Reconstruction and its Effects on African Americans, continued
by Derell Kennedo
The period of Congressional Reconstruction (1867-1877), or Radical Reconstruction, was the period in which the federal government made real attempts to integrate freedmen into American society and to change Southern society to one more in tune with Republican ideas of an equal and just society. First, Congress passed four Reconstruction Acts designed to ensure that Southern governments would comply with Congressional laws and policy. The first Reconstruction Act divided the rebel states into five military districts with a military officer at the head of each to maintain order (Trefousse 111-113). It also stated that each state could form an elected government and be readmitted into the Union. This act was quite moderate in that it allowed a swift reentry into the Union while allowing each state to conduct its affairs anyway it wished, as long as Confederate leaders would not be allowed to hold office. Each state would have to recognize the rights of freedmen until they became states within the Union, at which point they could find alternative ways subordinate blacks as they would when the Democrats regained control in the 1870s, but I will get to that later. But, Southern whites chose not to comply and did not set up their own governments, which led to the second Reconstruction Act. The second act, called the Supplementary Act (issued March 23, 1867) was designed to speed up the process so that Reconstruction could be completed. To do this, Congress gave power to the military governors of each district to get people registered, send delegates to form a constitution, and vote on the state constitutions so that they could be sent to Congress for ratification (Trefousse 114-117). While the moderates wanted Southern states to be readmitted swiftly, the Radicals were determined to punish the former rebels.
The second Reconstruction Act was not even allowed to take effect before the third Reconstruction Act was passed because Radical Republicans in Congress felt it was too lenient (Trefousse 118). It stipulated that the governments in the former rebel states were illegal; they would be placed under military rule, subject to the control of the military commander and not the president; that any person who held positions in, or aided, Confederate governments could not vote, regardless of any oath or proclamation of amnesty which stated otherwise; and that no commander was under obligation to any member of the United States government, including the president (Fleming 415-418). This act would ensure that the president could not obstruct Congressional policies. It also would ensure that a large amount of Southern Democrats - people who fought in the war, served in government, or supported the war somehow - would remain disenfranchised, while Northern Republicans who went to the South (Carpetbaggers), Southern Republicans (who were ostracized in society), Southern Democrats who switched over, and Negroes would play the largest role and, therefore, give Republicans a great deal of power in Congress. The Fourth Reconstruction Act, March 11, 1868, was simply a measure designed to force Southerners to comply because they were trying to obstruct Congress' plans (Trefousse 135-136).
Congress also designed policies that were specifically aimed at African Americans. Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment on March 30, 1870, which declared, "The right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous conditions of servitude" (Fleming 493). It was now a part of the United States Constitution that everyone must be allowed to vote and that Congress had the power to enforce this rule. Following this, due to harassment of black voters, Congress passed three Enforcement Acts designed to protect black voting rights. The First Enforcement Act, issued May 31, 1870, protected the civil rights of all citizens, guaranteed the right to vote for all citizens, and listed punishments for any individual who attempted to obstruct the rights of citizens to vote (Trefousse 154-160). The Second, issued February 28, 1871, restated some of the points from the first act and, also, stated that elections are to be strictly supervised by federal marshals.
The Third Enforcement Act, issued April 20, 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act because of the influence of that group, aimed to prevent terrorist organizations in the South, along with Southern governments and judicial systems, from obstructing justice, discriminating, and limiting the civil rights of anyone in the State. It said that the writing of Habeas Corpus could be suspended if and when large groups attempted to conspire to overthrow the government, or curb the civil rights of a particular group, such as Negroes (Trefousse 171-175). Nevertheless, while Congress attempted to create laws to force changes in Southern society, blacks began taking advantage of their newly created rights.
Blacks, during Reconstruction, were elected in both national and state political offices. Between 1869 and 1880, sixteen blacks served in Congress, with two of these serving in the Senate (Franklin 136). In Forever Free, Foner mentions that during Reconstruction, there were about two thousand blacks who served in public office (129). Of the blacks who served in public office or played leadership roles during Reconstruction, such as community organizations or in the Republican Party, there were representatives of both freeborn and slave-born. "In Louisiana, South Carolina, and Virginia – the home of large free black populations – men who had never known slavery dominated among Reconstruction officeholders. For the South as a whole, however, the black political leadership arose out of local slave communities." (Foner, Forever Free, 136). However, most of the ex-slave leadership consisted of mostly individuals who had skilled crafts, such as blacksmiths and carpenters, and very few were field-hands (Foner, Forever Free, 349). Nevertheless, blacks, on the whole, did not really control any state legislatures. For, example, while South Carolina was the only state with a black majority in the state legislature, they controlled only the lower house, "The white members of the legislature, from their control of the Senate, were always able to block Negro legislatures" (Dubois 404). Other states would have been impossible for blacks to control. However, with the white Republicans, they came together on many issues, such as free and compulsory public education, institutions for the destitute and insane, reduced number of capital crimes, and the granting of divorces (Foner, Forever Free, 143-144). Nevertheless, this union would be short lived, as the forces working against Reconstruction would eventually prevail.
Terrorist organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, were effective in instilling fear in Republican politicians and black voters in the South. The Ku Klux Klan was created in 1866 in Tennessee but, "By 1870, the Ku Klux Klan and kindred organizations like the Knights of the White Camelia and the White Brotherhood had become deeply entrenched in nearly every Southern state" (Foner, Forever Free, 425). These groups were terror organizations designed to help the Democratic Party regain control of the South. They intimidated blacks in order to restore them to their former position of inferiority and servitude. According to Cimbala, "White Georgia used violence to curb the very rights of the freed people that the [Freedman's] Bureau was committed to protect, including the right to be paid, the right to vote, the right to assemble, the right to bear arms, and ultimately the right to be treated as a free person" (Cimbala, Under the Guardianship of the Nation, 8). In 1868, "By election Day in Louisiana, more than 2,000 blacks had been killed. In Bossier Parish, 125 bodies were found in the Red River after a Klan raid. In St. Landry Parish, the white editor of a black newspaper was driven out of town and night raiders invaded local plantations, killing more than 200 blacks" (Dickerson 252). Furthermore, statistics show that the violence was working. "In the November election, the Democrats carried the state ... and the astonished Republicans blamed the outcome on coercion of Negro voters. In some parishes not one Republican vote was cast" (White 150). As a result, Democrats began taking back the political power in the South. "By the end of 1874, most of the South was under Democratic control, and the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts had eviscerated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments as well as the enforcement acts" (Dickerson 254). The reclamation of the South by the Democrats was definitely not good news for blacks.
While the violence of the Ku Klux Klan helped speed up the end of Reconstruction, there were many other factors at hand. First, Radical Republicans were dying or being voted out of Congress, which meant that the Republican Party was no longer willing to put in the effort that it would take to keep Reconstruction going. The resistance was just too great, as many Southerners could not stand for Northerners to run their states, nor could they stand seeing blacks being treated as equals because this was still a very racist time (Trefousse 64). Republicans lost the will to keep the experiment going. Also, white Republicans in the South were not willing to suffer harassment and possibly even death, and many of them switched over to the Democratic Party or went back to the North (Foner, Forever Free, 197). Also, there were other issues, such as industrialization, the emergence and consolidation of railroads barons, and the acquisition of Alaska in 1867 (Trefousse 69). The railroads developed as Americans began moving westward into Native American lands, which also led to wars between Native Americans and the U.S. government and settlers. In 1873 a financial panic caused a nationwide economic crisis, while the growth and expansion of corporations, which was the source of corruption and scandals in government, also put pressure on ordinary workers and labor (Franklin 185-187). People became disinterested in the plight of the Negro in the South because everyone had their own problems to deal with as America began to transform itself into an economic and industrial power.