not pay the fine, they would be hired out to work off their debt. South Carolina required all Black persons to pay a tax if they worked in any profession other than as a farmer or servant. Florida made it illegal to disrespect an employer, and a Black person who broke a work contract would be forced to serve a year of labor.32 The governor of Florida encouraged Blacks to return to the plantation and “call your old Master—Master.”33
If this sounds a bit like slavery…that’s because it was. White Southerners were trying to preserve an impoverished African American population working for white landowners. They did this by exploiting a loophole in the 13th Amendment which states that slavery and involuntary servitude are illegal “except as a punishment for a crime.” That’s why they made “mischief” a crime.
The white Southern vision for Reconstruction was to maintain the old order as best they could.
JOHNSON VS. THE RADICALS [17:55-19:19]
When Congress reassembled in the fall of 1865, Johnson told them that Reconstruction was over. The states had returned to their normal relationship with the federal government, Southern Congressmen were ready to take up their seats, and, ignoring the Black Codes, he argued that the rights of African Americans would work itself out at the state level.34
African Americans were pretty concerned about these policies. A group of freedmen from North Carolina wrote directly to the president, “We cannot understand the justice of denying the elective franchise to men who have just been fighting for the country, while it is freely given to men who have just returned from four years fighting against it.”35
So, the Radicals fought back. They refused to seat the Southern delegates in Congress and blocked the readmission of the Southern states. They realized that if the South was readmitted under Johnson’s requirements, they would lose the power to secure civil rights for freedmen.38
CIVIL RIGHTS & 14TH AMENDMENT [19:20-22:54]
To support those rights, Congress passed two bills in 1865. The first extended the life of the Freedman’s Bureau for an additional two years. The second was the Civil Rights Bill, which expanded American citizenship to include African Americans. Both bills attempted to curb the racism and injustice embedded Southern society, which Johnson was willing to permit.39
When Congress sent the bills to Johnson’s desk, he vetoed both. With a two-thirds majority, Congress overrode Johnson’s vetoes.40
Those bills were safe for the moment, but Radical Republicans realized they needed to protect civil rights for African Americans from future presidents or congresses. They needed a constitutional amendment.41
So, Congress drafted the 14th Amendment, which offered the first constitutional definition of American citizenship. Anyone born in the United States was a citizen—including African Americans. It also guaranteed equal protection under the law and prohibited the states from violating the Bill of Rights, which had previously only applied to the federal government.42
Where the 13th Amendment guaranteed freedom, the 14th promised equality.
But would the states ratify the 14th Amendment?
Johnson openly opposed the amendment and worked to return power to the South as quickly as possible. He even provided weapons to the Virginia militia, which consisted mostly of ex-Confederate soldiers. While arming former rebels during an election year may look good on paper, I guess, the move alienated Johnson from the military and its top general, Ulysses S. Grant.43
Johnson then embarked on a speaking tour to campaign against the Radicals, hoping they would lose seats in the 1866 mid-term elections. The tour was a disaster. He gave essentially the same speech again and again and again at every town.44 The crowds grew hostile and began to heckle him. He would grow angry and would argue with his audiences. At one point he suggested hanging Thaddeus Stevens and compared himself to Jesus Christ. Even his supporters were horrified.45
One Republican said Johnson was “always worse than you expect.”46
Republicans won big in the mid-term elections. They gained a two-thirds majority in Congress, and Reconstruction was now in their hands. They essentially began it over again.
They passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867. The bill divided the South into five military districts with a general over each. The military would maintain order. The former Confederate states could hold constitutional conventions, but they must allow Black men to vote for delegates. Then, the states would have to ratify the 14th Amendment before being readmitted into the Union.47
President Johnson, unsurprisingly, vetoed the bill, but Congress overrode the veto.48 And the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868.
IMPEACHMENT [22:55-25:37]
Despite having a veto-proof majority in Congress, the Radicals still worried about Andrew Johnson. It was the US military which occupied the South and protected the rights of freedmen. And Johnson, as Commander in Chief, sought to undermine Congress’ plan from within. He replaced military officials who aligned with the Radicals’ vision for Reconstruction with ones who would not enforce civil rights.49
Now, the Radicals had an ally in Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who had been appointed by Lincoln. For Johnson to truly undermine Reconstruction, he would have to replace Stanton. In an attempt to paralyze Andrew Johnson, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act in 1867. The act required the president to get the Senate’s approval before removing members of his own administration.50
Disregarding the act, Johnson fired Stanton in 1868. The House of Representatives then, for the first time in US history, brought Articles of Impeachment against a president. Both Radical and moderate Republicans voted against him.51 And the case moved to the Senate.
But Johnson’s lawyers devised a useful strategy. First, they told Johnson to shut up. Then, they stalled and hoped that internal divisions would surface within the Republican Party. And they did.52
See, Johnson had never appointed a Vice President. If he were impeached, Senator Benjamin Wade, pro tempore of the Senate, would become president. He was a Radical and not much liked by moderates or the business world.53 Other Republicans disliked Johnson but saw the Tenure of Office Act as a sorry excuse for impeachment. He was a horrible president, but not simply because he tried to fire Stanton. And this was the first presidential impeachment trial. It would establish a precedent for the future.
Andrew Johnson’s impeachment trial. Theodore Russel Davis, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
In May, the Senate voted. Impeachment required a 2/3rds majority. It failed by one single vote.54
He remained in office, but Johnson’s presidency was essentially over. In the aftermath of the trial, Republicans nominated Lincoln’s top general, Ulysses S. Grant, for the 1868 presidential election.55
THE 15TH AMENDMENT [25:38-28:15]
With Johnson on the sideline, the Radicals sought to further protect the rights of freedmen with the 15th Amendment, ratified by the states in 1870. Building on the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship and equality, the 15th Amendment prohibited federal or state governments from depriving citizens of the right to vote because of race or “previous condition of servitude.” However, the amendment failed to make voting requirements consistent nationally. Instead, they would still be left to the states.56 This will be relevant later on.
Nevertheless, the amendment protected the rights of freedmen as they stepped into the political vacuum left by disenfranchised Confederates. In 1866, only 0.5% of Black men could vote. By the end of 1867, 80.5% could vote.57
Ulysses S. Grant won the presidency in 1868, and he would not have won the election without the votes of freedmen.58
_(14782968892).jpg)
Artist Alfred Rudolph Waud depicted "The First Vote" of African Americans in Virginia in the November 16, 1867 issue of Harper's Weekly magazine. Internet Archive Book Images, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons.
Across the South, freedmen joined political organizations, and many Blacks themselves won seats in local, state, and federal government. Thomas Allen, who was born into slavery, was elected to the Georgia legislature in 1868.59 James Hill, also born into slavery, served as Mississippi’s Secretary of State from 1874-78. That said, most Black men who held office at the state level were freeborn men from the North who came South during Reconstruction. Jonathan C. Gibbs, for example, was a missionary and educator from Philadelphia who served as Secretary of State in Florida from 1868-72.60
In 1870, Hiram Revels, a freeborn African American, became the first Black man to serve in the US Senate. Later that year, Joseph Rainey became the first Black member of the House of Representatives. In all, during Reconstruction, sixteen Black men served in Congress, nine of whom were born into slavery.61
“The first colored senator and representatives - in the 41st and 42nd Congress of the United States,” 1872. Currier & Ives, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Back in 1857, the Supreme Court had ruled that Blacks were not citizens and had no rights that white men were bound to respect.62 Just 13 years later, they had seats in Congress.
AMENDMENTS RECAP [28:16-29:55]
The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery, the Fourteenth guaranteed citizenship and equality, and the Fifteenth protected voting rights. It was an incredible transformation.
And there is more going on here than the guarantee of specific rights. The amendments also redefined the role of the federal government. Section Two of the Thirteenth Amendment said, “Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments have similar provisions.
The first ten amendments, called the Bill of Rights, all limited federal power. In fact, they were only concerned about federal power. “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, the press, etc.” They did not originally apply to the states. But the Fourteenth Amendment required that states also uphold the Bill of Rights. Together, the Reconstruction amendments increased federal power.
The Founders had limited federal power in order to protect the rights of the people. The Reconstruction amendments expanded federal power to protect the rights and freedom of the people.
Reconstruction transformed the role and function of the American government. At least…it was supposed to.
SOUTHERN REDEMPTION [29:56-32:58]
Bitter at their defeat and the transformation of their society, white Southerners fought back and unleashed a reign of terror in the South.
Several paramilitary organizations formed in the aftermath of the war, each violently committed to white supremacy. The Red Shirts, the White Brotherhood, The Knights of the White Camelia, and the Ku Klux Klan, to name a few.63 The Klan was founded in Tennessee in 1866 but soon spread to other regions of the South. It attracted ex-Confederate soldiers and the sons of plantation owners who had lost much of their wealth.64
Southerners wanted to “redeem” the South. That meant overthrowing the Republican governments, reestablishing Southern Democratic power, eliminating Blacks from politics, and reasserting white control over Black labor.65
Klan violence was not organized. It was carried out ad hoc by local members.68 But they often targeted African Americans who held political office. Andrew Flowers of Chattanooga was elected Justice of the Peace in 1870. The Klan captured and whipped him saying they “did not intend any nigger to hold office in the United States.”69
Jack Dupree was a political organizer in Monroe County, Mississippi. The Klan slit his throat and disemboweled him in front of his wife.70
Similar events occurred all over the South. In one district in North Carolina, where the Klan was particularly active, a white judge counted “twelve murders, nine rapes, fourteen cases of arson, and over 700 beatings.”71
The Klan also targeted centers of Black life and education. In the fall of 1870, Klansmen burnt down nearly every Black church and school in and around Tuskegee, Alabama.72
Congress took action to curb the racial violence in a series of legislation called the Enforcement Acts. The first, passed in 1870, made it a federal offense to interfere with voting. The second came in the winter of ‘71, which created federal supervision for voting and voter registration. In the spring, they passed one more act, commonly called the Ku Klux Klan Act, which authorized the president to use the army and, if necessary, suspend habeas corpus where the right to vote was being suppressed.73
"Visit of the Ku-Klux," published in Harper's Weekly, Feb. 24, 1872. Engraving drawn by Frank Bellew, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
COLFAX MASSACRE [32:59-34:30]
The legislation helped but it didn’t end the violence. The deadliest single act of racial terror during Reconstruction came in Colfax, Louisiana.74 In the Spring of 1873, freedmen in Grant Parish anticipated an attack on the county seat of Colfax in response to the contested election of 1872. Under the leadership of Black veterans, they dug trenches around the courthouse and practiced their drill work. They were expecting a battle. And they got one. A white mob attacked. The Black men held them off for three weeks. But on Easter Sunday 1873, the white mob overpowered them.75
They set fire to the courthouse and executed the freedmen. The men on both sides knew each other. The white men called out the Black men by name before killing them. Some were shot. Some hung. Some had their throats slit.76
"The Louisiana Murders—Gathering The Dead And Wounded," published in Harper’s Weekly, May 10, 1873. See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
It’s hard to know exactly how many men the mob killed. Many were buried in anonymous graves. But somewhere between 70 and 165 people died that day.77
We need to be clear—this violence was nothing other than racially motivated domestic terrorism.
SUPREME COURT [34:31-37:41]
Under the Enforcement Acts, the federal government brought charges against a handful of men who had led the Colfax Massacre.78 But, then the Supreme Court issued a series of decisions which gutted the federal government’s ability to fight racial violence and discrimination.
First was the Slaughter-House Case of 1873.79 This was an odd case that seemingly had no relevance to the rights of freedmen. It began when Louisiana granted a monopoly to a slaughterhouse in New Orleans to combat health risks of butchers throwing animal entrails in the river. Weird, right? Well, the butchers in the city argued that the monopoly violated their rights under the 14th Amendment, and the Court was tasked with defining which rights the amendment actually protected.
In a 5-4 decision, the court upheld the monopoly. Cool. But then the decision went on to elaborate that the 14th Amendment did not actually redefine the relationship between the federal government and the states. The 14th Amendment, the court claimed, only protected national rights, not rights granted by states. National rights included things like protection at sea, access to ports, and the right to travel to the seat of government. You know, those ones. The decision did not even mention the Bill of Rights.80
If you’re confused by this decision, good. Because it makes no goddamn sense. The Congressmen who wrote and debated the 14th amendment were shocked. They thought they had redefined the role of the federal government. But I guess not. One of the dissenting justices claimed the ruling turned the 14th Amendment into a “vain and idle enactment which accomplished nothing."81
Another decision came in 1876 in the case United States v. Cruikshank. This case concerned those federal charges brought against the men who had led the Colfax Massacre. In a 9-0 decision, the Court overturned their conviction.
The Court ruled that the 14th Amendment only prohibited states from violating a person’s civil rights. The violence in this case was perpetrated by individuals. Therefore, their conviction was overturned. Furthermore, the Court claimed it was up to the states to protect an individual’s rights. The federal government could not even bring charges those individuals.82
These decisions gutted the 14th and 15th Amendments, and they invalidated much of the Enforcement Act of 1870.83 The decision also meant that terror could reign where local and state governments were uninterested in fighting it. And the men who committed the Colfax Massacre got off free.
WANING COMMITMENT TO RECONSTRUCTION [37:42-40:14]
And so, one by one, often with violence, white Southerners regained control of their states and trampled on the rights of freedmen. Tennessee was “redeemed” in 1869. North Carolina in 1870. Georgia in ‘71, etc.84 By 1876, only three states remained “unredeemed.”
While the Nation was succeeding in reconstructing itself politically, the cause of racial justice was faltering. On July 5th, 1875, Frederick Douglass gave a speech outside Washington D.C. in which he asked a pointed question: “If war among the whites brought peace and liberty to the Blacks, what will peace among the whites bring?”85
Douglass astutely noticed the changing political landscape.
A severe economic recession hit the Nation in 1873.86 The crisis, now known as the Panic of 73, shifted the political and public attention away from Reconstruction and towards economic issues. It also damaged the Republican Party. Regardless of the actual causes of an economic crisis, the public tends to blame the party that’s in power at the time.87
The Republican Party was also plagued by a series of scandals. Ulysses S. Grant had been a great general, but he was a pretty lame president. Several men he appointed proved to be corrupt.
The Ambassador to Britain committed business fraud and was sent back to the US.88 The Secretary of War accepted bribes and resigned his position to avoid impeachment. Two men, including Grant’s personal secretary and another close friend of his, had led the so-called Whiskey Ring in which government officials accepted bribes instead of collecting taxes on alcohol.89
These scandals hurt the Grant Administration and the Republican Party as a whole. And the party itself was changing. Thaddeus Stephens died in 1868. Charles Sumner died in ’74. This gave way to a new generation of leaders, and Radicalism was fading.90
ELECTION OF 1876 [40:15-42:11]
This brings us to the Election of 1876, one of the strangest and most controversial elections we’ve ever had. Republicans nominated Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes. Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden, governor of New York.91
Tilden carried most of the South, as well as New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Indiana. Things did not look promising for Hayes. But if Hayes could win the rest of the North and the remaining “unredeemed” Southern states of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, then he could win in the electoral college.92
But the voter suppression of African Americans in those “unredeemed” states left the election results unclear. It should have come as no surprise. Similar events occurred all over the South. Even before the election, a Justice of the Peace in Georgia, David Brundage, wrote to Ulysses S. Grant about the voter intimidation he witnessed, “The succession Democrats are so enraged that they openly declare to kill the man that the colored people elect.”93
However, Southern Democrats threatened to boycott Congress to keep them from certifying the results. Some feared that sectional violence would begin again. Several Southern newspapers declared “Tilden or War.”96
COMPROMISE OF 1877 [42:12-43:14]
To resolve the issue, party leaders from the North and South met at a hotel in Washington DC and brokered a deal.
The specifics of the deal, we don’t know with certainty. They kept things pretty hush-hush. But here’s what we do know: Democrats conceded that Hayes won the election. He then appointed two Democrats to his administration. He withdrew troops from South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, returning total home rule to Southerners.97 Hayes also agreed to not intervene on behalf of African Americans in the South.98
Thus, the Compromise of 1877 brought about the formal end of Reconstruction, and the South had been “redeemed.” The Republican Party, founded in the 1850s as the anti-slavery party, had given up the pursuit of racial justice.99
THE “REDEEMED” SOUTH [43:15-46:46]
What did this mean for African Americans in the South? Well, it was no secret what would happen next. “If we surrender, let us surrender with our eyes open,” remarked one newspaper. “Let us admit that the untiring hate of the Southerners has worn out our endurance.”100
So, despite earlier talks of land redistribution, nothing ever materialized. Freedmen had little money and little access to credit.101 Meanwhile, Southern landowners had their land but no one to work it. The solution to these problems was an economic system called sharecropping. African Americans rented land from white landowners and paid them between a quarter and a third of their crops.102
The system was really a compromise. The planter class didn’t reestablish slavery, but African Americans didn’t experience the freedom they had hoped. Blacks had more autonomy than they did under slavery, but they were often impoverished and in debt to their landowners.103
Violence against African Americans continued in disgusting frequency. Lynching—the public murder of African Americans outside of the justice system—increased during the 1880s and ‘90s. On average, an African American somewhere in the South was lynched by a white mob once every three days.104
At the same time, Southern states enacted strict racial segregation. They segregated schools and railroads first. Then theaters, parks, restrooms, drinking fountains, etc.
In 1896, the segregation of train cars was legally challenged. Did racial segregation violate the 14th Amendment? In the case Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court botched yet another decision when it ruled that segregation was legal so long as the accommodations were equal. But they never were equal.105
Drinking at a "Colored" water cooler in an Oklahoma City streetcar terminal, 1939. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-fsa-8a26761.
In the years after Reconstruction, white Southerners worked to protect their political control. In 1890, Mississippi rewrote its state constitution and enacted strict voting requirements such as property ownership, arbitrary literacy tests, and poll taxes. Though the requirements made no mention of race, their goal was to suppress the African American vote, since that community was largely stuck in poverty and had limited access to education.106
James Vardaman, the eventual governor of Mississippi said, “There is no use to equivocate or lie about the matter. Mississippi's Constitutional Convention was held for no other purpose than to eliminate the nigger from politics.”107
In the following years, every former Confederate state enacted similar voting restrictions. By the turn of the century, only 5% of eligible Blacks voted in the South.108
THE LOST CAUSE [46:47-52:17]
In the years after the war, Confederate resentment, anger, and a desire to defend themselves solidified into what’s called the Lost Cause tradition. This is a Southern ideology, rhetoric, and above all else, a history of the Civil War and Reconstruction—a distorted version of the events.
Through the Lost Cause, Southerners attempted to explain their defeat. They were adamant that they had not lost because they had been wrong. “The Southern people,” wrote one Southerner, “were the best informed, most energetic, the most religious, and the most democratic people on earth.”109 They’d been conquered by an insidious industrial society in the North, but there had been nothing wrong with their civilization.110
Above all, they argued that the war had not been about slavery. They simply fought to defend their homes from Northern aggression.113 They’d fought for states’ rights, never mind that they actually fought for the states’ right to own slaves.
In fact, they constructed a myth of the faithful slave who never wanted to be freed.
After the war, former Confederate president Jefferson Davis argued that Blacks had benefited from slavery because “their servile instincts rendered them contented with their lot, and their patient toil blessed the land of their abode with unmeasured riches.” But then, Davis claimed, “the tempter came, like the serpent of Eden, and decoyed them with the magic word of ‘freedom.’”114
In their view, slavery had uplifted African Americans and given them work and religion and dignity. When slaves fled the plantations during the war, it was due to the insidious influence of Northerners. And freedom had actually led to a moral decline among African Americans, supposedly.115
The Lost Cause myth extended to Reconstruction, too. Radical Republicans and carpet baggers were the villains of the story, who vindictively tried to oppress the South with their Reconstruction policies. The heroes were the “redeemers” and Klansmen who had heroically overthrown the oppression.116 In 1921, at the site of the Colfax Massacre, the county built a monument which said, “Erected to the memory of the heroes…who fell in the Colfax Riot fighting for white supremacy.”117
It’s often said that history is written by the victors. That’s sometimes true, but not always, and not here. The Lost Cause myth came to dominate Southern and indeed broader American culture.
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Scene at the unveiling of the monument to General Robert E. Lee at Richmond, Virginia, 1890. VCU Libraries Commons, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons.
Likewise, an organization called the United Confederate Veterans created a historical committee to review textbooks and reject any that named slavery as the cause of the war or questioned the “unparalleled patriotism manifested by the Southern people.”120
The myth permeates popular culture.
It’s in songs like “Johnny Reb” by Johnny Horton, “The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down” by the Band and Joan Baez, and “Burning Georgia Down” by Balsam Range.
Adjusted for inflation, the film “Gone with the Wind” is the highest grossing movie of all time.
It begins with a title sequence which says: “There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South... Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow... Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and Slave... Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind…”
Talk about a romanticized past.
The Lost Cause was and is a powerful lie.
CONCLUSION [52:18-53:55]
Reconstruction was an era of tremendous progress and experimentation. In many ways, it was a success. The Nation succeeded in reuniting itself. The 13th Amendment killed slavery, the 14th guaranteed citizenship and equality, and the 15th gave the right to vote regardless of race.
Black Americans exercised their new rights at every level of government, and the Nation made profound strides towards racial justice. But the South fought back. Through violence and national exhaustion, the progress was undone. The North won the war, but the South won the peace.
Reconstruction was a revolution…but it was also a tragedy.
Thanks for listening.
[American History Remix is written and produced by Will Schneider and Lyndsay Smith. For the latest updates, be sure to follow us on Instagram and Threads. Check out our website for episode transcripts, recommended reading, and resources for teachers. That’s AmericanHistoryRemix.com.]
REFERENCES
Alexander, Shawn. Reconstruction Violence and the Ku Klux Klan Hearings: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin's, 2015.
Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001.
Edwards, Rebecca. New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age: 1865-1905. Oxford University Press, 2010.
Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2002.
Foner, Eric. The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2019.
Hahn, Steven. A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910. New York: Penguin Random House, 2016.
McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War, 1848-1861. New York: Harper Perennial, 2011.
Prince, K. Stephen. Radical Reconstruction: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin's, 2015.
Simpson, Brooks D., ed. Reconstruction: Voices from America’s First Great Struggle for Racial Equality. New York: Library of America, 2018.
White, Richard. The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Wilson, Charles R. Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1983.
NOTES
1 Steven Hahn, A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910 (New York: Penguin Random House, 2016), 290-91; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York: -Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2002), 70-71.
2 K. Stephen Prince, Radical Reconstruction: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin's, 2015), 11.
3 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 4-5.
4 James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 699-700.
5 McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 703.
6 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 10.
7 McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 712.
8 McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 504, 841-42.
9 U.S. Constitution, amend. 13, sec. 1.
10 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 6.
11 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 6-7.
12 McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 842.
13 Foner, Reconstruction, 69.
14 Foner, Reconstruction, 69.
15 Foner, Reconstruction, 74-75.
16 McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 717.
17 McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 304.
18 Foner, Reconstruction, 178-79.
19 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 12.
20 Foner, Reconstruction, 179-80.
21 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 12-13.
22 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 13.
23 David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001), 23.
24 Blight, Race and Reunion, 24.
25 Foner, Reconstruction, 288.
26 Foner, Reconstruction, 97.
27 Foner, Reconstruction, 96.
28 Foner, Reconstruction, 97.
29 Eric Foner, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2019), 42.
30 Foner, Reconstruction, 97.
31 Foner, Reconstruction, 199.
32 Foner, Reconstruction, 199-200.
33 Blight, Race and Reunion, 45-46.
34 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 14, 63-64.
35 “Colored Men of North Carolina to Andrew Johnson, May 10, 1865,” in Reconstruction: Voices from America’s First Great Struggle for Racial Equality, ed. Brooks D. Simpson (New York: Library of America, 2018), 24-25.
36 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 12.
37 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 14.
38 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 14.
39 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 14; Foner, Reconstruction, 243; “Freedmen’s Bureau Acts of 1865 and 1866,” United States Senate, accessed April 10, 2024, https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/FreedmensBureau.htm.
40 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 15.
41 Foner, Reconstruction, 251.
42 Richard White, The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 73-75.
43 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 75.
44 Foner, Reconstruction, 264-65.
45 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 82; Foner, Reconstruction, 264-65.
46 Rebecca Edwards, New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age: 1865-1905 (Oxford University Press, 2010), 20.
47 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 83.
48 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 19.
49 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 21-22.
50 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 22.
51 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 93.
52 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 93.
53 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 91.
54 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 23.
55 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 23.
56 Foner, Reconstruction, 446.
57 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 84.
58 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 23.
59 Foner, Reconstruction, 287.
60 Foner, Reconstruction, 352-53.
61 Foner, Reconstruction, 352. Ibid., note 12.
62 McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 174; David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War, 1848-1861 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011), 275.
63 Shawn Alexander, Reconstruction Violence and the Ku Klux Klan Hearings: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin's, 2015), 8.
64 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 90.
65 Foner, Reconstruction, 425-26.
66 Blight, Race and Reunion, 47, 121-22.
67 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 87.
68 Foner, Reconstruction, 425-26.
69 Foner, Reconstruction, 426-27.
70 Foner, Reconstruction, 426.
71 Foner, Reconstruction, 430-31.
72 Foner, Reconstruction, 428.
73 Alexander, Reconstruction Violence and the Ku Klux Klan Hearings, 9.
74 Foner, Reconstruction, 530.
75 Foner, Reconstruction, 437.
76 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 279.
77 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 279-80.
78 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 279-80.
79 The Supreme Court’s ruling was based on a series of cases under the same name. For simplicity, we refer to the case in the singular here. Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36 (1873).
80 Foner, The Second Founding, 133-34. Foner, Reconstruction, 529.
81 Foner, The Second Founding, 135.
82 Foner, Reconstruction, 530-31. Foner, The Second Founding, 145-46.
83 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 285.
84 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 26.
85 Blight, Race and Reunion, 132.
86 Foner, Reconstruction, 512.
87 Foner, Reconstruction, 568-69.
88 Foner, Reconstruction, 565-66.
89 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 205.
90 Foner, Reconstruction, 344, 524-25.
91 Foner, Reconstruction, 567.
92 Foner, Reconstruction, 575. Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 25.
93 “David Brundage to Ulysses S. Grant, Oct. 14, 1776,” in Reconstruction: Voices from America’s First Great Struggle for Racial Equality, ed. Brooks D. Simpson (New York: Library of America, 2018), 632-33.
94 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 330.
95 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 332. Blight, Race and Reunion, 136.
96 Foner, Reconstruction, 576.
97 Foner, Reconstruction, 581-82.
98 Blight, Race and Reunion, 138.
99 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 25.
100 "St. Louis Globe Democrat: The Warning, March 31, 1877," in Reconstruction: Voices from America's First Great Struggle for Racial Equality, ed. Brooks D. Simpson (New York: Library of America, 2018), 646.
101 Foner, Reconstruction, 106.
102 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 80.
103 White, The Republic for Which It Stands, 81.
104 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 478.
105 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 480-81.
106 Blight, Race and Reunion, 271-72.
107 “Williams v. Mississippi (1898),” The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, Jim Crow Stories (blog), Thirteen, accessed April 10, 2024, https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_williams.html.
108 Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, 471, 473.
109 Blight, Race and Reunion, 283.
110 Blight, Race and Reunion, 256-57.
111 Charles R. Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920 (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1983), 7. Blight, Race and Reunion, 256.
112 Blight, Race and Reunion, 266.
113 Blight, Race and Reunion, 257, 275.
114 Blight, Race and Reunion, 260.
115 Wilson, Baptized in Blood, 104, 110.
116 Prince, Radical Reconstruction, 1, 27.
117 Tom Barber and Jeff Crawford, “Removing the White Supremacy Marker at Colfax, Louisiana: A 2021 Success Story,” Muster (blog), The Journal of the Civil War Era, July 6, 2021, https://www.journalofthecivilwarera.org/2021/07/removing-the-white-supremacy-marker-at-colfax-louisiana-a-2021-success-story/.
118 Blight, Race and Reunion, 272-73.
119 Blight, Race and Reunion, 278, 282.
120 Wilson, Baptized in Blood, 140-1. Blight, Race and Reunion, 277, 281-82.