What was the Southern response to Reconstruction?

In the aftermath of the Civil War, African-Americans finally attained emancipation, citizenship, and the right to vote; these hard-won achievements, however, soon came under assault as pre-war socio-economic patterns re-emerged in the South.

At the end of the Civil War, much of the conquered Confederacy lay in ruins: cities such as Atlanta and Richmond were utterly destroyed, the few railroads across the region were torn up, and plantations and farms that had once produced bountiful cash crops for export were burnt to the ground or abandoned. Union troops occupied the land, enforcing the deconstruction of Confederate political structures, the removal of the rebellious Southern elite from government participation, and the liberation of the black population from almost three centuries of bondage. Federally, Radical Republicans in Congress impeached President Johnson and passed the 14th and 15th amendments, granting blacks the same rights to citizenship, suffrage, and protection under the law as whites enjoyed. With these new rights, black Americans soon expanded their social and political power, electing the first black US Senator (Hiram Rhodes Revels) in 1870 and establishing the first public schools in the South for African-Americans. But what looked like progress from the perspective of African-Americans and Northerners was interpreted as anarchy and upheaval by many south of the Mason-Dixon.

By 1873, many white Southerners were calling for “Redemption” – the return of white supremacy and the removal of rights for blacks – instead of Reconstruction. This political pressure to return to the old order was oftentimes backed up by mob and paramilitary violence, with the Ku Klux Klan, the White League, and the Red Shirts assassinating pro-Reconstruction politicians and terrorizing Southern blacks. Within a few years, Northern attentions were consumed by apathy and fatigue and the South slipped back toward many of the patterns of the antebellum era. So dire was the situation that historian W. E. B. DuBois described the period as one where “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.” Learn more about this fractious time in American history at Edsitement, the NEH’s educational website.

The original Northern objective in the Civil War was the preservation of the Union—a war aim with which virtually everybody in the free states agreed. As the fighting progressed, the Lincoln government concluded that emancipation of enslaved people was necessary in order to secure military victory; and thereafter freedom became a second war aim for the members of the Republican Party. The more radical members of that party—men like Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens—believed that emancipation would prove a sham unless the government guaranteed the civil and political rights of the freedmen; thus, equality of all citizens before the law became a third war aim for this powerful faction. The fierce controversies of the Reconstruction era raged over which of these objectives should be insisted upon and how these goals should be secured.

Lincoln’s plan

Lincoln-Johnson campaign banner

Lincoln himself had a flexible and pragmatic approach to Reconstruction, insisting only that the Southerners, when defeated, pledge future loyalty to the Union and emancipate their enslaved persons. As the Southern states were subdued, he appointed military governors to supervise their restoration. The most vigorous and effective of these appointees was Andrew Johnson, a War Democrat whose success in reconstituting a loyal government in Tennessee led to his nomination as vice president on the Republican ticket with Lincoln in 1864. In December 1863 Lincoln announced a general plan for the orderly Reconstruction of the Southern states, promising to recognize the government of any state that pledged to support the Constitution and the Union and to emancipate enslaved persons if it was backed by at least 10 percent of the number of voters in the 1860 presidential election. In Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee loyal governments were formed under Lincoln’s plan; and they sought readmission to the Union with the seating of their senators and representatives in Congress.

The Radicals’ plan

Benjamin F. Wade

Davis, Henry Winter

Radical Republicans were outraged at these procedures, which savoured of executive usurpation of congressional powers, which required only minimal changes in the Southern social system, and which left political power essentially in the hands of the same Southerners who had led their states out of the Union. The Radicals put forth their own plan of Reconstruction in the Wade–Davis Bill, which Congress passed on July 2, 1864; it required not 10 percent but a majority of the white male citizens in each Southern state to participate in the reconstruction process, and it insisted upon an oath of past, not just of future, loyalty. Finding the bill too rigorous and inflexible, Lincoln pocket vetoed it; and the Radicals bitterly denounced him. During the 1864–65 session of Congress, they in turn defeated the president’s proposal to recognize the Louisiana government organized under his 10 percent plan. At the time of Lincoln’s assassination, therefore, the president and the Congress were at loggerheads over Reconstruction.

Reconstruction under Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson: oath of office

At first it seemed that Johnson might be able to work more cooperatively with Congress in the process of Reconstruction. A former representative and a former senator, he understood congressmen. A loyal Unionist who had stood by his country even at the risk of his life when Tennessee seceded, he was certain not to compromise with secession; and his experience as military governor of that state showed him to be politically shrewd and tough toward the enslavers. “Johnson, we have faith in you,” Radical Benjamin F. Wade assured the new president on the day he took the oath of office. “By the gods, there will be no trouble running the government.”

Johnson’s policy

Andrew Johnson

Such Radical trust in Johnson proved misplaced. The new president was, first of all, himself a Southerner. He was a Democrat who looked for the restoration of his old party partly as a step toward his own reelection to the presidency in 1868. Most important of all, Johnson shared the white Southerners’ attitude toward African Americans, considering Black men innately inferior and unready for equal civil or political rights. On May 29, 1865, Johnson made his policy clear when he issued a general proclamation of pardon and amnesty for most Confederates and authorized the provisional governor of North Carolina to proceed with the reorganization of that state. Shortly afterward he issued similar proclamations for the other former Confederate states. In each case a state constitutional convention was to be chosen by the voters who pledged future loyalty to the U.S. Constitution. The conventions were expected to repeal the ordinances of secession, to repudiate the Confederate debt, and to accept the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery. The president did not, however, require them to enfranchise African Americans.

“Black Codes”

Given little guidance from Washington, Southern whites turned to the traditional political leaders of their section for guidance in reorganizing their governments; and the new regimes in the South were suspiciously like those of the antebellum period. To be sure, slavery was abolished; but each reconstructed Southern state government proceeded to adopt a “Black Code,” regulating the rights and privileges of freedmen. Varying from state to state, these codes in general treated African Americans as inferiors, relegated to a secondary and subordinate position in society. Their right to own land was restricted, they could not bear arms, and they might be bound out in servitude for vagrancy and other offenses. The conduct of white Southerners indicated that they were not prepared to guarantee even minimal protection of African American rights. In riots in Memphis (May 1866) and New Orleans (July 1866), African Americans were brutally assaulted and promiscuously killed.

How did the South react to Reconstruction in the 1870's?

The South, however, saw Reconstruction as a humiliating, even vengeful imposition and did not welcome it. During the years after the war, black and white teachers from the North and South, missionary organizations, churches and schools worked tirelessly to give the emancipated population the opportunity to learn.

What were Southerners that supported Reconstruction?

scalawag, after the American Civil War, a pejorative term for a white Southerner who supported the federal plan of Reconstruction or who joined with black freedmen and the so-called carpetbaggers in support of Republican Party policies.

What did Reconstruction mean for the South?

The Reconstruction Era lasted from the end of the Civil War in 1865 to 1877. Its main focus was on bringing the southern states back into full political participation in the Union, guaranteeing rights to former slaves and defining new relationships between African Americans and whites.

What happened to the South during Reconstruction?

Much of the Southern United States was destroyed during the Civil war. Farms and plantations were burned down and their crops destroyed. Also, many people had Confederate money which was now worthless and the local governments were in disarray.