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Presidential versus Congressional Reconstruction
Upon the war’s end in April 1865, it became apparent that there would be a need to help rebuild the South—this period is called Reconstruction. Both presidents involved with Presidential Reconstruction outlined relatively lenient terms. Lincoln’s plan was to reunite the country by enticing the Southern states with an easy return. When Lincoln was assassinated shortly after the end of the war, his vice president, Andrew Johnson, continued to follow most of the same policies. The Presidential Reconstruction plan stated that each of the rebellious states had to do several things to be allowed to rejoin the Union. These included swearing a loyalty oath to the Union and pledging to recognize the abolition of slavery, and new state constitutions had to recognize the abolition of slavery and renounce secession.
Republicans in Congress, however, felt that Johnson did not go far enough in ensuring that Confederates were adequately punished. They also worried that former Confederate leaders would find a way to recreate conditions in the South that would lead to the mistreatment of African Americans. Their Congressional Reconstruction Plan denied seats in Congress to former Confederates and divided the South into five military districts under oversight by the Army. The plan also resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which granted citizenship to the formerly enslaved.
Successes of Reconstruction
The major accomplishments of the Reconstruction era were the three amendments created during it, which are often called the “Civil War Amendments.” The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in all states, including those that had remained in the Union. The Fourteenth Amendment gave citizenship to all native-born Americans, granting citizenship to all formerly enslaved people, and provided them with equal protection under the law. This meant that states could not pass laws that applied to some citizens but not others or discriminated against certain groups. Finally, the Fifteenth Amendment declared that the right to vote could not be denied to anyone because of their race, color, or condition of previous servitude, officially giving all formerly enslaved men the right to vote. It did not, however, apply to women of any race. Additionally, the Freedmen’s Bureau was created. This was a government agency designed to assist the millions of former slaves living in the South. Its goals were to supply food, aid, and clothing; create new public schools; and help negotiate labor contracts between the newly-freed laborers and prospective employers. However, the Freedmen’s Bureau soon ran short of funding and was abolished in 1877.
Failures of Reconstruction
Despite all of the gains in racial equality, Reconstruction had many failures. Soon after the war, Southern states began to pass Black Codes, laws that limited the rights of the newly-freed to maintain the culture of white supremacy. These “Jim Crow” laws limited property rights and the ability to testify in court and outlawed intermarriage with whites. Other laws made it illegal for African Americans to be unemployed or not have a permanent residence. The penalty for breaking these laws was a fine or prison, which could result in being leased out as a convict laborer—forcibly working under the penalty of punishment. While many of these laws were limited during Congressional Reconstruction, they were reenacted when Reconstruction ended in 1877.
Organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) or the White League used terror and intimidation to prevent African American and white voters from choosing reform-minded Republican candidates. During the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant, Congress passed a series of Force Acts. These were meant to help protect voting rights in the South by means of additional law enforcement support and supervision of elections. By the end of Reconstruction, however, nearly all former Confederate states had fallen firmly back into their old ways. Without the support or protection of the federal government, African Americans in the South often found themselves barely better off than they had been before the war. Former Plantation owners still controlled most of the land in the South, so many formerly enslaved people had to earn a living as sharecroppers—farmers who rented land and equipment from wealthy landowners in exchange for splitting the profits from their crops. This system was designed to trap the sharecropper in layers of debt to the landowner that often couldn’t be escaped for generations.
In the end, Reconstruction was a failure. Organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, or KKK, used terrorism and violence to suppress voting rights. After more than a decade of war and rebuilding, the North had lost the will to enforce Reconstruction reforms. Additionally, there was a return to a focus on economic issues, especially after the Panic of 1873 (an economic depression). However, the Compromise of 1877 officially indicated Reconstruction’s end. The Election of 1876 basically resulted in a tie between Democrat Samuel Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. After a series of closed-door negotiations, Democrats allowed Hayes to take the presidency in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops that had been enforcing Reconstruction from the South. This set the stage for a complete takeover of Southern states by the Democrats and slowed the cause of racial equality for generations.
