Chapter 15.4 Apush Foner

1890s

Blacks continued to vote and, in some states, hold office into the... But as a distinct era of national history—when Republicans controlled much of the South, blacks exercised significant political power, and the federal government accepted the responsibility for protecting the fundamental rights of all American citizens—Reconstruction had come to an end.

assaulted and murdered

Blacks were... for refusing to give way to whites on city sidewalks, using "insolent" language, challenging end-of-year contract settlements, and attempting to buy land.

defensive

By the mid-1870s, Reconstruction was clearly on the...

Horace Greeley

Calling themselves Liberal Republicans, they nominated ..., editor of the New York Tribune, for president.

discussions of freedom

Even while it lasted, however, Reconstruction revealed some of the tensions inherent in nineteenth-century...

campaign of 1876

Events in South Carolina directly affected the outcome of the presidential... To succeed Grant, the Republicans nominated Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio. Democrats chose as his opponent New York's governor, Samuel J. Tilden. By this time, only South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana remained under Republican control.

thirty

In Meridian, Mississippi, in 1871, some... blacks were murdered in cold blood, along with a white Republican judge.

openly assaulted and murdered

In Mississippi, in 1875, white rifle clubs drilled in public and... Republicans. When Governor Adelbert Ames, a Maine-born Union general, frantically appealed to the federal government for assistance, President Grant responded that the northern public was "tired out" by southern problems.

eleven murders and hundreds of whippings

In York County, South Carolina, where nearly the entire white male population joined the Klan (and women participated by sewing the robes and hoods Klansmen wore as disguises), the organization committed...

1875 and 1876

In contrast to the Klan's activities—conducted at night by disguised men—the violence of... took place in broad daylight, as if to underscore Democrats' conviction that they had nothing to fear from Washington.

was not improving

Many poor whites who had initially supported the Republican Party turned against it when it became clear that their economic situation...

700,000

Many rank and file Democrats, unable to bring themselves to vote for Greeley, stayed at home on election day. As a result, Greeley suffered a devastating defeat by Grant, whose margin of more than... popular votes was the largest in a nineteenth-century presidential contest. But Greeley's campaign placed on the northern agenda the one issue on which the Liberal reformers and the Democrats could agree—a new policy toward the South.

Republican rule

Opponents launched a campaign of violence in an effort to end... Their actions posed a fundamental challenge both for Reconstruction governments in the South and for policymakers in Washington, D.C.

8-7 majority

Republicans enjoyed an... on the commission, and to no one's surprise, the members decided by that margin that Hayes had carried the disputed southern states and had been elected president. Even as the commission deliberated, however, behind-the-scenes negotiations took place between leaders of the two parties.

weakened

Resurgent racism offered a convenient explanation for the alleged "failure" of Reconstruction. Other factors also... northern support for Reconstruction.

ballot boxes

On election day, armed Democrats destroyed... and drove former slaves from the polls. The result was a Democratic landslide and the end of Reconstruction in Mississippi. "A revolution has taken place," wrote Ames, "and a race are disfranchised—they are to be returned to . . . an era of second slavery."

mass terrorism and even local insurrections

On occasion, violence escalated from assaults on individuals to...

hotels and theaters

This outlawed racial discrimination in places of public accommodation like... But it was clear that the northern public was retreating from Reconstruction.

United States v. Cruikshank

Three years later, in..., the Court gutted the Enforcement Acts by throwing out the convictions of some of those responsible for the Colfax Massacre of 1873

Redeemers

The victorious Democrats called themselves..., since they claimed to have "redeemed" the white South from corruption, misgovernment, and northern and black control.

1867

The violence that greeted the advent of Republican governments after..., however, was far more pervasive and more directly motivated by politics.

Liberal attack

The... on Reconstruction, which continued after 1872, contributed to a resurgence of racism in the North.

civil and political rights

These laws continued the expansion of national authority during Reconstruction. They defined crimes that aimed to deprive citizens of their... as federal offenses rather than violations of state law.

Civil War veterans, upstanding citizens, or victims of violence

Engravings depicting the former slaves as heroic... were increasingly replaced by caricatures presenting them as little more than unbridled animals.

Civil Rights Act of 1875

Before the new Congress met, the old one enacted a final piece of Reconstruction legislation, the...

destruction of slavery

As a historical process—the nation's adjustment to the...—Reconstruction continued well after 1877.

corruption and misgovernment

As in the North, they became convinced, the "best men" of the South had been excluded from power while "ignorant" voters controlled politics, producing... Power in the South should be returned to the region's "natural leaders."

no race, region, or party

Corruption did exist during Reconstruction, but it was confined to...

descendants of slaves

Despite its limitations, Reconstruction was a remarkable chapter in the story of American freedom. Nearly a century would pass before the nation again tried to bring equal rights to the...

Klan terrorism

Despite the Grant administration's effective response to ..., the North's commitment to Reconstruction waned during the 1870s. Many Radicals, including Thaddeus Stevens, who died in 1868, had passed from the scene.

local and unorganized

In the early years of Reconstruction, violence was mostly...

Liberals

Democratic criticisms of Reconstruction, however, found a receptive audience among the...

Tennessee, North Carolina, and Texas

Democrats had already regained control of states with substantial white voting majorities such as...

elections of 1874

Democrats made substantial gains throughout the nation in the... For the first time since the Civil War, their party took control of the House of Representatives.

clasp hands across the bloody chasm

During the campaign of 1872, Greeley repeatedly called on Americans to "..." by putting the Civil War and Reconstruction behind them.

Bargain of 1877

For their part, Democrats promised not to dispute Hayes's right to office and to respect the civil and political rights of blacks. Thus was concluded the....

terrorist organization

From its founding in 1866 in Tennessee, the Klan was a... It quickly spread into nearly every southern state. Led by planters, merchants, and Democratic politicians, men who liked to style themselves the South's "respectable citizens," the Klan committed some of the most brutal criminal acts in American history.

denouncing

Greeley had spent most of his career, first as a Whig and then as a Republican,... the Democratic Party. But with the Republican split presenting an opportunity to repair their political fortunes, Democratic leaders endorsed Greeley as their candidate.

wave of intimidation

Hampton promised to respect the rights of all citizens of the state, but his supporters, inspired by Democratic tactics in Mississippi, launched a... Democrats intended to carry the election, one planter told a black official, "if we have to wade in blood knee-deep."

Louisiana and South Carolina

Hayes quickly ordered federal troops to stop guarding the state houses in..., allowing Democratic claimants to become governor. (Contrary to legend, Hayes did not remove the last soldiers from the South—he simply ordered them to return to their barracks.) But the Texas and Pacific never did get its land grant. Of far more significance, the triumphant southern Democrats failed to live up to their pledge to recognize blacks as equal citizens.

Texas and Pacific railroad

Hayes's representatives agreed to recognize Democratic control of the entire South and to avoid further intervention in local affairs. They also pledged that Hayes would place a southerner in the cabinet position of postmaster general and that he would work for federal aid to the..., a transcontinental line projected to follow a southern route.

federal marshals

In 1871, President Grant dispatched..., backed up by troops in some areas, to arrest hundreds of accused Klansmen. Many Klan leaders fled the South. After a series of well-publicized trials, the Klan went out of existence.

alienated by corruption

In 1872, an influential group of Republicans,... within the Grant administration and believing that the growth of federal power during and after the war needed to be curtailed, formed their own party. They included Republican founders like Lyman Trumbull and prominent editors and journalists such as E. L. Godkin of The Nation.

former Confederacy

In 1872, for the first time since the Civil War, peace reigned in most of the...

severe economic depression

In 1873, the country plunged into a... Distracted by economic problems, Republicans were in no mood to devote further attention to the South.

reign of terror

In many counties, it launched what one victim called a "..." against Republican leaders, black and white.

overthrown

In order to restore white supremacy in southern public life and to ensure planters a disciplined, reliable labor force, they believed, Reconstruction must be...

violence again erupted

In those states where Reconstruction governments survived,... This time, the Grant administration showed no desire to intervene.

local leaders and public officials

In wide areas of the South, secret societies sprang up with the aim of preventing blacks from voting and destroying the organization of the Republican Party by assassinating...

Prostrate State

Journalist James S. Pike, a leading Greeley supporter, in 1874 published The..., an influential account of a visit to South Carolina. The book depicted a state engulfed by political corruption, drained by governmental extravagance, and under the control of "a mass of black barbarism."

southern government

Newspapers that had long supported Reconstruction now began to condemn black participation in... They expressed their views visually as well.

Washington

Northerners increasingly felt that the South should be able to solve its own problems without constant interference from...

David M. Key

Not all of its parts were fulfilled. But Hayes became president, and he did appoint... of Tennessee as postmaster general.

economic essence of freedom

Reconstruction placed on the national agenda a problem that would dominate political discussion for the next half-century—how, in a modern society, to define the...

Wade Hampton

Similar events took place in South Carolina in 1876. Democrats nominated for governor former Confederate general...

Whiskey Ring

Southern frauds, however, were dwarfed by those practiced in these years by the..., which involved high officials of the Grant administration, and by New York's Tweed Ring, controlled by the Democrats, whose thefts ran into the tens of millions of dollars. (These are discussed in the next chapter.)

state budgets

The rapid growth of... and the benefits to be gained from public aid led in some states to a scramble for influence that produced bribery, insider dealing, and a get-rich-quick atmosphere.

Slaughterhouse Cases

The Supreme Court whittled away at the guarantees of black rights Congress had adopted. In the... (1873), butchers excluded from a state-sponsored monopoly in Louisiana went to court, claiming that their right to equality before the law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment had been violated. The justices rejected their claim, ruling that the amendment had not altered traditional federalism. Most of the rights of citizens, it declared, remained under state control.

postwar South

The Civil War ended in 1865, but violence remained widespread in large parts of the...

opposition to Reconstruction

The rising taxes needed to pay for schools and other new public facilities and to assist railroad development were another cause of...

wartime Unionists and local officeholders, teachers, and party organizers

The Klan's victims included white Republicans, among them...

equal rights for blacks

Within the Republican Party, their place was taken by politicians less committed to the ideal of...

immigrants and workingmen

The Liberals' alienation from the Grant administration initially had little to do with Reconstruction. They claimed that corrupt politicians had come to power in the North by manipulating the votes of..., while men of talent and education like themselves had been pushed aside.

Negro government

The South's problems, he insisted, arose from "..." The solution was to restore leading whites to political power.

planters, merchants, and Democratic politicians

The South's traditional leaders—...—bitterly opposed the new governments. They denounced them as corrupt, inefficient, and examples of "black supremacy." "Intelligence, virtue, and patriotism" in public life, declared a protest by prominent southern Democrats, had given way to "ignorance, stupidity, and vice."

land ownership

The policy of granting black men the vote while denying them the benefits of... strengthened the idea that the free citizen could be a poor, dependent laborer.

Colfax

The bloodiest act of violence during Reconstruction took place in...., Louisiana, in 1873, where armed whites assaulted the town with a small cannon. Hundreds of former slaves were murdered, including fifty members of a black militia unit after they had surrendered.

Second Reconstruction

The civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s would sometimes be called the...

region's economy

The depression dealt the South a severe blow and further weakened the prospect that Republicans could revitalize the...

fifteen-member

The election turned out to be so close that whoever captured these states—which both parties claimed to have carried—would become the next president. Unable to resolve the impasse on its own, Congress in January 1877 appointed a... Electoral Commission, composed of senators, representatives, and Supreme Court justices.

further assistance

The federal government had freed the slaves, made them citizens, and given them the right to vote. Now, blacks should rely on their own resources, not demand...

voting, holding office, and enjoying equality before the law

The most basic reason for opposition to Reconstruction, however, was that most white southerners could not accept the idea of former slaves...

Ku Klux Klan

The most notorious such organization was the..., which in effect served as a military arm of the Democratic Party in the South.

terrorist societies and allowing the president to use the army against them

Unable to suppress the Klan, the new southern governments appealed to Washington for help. In 1870 and 1871, Congress adopted three Enforcement Acts, outlawing...

1870

William Luke, an Irish-born teacher in a black school, was lynched in... But African-Americans—local political leaders, those who managed to acquire land, and others who in one way or another defied the norms of white supremacy—bore the brunt of the violence.