CHAPTER 15

“What Is Freedom?”:

Reconstruction, 1865–1877

This chapter concentrates on the history of Reconstruction. Opening with an explanation of the origins of General William T. Sherman’s Special Field Order 15, which set aside forty-acre plots of land for former slave families, the chapter explores what freedom meant to newly free African-Americans and how white American society responded to emancipation. There were many meanings of freedom for blacks, and they relished various opportunities to express their liberation from slavery. Land ownership became a contentious issue as blacks were ultimately denied free access to land. One of the “Voices of Freedom” selections highlights this controversy with a petition from freedmen to President Andrew Johnson. The devastation of the Civil War also caused many white farmers to face poverty as tenant farmers and sharecroppers. The chapter discusses the national political developments that led from President Johnson’s lenient plan to the Radical Reconstruction designed by congressional Republicans. In response to Johnson’s many presidential pardons of ex-Confederates and to the South’s implementation of Black Codes, Republicans in Congress fought back with the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Reconstruction Act. Johnson resisted and was impeached by the House, but avoided being removed from office by the Senate. The Fifteenth Amendment finished the Radical Republicans’ Reconstruction agenda, but it split the feminist movement because it failed to give the vote to women. The chapter’s second “Voices of Freedom” piece touches on the frustrations of feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton with her fellow abolitionist Gerrit Smith’s stand on woman suffrage. The chapter then looks at how Reconstruction shaped southern politics—and at how southern politics shaped Reconstruction. Once Radical Reconstruction accorded suffrage rights to southern black men, African-Americans voted and ran for office. Blacks held over 2,000 public offices during Reconstruction, there were fourteen black members of the U.S. House and two black U.S. senators. Many white southerners, however, felt threatened by black political power, and the Ku Klux Klan began a campaign of terror and violence that sought to intimidate Republican voters, white and black. After the Klan was abolished through the efforts of President Ulysses Grant, white Democrats continued efforts to “redeem” the South from perceived corruption, misgovernment, and northern and black control. Reconstruction ended in 1877, after a compromise was made between the Republicans and Democrats over the disputed 1876 presidential election. (Foner)

The military aspect of the American Civil War lasted less than five years and ended in April 1865, but it would take another dozen years of Reconstruction to determine what the results of the war would be. The only questions clearly settled by the time of Appomattox were that the nation was indivisible and that slavery must end. The nation faced other issues with far-reaching implications. What would be the place of the freedmen in Southern society? How would the rebellious states be brought back into their "proper relationship" with the Union? The victorious North was in a position to dominate the South, but Northern politicians were not united in either resolve or purpose. For over two years after the fighting stopped, there was no coherent Reconstruction policy. Congress and the president struggled with each other, and various factions in Congress had differing views on politics, race, and union. Congress finally won control and dominated the Reconstruction process until Southern resistance and Northern ambivalence led to the end of Reconstruction in 1877. Whites who reasserted their economic and political control set out to industrialize the region, but with little success. The South remained a troubled agricultural sector. No economic, political, or social issue in the South could escape the race question. The Jim Crow system of the Southern establishment succeeded in evading the spirit of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and many African Americans began to wonder just who won the Civil War. (Brinkley)

SUGGESTED DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• What visions of freedom did the former slaves and slaveholders pursue in the postwar South?

• Compare and contrast Lincoln's plan for Reconstruction, the Wade-Davis Bill, Johnson's plan, and Radical Reconstruction. Consider provisions, motives, goals, and results. What were the Southern reactions to these various plans?

• What did freedom mean to the blacks? How did they express their newfound freedom?

• What made the Radical Republicans “radical”?

• Discuss Charles Sumner’s remark that rather than being a threat to liberty, the federal government had become “the custodian of freedom.” What did he mean? Was he correct?

• Why did Radical Republicans believe that Andrew Johnson would support their agenda? Why was Johnson ultimately unable to lend his support to the Civil Rights Act of 1866 or the Fourteenth Amendment?

• Explain the process of impeaching a president. On what grounds was Andrew Johnson impeached? Were these charges the real reason for his impeachment? Should he have been convicted?

• Explain the strengths and weaknesses of the Fourteenth Amendment. What liberties and freedoms did it extend in the nineteenth century—and to whom? How did it alter the relationship between the federal government and the states?

• Who were the Redeemers, what did they want, and what were their methods? How did the Redeemers feel that their freedom was being threatened by Radical Reconstruction?

Discuss the factors that contributed to the rapid "redemption" of the S states and the national abandonment of Recon by the late 1870s.

• What was done to protect the freedmanpolitically, economically, and physically? What more could have been done? How might "forty acres and a mule" have helped the freedman?

• Explain the ways in which the S white establishment was able to evade the spirit of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Const. What alternative paths of accommodation and resistance did black leaders propose to this rise of Jim Crow?

• What did this debate over the 15th Amendment say about the boundaries of freedom defined by Reconstruction?

• Why did Reconstruction come to end in 1877?

• Was Reconstruction a success or a failure? Or was it something in between? Be sure to make clear what you mean by success and failure.

Freedmen’s BureauGreenbacksPlessy v. FergusonPoll tax

13th, 14th,15thLiteracy testsColfax MassacreU.S. v. Cruickshank

Panic of 1873Oliver HowardThaddeus StevensCharles Sumner

Lincoln’s PlanWade-DavisKKKRedemption

Home RuleGrandfather lawsPresidential ReconstructionBlack Codes

Congressional ReconCarpetbaggersScalawags Radical Republicans

LynchingCivil Rights Act of 1866Tenure of Office Act Bradwell v. Illinois

Tenant FarmingSharecroppersCR Act of 1875Enforcement Acts

Horace GreeleyCrop lien system40 acres and a mule waving the bloody shirt

Jim Crow Liberal RepublicansSlaughterhouse Cases Redeemers

Enforcement ActsCompromise of 1877

Key Concept 5.3: The Union victory in the Civil War and the contested reconstruction of the South settled the issues of slavery and secession, but left unresolved many questions about the power of the federal government and citizenship rights.