Radical reconstruction

The first great task confronting the North was to determine the status of the states that had seceded. Lincoln had already set the stage and his vice-president – Andrew Jackson, a Southerner who remained loyal to the Union – tried to carry out Lincoln’s program.

In Lincoln’s view, the people of the Southern states had never legally seceded – they had been misled by disloyal individuals; so, the federal government had to deal with these individuals and not with the states.

In 1863 Lincoln proclaimed that if in any state 10% of the voters of record in 1860 would form a government loyal to the US Constitution, the Congress and the proclamations of the president, he would recognize it as the state’s legal government.

The Congress rejected this plan and some members even demanded severe punishment for all the seceded states. Yet even before the war was wholly over, in Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana new governments had been set up.

In March 1865, the Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau to act as guardian over African Americans and guide them toward self-support.

In December 1865, the Congress ratified the 13^th Amendment to the US Constitution, which abolished slavery.

Throughout the summer of 1865 Jackson tried to carry out Lincoln’s program with minor modifications. He appointed a governor for each of the former Confederate states.

Both Lincoln and Jackson had foreseen that the Congress would seek to punish the South refusing to seat its elected senators and representatives. Then, the Congress worked out a plan for the reconstruction quite different from Lincoln’s.

Many members of the Congress believed that blacks should be given full citizenship. In summer 1866, they passed the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the Unites States and of the states in which they reside.”

All the Southern states – except Tennessee – refused to ratify the amendment and passed black codes, aimed to reimpose bondage on the freedmen. The codes differed from state to state but had some provisions in common.

In response, certain groups in the North advocated intervention to protect the rights of blacks in the South.

In the Reconstruction Act of March 1867, the Congress divided the South into five districts and placed them under military rule. This act marked the end of Presidential Reconstruction and the beginning of Radical Reconstruction. To escape permanent military government the states had to take an oath of allegiance, ratify the 14^th Amendment and adopt black suffrage.

The amendment was ratified in 1868. In 1870 the 15th Amendment was ratified, providing that “The rights of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the Unites States or any state on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.”

President Jackson’s vetoes of legislations protecting newly freed blacks led to the first in the American history impeachment proceedings. The attempted impeachment failed by a narrow margin.

By 1870 all the Confederate states were readmitted to the Union, but many Southern whites turned to illegal means to prevent blacks from gaining equality. Violence against blacks became more and more frequent. In 1879 the Congress was forced to pass the Enforcement Act severely punishing those who attempted to deprive the black freedmen of their civil rights.

As time passed, it became obvious that the problems of the South could not be solved by harsh laws, so in May 1872, the Congress passed a general Amnesty Act, restoring full political rights to all but 500 Confederate leaders.

The Reconstruction period was over: slaves got freedom, but not equality. Blacks were dependent on the Northern whites to protect them from the Ku-Klux-Klan. The economic needs of the freedmen were not solved, and without economic resources of their own, many Southern blacks were forced to become tenant farmers on land owned by their former masters.

The failure of Reconstruction meant the continuation of the struggle of African American for equality and freedom in the 20^th century – when it became a national, and not a Southern issue.