The Ten-Percent Plan
The process of reconstructing the Union began in 1863,
two years before the Confederacy formally surrendered. After major
Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Abraham Lincoln issued
the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction in which
he outlined his Ten-Percent Plan. The plan stipulated
that each secessionist state had to redraft its constitution and
could reenter the Union only after 10 percent
of its eligible voters pledged an oath of allegiance to the United
States.
The
Wade-Davis Bill and the Freedmen’s Bureau
Many Radical Republicans believed that Lincoln’s
plan was too lenient: they wanted to punish the South for secession
from the Union, transform southern society, and safeguard the rights
of former slaves. As an alternative to the Ten-Percent
Plan, Radical Republicans and their moderate Republican allies passed
the Wade-Davis Bill in 1864.
Under the bill, states could be readmitted to the Union only after 50 percent
of voters took an oath of allegiance to the Union. Lincoln pocket-vetoed
the bill, however, effectively killing it by refusing to sign it
before Congress went into recess. Congress did successfully
create the Freedmen’s Bureau, which helped distribute food,
supplies, and land to the new population of freed slaves.
Presidential
Reconstruction
On April 14, 1865, John
Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre
in Washington, D.C., and Vice President Andrew Johnson became
president. Presidential Reconstruction under Johnson
readmitted the southern states using Lincoln’s Ten-Percent Plan
and granted all southerners full pardons, including thousands of
wealthy planters and former Confederate officials. Johnson also
ordered the Freedmen’s Bureau to return all confiscated lands to
their original owners. While Congress was in recess, Johnson approved
new state constitutions for secessionist states—many written by
ex-Confederate officials—and declared Reconstruction complete in
December 1865.
Progressive
Legislation for Blacks
Although Johnson vetoed Congress’s attempt to renew the
charter of the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1866, Congress was successful
in overriding Johnson’s veto on its second try, and the bureau’s
charter was renewed. They also passed the Civil Rights
Act of 1866,
which granted newly emancipated blacks the right to sue, the right
to serve on juries, and several other legal rights. Although Johnson
vetoed this bill as well, Congress was able to muster enough votes
to override it. The Radical Republicans also passed the Thirteenth
Amendment, which abolished slavery, and the Fourteenth
Amendment, which made freed slaves U.S. citizens.
Johnson’s
“Swing Around the Circle”
Many southerners reacted violently to the passage by Congress
of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and
the two amendments. White supremacists in Tennessee formed the Ku
Klux Klan, a secret organization meant to terrorize southern
blacks and “keep them in their place.” Race riots and mass
murders of former slaves occurred in Memphis and New Orleans
that same year.
Johnson blamed Congress for the violence and went on what
he called a “Swing Around the Circle,” touring
the country to speak out against Republicans and encourage voters
to elect Democrats to Congress. However, many of Johnson’s speeches
were so abrasive—and even racist—that he ended up convincing more
people to vote against his party in the midterm
elections of 1866.
Radical Reconstruction
The Congress that convened in 1867,
which was far more radical than the previous one, wasted no time
executing its own plan for the Radical Reconstruction of
the South. The First Reconstruction Act in 1867 divided
the South into five conquered districts, each of which would be
governed by the U.S. military until a new government was established.
Republicans also specified that states would have to enfranchise
former slaves before readmission to the Union. To enforce this order,
Congress passed the Second Reconstruction Act, putting
the military in charge of southern voter registration. They also
passed the Fifteenth Amendment, giving all American
men—including former slaves—the right to vote.
Johnson’s Impeachment
In an effort to limit Johnson’s executive powers, Congress
passed the Tenure of Office Act in 1867,
which required the president to consult with the House and Senate
before removing any congressionally appointed cabinet members. Radicals
took this measure in an attempt to protect Secretary of War Edwin
M. Stanton, a carryover from Lincoln’s cabinet and a crucial
figure in military Reconstruction. When Johnson ignored the Tenure
of Office Act and fired Stanton, Republicans in the House impeached
him by a vote of 126–47.
After a tense trial, the Senate voted to acquit the president by
a margin of only one vote.
The Black
Codes and Ku Klux Klan
Despite sweeping rights legislation by Radical Republicans
in Congress, southern whites did everything in their power to limit
the rights of their former slaves. During Presidential Reconstruction, white
supremacist Congressmen passed a series of laws called the black
codes, which denied blacks the right to make contracts, testify against
whites, marry white women, be unemployed, and even loiter in public
places. Violence by the Ku Klux Klan became so common that Congress
had to pass the Ku Klux Klan Act in 1871 to
authorize military protection for blacks.
Carpetbaggers,
Scalawags, and Sharecroppers
Countless carpetbaggers (northerners who
moved to the South after the war)and scalawags (white
Unionists and Republicans in the South) flocked to the South during
Reconstruction and exerted significant influence there. Although
in many respects they achieved their goals of modernizing and Republicanizing
the South, they eventually were driven out by Democratic state politicians
in the mid-1870s.
Most former slaves in the South, meanwhile, became sharecroppers during
the Reconstruction period, leasing plots of land from their former
masters in exchange for a percentage of the crop yield. By 1880,
more than 80 percent
of southern blacks had become sharecroppers.
Grant’s Presidency
To the Radicals’ delight, Johnson finally left the White
House in 1868,
when Republican Ulysses S. Grant was elected president. Grant’s
inexperience, however, proved to be a liability that ultimately
ended Radical Reconstruction. Because Grant had difficulty saying
no, many of his cabinet posts and appointments ended up being filled
by corrupt, incompetent men who were no more than spoils-seekers.
As a result, scandal after scandal rocked Grant’s administration and
damaged his reputation. In 1869,
reporters uncovered a scheme by millionaires Jim Fisk and
Jay Gould to corner the gold market by artificially inflating gold
prices. Schuyler Colfax, vice president at the time,
was forced to resign for his complicity in the Crédit Mobilier
scandal in 1872.
The president lost even more credibility during his second
term, when his personal secretary helped embezzle millions of dollars
from the U.S. Treasury as a member of the Whiskey
Ring.
Liberal
Republicans and the Election of 1872
The discovery of new scandals split the Republican Party
in 1872, as
reform-minded Liberal Republicans broke from the ranks
of moderates and radicals. The Liberal Republicans wanted to institute reform,
downsize the federal government, and bring a swift end to Reconstruction.
They nominated New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley as
their party’s presidential candidate (he agreed to run on the Democratic
Party’s ticket as well). Though already marred by scandal, Grant
easily defeated Greeley by more than 200 electoral votes
and 700,000 popular
votes.
The Depression of
1873
In 1873,
the postwar economic bubble in the United States finally burst.
Overspeculation in the railroad industry, manufacturing, and a flood
of Americans taking out bad bank loans slid the economy into the
worst depression in American history. Millions lost
their jobs, and unemployment climbed as high as 15 percent.
Many blacks, landless whites, and immigrants from both North and
South suffered greatly, demanding relief from the federal government. Republicans,
refusing to give in to demands to print more paper money, instead
withdrew money from the economy by passing the Resumption Act
of 1875 to
curb skyrocketing inflation. This power play by Republicans
prompted northerners to vote Democrat in the midterm elections of 1876,
effectively ending Radical Reconstruction.
Striking
Down Radical Reconstruction
By the mid-1870s,
Democrats had retaken the South, reseating themselves in southern
legislatures by driving blacks and white Unionists away from the
polls and employing violence and other unethical tactics to win
state elections. Most northerners looked the other way during this
period, consumed by their own economic hardships.
In the late 1870s
and early 1880s,
a conservative Supreme Court also struck down much of the civil
rights legislation that Radical Republicans had passed. In the 1873 Slaughterhouse
Cases, the Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment
safeguarded a person’s rights only at a federal level, not at a
state level (in rulings ten years later, the court further stipulated
that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited racial discrimination only
by the U.S. government, not by individuals). In 1876,
the Court ruled in United States v. Cruikshank that
only states and their courts—not the federal government—could prosecute
Ku Klux Klan members under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.
The Disputed
Election of 1876
As the election of 1876 approached,
Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden, a lawyer famous
for busting corrupt New York City politician William “Boss”
Tweed in 1871.
Tilden campaigned for restoration of the Union and an end to government
corruption. The Republican Party, on the other hand, chose the virtually
unknown Rutherford B. Hayes. Many Northern voters,
tired of Reconstruction and hoping for more federal relief because
of the depression, voted Democrat. Ultimately, Tilden received 250,000 more
popular votes than Hayes, and 184 of
the 185 electoral
votes needed to become president.
The Compromise of
1877
With the election result hanging in the balance, Congress
passed the Electoral Count Act in early 1877,
creating a fifteen-man commission—eight Republicans and seven Democrats—to
recount disputed votes in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida.
Not surprisingly, the commission determined by an eight-to-seven
vote that Republican Rutherford B. Hayes had carried all three states. Resentment
and political deadlock threatened to divide the country, but both
parties were able to avoid division and strike a deal with the Compromise
of 1877.
Democrats agreed to concede the presidency to the Republicans in
exchange for the complete withdrawal of federal troops from the
South. Hayes became president, withdrew the troops, and ended Reconstruction.
