Reconstruction Terms and Info

Freedmen's Bureau/ Oliver O. Howard

Abolitionists had long preached that slavery was a degrading institution. Now the emancipators were faced with the brutal reality that the freedmen were unskilled, unlettered, without property or money, and with scant knowledge of how to survive as free people. To cope with this problem throughout the conquered South, Congress created the Freedmen's Bureau on March 3, 1865. On paper at least, the bureau was intended to be a kind of primitive welfare agency. It was to provide food, clothing, medical care, and education both to freedmen and to white refugees. Heading the bureau was a warmly sympathetic friend of the blacks, Union general Oliver O. Howard, who later founded and served as president of Howard University in Washington, D.C.

10 percent plan

Abraham Lincoln believed that the Southern states had never legally withdrawn from the Union. Their formal restoration to the Union would therefore be simple. Accordingly, Lincoln in 1863 proclaimed his "10 percent" Reconstruction plan. It decreed that a state could be reintegrated into the Union when 10 percent of its voters in the presidential election of 1860 had taken an oath of allegiance to the United States and pledged to abide by emancipation. The next step would be formal erection of a state government. Lincoln would then recognize the regime.

Ben Wade/ Tenure of Office Act/ Edwin M. Stanton

Annoyed by the obstruction of the "drunken tailor" in the White House, the Republicans accused Johnson of maintaining there a harem of "dissolute women." Not content with curbing his authority, they decided to remove him altogether by constitutional processes. Under existing law the president pro tempore of the Senate, the radical "Bluff Ben" Wade of Ohio, would then become president. As an initial step, Congress in 1867 passed the Tenure of Office Act - as usual, over Johnson's veto. Contrary to precedent, the new law required the president to secure the consent of the Senate before he could remove his appointees once they had been approved by that body. One purpose was to freeze in to the cabinet the secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton, a holdover from the Lincoln administration. Although loyal to Johnson, he was secretly serving as a spy and informer for the radicals. Johnson provided the radicals with a pretext to begin impeachment proceedings when he abruptly dismissed Stanton early in 1868. The House of Representatives immediately voted 126 to 47 to impeach Johnson for "high crimes and misdemeanors," as required by the Constitution, charging him with various violations of the Tenure of Office Act.

Hiram Revels/ Blanche K. Bruce

BUT black men elected as delegates to the state constitutional conventions held the greater political authority. They formed the backbone of the black political community. At the conventions, they sat down with whites to hammer out new state constitutions, which most importantly provided for universal male suffrage. Though the subsequent elections produced no black governors or majorities in state senates, black political participation expanded during Reconstruction. Between 1868-1876, fourteen black congress men and two black senators, Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce, both of Mississippi, served in Washington, D.C. Blacks also served in state governments as lieutenant governors and representatives, and in local governments as mayors, magistrates, sheriffs, and justices of the peace.

Alaska

Johnson's administration achieved its most enduring success in the field of foreign relations. The Russians by 1867 were in a mood to sell the vast and chilly expanse of land now known as Alaska. They had already overextended themselves in North America, and they saw that in the likely even of another war with Britain, they probably would lose their defenseless northern province to the British. Alaska had been ruthlessly "furred out" and was a growing economic liability. The Russians were therefore quite eager to unload their "frozen asset" on the Americans, and they put out seductive feelers in Washington. They preferred the United States to any other purchaser, primarily because they wanted to strengthen further the Republic as a barrier against their ancient enemy, Britain.

Invisible Empire of the South/ Ku Klux Klan

Some Southern whites resorted to savage measures against "radical" rule. Many whites resented the success and ability of black legislators as much as they resented alleged "corruption." A number of secret organizations mushroomed forth, the most notorious of which was the "Invisible Empire of the South," or Ku Klux Klan, founded in Tennessee in 1866. In ghoulish tones one thirsty horseman would demand a bucket of water. Then, under pretense of drinking, he would pour it into a rubber attachment concealed beneath his mask and gown, smack his laps, and declare that this was the first water he had tasted since he was killed at the Battle of Shiloh. If fright did not produce the desired effect, force was employed.

Joint Committee on Reconstruction part 2

Still opposed to rapid restoration of the Southern states, the radicals wanted to keep them out as long as possible and apply federal power to bring about a drastic social and economic transformation in the South. But moderate Republicans, more attuned to time honored principles of states' rights and self government, recoiled from the full implications of the radical program. They preferred policies that restrained the states from abridging citizens' rights, rather than policies that directly involved the federal government in individual lives. The actual policies adopted by Congress showed the influence of both these schools of thought, through the moderates, as the majority faction, had the upper hand. And one thing both groups had come to agree on by 1867 was the necessity to enfranchise black voters, even if it took federal troops to do it.

Charles Sumner/Thaddeus Stevens/ Joint Committee On Reconstruction

The Republicans now had a veto proof Congress and virtually unlimited control of Reconstruction policy. But moderates and radicals still disagreed over the best course to pursue in the South. The radicals in the Senate were led by the courtly and principled idealist Charles Sumner, long since recovered from his prewar caning on the Senate floor, who tirelessly labored not only for black freedom but for racial equality. In the House the most powerful radical was Thaddeus Stevens, crusty and vindictive congressman from Pennsylvania. Seventy four years old in 1866, he was a curious figure, with a protruding lower lip, a heavy black wig covering his bald head, and a deformed foot. An unswerving friend of blacks, he had defended runaway slaves in court without fee and, before dying, insisted on burial in a black cemetery. His affectionate devotion to blacks was matched by his vitriolic hatred of rebellious white Southerners. A masterly parliamentarian with a razor sharp mind and withering wit, Stevens was a leading figure on the Joint (House-Senate) Committee on Reconstruction.

Freedmen's Bureau part 2/ Andrew Johnson

The bureau achieved its greatest successes in education. It taught an estimated 200,000 blacks how to read. Many former slaves had a passion for learning, partly because they wanted to close the gap between themselves and the whites and partly because they longed to read the Word of God. In one elementary class in North Carolina sat four generations of the same family, ranging from a six year old child to a seventy five year old grandmother. But in other areas, the bureau's accomplishments were meager or even mischievous. Although the bureau was authorized to settle former slaves on forty acre tracts confiscated from the Confederates, little land actually made it into blacks' hands. Instead local administrators often collaborated with planters in expelling blacks from towns and cajoling them into signing labor contracts to work for their former masters. Still the white south resented the bureau as a meddlesome federal interloper that threatened to upset white racial dominance. President Andrew Johnson repeatedly tried to kill it and it expired in 1872.

American Missionary Association

The church became the focus of black community life in the years following emancipation. As slaves, blacks had worshiped alongside whites, but now they formed their own churches pastured by their own ministers. The black churches grew robustly. These churches formed the bedrock of black community life, and they soon gave raise to other benevolent, fraternal, and mutual aid societies. All these organizations helped blacks protect their newly won freedom. Emancipation also meant education for many blacks. Learning to read and write had been a privilege generally denied to them under slavery. Freedmen wasted no time establishing societies for self improvement, which undertook to raise funds to purchase land, build schoolhouses, and hire teachers. Southern blacks soon found that the demand outstripped the supply of qualified black teachers. They accepted the aid of Northern white women sent by the American Missionary Association, who volunteered their services as teachers. They also turned to federal government for help.

Civil Rights Act of 1875/ Civil Rights Cases

The compromise bought peace at a price. Violence was averted by sacrificing the black freedmen in the South. With the Hayes-Tilden deal, the Republican Party quietly abandoned its commitment to racial equality. That commitment had been weakening in any case. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was in a sense the last feeble gasp of the congressional radical Republicans. The act supposedly guaranteed equal accommodations in public places and prohibited racial discrimination in jury selection, but the law was born toothless and stayed that way for nearly a century. The Supreme Court pronounced much of the act unconstitutional in the Civil Rights Cases (1883). The Court declared that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited only government violations of civil rights, not the denial of civil rights by individuals. Hayes clinched the bargain by withdrawing the last federal troops that were propping up carpetbag governments.

Tweed Ring/ Thomas Nast/ Samuel J. Tilden

The infamous Tweed Ring in New York City vividly displayed the ethics typical of the age. Burly "Boss" Tweed employed bribery, graft, and fraudulent elections to milk the metropolis of as much as $200 million. Honest citizens were cowed into silence. Protesters found their tax assessments raised. Tweed's luck finally ran out. The New York Times secured damning evidence in 1871 and courageously published it, though offered $5 million not to do so. Gifted cartoonist Thomas Nast ridiculed Tweed mercilessly, after rejecting a heavy bribe to discontinue. New York attorney Samuel J. Tilden headed the prosecution, gaining fame and that later paved the path to his presidential nomination. Unbailed and unwept, Tweed died behind bars.

Benjamin Butler

The radical-led Senate now sat as a court to try Johnson on the impeachment charges. The House conducted the prosecution. The trial aroused intense public interest and proved to be the biggest show of 1868. Johnson kept his dignity and sobriety and maintained a discreet silence. His battery of attorneys argued that the president, convinced that the Tenure of Office Act was unconstitutional, had fired Stanton merely to put a test case before the Supreme Court. House prosecutors, including Benjamin F. Butler and Thaddeus Stevens, had a harder time building a compelling case for impeachment. On May 16, 1868, the day for the first voting the Senate, the tension was electric. By a margin of only one vote, the radicals failed to muster the two-thirds majority for Johnson's removal. Seven independent-minded Republican senators, putting country above party, voted "not guilty."

Black Codes part 3

These oppressive laws mocked the ideal of freedom. The Black Codes imposed terrible burdens on the unfettered blacks. The worst features of the Black Codes would eventually be repealed, but their revocation could not by itself lift the liberated blacks into economic independence. Lacking capital thousands of impoverished former slaves slipped into the status of sharecropper farmers, as did many landless whites. Luckless sharecroppers gradually sank into a morass of virtual peonage and remained there for generations. Formerly slaves to masters, countless blacks as well as poorer whites in effect became slaves to the soil and to their creditors. The Black Codes made an ugly impression in the North.

Defining black freedom part 2

Though some blacks initially responded to news of their emancipation with uncertainty and suspicion, they soon celebrated their newfound freedom. Many took new names in place of the ones given by their masters and demanded that whites formally address them as "Mr." or "Mrs." Others abandoned the coarse cottons that had been their only clothing as slaves and sought silks, satins, and other finery. Though many whites perceived such behavior as insubordinate, they were forced to recognize the realities of emancipation. Emancipation thus strengthened the black family, and many newly freed men and women formalized "slave marriages" for personal and pragmatic reasons, including the desire to make their children legal heirs. Other blacks Let their former masters to work in towns and cities, where existing black communities provided protection and mutual assistance. Whole communities sometimes moved together in search of opportunity. From 1878-1880, some twenty five thousand blacks from Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi surged in a mass exodus to Kansas. The westward flood of these "Expodusters" was stemmed only when steamboat captains refused to transport more black migrants across the Mississippi River.

Force Acts of 1870 and 1871

persisted in their "upstart" ways were flogged, mutilated, or even murdered. In one Louisiana parish in 1868, the whites in two days killed or wounded two hundred victims; a pile of twenty five bodies was found half buried in the woods. The Klan became a refuge for numerous bandits and cutthroats. Congress, outraged by this night-riding lawlessness, passed the harsh Force Acts of 1870 and 1871. Federal troops were able to stamp out much of the "lash law," but by this time the Invisible Empire had already done its work of intimidation. White resistance undermined attempts to empower the blacks politically. Among various underhanded schemes were the literacy tests, unfairly administered by whites to the advantage of illiterate whites. In the eyes of the white Southerners, the goal of white supremacy fully justified these dishonorable devices.

Civil Rights Bill

A clash between president and Congress was now inevitable. It exploded into the open in February 1866, when the president vetoed a bill (later re-passed) extending the life of the controversial Freedmen's Bureau. Aroused, the Republicans swiftly struck back. In March 1866 they passed the Civil Rights Bill, which conferred on blacks the privilege of American citizenship and struck at the Black Codes. President Johnson vetoed this forward looking measure on constitutional grounds, but in April 1866 congressmen steamrolled it over his veto- something they repeatedly did henceforth. The hapless president, dubbed "Sir Veto" had his presidential wings clipped, as Congress increasingly assumed the dominant role in running the government.

The Freedman's Savings and Trust Company

A paralyzing economic broke out in 1873. Overreaching promoters had laid more railroad track, sunk more mines than existing markets could bear. Bankers, in turn, had made too many imprudent loans to finance those enterprises. When profits failed to materialize, loans went unpaid, and the whole credit based house of cards fluttered down. More than fifty thousand businesses went bankrupt. The Freedman's Savings and Trust Company had made unsecured loans to several companies that went under. Black depositors who had entrusted over $7 million to the bank lost their savings, and black economic development and black confidence in savings institutions went down with it.

Reconstruction Act/ Military Reconstruction

Against a backdrop of vicious and bloody race riots that had erupted in several Southern cities, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act on March 2, 1867. Supplemented by later measures, this drastic legislation divided the South into five military districts, each commanded by a Union general and policed by blue clad soldiers, about twenty thousand all told. The act also temporarily disfranchised tens of thousands of former Confederates.Congress additionally laid down stringent conditions for the readmission of the seceded states. The wayward states were required to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, giving the former slaves their rights as citizens. The bitterest pill of all to white Southerners was the stipulation that they guarantee in their state constitutions full suffrage for their former adult male slaves. Yet the act, reflecting moderate sentiment, stopped short of giving the freedmen land or education at federal expense. The overriding purpose of the moderates was to create an electorate in Southern states that would vote those states back into the Union on acceptable terms and thus free the federal government from direct responsibility for the protection of black rights. As later events would demonstrate, this approach proved woefully inadequate to the cause of justice for blacks.

Black Codes

Among the first acts of the new Southern regimes sanctioned by Johnson was the passage of the Black Codes. These laws were designed to regulate the affairs of the emancipated blacks, much as the slave statues had done in pre- Civil War days. Mississippi passed the first such law in November 1865, and other Southern states soon followed suit. The Black Codes varied in severity from state to state (Mississippi's was the harshest and Georgia's the most lenient), but they had much in common. The Black Codes aimed to ensure a stable and subservient labor force. The crushed Cotton Kingdom could not rise from its weeds until the fields were once again put under hoe and plow - and many whites wanted to make sure that they retained the tight control they had exercised over black filed hands and plow drivers in the days of slavery.

Deflation/inflation wtf.

By 1868, the Treasury had already withdrawn $100 million of the "battle born currency" from circulation, and "hard money" people everywhere looked forward to its complete disappearance. But now afflicted agrarian and debtor groups - cheap money supporters - clamored for a reissuance of the greenbacks. With a crude but essentially accurate grasp of monetary theory, they reasoned that more money meant cheaper money and, hence, rising prices and easier to pay debts. Creditors, of course, advocated precisely the opposite policy. They had no desire to see the money they had loaned repaid in depreciated dollars. They wanted deflation, not inflation.

Liberal Republican Party/ Horace Greeley

By 1872 a powerful wave of disgust with Grantism was beginning to build up throughout the nation, even before some of the worst scandals had been exposed. Reform-minded citizens banded together to form the Liberal Republican Party. Voicing the slogan "Turn the Rascals Out," they urged purification of the Washington administration as well as an end to military Reconstruction. The Liberal Republicans muffed their chance when their Cincinnati nominating convention astounded the country by nominating Horace Greely for the presidency. Although Greely was the fearless editor of the New York Tribune, he was emotional, petulant, and notoriously unsound in his political judgments. More astonishing still was the action of the office-hungry Democrats, who foolishly proceeded to endure Greeley's candidacy. In swallowing Greeley the Democrats "ate crow" in large gulps, for the eccentric editor had long blasted them as traitors. Yet Greeley pleased the Democrats, North and South, when he pleaded for clasping hand across "the bloody chasm." The Republicans dutifully renominated Grant. The voters were thus presented with a choice between two candidates who had made their careers in fields other than politics and who were both eminently unqualified, by temperament and lifelong training, for high political office.

Defining Black Freedom

Confusion abounded in the South about the precise meaning of "freedom" for blacks. Emancipation took effect haltingly and unevenly in different parts of the conquered Confederacy. As Union armies marched in and out of various localities, many blacks found themselves emancipated and then re-enslaved. Other planters resisted emancipation more legalistically, stubbornly protesting that slavery was lawful until state legislatures or the Supreme Court declared otherwise. The variety of responses to emancipation illustrated the sometimes startling complexity of the master-slave relationship. Loyalty to the plantation master prompted some slaves to resist the liberating Union armies, while other slaves' pent up bitterness burst forth violently on the day of liberation. Many newly emancipated slaves joined Union troops in pillaging their master's possessions. All masters were eventually forced to recognize their slaves' permanent freedom. The once-commanding planter would assemble his former human chattels in front of the porch of the "big house" and announce their liberty

Jim Crow Laws/ Plessy v. Ferguson

Daily discrimination against blacks grew increasingly oppressive. What had started as the informal separation of blacks and whites in the immediate postwar years developed by the 1890s into systematic state level legal codes of segregation known as Jim Crow Laws. Southern states also enacted literacy requirements, voter registration laws, and poll taxes to ensure full scale disfranchisement of the South's black population. The Supreme Court validated the South's segregationist social order in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). It ruled that "separate but equal" facilities were constitutional under the "equal protection" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Grand Army of the Republic (GAR)/ Patronage/ Roscoe Conkling/ Half Breeds/ James G. Blaine

Democrats had a solid electoral base in the South and in the northern industrial cities, teeming with immigrants and controlled by well-oiled political machines. Republican strength lay largely in the Midwest and the rural and small town northeast. Grateful freedmen in the South continued to vote Republican in significant numbers. Another important bloc of Republican ballots came from the members of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) - a politically potent fraternal organization of several hundred thousand Union veterans of the Civil War. The lifeblood of both parties was patronage - disbursing jobs by bucketful in return for votes, kickbacks, and party service. Infighting over patronage beset the Republican Party in the 1870s. A "Stalwart" action, led by the handsome and imperious Roscoe "Lord Roscoe" Conkling, US senator from New York; unblushingly embraced the time honored system of swapping civil service jobs for votes. Opposed to the Conklingites, were the so called Half Breeds, who flirted coyly with civil service reform, but whose real quarrel with the Stalwarts was over who should grasp the ladle that dished out the spoils. The champion of the Half-Breeds was James G. Blaine of Maine, radiantly personable congressmen with an elastic conscience. Conkling and Blaine succeeded only in stalemating each other and deadlocking their party.

Black Codes part 2

Dire penalties were therefore imposed by the codes on blacks who "jumped" their labor contracts, which usually committed them to work for the same employer for one year, and generally at pittance wages. Violators could be made to forfeit back wages or could be forcibly dragged back to work by a paid "Negro-catcher." In Mississippi the capture freedmen could be fined and then hired out to pay their fines - an arraignment that closely resembled slavery itself. The codes also sought to restore as nearly as possible the pre-emancipation system of race relations. Freedom was legally recognized such as the right to marry. But all the codes forbade a black to serve on a jury; some even barred blacks from renting or leasing land. A black could be punished for "idleness" by being sentenced to work on a chain gang. Nowhere were blacks allowed to vote.

Ohio Idea

Expectant Democrats condemned military Reconstruction but could agree on little else. Wealthy eastern delegates demanded a plank promising that federal war bonds be redeemed in gold - even though many of the bonds had been purchased with badly depreciated paper greenbacks. Poorer mid-western delegates answered with the "Ohio Idea," which called for redemption in greenbacks. Debt burdened Democrats thus hoped to keep more money in circulation and keep interest rates lower. This dispute introduced a bitter contest over monetary policy that continued to convulse the Republic until the century's end.

Democratic vs Republican Similarities

Few significant economic issues separated the major parties. Democrats and Republicans saw very nearly eye to eye on questions like the tariff and civil service reform, and majorities in both parties substantially agreed even on the much debated currency question. Yet despite their rough agreement on these national matters, the two parties were competitive with each other. They were tightly and efficiently organized, and they commanded fierce loyalty from their members. How can this apparent paradox of political consensus and partisan fervor be explained? The answer lies in the sharp ethnic and cultural differences in the membership of the two parties - in distinctions of style and tone, and especially of religious sentiment. Republican voters tended to adhere to those creeds that traced their lineage to Puritanism. They stressed strict codes of personal morality and believed that government should play a role in regulating both the economic and the moral affairs of society. Democrats, among whom immigrant Lutherans and Roman Catholics figured heavily, were more likely to adhere to faiths that took a less stern view of human weakness. Their religions professed toleration of differences in an imperfect world, and they spurned government efforts to impose a single moral standard on the entire society. These differences in temperament and religious values often produced raucous political contests at the local level, where issues like prohibition and education loomed large.

Electoral Count Act

Frantically laboring statesman gradually hammered out an agreement in the Henry Clay tradition - the Compromise of 1877. The election deadlock itself was to be broken by the Electoral Count Act, which passed Congress early in 1877. It set up an electoral commission consisting of fifteen men selected from the Senate, the House, and the Supreme Court. In February 1877, about a month before Inauguration Day, the Senate and House met together in an electric atmosphere to settle the dispute. The roll of the states was tolled off alphabetically. When Florida was reached the disputed documents were referred to the electoral commission, which sat in a nearby chamber. After prolonged discussion the members agreed, by the partisan vote of eight Republicans to seven Democrats, to accept the Republican returns.

Contraction/ Redemption Day/ Greenback Labor Party

Hard-money Republicans resisted this scheme and counted on Grant to hold the line against it. He did not disappoint them. The Treasury began to accumulate gold stocks against the appointed day for resumption of metallic money payments. Coupled with the reduction of greenbacks, this policy was called "contraction." It had a noticeable deflationary effect- the amount of money per capita in circulation actually decreased. Contraction probably worsened the impact of the depression. But the new policy did restore the government's credit rating, and it brought the embattled greenbacks up to their full face value. When Redemption Day came in 1870, few greenback holders bothered to exchange the lighter and more convenient bills for gold. The Republican hard-money policy helped elect a Democratic House of Representatives in 1874, and in 1878 it spawned the Greenback Labor Party, which polled over a million votes and elected fourteen members o Congress.

William Seward

In 1867 Secretary of State William Seward, an ardent expansionist, signed a treaty with Russia that transferred Alaska to the United States for the bargain price of $7.2 million. But Seward's enthusiasm for these frigid wastes was not shared by his ignorant or uniformed countrymen, who jeered at "Seward's Icebox." The American people, still preoccupied with Reconstruction and other internal vexations, were economy minded and anti-expansionist. Then why did Congress and the American public sanction the purchase? For one thing Russia had been conspicuously friendly to the North during the recent Civil War. Americans did not feel that they could offend their great and good friend by rejecting the offer. Besides, the territory was rumored to be teeming with furs, fish, and gold, and it might yet "pan out" profitably - as it later did with natural resources, including oil and gas.

Whiskey Ring/ William Belknap

In 1874-1875 the sprawling Whiskey Ring robbed the Treasury of millions in excise-tax revenues. "Let no guilty man escape," declared President Grant. But when his own private secretary turned up among the culprits, he volunteered a written statement to the jury that helped pardon the thief. Further rottenness in the Grant administration came to light in 1876, forcing Secretary of War William Belknap to resign after pocketing bribes from suppliers to the Indian reservations. Grant, ever loyal to his crooked conies, accepted Belknap's resignation with "great regret."

bail bond/ general amnesty act

In the campaign that followed, regular Republicans denounced Greely as an atheist, a vegetarian, and a cosigner of Jefferson Davis's bail bond. Democrats derided Grant as a drunkard and a swindler. But the regular Republicans, chanting "Grant us another term," pulled the president through. Liberal Republican agitation frightened the regular Republicans into cleaning their own house before they were thrown out of it. The Republican Congress in 1872 passed a general amnesty act, removing political disabilities from all but some five hundred former Confederate leaders. Congress also moved to reduce high Civil War tariffs and to fumigate the Grant administration with mild civil service reform.

Wade-Davis Bill

Lincoln's proclamation provoked a sharp reaction in Congress, where Republicans feared the restoration of the planter aristocracy to power and the possible re-enslavement of blacks. Republicans therefore rammed through Congress in 1864 the Wade-Davis Bill. It required that 50 percent of a state's voters take the oath of allegiance and demanded stronger safeguards or emancipation than Lincoln's as the price of readmission. Lincoln "pocket-vetoed" this bill by refusing to sign it after Congress had adjourned. Republicans were outraged. They refused to seat delegates from Louisiana after that state had reorganized its government in accordance with Lincoln's 10 percent plan in 1864.

Congressional Reconstruction

Looking to the future, the Republicans were alarmed to realize that a restored South would be stronger than ever in national politics. Before the war a black slave had counted as three fifths of a population in apportioning congressional representation. Now the slave was five fifths of a person. Eleven Southern states had seceded and been subdued by force of arms. But now, owing to full counting of free blacks, the rebel states were entitled to twelve more votes in Congress, and twelve more presidential electoral votes, than they had previously enjoyed. Republicans had a good reason to fear that ultimately they might be elbowed aside. Southerners might join hands with Democrats in the North and win control of Congress or maybe even the White House. If this happened, they could perpetuate the Black Codes, virtually re-enslaving the blacks. They could dismantle the economic program of the Republican Party by lowering tariffs, rerouting the transcontinental railroad, repealing the free-farm Homestead Act, possibly even repudiating the national debt. President Johnson thus deeply disturbed the congressional Republicans when he announced on December 6, 1865, that the recently rebellious states had satisfied his conditions and that in his view the Union was now restored.

Horatio Seymour

Midwestern delegates got the platform but not the candidate. The nominee, former New York governor Horatio Seymour, scuttled the Democrats' faint hope for success by repudiating the Ohio Idea. Republicans whipped up enthusiasm for Grant by energetically "waving the bloody shirt" - that is, reviving gory memories of the Civil War - which became for the first time, a prominent feature of a presidential campaign. "Vote as You Shot" was a powerful Republican slogan aimed at Union army veterans. Grant won. Most white voters apparently supported Seymour, and the balances of three still unreconstructed southern states (Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia) were not counted at all. An estimated 500,000 former slaves gave Grant his margin of victory. To remain in power, the Republican Party somehow had to continue to control the South - and to keep the ballot in the hands of the grateful freedmen.

Military Reconstruction part 2/

Military Reconstruction of the South not only usurped certain functions of the president as commander in chief but set up a martial regime of dubious legality. The Supreme Court had already ruled in the case Ex parte Milligan (1866), that military tribunals could not try civilians, even during wartime, in areas where the civil courts were open. Peacetime military rule seemed starkly contrary to the spirit of the Constitution. But the circumstances were extraordinary in the Republic's history, and for the time being the Supreme Court avoided offending the Republican Congress. Prodded into line by federal bayonets, the Southern states got on with the task of constitution making. By 1870 all o them had reorganized their government and had been accorded full rights. The hated "blue bellies" remained until the new Republican regimes - usually called "radical" regimes- appeared to be firmly entrenched. Yet when the federal troops finally left a state, its government swiftly passed back into the hands of the white "Redeemers", or "Home Rule" regimes, which were inevitably Democratic. Finally in 1877, the last federal muskets were removed from state politics, and the "solid" Democratic South changed.

Andrew Johnson

No citizen, not even Lincoln, has ever reached to the White House from humble beginnings. Born to impoverished parents in North Carolina and early orphaned, Johnson never attended school but was apprenticed to a tailor at age ten. Ambitious to get ahead, he taught himself to read, and later his wife taught him to write and do simple arithmetic. Like many another self made men, he was inclined to over praise his maker. Johnson early became active in politics in Tennessee, where he had moved when seventeen years old. He shone as an impassioned champion of poor whites against the planter aristocrats, although he himself ultimately owned a few slaves. Elected to Congress, he attracted much favorable attention in the North (but not in the South), when he refused to secede with his own state. After Tennessee was partially "redeemed" by Union armies, he was appointed war governor and served courageously in an atmosphere of danger.

Fisk/Gould Black Friday

Notorious in the financial world were two millionaire partners, "Jubilee Jim" Fisk and Jay Gould. The corpulent and unscrupulous Fisk provided the "brass", while the undersized and cunning Gould provided the brains. The crafty pair concocted a plot in 1869 to corner the gold market. Their game would work only if the federal Treasury refrained from selling gold. The conspirators worked on President Grant directly and also through his brother in law, who received $25,000 for his participation. On "Black Friday" (September 24, 1869), Fisk and Gould madly bid the price of gold skyward, while scores of honest businesspeople were driven to the wall. The bubble finally broke when the Treasury, contrary to Grant's supposed assurances, was compelled to release gold. A congressional probe concluded that Grant had done nothing crooked, though he had acted stupidly and indiscreetly.

Andrew Johnson part 2

Policy exigency next thrust Johnson into vice presidency. Lincoln's Union Party in 1864 needed to attract support from the War Democrats and other pro-Southern elements, and Johnson, a democrat, seemed to be the ideal man. Unfortunately, he appeared at the vice presidential inaugural ceremonies the following March in a scandalous condition. He had been afflicted with typhoid fever, and although not known as a heavy drinker, he was urged by his friends to take a stiff bracer of whiskey. This he did - with unfortunate results. Johnson was no doubt a man of parts - unpolished parts. He was intelligent, able, forceful, and gifted with homespun honesty. Steadfastly devoted to duty and to the people, he was a champion of states' rights and the Constitution. He would often present a copy of the document to visitors. He was Southerner who did not understand the North, a Tennessean who had earned the distrust of the South, a Democrat who had never been accepted by the Republicans, a president who had never been elected to the office, he was not at home in a Republican White House.

Impeachment/ Ben Wade

Several factors shaped the outcome. Fears of creating a destabilizing precedent played a role, as did principled opposition to abusing the constitutional mechanism of checks and balances. Political considerations also figured conspicuously. As the vice presidency remained vacant under Johnson, his successor would have been radical republican Ben Wade, the president pro tempore of the Senate. Wade was disliked by many members of the business community for his high tariff, soft money, pro-labor, and was distrusted by moderate Republicans. Meanwhile, Johnson indicated through his attorney that he would stop obstructing the Republican policies in return for remaining in office. Radicals were infuriated by their failure to muster a two-thirds majority for Johnson's removal. But the nation accepted the verdict with good temper that did credit to its political maturity. In a less stable republic, an armed uprising might have erupted against the president. The nation thus narrowly avoided a dangerous precedent that would have gravely weakened one of the three branches of federal government.

Johnson's presidential reconstruction

Some of the radicals were secretly pleased when Lincoln was assassinated for the martyred president had shown tenderness toward the South. Johnson, who shared their hatred for the planter aristocrats, would presumably also share their desire to reconstruct the South with a rod of iron. Johnson soon disillusioned them. He agreed with Lincoln that the seceded states had never legally been outside the Union. Thus he recognized several o Lincoln's 10 percent governments, and on May 29, 1865, he issued his own Reconstruction proclamation. It disfranchised certain leading Confederates, including those with taxable property worth more than $20,000, though they might petition him for personal pardons. It called for special state conventions, which were required to repeal the ordinances of secession, repudiate all Confederate debts, and ratify the slave freeing Thirteenth Amendment. States that complied with these conditions would be swiftly readmitted to the Union.

Union League

Southern black men seized the initiative and began to organize politically. Their primary vehicle became the Union League, originally a pro-Union organization based in the North. Assisted by Northern blacks, freedmen turned the League into a network of political clubs that educated members in their civic duties and campaigned or Republican candidates. The league's mission soon expanded to include building black churches and schools, representing black grievances before local employers and government, and recruiting militias to protect black communities from white retaliation. Though African American women did not obtain the right to vote, they too assumed new political roles. Black women faithfully attended the parades and rallies common in black communities during the early years of Reconstruction and helped assemble mass meetings in the newly constructed black churches. They even showed up at the constitutional conventions held throughout the South in 1867, monitoring the proceedings and participating in informal votes outside the convention halls.

Alexander Stephens/ Congressional Reconstruction

Th congressional delegations from the newly reconstituted Southern states presented themselves in the Capitol in December 1865. To the shock and disgust of the Republicans, many former Confederate leaders were on hand to claim their seats. The appearance of these ex rebels was a natural but costly blunder. Voters of the South, seeking able representatives, had turned instinctively to their experienced statesmen. But most of the Southern leaders were tainted by active association with the "lost cause." Among them were four former Confederate generals, five colonels, and various members of the Richmond cabinet and Congress. Worst of all, there was the shrimpy but brainy Alexander Stephens, ex-vice president of the Confederacy, still under indictment for treason.

Resumption Act of 1875

The "hard-money" advocates carried the day. In 1874 they persuaded a confused Grant to veto a bill to print more paper money. They scored another victory in the Resumption Act of 1875, which pledged the government further withdrawal of greenbacks from circulation and to the redemption of all paper currency in gold at face value, beginning in 1879. Debtors now looked for relief to another precious metal, silver. The "scared white metal" had received a raw deal. In the early 1870s, the Treasury had stubbornly maintained that an ounce of silver was worth only one sixteenth as much as an ounce of gold, though open market prices for silver were higher. Silver miners thus stopped offering their shiny product for sale to the federal mints. With no silver flowing into the federal funds, Congress formally dropped the coinage of silver dollars in 1873. However, new silver discovered later in 1870s shot production up and forced silver prices down. The demand for the coinage of more silver was nothing more or less than another scheme to promote inflation.

Sharecropping/ Tenant farmers

The Democratic South speedily solidified and swiftly suppressed the now-friendless blacks. Reconstruction officially ended. Shamelessly relying on fraud and intimidation, white Democrats (Redeemers) resumed political power in the South and exercised it ruthlessly. Blacks who tried to assert their rights faced unemployment, eviction, and physical harm. Blacks (As well as poor whites) were forced into sharecropping and tenant farming. Former slaves often found themselves at the mercy of former masters who were now their landlords and creditors. Through the"crop-lien" system, storekeepers extended credit to small farmers for food and supplies and in return took a lien on their harvests. Shrewd merchants manipulated the system so that farmers remained perpetually in debt to them. For generations to come, southern blacks were condemned to eke out a threadbare living under conditions scarcely better than slavery.

Fourteenth Amendment

The Republicans now undertook to rivet the principles of the Civil Rights Bill into the Constitution as the Fourteenth Amendment. They feared that the Southerners might one day win control of Congress and repeal the hated law. The proposed amendment, as approved by Congress and sent to the states in June 1866, was sweeping. It (1) conferred civil rights, including citizenship but excluding the franchise, on the freedmen; (2) reduced proportionately the representation of a state in Congress and in the Electoral College if it denied blacks the ballot; (3) disqualified from federal and state office former Confederates who as federal officeholders had sworn "to support the Constitution of the United States"; and (4) guaranteed the federal debt, while repudiating all Confederate debts. The radical action was disappointed that the Fourteenth Amendment did not grant the right to vote, but all Republicans agreed that no state should be welcomed back into the Union fold without first ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet President Johnson advised the Southern states to reject it, and all of the "sinful eleven," except Tennessee, defiantly spurned the amendment.

Consequences of Wade-Davis Bill

The controversy surrounding the Wade- Davis Bill had revealed deep differences between the president and Congress. Unlike Lincoln, many in Congress insisted that the seceders had indeed left the Union - had indeed "committed suicide" as republican states - and had therefore forfeited all their rights. They could be readmitted only as "conquered provinces" on such conditions as Congress should decree. This episode further revealed differences among Republicans. Two factions were emerging. The majority moderate group tended to agree with Lincoln that the seceded states should be restored to the Union as simply and swiftly as reasonable - though on Congress's terms, not the president's. The minority radical group believed that the South should atone more painfully for its sins. Before the South should be restored, the radicals wanted its social structure uprooted, the planters punished, and the newly emancipated blacks protected by federal power.

"Swing 'round the circle"

The crucial congressional elections of 1866 - more crucial than some presidential elections - were fast approaching. Johnson was naturally eager to escape from the clutch of Congress by securing a majority favorable to his soft-on-the-South policy. Invited to dedicate a Chicago monument to Stephen A. Douglas, he undertook to speak at various cities en route in support of his views. Johnson's famous "swing 'round the circle," beginning in the late summer of 1866, was a serious comedy of errors. The president delivered a series of "give 'em hell" speeches, in which he accused the radicals in Congress of having planned large-scale anti-black riots and murder in the South. As he spoke, hecklers hurled insults at him. Reverting to his stump speaking days in Tennessee, he shouted back angry retorts, amid cries "You be damned" and "Don't get mad, Andy." The dignity of his high office sank to a new low, as the old charges of drunkenness were revived. As a vote getter, Johnson was highly successful - for the opposition. His inept speechmaking heightened the cry "Stand by Congress" against the "Tailor of the Potomac." When the ballots were counted, the Republicans had rolled up more than a two thirds majority in both houses of Congress.

Credit Mobilier Scandal

The easy going Grant was first tarred by the Credit Mobilier scandal, which erupted in 1872. Union Pacific Railroad insiders had formed the Credit Mobilier construction company and then cleverly hired themselves at inflated prices to build the railroad line, earning dividends as high as 348 percent. Fearing that Congress might blow the whistle, the company furtively distributed shares of its valuable stock to key congressmen. A newspaper expose and congressional investigation of the scandal led to the formal censure of two congressmen and the revelation that the vice president of the United States had accepted payments from Credit Mobilier

Whitewashed rebels/ Congressional Reconstruction

The presence of these "whitewashed rebels" infuriated the Republicans in Congress. The war had been fought to restore the Union, but on these kinds of terms. The Republicans were in no hurry to embrace their former enemies in the chambers of the Capitol. While the South had been "out" from 1861-1865, the Republicans in Congress had enjoyed a relatively free hand. They passed much legislation that favored the North, such as the Morrill Tariff, the Pacific Railroad Act, and the Homestead Act. Now many Republicans balked at giving up this political advantage. On the first day of the congressional session, December 4, 1865, they banged shut the door in the face of the newly elected Southern delegations.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton/ Susan B Anthony/ The Women's Loyal League

The passage of three Reconstruction-era Amendments delighted former abolitionists but deeply disappointed advocates of women's rights. Women had played a prominent part in the prewar abolitionist movement and had often pointed out that both women and blacks lacked basic civil rights, especially the crucial right to vote. The struggle for black freedom and the crusade for women's rights, therefore, were on and the same in the eyes of many women. Yet during the war, feminist leaders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony had temporarily suspended their own demands and worked wholeheartedly for the cause of black emancipation. The Women's Loyal League had gathered nearly 400,000 signatures on petitions asking Congress to pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery. Now, with the war ended and the Thirteenth Amendment passed, feminist leaders believed that their time had come. They reeled with shock, when the wording of the Fourteenth Amendment, which defined equal national citizenship, for the first time, inserted the word male into the Constitution in referring to a citizen's right to vote. Both Stanton and Anthony campaigned actively against the Fourteenth Amendment despite the pleas of Frederick Douglass, who long supported woman suffrage but believed that this was "the Negro's hour." When the Fifteenth Amendment proposed to prohibit denial of the vote on the basis of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude," Stanton and Anthony wanted the word sex added to the list. They lost this battle, too. Fifty years would pass before the Constitution granted women the right to vote.

Fifteenth Amendment

The radical Republicans were still worried. The danger loomed that once the unrepentant states were readmitted, they would amend their constitutions so as to withdraw the ballot from the blacks. The only ironclad safeguard was to incorporate black suffrage in the federal Constitution. This goal was finally achieved by the Fifteenth Amendment, passed by Congress in 1869 and ratified by the required number of states in 1870

Scalawags, Carpetbaggers, Redeemer Governments

The sight of former slaves holding office deeply offended their onetime masters, who lashed out with fury at the freedmen's white allies, labeling them "scalawags" and "carpetbaggers." The so-called scalawags were Southerners, often former Unionists and Whigs. The former Confederates accused them of plundering the treasuries of the Southern states through their political influence in the radical governments. The carpetbaggers, on the other hand, were supposedly sleazy Northerners who had packed all their worldly goods into a carpetbag suitcase at war's end and had come south to seek personal power and profit. In fact, most were former Union soldiers and Northern businessmen and professionals who wanted to play a role in modernizing the "New South." How well did the radical regimes rule? The radical legislatures passed much desirable legislation and introduced many badly needed reforms. For the first time in Southern history, steps were taken toward establishing adequate public schools. Tax systems were streamlined; public works were launched; and property rights were guaranteed to women. Many welcome reforms were retained by the all white "Redeemer" governments that later returned to power.

Rutherford B Hayes/ The Great Unknown/ Samuel J. Tilden

With Grant out of the running and with the Conklingites and Blaineites neutralizing each other, the Republicans turned to a compromise candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, who was obscure enough to be dubbed "The Great Unknown." His foremost qualification was the fact that he hailed from the electorally doubtful but potent state of Ohio, where he served three terms as governor. So crucial were the "swing" votes of Ohio in the cliffhanging presidential contests of the day that the state produced more than its share of presidential candidates. Samuel J. Tilden was the Democratic nominee, who had risen to fame as the man who bagged Boss Tweed. Campaigning against Republican scandal, Tilden racked up 184 electoral votes of the needed 185, with 20 votes in four states - three of them in the South. Both parties scurried to send "visiting statesmen" to the contested southern states of Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida. All three disputed states submitted two sets of returns, one Democratic and one Republican. The Constitution merely specifies that the electoral returns from the states shall be sent to Congress, and in the presence of the House and Senate, they shall be opened by the president of the Senate. But who should count them? The Constitution was silent. If counted by the president of the Senate (a Republican), the Republican returns would be selected. If counted by the Speaker of the House (a Democratic), the Democratic returns would be chosen. How could this be resolved?