Reconstruction

An uncertain era and an unknown quantity

In the immediate aftermath of President Lincoln’s assassination, the United States government confronted its greatest challenge since the American Revolution, reunifying the country, with the added uncertainty of how new President Andrew Johnson would govern. During the Civil War, Johnson, a former slave owner from Tennessee, distinguished himself as the only southern senator to continue to represent a state that had seceded from the Union and was later appointed military governor of the occupied parts of Tennessee. As a prominent southern War Democrat, Johnson appealed to Republicans anxious to shore up support for Lincoln’s reelection campaign in 1864; these Republicans did not anticipate Johnson becoming president within 6 weeks of Lincoln’s second inauguration, however, meaning that the country had to rely on Johnson’s Civil War statements blaming wealthy southern planters for secession and starting the war as their only signal posts for how Johnson would govern.

Lincoln’s ten percent plan

Before Lincoln’s assassination, he had proposed what became known as the 10 percent plan, the most lenient route for the seceded states to reenter the Union - 10% of the voters from 1860 would be able to form a new state government that had to outlaw slavery and commit the state to never take up arms against the Union in the future. Lincoln’s 10 percent plan also included full pardons for most white southerners, although not for prominent Confederate military and political leaders. Lincoln’s plan faced considerable opposition from Radical Republicans in Congress who advocated a more punitive plan, the Wade-Davis bill, that Lincoln pocket vetoed at the end of the session of Congress, meaning that when Andrew Johnson became president in April 1865 there was no plan for Reconstruction in effect. Coupled with the fact that Congress was not in session in the spring of 1865, President Johnson enjoyed considerable leeway to implement his own version of Reconstruction.

Presidential Reconstruction

Andrew Johnson did not become president with a clearly defined plan for Reconstruction; indeed, his ascendancy to the presidency, particularly in the wake of Lincoln’s assassination, surprised nearly everyone, including Johnson himself. Lacking clear precedents, and with Congress not in session, Johnson ultimately resolved upon measures that allowed him to humiliate the wealthy southern planters that he blamed for secession and for starting the Civil War without fundamentally changing southern society beyond the outlawing of slavery through the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Johnson’s leniency towards the planters, including many who had served as high-ranking Confederate military and political officials, rankled Radical Republicans and set the stage for future showdowns, including the first impeachment of an American president.

Home rule

By all accounts, most white southerners reluctantly, and often resentfully, rejoined the United States but with firm intentions of maintaining their control over the south. During the summer and fall of 1865, the previously seceded states wrote new constitutions that enshrined discrimination against African Americans, 90% of whom in the south were now known as freedmen. These infamous black codes preserved as much of the prewar status quo as possible while tacitly acknowledging that the system of chattel slavery could no longer officially exist. Southern voters and legislators sought to send prominent Confederate military and political leaders to Congress, including Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens. The Republican dominated Congress refused to recognize the credentials of these former Confederates when Congress convened in December 1865. Throughout 1866, white southerners, overwhelmingly associated with the Democrats, campaigned on the restoration of home rule, bluntly asserting that southern governments were “white men’s” governments. Andrew Johnson vetoed vital civil rights legislation and openly campaigned against ratification of the 14 Amendment while turning a blind eye to the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan. Republicans increased their majorities in both houses of Congress, generating veto-proof majorities and ensuring continued confrontations with President Johnson.

Radical Reconstruction

With solid majorities in both houses of Congress, Radical Republicans enacted their own version of Reconstruction in the spring of 1867. Andrew Johnson had alienated more moderate Republicans with his vetoing of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill and his explicit, vitriolic racism and recriminations against prominent Republicans. Under Radical Reconstruction, southern military commanders and politicians were prohibited from voting and holding elected office, ensuring that white southerners who were accommodating to Reconstruction would govern in the south. The 10 southern states that had previously rejected the 14 Amendment, all of the former Confederate states than Johnson’s home state of Tennessee, were then divided into 5 military districts with several thousand federal soldiers stationed across the south to ensure the protection of the freedmen and the implementation of federal law. By early February 1870, the 15th Amendment was ratified, prohibiting racial discrimination in voting.

Freedmen’s Bureau

Established on March 3, 1865, 2 days before Lincoln’s second inauguration, the Freedmen’s Bureau was the only significant component of Reconstruction authorized before Lincoln’s assassination. Formed to provide critical emergency assistance to the formerly enslaved, the Freedmen’s Bureau supervised labor contracts for the freed people and ultimately established the first public school system in the American south, educating tens of thousands of African Americans in the late 1860s, often with the assistance of northern missionary societies. Even though the Freedmen’s Bureau assisted poor southern whites in the aftermath of the Civil War with emergency food, medicine and shelter and later with employment and education, many white southerners rejected the Freedmen’s Bureau as a symbol of federal military occupation of the south. Later reports of corruption in the Freedmen’s Bureau were at least partially substantiated, further fueling white southern anger and resistance.

Reconstruction offered significant prospects for expanding democracy but encountered immediate and violent resistance.

The first Constitutional amendments ratified in over 60 years, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, outlawed slavery, more clearly defined citizenship and equal protection of the laws and banned racial discrimination in voting.