RECONSTRUCTION. The question of the restoration of the seceded states to the Union became an
issue long before the surrender at Appomattox, Va',
on Apr. 6, 1865. According to the Crittenden-Johnson Resolutions of July 1861, the object of the war
was to restore the Union with "all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several States unimpaired'" But
as the conflict progressed, it became evident that this
objective was impossible to achieve. Congress refused to reaffirm its policy; Presideni Abraham Lincoln appointerJ military governors for partially reconquered states; and radicals and moderates debated the
exacl status of the insurgent communities'
The president viewed the process of wartime reconstruction as a weapon to detach southerners from their
allegiance to the Confederacy and thus shorten the
*u.. Cont.quently, on Dec. 8, 1863' he issued a
proclamation of amnesty that promised full pardon to
all but a select group of disloyal citizens' Wherever
10 percent of the voters had taken the oath of allegiance, they were authorized to inaugurate new
governments. All Lincoln required was their submission to the Union and their acceptance of the Emancipation Proclamation.
The president's plan encounlered resistance in
Congress. Perturbed by his failure to leave Reconstruction to the lawmakers and anxious to protect
Republican interests in the South, Congress, on July
2,1864,passed the Wade-Davis bill, a more stringent
measure than the "10 percent plan'" Requiring an
oath of allegiance from 50' rather than 10, percent of
the electorate before new governments could be set
up, the bill prescribed further conditions for prospective voters. Only those able to take an "ironclad
oath" of past loyalty were to be enfranchised, and
slavery was to be abolished. When Lincoln pocket-
55
RECOI{STRUCTIOI\
vetoed the measure, its authors bitterly attacked him
in the Wade-Davis Manifesto. After the president's
reelection, efforts to revive the Wade-Davis bill in
modified form failed. Congress refused to recognize
the "free-state" governments established in accordance with Lincoln's plan in Louisiana and Arkansas,
and so Lincoin's assassination on Apr. 14, 1865, left
the future of Reconstruction in doubt.
What Lincoln would have done if he had lived is
difficult to establish. It is known thal as soon as Gen.
Ulysses S. Grant had forced Gen, Robert E. Lee to
surrender, the president withdrew his invitation to
members of the Confederate legislature of Virginia to
reassemble: his wartime plans are evidently not necessarily a guide to his peacetime intentions. It is also
clear that he was not averse to the enfranchisement of
qualified blacks. He wrote to this effect to the governor of Louisiana and touched on the subject in his last
pubiic address, on Apr. I 1, 1865. But his larger policy had not yet fully matured.
With the end of war the problem of Reconstruction
became more acute. If the seceded states were to be
restored without any conditions, local whites wouid
soon,reestablish Democratic rule. They would seek to
reverse the verdict of the sword and, by combining
with their northern associates, challenge Republican
supremacy. Moreover, before long, because of the
end of slavery and the lapse of the Three-fifths Compromise, the South would obtain a larger influence in
the councils of the nation than before the war.
The easiest way of solving this problem would
have been to extend the suffrage to the freedmen. But
in spite of an increasing radical commitment to votes
for blacks, the majority of the party hesitated. Popular
prejudice, not all of it in the South, was too strong,
and many doubted the feasibility of enfranchising
newly liberated slaves. Nevertheless, the integration
of the blacks into American lif'e became one of the
principal issues of Reconstruction.
Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, was wholly
out of sympathy with black suffrage. A southerner
and former slaveholder, Johnson held deep prejudices
against blacks, who, he believed, should occupy an
inferior place in society. He was willing to concede
the vote to the very few educated or propertied
blacks, if only to stop radical agitation, but he did not
even insist on this minimum. Based on his Jacksonran
convictions of an indestructible Union of indestructible states, his Reconstruction policies in time of
peace resernbled those of his predecessor in time of
war. But they were no longer appropriate.
Johnson's plan, published on May 29, 1865, called
for the speedy restoration of southern governments
56
based on the (white) electorate of 1860. High Confederate officials and all those owning property vaiued at
more than $20,000 were excluded from his offer of
amnesty, but they were eligible for individual pardons. Appointing provisional governors who were to
call constitutional conventions, Johnson expected the
restored states to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment
abolishing slavery, nullify the secession ordinances,
and repudiate the Confederate debt.
In operation the president's plan revealed that little
had changed in the South. Not one of the states
enfranchised even literate blacks. Some balked at
nullifying the secession ordinances; others hesitated
or faiied to repudiate the Confederate debt; and Mississippi refused to ratify the Thirteenth Amendmenr.
Former insurgent leaders, including Alexander H.
Stephens, the vice-president of the Confederacy,
were elected to Congress. Several states even passed
black codes that in effect remanded the blacks to a
condition not far removed from slavery.
The reaction of northerners to these developments
was not favorable. When Congress met in December,
it refused to admit any of the representatives from the
seceded states. All matters pertaining to the restoration of the South were to be refened to the newly
created Joint Committee of Fifteen on Reconstruc-
tion.
Johnson had to make a choice. Either he could cooperate with the moderate center of the party or, by
opposing it, break with the overwhelming majority of
Republicans and rely on the small minority of conser-
vatives and the Democrats. When Lyman Trumbull,
the moderate chaii'nan of the Senate Judiciary Committee, tiamed the Freedmen's Bureau and civil rights
bills largely for the protection of the blacks, the president, unwilling to compromise on the subject of race
and federal relations, refused to sign them. As a
result, the moderates cooperated increasingly with the
radicals, and the civil rights bili veto was overridden
on Apr. 9, i866.
Congress then developed a Reconstnlction plan of
its own: the Fourteenth Amendment. Moderate in
tone, it neither conferred suffrage on the blacks nor
exacted heavy penalties from the whites. Clearly defining American citizenship, it made blacks part of
the body politic, sought to protect them from state interierence, and provided for redr"rced representation
for states disfranchising prospective voters. If Johnson had been willing to accept it, the struggle over
Reconstruction might have been at an end. But the
president was wholly opposed to the measure. Believing the amendment subversive of the Constitution and
of white supremacy, he used his influr'nce to procure
RECONSTRUCTION
its defeat in the southern states, an effort that suc_
in Tennessee, which was
adnritted on July 24, 1966. At the same lime,
he
sought to build up a new party. The rival plans
of
Reconstruction thus became an issue in the midterm
elections of 1866, during which four national
conventrons met, and Johnson on his ..swing around
the
circle" actively campaigned for his p"rogram. His
claims of having established peace in the S*outh
were
weakened by serious riots in Memphis
and New Or_
During 1867 and 1g6g radical Reconstruction
had
been gradually initiated. Despite conservative
opposr_
tion-Congress had to pass a fourth Reconstruction
ceeded et'erywhere except
leans.
The elections resulted in a triumph for the
Republi-
can majority. Since the president was still unwillins
to cooperate, Congress proceeded to shackle him
b!
restricting his powers of removal (Tenure
of Office
Act) and of military control (,.Command of the
Army" Act). In addition, it passed a series of mea_
sures known as the Reconstruction Acts,
which inau_
gurated the congressional or ,,radical,, phase
of Re_
cOnstrucl ion.
The first two Reconstruction Acts divided the
South (except for Tennessee) into five military
distrrcts, enfranchrsed blacks, and required southern
states to draw up constitutions safeguarding
black
tuff:ug.
The new legislatures were ex-pected to ratify
the Fourteenth Amendment, and certain Conf.ederate
officeholders rvere for a time baned from voting
and
from officeholding.
The president refused to concede defeat. After
his
vetoes of the Reconstruction Acts were
nbt sustained,
he sought to lessen their effect as much
as possibie.
His lenient interpretation of the law led to ;he
more
stringent third Reconstruction Act (July Ig,
1g6l),.
which only spurred him to further resistance.
On
Aug.
12 he suspended Edwin
M. Stanton, his radical
secretary of war. After appointing Grant
secretary ad
interim, he also removed ,.u".uiradical
maj<_rr gen_
erals in the South. Democratlc successes
in the fall
elections greatly encouraged him.
Johnson's intransigence
,break
with
resulted
in a
complete
Congress. Because the radicals lacked a
majority, their first attempt to impeach him
failed, on
Dec. 7 ,1867. But when the Senaie reinstared
Stanton
and the president dismissed him a second
time, the
House-acted. Passing a resolution of impeachment
on
Feb. 21 , 1868, it put Johnson cn t.ial
befbre the
Senate. Because of moderate defections
and the
weakness of the case, he was acquitted
by one vore,
on l\4ay i6 and 26. His narrow escape
once more en_
couraged southern conservatives,
so that it was dif_
ficult for Grant, elected presiclent in November
1g6g,
to carry congressional Reconstruction
to a successful
conclu
si
on.
.
Act easing requirements before the constitution
of
Alabama was accepted; the electorate ratified
the new
charters in all but three states_Mississippi,
Texas,
and Virginia. Accordingly, in the summe,
of tgOA th"
compliant states were readrnitted and the Fourteenth
Amendment declared in force. Because
Georgia later
excluded blacks from its legislature and because
Mis_
sissippi, Texas, and Virginia, for various
local rea_
sons, did not ratify their constitutions on
time, those
four states were subjected to additional requirements.
These
included the ratification of the Fifteenth
Amendment, prohibiting the denial of suffrage
on ac_
count of race. After complying with the new
de-
mands, these states too were restored to their
places in
the Union in 1870, and the amendment was
added to
the Constirution.
Historians have long argued about the nature
ofthe
radical governments. According to William
A.
Dun_
ning and his school, fhey were characterized bv
vindictiveness, corruption, inefficiency, and
ruthless
of southern whites. Northern carpet_
baggers, local scalawags, and their alleged
black
tools supposedly trampled white civilizatiin under_
exploitation
foot. Some scholars have questioned these assump_
tions. Pointing out that the radical governments
succeeded in establishing systems of puUtic
educa_
tion, eleemosynary institutions, and lastine constitu_
tions, modern experts have discarded the ioncent
of
"black Reconstruction.,' Black legislators
were in a
majority only in South Carolina, and even there
their
white allies wielded considerable influence. Con_
ceding the presence of corruption in the South,
these
historians have emphasized its nationwide
scope.
They have tended to show that fhe new governments
deserved credit for making the first effortito
establish
racial democracy in the South and that many radical
officeholders, black and white alike, did not
compare
unfavorably with their conservative colleagues.
But the experiment could nor last. The ripid disao_
pearance. by dearh or reriremenr. of radicai
Repubii_
cans, the granting of amnesty to former Confederates,
the conservatives' resort to terror, and a gradual
loss
of interest by the North woujd have made i.econstruction difficult in any case. These problems were com_
plicated by the blacks' lack of economic
Johnson had gone so far as to return to whiies
lands
already occupied by freedmen. Factionalism within
the dominant party increased wirh the rise of
the Lib_
eral Republicans in 1872, and the panic of 1g73
eroded Republican majorities in the House. The
Su_
57
RECONSTRUCTION, LINCOLN'S PLAN OF
preme Court, which had refused to interfere with
Reconstruction in Mississippi v. Johnsott (1867) and
Georgia v. Stanton (1867), began to interpret the
Fourteenth Amendment very narrowly, as in the
Slaughterhouse Cases (1873). Such a tendency foreshadowed the Court's further weakening of not only
the Fourteenth Amendment but aiso the Fifteenth
Amendment, in United States v. Cruikshank (1876)
and United States v . Reese (I87 6) and its invalidation
in
1883 of the Civil Riehts Act of 1875 in the Civil
Rights Cases.
The end of Reconstruction came at different times
in the several states. Despite the passage of three Federal Force Acts during 1870 and 1871, the graduai
collapse of the radical regimes could not be arrested.
In some cases terror instigated by the Ku Klux Klan
and its successors overthrew Republican administrations; in others, conservatives regained control by
more conventional means. By 1876 Republican administrations survived only in Florida, Louisiana, and
South Carolina, all of which returned disputed election results in the fall. After a series of economic and
political bargains enabled Rutherford B. Hayes, the
Republican candidate, to be inaugurated president, he
promptly withdrew federal troops, and Reconstruction in those states also came to an end. For a time
blacks continued to vote, although in decreasing numbers, but by the tum of the century they' had been almost eliminated from southern politics.
Reconstruction thus seemed to end in failure, and
the myth of radical misrule embittered relations between the sections. But in spite of their apparent lack
of accomplishment, the radicals had succeeded in embedding the postwar amendments in the Constitution,
amendments that were the foundation for the struggle
for racial equality in the 20th century.
[Herman Belz, Reconstructing the Union: Theory and
Policy During tl'te Civil War; Michael Les Benedict, .4
Compromise oJ'Print-iple; William R. Brock, An American
Crisis: Congress and Reconstruction, l865-1867; LaWanda Cox and John H. Cox, Politics, Principle, and
Prejudic'e, | 865-l 866 ; John Hope Franklin, Reconstruction
After the Civil War; Eric L. McKitrick, Andrevv Johnson
and Reconstruclion; Rembert W. Patrick, The Reconstruction oJ'the Nation; J. G. Randall and David Donald, Ifte
Civil War and Reconstructiou Kenneth P. Stampp,The Era
tf Reconstruction.l
He.Ns
L. Tnrrousss
R
q'|3.a
3
J) tz
NTCTIONARY
OF
AI\dERICAI{
F{TSTORY
REVISED EDITION
VOLUME VI
Quebec, Capture of:Tat"iff
1
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W*sf
Fe,rsyih F,is:h S{f"x}*! Lihr*ry
i
Charles Scribner's
,
i
Sons F{ew york
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Copyright @ 1976,1961, 1940 Charles Scribner's Sons
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rights reserved. No part of this book
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