The Reconstruction Era

The Reconstruction Era

Michael T. Griffith

2004

@All Rights Reserved

Time only allows me to provide a brief sketch of the “Reconstruction” program that the Republicans imposed on the South after the war.  I don’t deny that some good things were accomplished during Reconstruction.  Nor  do I deny that Reconstruction, as bad as it was, could have been worse.  However, most textbooks only talk about the good aspects of Reconstruction and either ignore or minimize the negative aspects.  The unjust, illegal aspects of Reconstruction merit discussion.

Reconstruction began in 1865 and officially ended in 1877.  The Radicals took substantial control of Reconstruction in 1867.  Reconstruction was bad enough from the outset, but it became much worse under Radical influence.  The Radicals illegally placed the South under military rule.  They divided the South into five military districts, each governed by a Union army general.  They nullified the recent Southern elections and refused to allow Southern congressmen to take their seats in Congress, even though these men had been elected in elections that were just as valid as any election that had been held in the North.  Not content with their political subjugation of the South, the Radicals and other Republicans allowed the Southern states to be looted and exploited for years by Northern business interests and by corrupt Reconstruction governments. The Radicals did these things over the strenuous objections of Lincoln’s successor, President Andrew Johnson. 

The Radicals also shamelessly contradicted the earlier Republican claim that the Southern states had not left the Union.  During the war, Lincoln and other Republicans made the bizarre argument that the Southern states had not really left the Union but that they had been taken over by “combinations” too powerful for local authorities to suppress.  According to this pathetic argument, Lincoln wasn’t invading the Southern states; rather, he was merely liberating them from the “combinations” that had supposedly seized control of them.  Well, once the war was over, the Radicals decided that the Southern states had left the Union after all, and that they couldn’t be readmitted until they complied with Republican demands. 

During the worst period of Reconstruction, Southerners who voiced objections to Republican policy could be jailed, and even executed, without indictment or trial.  Southern newspapers that criticized Reconstruction ran the real risk of being shut down, and some newspapers were closed down for this reason.  Federal troops were stationed all over the South, and in many cases their conduct was disgraceful and abusive.  Many Republican operatives and other Northerners who came to the South poisoned race relations by inciting former slaves to hate and persecute Southern whites.  The Republicans made it illegal for males who had served in the Confederate army or in the Confederate government to vote or hold public office.  Ex-Confederates could only vote if they were willing to lie by taking the “ironclad oath.”  The oath disqualified any man who had served in the Confederacy or who had even “aided” the Confederacy.  Of course, this excluded a large majority of Southern men.  To their credit, some Southern black leaders opposed denying former Confederates the right to vote, but their efforts were unsuccessful.  New Southern legislatures and governors were chosen in elections in which most former Confederates were barred from voting.  These corrupt Reconstruction state governments imposed oppressive taxes on their citizens and also stole or wasted a staggering amount of taxpayer money. 

Hummel notes the heavy tax burden that was imposed on the South after the war:

. . . the war-ravaged South suffered under some of the heaviest state and local taxation in proportion to wealth in U.S. history.  Tax rates in 1870 were three or four times what they had been in 1860, even though property values had declined significantly.  Many who had not lost their land already were now forced into bankruptcy.  At one point 15 percent of all taxable land in Mississippi was up for sale because of tax defaults. (Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men, p. 316)

Northern business interests took full advantage of the South’s subjugation during Reconstruction.  African-American scholars Franklin and Moss note that “Northern financiers and industrialists took advantage of the opportunity to impose their economic control on the South, and much of it endured for generations” (From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, p. 264).  Kenneth Davis concedes that Southern railroad companies were "burdened for decades by unfair rates and restrictive tariffs set by Northerners, who controlled the vast majority of railways and the legislatures that set rates" (Don't Know Much About the Civil War, pp. 425-426).

“But,” some will ask, “wasn’t slavery abolished under Reconstruction?”  Yes, slavery was abolished during the Johnson phase of Reconstruction when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified on December 18, 1865.  We can all agree that slavery was wrong and that it needed to be abolished.  But it was abolished in a way that was unfair and that caused enormous damage to the Southern economy.  Under the Thirteenth Amendment, Southern slaveholders received no compensation for their slaves.  The abolition of slavery without compensation cost the South about two billion dollars in capital, and it reduced real estate values by at least that amount.  In terms of modern monetary value, this represented a total loss of over sixty billion dollars.

Southern slaveholders should have been able to recover the cost of their slaves, just as Northern slaveholders had been able to do decades earlier.  Most Southern slaveholders treated their slaves humanely.  Many of these men believed they had a Christian duty to properly and respectfully care for their slaves.  One doesn’t have to condone human bondage to acknowledge that in most cases Southern slavery was administered humanely.  This isn’t the place for an extended discussion on slavery in the pre-war South, but it should be   pointed out that Southern slaves had a life expectancy that was comparable to urban populations and higher than in Europe, that 66-80 percent of slave marriages were not broken up, that nearly 40 percent of the marriages performed in Southern Episcopal churches between 1800 and 1860 were slave marriages, that even in the 1850s many slaves were able to buy their freedom because they were permitted to earn money, and that hundreds of thousands of slaves were converted to Christianity.  Granted, no matter how humanely slavery was administered, it was still wrong.  The point is that most Southern slaveholders did not deserve to lose their slaves without compensation, and that this unfair policy did great damage to the South’s economy.

Textbooks note the fact that Radical Reconstruction included civil rights reforms that enabled former slaves to vote.  However, they almost never mention information that sheds important light on those reforms.  If the Republicans had enacted and implemented these reforms in a legal, ethical manner, and if their motives for doing so had been noble, they would deserve nothing but praise.  But such was not the case.  Most Republican leaders supported the imposition of these reforms because they wanted to control and exploit the Southern states, not because they really cared about the fate of the ex-slaves.  Republican operatives manipulated, and sometimes even coerced, ex-slaves to vote Republican so the Republican Party could take over Southern state governments.  Once the Republicans achieved this goal, they proceeded to engage in large-scale corruption and oppression, which harmed blacks and whites alike.  A respected moderate Southern leader in Mississippi warned President Johnson that the Republican-created Freedmen’s Bureau was “demoralizing the negroes, robbing and defrauding them” (Felicity Allen, Jefferson Davis: Unconquerable Heart, Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1999, p. 472). 

Civil rights could and should have been advanced through legal, ethical means.  Yes, this would have taken longer, but it would have preserved the constitutional republic that our founding fathers gave us, and all Americans would have been better off in the long run.  Instead, in the name of imposing civil rights on the South, the Republicans, led by the Radicals, subverted the rule of law, permitted Republican operatives to engage in astonishing corruption, looted the South for years, poisoned race relations, illegally and unethically amended the Constitution, further destroyed the balance of power between the states and the federal government, and empowered the federal government to perform functions that the founding fathers did not want it to perform.

I would like to conclude this discussion on Reconstruction by quoting a substantial portion of President Johnson’s veto of the first Radical Reconstruction Act.  Before doing so, I should point out that the Radicals tried to remove Johnson from office because he opposed their Reconstruction program, even though he had staunchly supported the war and had opposed secession.  When Lincoln was assassinated, some Radicals said Lincoln’s death was “a godsend to the country” because they believed Johnson, unlike Lincoln, would help them ravage the South.   When the Radicals realized Johnson was not going to cooperate with them, they turned on him with a vengeance.  They impeached (i.e., indicted) him in the House and then put him on trial in the Senate, on the basis of utterly frivolous charges (Johnson was acquitted).  Amazingly, a few Radicals even tried to frame Johnson for Lincoln’s murder.  In any case, the Radicals overturned Johnson’s veto.  Therefore, their Reconstruction program became law and was imposed on ten of the eleven Southern states (the one exception was Tennessee).  Here is some of what President Johnson had to say about the first Reconstruction Act and why he refused to sign it:

I have examined the bill "to provide for the more efficient government of the rebel States" with the care and the anxiety which its transcendent importance is calculated to awaken. I am unable to give it my assent for reasons so grave that I hope a statement of them may have some influence on the minds of the patriotic and enlightened men with whom the decision must ultimately rest.   The bill places all the people of the ten States therein named under the absolute domination of military rulers. . . .

The bill . . . would seem to show upon its face that the establishment of peace and good order is not its real object. The fifth section declares that the preceding sections shall cease to operate in any State where certain events shall have happened. . . .  All these conditions must be fulfilled before the people of any of these States can be relieved from the bondage of military domination; but when they are fulfilled, then immediately the pains and penalties of the bill are to cease, no matter whether there be peace and order or not, and without any reference to the security of life or property. The excuse given for the bill in the preamble is admitted by the bill itself not to be real. The military rule which it establishes is plainly to be used, not for any purpose of order or for the prevention of crime, but solely as a means of coercing the people into the adoption of principles and measures to which it is known that they are opposed, and upon which they have an undeniable right to exercise their own judgment. . . .

I submit to Congress whether this measure is not in its whole character, scope, and object without precedent and without authority, in palpable conflict with the plainest provisions of the Constitution, and utterly destructive to those great principles of liberty and humanity for which our ancestors on both sides of the Atlantic have shed so much blood and expended so much treasure. . . . (Veto of the first Reconstruction Act, March 2, 1867)