How would Lincoln have dealt with the difficult business
of reconstruction that faced the nation in the aftermath of the
Civil War? Based on the few public remarks that Lincoln made on
the subject in the months before his death, one can make a reasonable
guess as to his opening gambit, but anything beyond this is mere
speculation. It is safe to say that Lincoln remained much more
moderate than the bulk of so-called Radical Republicans in Congress,
who favored a harsh, retributive plan of reconstruction.
As early as December of 1863, Lincoln had come forward
with a generous plan of reconstruction, providing for the readmission
of former Confederate states to the Union upon an oath of loyalty
by one-tenth of the electorate. Radical Republicans reacted with
distaste at what they found to be an all too lenient plan, and
proposed instead the Wade-Davis Bill, which demanded a majority
of citizens to swear loyalty before readmission would be considered.
Lincoln pocket-vetoed this measure after it passed through Congress
on July 4, 1864, raising the ire of those who found his executive
usurpation excessive. It was a bold move that nearly cost him
re-election.
At his Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln had announced
the imperative duty of the American people to proceed "with malice toward
none; with charity toward all...to finish the work we are in; to
bind up the nation's wounds." Such a stance continued to draw criticism,
with many still finding Lincoln to be overly soft in his plans
for the rebels. Lincoln himself recognized the question of reconstruction
to be "fraught with great difficulty." For example, should a
former Confederate state be allowed the right of self-government?
Lincoln's position was to allow such a transitional arrangement
in more moderate states like North Carolina and Virginia, while
granting the federal government a larger degree of control further
to the south.
In his final public address, concerning the question of
Louisiana's re-admission to the Union, Lincoln explained that the
goal of reconstruction was to restore the seceded states back into
their "proper practical relation" with the federal government.
To Lincoln, this did not mean federal domination in the form of
confiscation and occupation. He had repeatedly voiced his objections
to carpetbaggers, although he was unable to develop a clear alternative
for truly effective and lasting reform. What exactly was the "proper
practical relation" of the states to the federal government? No
such balance had ever truly been struck, and the Civil War did
more to confuse rather than to resolve this complicated issue,
which continues to persist even today.
Unfortunately, Lincoln did not survive to face the challenges
of reconstruction, which were every bit as great as the Civil War
itself. The task of rebuilding the nation was left to Lincoln's
bewildered vice president, Andrew Johnson, who had assumed the
nation's second office just forty days before. A Tennessee native
who had remained loyal to the Union, Johnson found himself in a
precarious position, trapped between his compassion for the south
and his need to placate the harsher wishes of the Radical Republicans
in Congress.
Three major amendments to the Constitution were
passed in the first years of reconstruction: the thirteenth, which
abolished slavery; the fourteenth, extending citizenship to blacks;
and the fifteenth, extending the right of suffrage to black males.
Additionally, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 made extensive provisions
in order to improve the lot of former slaves from the southern
states. A Freedman's Bureau was established to ease the transition
of former slaves into free society. 4,000 free schools were established
for blacks, and as a result 250,000 black children began learning
to read and write English.
In order to enforce such radical legislation against the
hostility of a defeated South, the federal government created five
military districts to enforce principles of reconstruction. Polling
places were placed under special controls, and as a result sixteen
blacks were elected to Congress in the 1870s. By the Civil Rights
Act of 1875, all hotels, restaurants and theaters were officially
integrated, although this particular law proved particularly difficult
to enforce, and was later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme
Court in 1883 on the premise of states' rights.
Heavy federal strictures on southern sovereignty naturally
created a backlash. The Ku Klux Klan was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee
in 1866, later enjoying a strong following in states such as Indiana,
Oklahoma and Texas after its early twentieth-century revival.
As the southern states slowly reacquired the power to determine
their own affairs, they instituted a series of black codes to limit
the rights that had been extended to blacks by the federal government.
Johnson recognized the potentially damaging and mean-spirited nature
of many reconstruction policies, and vetoed several bills in an
effort to heal the still festering regional fracture. But time
and again his vetoes were overridden. Would Lincoln have allowed such
domination by the Radical Republicans? It is a question for all time.
Succeeding Johnson as President in 1868, U.S. Grant spent
two unremarkable terms dodging scandal and allowing reconstruction to
be directed by an increasingly powerful Congress. True to his military
background, Grant reinforced the decrees of reconstruction by imposing
a fierce brand of martial law where needed and ordering several
arrests in places where federal civil rights laws were not adhered
to.
Finally, in the scandalous presidential election of 1876,
Rutherford B. Hayes narrowly defeated Samuel Tilden after an inconclusive
election was decided by a Congressional committee. When the southern
states indignantly threatened to secede yet again, Hayes capitulated
with the Compromise of 1877, which allowed him to accede to the
presidency in exchange for an effective end to reconstruction with
the withdrawal of all federal troops from the southern states.
And with this, after almost two decades of violent bloodshed and
rhetoric, civil rights reform would remain dormant as an issue of
national importance for the next eighty years.
No one knew better than Lincoln that a Civil War fought
to preserve the Union, if successful, could only end with a return
to divisiveness. As he remarked in his First Inaugural Address:
"Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after
much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting,
the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again
upon you." Somehow, over the fiercest opposition, slavery was in
fact abolished, but the rights of blacks were slow in coming.
Temporary reforms could only last for as long as the federal government
was willing to commit forces to the southern states. With the
end of reconstruction, southerners quickly reverted to the local
rule of law, which equaled terror for many blacks during the decades
to come.
Nevertheless, for a brief moment then, and increasingly
today, a spirit of reform moved the United States closer to its
founding principle that "all men are created equal." No single
man was more responsible for such progress in the nineteenth century
than Abraham Lincoln. This fact has been well-remembered in the
many encomiums that have been produced for Lincoln in the 135 years since
his death.
One of the most famous songs of praise to Lincoln was
written by Walt Whitman, who served as a clerk and nurse in Washington
during the Civil War and later came to be a close friend and adviser
to the president. In his memorial poem to Lincoln titled "When
Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed," Whitman called him 'the sweetest, wisest
soul of all my days and lands." While Lincoln surely would have
been flattered by such praise, he might have found more pleasure
in the insightful words of fellow Illinois hero Vachel Lindsay.
In his poem "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight (Springfield, Illinois),"
Lindsay aptly memorialized the freedom-loving strongman with a wink
and a nod as 'the quaint great figure that men love,/ the prairie
lawyer, master of us all."
