Reconstructing Reconstruction: America's Second Civil War

By the end of the American Civil War, nearly all Northern political leaders could agree that true "victory" could not be achieved with just Confederate surrender, it would require a total realization of the war's two major goals: the repudiation of secessionism, and the dissolution of slavery. There was significant - and often violent - disagreement, however, over what course and what measures should be taken to rebuild and reintegrate the South as part of the postwar United States. The possibility of Reconstruction offered enormous opportunities for political and social reform in the wake of devastation and turmoil left by the Civil War, but bitter Southern opposition, ineffective Northern leadership, and sweeping desires to end the nearly fifteen year conflicts over reconciliation and personal freedom ultimately saw Reconstruction abandoned in failure. The consequences would prove to be crippling setbacks for southern recovery and civil rights, but the nature of the conflicts that emerged during Reconstruction offer evidence that the Civil War had nonetheless turned a corner in American history.

Many scholars and firsthand sources will testify to the hardships faced by African American "freedmen" during the Reconstruction period following their emancipation from slavery. Many freed slaves living in the South, which had been economically ravaged during the war, were largely uneducated, viciously discriminated against, and at least initially, had little if any concept of their political rights as free citizens. All their lives they had been denied access to the benefits and trappings of freedom, and they suddenly found themselves mobilized as never before in an utterly hostile environment. The economic tribulations of freedmen described in accounts like Felix Haywood's and Warren McKinney's were greatly exacerbated by the severe limitations put on African Americans' civil liberties by Southern legislation like the "Black Codes" (424-426).

The Black Codes, which attempted to reassert many of the same restrictions on African Americans' individual rights that had existed under slavery, embody common trends of resistance to equality in the South that would play a major role in the continued subjugation and exploitation of blacks as the main source of labor for cotton-based agriculture. And, as David Blight points out, President Johnson "openly encouraged the South to draft its notorious Black Codes," being "a thoroughgoing white supremacist and a doctrinaire state rightist" himself (447). Put in this context, it is perhaps not surprising that Johnson was focused almost solely on the rapid reconciliation with and readmission of the Southern states, and his leadership at a vital point during Reconstruction became a major factor in its failure to uphold the legal, political or civil rights of freed former slaves.

Johnson's goals for Reconstruction were, in fact, extremely generous and conciliatory toward the ex-Confederates. His plans "included a broad provision for amnesty and pardon for those participants in the rebellion who would take a loyalty oath to the Union" (Blight 447). This, combined with Johnson's outright sponsorship of the continued exploitation of blacks for agricultural labor in favoring the Black Codes, was largely indicative of the nature of his "Presidential Reconstruction," which not only ignored and undermined provisions for the rights of black citizens, but restored significant political authority for white Southern landowners (Blight 447). And, as Blight argues, Johnson's measures rekindled the "white Southern defiance" to Northern policymakers that would significantly hamper later Reconstruction efforts (Blight 446).

Many had initially believed that Southerners "would accept virtually any conditions or terms laid upon them" by federal policy, and that a strict and thorough approach to Reconstruction could drastically change the political, social, and economic landscapes of the South (Blight 446). But Johnson's refusal to embrace such an approach, as well as his continual hindrance of Republican attempts within congress to pass equal-rights legislation, quickly dissolved any possibility of an expedient resolution, and further emboldened white Southerners in their opposition to federal demands (Blight 448). His actions frustrated the radical Republican reformists in congress, and unwittingly strengthened their determination to enact far more severe Reconstruction policies following the triumph of the Republican Party in the 1866 elections.

In the period of Radical Reconstruction that followed, federal authority was broadened and deepened, and "black suffrage [became] a condition of readmission to the Union" (Blight 448). The Republican Party, devoted to principles of total equality and free labor, regardless of the expenses to Southern pride and autonomy, gained control of state governments in the South, thanks in large part to their tremendous constituency of black voters (Blight 448). For the first time in history, "black men held political office in every state of the former Confederacy," and "one African American even sat briefly as the governor of Louisiana," though most black elected officials only held positions in the local bureaucracy (Hahn 439-440).

The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were eventually passed, and for a time, it seemed that radical transformation had taken root in a way that might drastically alter the path of American history. But the Republicans' political victories were not to last. Increasingly, violent conflicts erupted in the South, as resistance groups like the Ku Klux Klan took to brutality and political intimidation in a widespread counterattack on Radical Reconstruction. As Steven Hahn describes, in some places, like southwest Georgia, their success was particularly clear: "only two Republicans bothered to cast ballots in Camilla, and the turnout was so low elsewhere in the district that the Democrats, despite being greatly outnumbered among eligible voters, registered an official victory," adding "there would be resurgences of local black power in the future, but this was the beginning of the end for Republican rule in Georgia" (444).

Shows of force by the KKK and other former Confederates had a tremendous demoralizing effect on black voters and Republicans in general in the Southern states. And, as the ex-Confederates had begun to reclaim much of their political and economic power, due in large part to Johnson's administration, Republican influence in the South dwindled. Radical reforms lost their momentum, as increasing weariness, disillusionment and nostalgia for the heavy losses of the Civil War chipped away at the determination of reformists to see Reconstruction through. Attentions began to turn elsewhere, and in what Blight believes had been a struggle between "healing" and "justice" as the main goals of Reconstruction all along, "healing," that is to say, reconciliation, won out.

The Compromise of 1877 brought an official end to the period of Reconstruction; few statements could speak more strongly to the loss of devotion to Reconstruction's ideals than the federal troops withdrawing from those final Southern states to secure a tentative Presidential election. Freed blacks would no longer have the federal support so desperately needed to prevent their continued subjugation, intimidation, and oppression by white Southern landowners. Thus Reconstruction achieved the reconciliation and readmission of the former Confederacy, but only at the cost of abandoning one of the fundamental ideals for which the Civil War had ostensibly been fought - the freedom and equality of all men. Yet the war had still not been fought in vain, for many precedents were still set during the Reconstruction era - the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the election of black officials chief among them, that were, at the very least, a sign of things to come.

Works Cited

Blight, David W. "Ending the War: the Push for National Reconciliation." Major Problems in American History. US: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. 446-453.

Hahn, Steven. "Continuing the War: White and Black Violence During Reconstruction." Major Problems in American History. US: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. 437-446.