Reconstruction: A Success Only After the Fact
Teresa Gil

Reconstruction, the act of putting the country back together after the divisive and bloody Civil War, is the era from the end of the Civil War until 1877. Because so much was at stake and there were so many variations about how Reconstruction should be accomplished, this was a period of enormous conflict. In the South, the primary battle was between the Planters who dominated the South economically, politically, and socially, and former slaves, who wanted legal and political equality and the ability to own land. In the federal government, the Republican Party was dominant, and the most outspoken group within the Republican Party was known as the Radical Republicans. They were the northerners who were most bitter toward the planters and the most dedicated to winning equality for former slaves. In 1865, the Radicals nevertheless came to dominate Congress with their calls for significant political and legal change in the South.
One of the central conflicts within the government concerned President Johnson’s unwavering conviction that his methods were the only methods and his refusal to change any of his laws. He tried to take charge of Reconstruction, offering a plan by which the southern states would write new constitutions and re-enter the Union without having to allow political rights to the freedmen. When Johnson’s plan was put into effect, many northerners were disgusted by the results. Former Confederate leaders were elected to high positions, and Black Codes were drawn up by the new states that severely restricted the freedom of the former slaves and seemed, in some ways, to continue slavery. Congress refused to accept the new governments, and after the refusal of Johnson to modify his “state governments”, Republicans refused to seat those elected under Johnson’s plan. Johnson’s refusal effectively united all Republicans.
When it convened in 1867, Congress was determined to create a new Reconstruction Act. Their act centered on the fact that lawful governments did not exist in the south and that they should govern the area until acceptable replacements were chosen. This act divided the south into five districts and outlined how new governments would, based on suffrage, be established. This new Reconstruction Act, over President Johnson’s veto, was passed into law. Once a state’s constitution was accepted by the state’s voters and by Congress, and once the state ratified the 14th Amendment, which stated that anyone born in the U.S. was a citizen of the United States, and that all citizens were entitled to equal protection of the laws, then that state could become a functioning part of the Union. By June of 1868, all but three states had completed this process. The 14th Amendment was ratified in July.
Vehemently opposed to the Reconstruction Acts and to Congress calling the shots on Reconstruction, President Johnson attempted to thwart the plan in any way he could. As a result, he was impeached by the House of Representatives in the spring of 1868, and tried before the Senate. He avoided conviction and removal from office, by one vote, but he more or less promised to sit out the rest of his term. In November 1868 Ulysses S. Grant, a Republican and the great northern hero of the Civil War, was elected president. But the election was closer than expected, and Grant would not have won without the votes of former slaves. To protect these votes in the future, Congress approved the 15th Amendment, which was ratified by the states and became part of the Constitution in 1870. Under the terms of this amendment, no one could be denied the right to vote because of race.
The Plan of Reconstruction created by Congress dramatically changed politics in the South. More than 700,000 black voters were enfranchised, and about 15% of white voters were disqualified. As a result, Republican governments came to power in each southern state. The new state constitutions brought revolutionary change to the South. They were established on the principle that all men are created equal, and for the first time blacks were to be treated as equals before the law. The constitutions also provided social services, hospitals and orphanages, and put money into railroad expansion. Most importantly, for the first time in the South, these constitutions established free statewide public school systems, open to blacks as well as whites.
Excruciatingly hard for the former slaves to swallow was the fact that there was no redistribution of land. That continued to remain overwhelmingly in white hands. Some Radicals had favored dividing up planters’ land to give to the freedmen, but the government was not willing to go this far, fearing that such action would distance northern and southern property owners, and undermine the drive for equal rights. As a result, former slaves who didn’t own land had to work for those who did.
Planters despised the new constitutions and governments created under the congressional plan. They resented having to pay the high taxes that the new schools, social services, and railroad-building programs required. They were also appalled by the idea of educating African Americans. Above all, planters were horrified by the prospect of black political participation. They saw the former slaves as ignorant, incapable, and inferior, and could not conceive of them voting responsibly, much less holding office.
Outraged by such developments, the planters launched a counterattack against Reconstruction. In part, this attack was verbal, carried out in speeches and newspapers. Planters made two main charges against Reconstruction. First, they claimed that Reconstruction had brought black control to the South, that whites had been forced under the control of uneducated, irresponsible people. Second, they claimed that Reconstruction governments were corrupt, that Republicans sought office solely to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense.
It is true that there was some corruption during Reconstruction, but this was a very corrupt period in history. Corruption was not confined to Republican governments in the South, nor did it end with Reconstruction. Like the charge of black domination, this was an exaggeration, designed to convince supporters of Reconstruction to abandon it and allow the planters to reassume power.
Willing to go beyond verbal welfare, they employed violence as well. Almost from the beginning of its existence, the Ku Klux Klan, founded 1866, was a terrorist organization, willing to go to any length to prevent Republicans from voting and to put conservative Democrats back in control. The activities of the Klan, as well as others, grew so bold by 1870 that the federal government passed a series of Enforcement Acts which outlawed Klan activities and gave the president power to declare martial law in portions of the South where local authorities couldn’t or wouldn’t control the Klan. This government intervention worked and the Klan was temporarily crippled, showing that the government could protect Reconstruction in the South if it was willing to use force. Trouble was, the government became less willing to use such force as time went on.
At the same time that political conflict raged in the South, economic conflict between the planters and former slaves simmered as well. The planters owned land but needed labor, and the former slaves possessed the ability to labor but needed land. A compromise evolved, sharecropping, in which former slaves worked sections of a planter’s land, and paid planters a share of the crop at the end of the year. This arrangement was not so bad at first, but ultimately, it turned into an economic nightmare for the South. It also helped preserve the economic and political power of the landowning elite.
As other problems, westward expansion, Indian wars, economic change, and a major depression which began in 1873, beset the nation, most Americans were beginning to tire of Reconstruction. Many northern whites felt that the nation had done enough for the former slaves, that they should now be able to fend for themselves. After another wave of anti-black terrorism swept the South in 1875 and 1876, President Grant did not feel that it was politically possible for the federal government to intervene. One by one, Republican governments in the South fell to Democrats, calling themselves Redeemers, who were willing to use fraud and violence to seize power.
By the fall of 1876, only three Southern states maintained Republican governments. As a result of the disputed Presidential election of that year, President Hayes pulled federal troops from these states and allowed the Redeemers to take control. The entire South was now under the sway of conservative, white-supremacist Democrats, and Reconstruction was ended. The real losers in the collapse of Reconstruction were the freedmen.
Therefore, although three very important pieces of legislation were born in Reconstruction, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the constitution, giving former slaves rights they had never known, most of what was accomplished was then stripped away for a long time to come.

References
Foner, E. Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction (2006), Random House
Publishing