Reconstruction and the Origins of the New South

1. Reconstruction and the Origins of the New South Presidential and Radical ReconstructionSouthern state governments: aspirations, achievements, failuresRole of African Americans in politics, education, and the economyCompromise of 1877Impact of ReconstructionReconfiguration of southern agriculture: sharecropping and crop-lien systemExpansion of manufacturing and industrializationThe politics of segregation: Jim Crow and disenfranchisement

2. Introduction • The period following the Civil War was known as Reconstruction, beginning shortly after the war in 1865, and ending with the so-called Compromise of 1877. • At war’s end the South faced near complete ruin- many of its leading cities destroyed, its economy shattered, its social and cultural fabric shredded, and its people demoralized. • The Union victors were faced with how to go about healing the deep wounds of the Civil War and putting the nation back together. Many had high hopes for Reconstruction, perhaps none more than the nearly 4 million freed slaves whose freedom had become the underlying moral cause of the war. And although glimmers of hope emerged through the process, Southern recalcitrance and political apathy in the North unceremoniously ended efforts at reconstruction following the elections of 1876.

3. Presidential and Radical Reconstruction • Even before the Civil War ended, Lincoln had already begun sketching out plans to reintegrate the southern states back into the union. Lincoln first proposed the “10 percent” Reconstruction plan- on the premise that once 10% of voters in a given state took an oath of allegiance and a promise to recognize emancipation, that state would be restored into the national government. • These rather lenient terms angered some members of Congress, who passed more stringent requirements (Wade-Davis Bill). Lincoln vetoed the bill, and the episode indicated an emerging rift in the Republican party: between a moderate faction favoring lenient Reconstruction policies, and a “Radical” element, demanding a much more rigorous process to re-admit the southern states.

4. Presidential and Radical Reconstruction • Following Lincoln’s assassination, the radical faction of Congress pushed to interject in plans for Reconstruction, but President Andrew Johnson, himself a Southerner from Tennessee, proceeded with a plan nearly identical to Lincoln’s. Johnson took special delight in forcing aristocratic planters to grovel for his presidential pardon, but very few except the highest Confederate leaders were denied. • Many northerners were shocked and dismayed by the rapidity with which the political and social structure of the South was reconstituted. The state governments formed under Johnson were controlled by the same classes of people (in many cases the same people) as before and during the war. All southern states had immediately passed harsh “Black Codes,” statutes that denied Blacks virtually all civil rights, save for the legal status of freedom. Such a scenario was exactly what many feared, and the political will for Congressional intervention was strengthened.

5. Presidential and Radical Reconstruction • Through 1866, Congress battled the president at every turn, consistently overriding his vetoes, as in the Civil Rights Bill, which attempted to dampen the implications of the Black Codes by conferring citizenship to Blacks. The proposed Fourteenth Amendment took Civil Rights for freedmen a step further, and its ratification became the basis for a revised Congressional plan for Reconstruction. • The mid-terms elections of 1866 produced even stronger support for Radical Reconstruction, and with Johnson impotent to act, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act in early 1867. The act affected every southern state (excepting Tennessee which had already ratified the 14th Amendment), and divided the former Confederate territory into five military districts. • Under this military regime, southern state governments were reorganized and civil rights ensured for freedmen (including the 15th Amendment, passed in 1870). In the Republican controlled South, Black leaders were elected to Congress and state legislatures, and for a time the notion of equality for southern Blacks appeared to be making progress. But beneath the façade was a growing resentment among white southerners, seething at the humiliation of “Black Republican” rule, and scheming on how to “redeem” southern governments once the bayonets were gone.

6. Southern state governments: aspirations, achievements, failures • Assessing the aspirations, achievements, and failures of southern state governments largely depends on perspective. Certainly all aspired to see the southern economy viable, and the southern governments re-integrated, but as demonstrated in the protracted political battles over Reconstruction, how best to handle the South was a most contentious problem. As reconstruction unfolded, the aspirations of Congress were to affect social and cultural change on the South, while many southerners aspired and clamored to restore their social order and “way of life.” • Under military occupation the southern state governments achieved a temporary victory for racial equality in terms of suffrage and civil rights, but once “redeemed” after Compromise of 1877, the southern state governments “achieved” a near total reversal of those reforms. • The failures of southern state governments, as Reconstruction broadly, were numerous. Most conspicuously, the failure to protect civil rights for freedmen produced a century-long struggle to enfranchise the descendants of slaves in the South. In the shorter term, the restoration of political power to the southern planter class hindered efforts to diversify and reform the southern economy.

7. Role of African Americans in politics, education, and the economy • African Americans played important, if often limited, roles in shaping their political, educational, and economic futures. Under the rule of Radical Republicans, southern Blacks were elected to state and national offices, and were able to vote in most areas. One Black Senator held the seat formerly occupied by Confederate president Jefferson Davis. • African Americans also played important roles in establishing educational institutions during Reconstruction. The institutions that eventually became Howard University and Morehouse College were established to provide higher education opportunities for Blacks. • Shaping their role in the economy proved to be the most daunting task for African-Americans. Some did boldly strike out for new opportunities (The Exodusters), but most southern blacks had no choice but to remain tied to the land- technically and legally free, but with a day-to-day life that otherwise differed little from the toils of slavery. Even off the plantations, in both southern and northern cities, Blacks faced systematic discrimination that by-in-large severely limited their economic participation outside of their own communities.

8. Compromise of 1877 • The Compromise of 1877 was a complex set of negotiations between the political parties to determine the outcome of the presidential election of 1876. The election was close, but became even more complicated by the disputed electoral returns of three southern states. Democrat Samuel Tilden had won the popular vote by a slim margin, but his Republican opponent, Rutherford B. Hayes held the advantage in the Electoral College, given that the disputed returns fell in the Republican’s favor. • The political deadlock among Republicans and Democrats was threatening to render a constitutional crisis, and a leaderless nation. Just three days before inauguration the negotiations reached a conclusion. The South would allow Hayes’ ascendancy in exchange for an end to military reconstruction. The Redeemers now had free reign to reestablish the economic and socio-political structures of the South.

9. Impact of Reconstruction • Although not totally devoid of successes, Reconstruction failed in nearly every way to realize meaningful long term social or economic change in the South. The impact of these failures stretched far into the future. • One major impact was that it fostered long-term resentment and bitterness among many southerners, and probably heightened their already xenophobic tendencies. Another obvious impact was the plight of southern Blacks. Their short-lived hopes of relative equality were ultimately dashed as the political winds shifted in the north, and the support of Black freedom evaporated.

10. Reconfiguration of southern agriculture: sharecropping and crop-lien system • Reconstructed or not, the Southern economy was still overwhelmingly agricultural, and southern landowners devised new methods to ensure a stable labor force. Most commonly, landowners would lease land to tenant farmers (sharecroppers) who would then pay their rent with a share of the crop. The crop-lien system was a similar arrangement: a merchant or storekeeper would provide credit to farmers in exchange for a legal entitlement to part of the proceeds from their crops. • In either event, the terms of the agreement could easily be manipulated to favor the landowner/credit-holder, producing a cycle of debt peonage that kept tenant families in perpetual debt, and thus unable to leave the land. • For many southern Blacks and poor whites, their condition of financial exploitation and bondage was scarcely better than slavery.

11. Expansion of manufacturing and industrialization • During and following Reconstruction, the North continued its aggressive expansion of industry and manufacturing. Meanwhile the South was very slow to undertake the process of industrialization. Atlanta newspaperman Henry Grady is often credited with being among the first to make concerted calls for creating a “New South” through the development of industrial capacity. • Still, the earliest manufacturing in the South from the 1880s through the early 1900s (tobacco processing and textile mills) tended to reinforce southern reliance on agriculture.

12. The politics of segregation: Jim Crow and disenfranchisement • As Reconstruction came to an inglorious end, the Redeemed southern state governments set about institutionalizing their vision for Southern society, and the place of Blacks in it, through a system of discrimination known as Jim Crow. • Jim Crow laws disenfranchised Blacks from political and civic processes, severely limited their economic participation in all but the most menial occupations, and segregated the races in virtually all public facilities. • Challenges to the systematic discrimination of the Jim Crow South fell on deaf ears in the nation’s highest court. In the 1880s the Supreme Court overturned much of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and later upheld the principle of segregation (“Separate but equal”) in the 1896 decision of Plessy v. Ferguson. • The sad fact was that after Reconstruction ended, Blacks had very few advocates, and would be forced to undertake efforts for economic improvement and political equality on their own.