Changes In The States After The Era Of Reconstruction

The first decade after the Civil War, also known as “the era of Reconstruction”, was a time of massive change in the USA. It was the time of the “Old West”, as we are used to seeing it in the movies – cowboys, buffalo hunters, and the construction of railroads; the symbol of prosperity in America. The North and the West grew richer and attracted millions of immigrants from Europe, who were looking for higher wages. Despite the fact that highly skilled workers were paid more than they would receive in their homeland, these were times of inequality, and poverty. These events blended together with those following the Civil War in the South, as the Era of Reconstruction unfolded. The political changes in the South are divided in two periods,
the first of which is the Presidential Reconstruction (1865-1867). The president who helped shape the rate and the extent of the reintegration of the South into the USA, Andrew Johnson, played a significant role during this time. The government had no distinguished plan for what would happen with the southern states after the war and the assassination of President Lincoln and the following uprising of Johnson threw the country into even greater uncertainty. Johnson, who was a vice president under Lincoln, proved to be astonishingly merciful towards the white people and not in favor of the former slaves as was anticipated. In order to gain the support of the former Southern leaders, he sacrificed the black community’s interests. While Johnson was in power, the South stood behind their traditional values. Black people were not allowed numerous things because of the “Black Codes”. Colored people couldn’t own property, firearms, or have education for their children. A major player in the scene of discrimination was the newly formed Ku Klux Klan, which stood for white supremacy. Despite the existence of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, generally referred to as the Freedmen’s Bureau and their efforts to reduce discrimination, it was times of change that Southerners did not want and tried to resist. However, the former slaveholders needed the workforce they used to have, and wanted the black workers to be in “gangs” and work under close supervision, but the African Americans sought independence both in their work, and their life. This led to the system of sharecropping, in which workers and landowners would share part of the profits from the crops. This system would prove to be crucially formative for the economy of the South in the years that followed. Sharecropping led to a desperate cycle. People who worked in the fields were mostly family units with separate responsibilities. They had no other income and relied exclusively on the income from selling crops, which came once a year. During the other time, workers sunk into debt to the landowners and shopkeepers, who were often the same person. This, however, did not bring profit to anyone, and the lowering of the cost of the cotton (the main crop during this era) increased the negative economic effects. The decision made by Andrew Johnson to return the lands, owned by the federal government after the war, to the previous owners favored even more the white people, and put the freed men in a difficult position of dependence to the men who “owned” them. With the changes regarding their freedom, African American men and women changed their relations as well. The structure of their families, during the slavery, was far from the conception of the white people’s ideal marriage where the man of the house provides for the family, and the woman’s job is to take care of the home and the children. They had families, despite the lack of legal authorization, and their children could be sold at any time. The figure of the father was often missing. People, in most cases, could not be with their loved ones, and were separated by force, or they were stuck with partners they did not like or choose. With the freedom came changes. Some people reunited, and some relationships fell apart. The whole African American community embraced the fact that the women were now far less likely to be a subject of sexual harassment and assaults, and were now free of the white man’s will. However, there were many women who would now not want to have the same sort of abusive relations with their husbands. In other words, the social structure in terms of family life needed reconstruction as well. The second period of the Reconstruction, known as the Congressional or Radical Reconstruction, began with the newly formed congress, dominated by the Republicans, in March 1867. The North was dissatisfied with the resistance of the South to implement even the lenient reforms made during the first period of the Reconstruction. The people wanted deeper and more significant changes in the southern states if they were to join the Union again. The Acts of 1867 gave the rights to vote to all men, regardless of their ethnicity, and divided the South into five military areas under federal control. Having the right to vote, the African American community quickly elected their representatives for political positions. However, the new political force faced harsh reactions and the changes they were trying to bring, were undermined and rejected. Despite the fact that the high positions in the party were still held by white people, who were in theory responsible for the actions of the party, every failure was used as an example of the inability of the African Americans to be involved with politics. The reforms and legislation concerning public schools, the development of the economy, and better public spending, proposed by the freed men appealed to a part of the white community. However, those who were to join their cause were labeled “traitors to their race.” The white men, allied with the Republican Party and the black voters were looked upon by Democrats as shameless men who would sell themselves and everything people value just to have political power. They thought that the Northern Republicans, who held positions in the South, were greedy people who made use of the ignorance of the African American men to empower themselves and look after their own interests. Indeed, there were people who went south to spend their savings lured by the public idea that there was easy money to be made from cotton. However, most of those northerners were well educated men who moved to the South before having any ambitions or chances to have a political career. Many of them joined the Freedmen’s Bureau driven by the idea of racial equality. By any definition, the period following the Civil War was one of many different ambitions and motivations. Many who fought as abolitionists before and during the war returned to the South, feeling the work of emancipation was not complete; still others came seeking financial gain and business opportunities. There was open rancor between Republicans of the South who chose to align with black interests, as opponents were quick to attack the new alliances with unveiled contempt. Party members would separate over issues concerning labor laws, as there were sides to be taken between those who favored business and those left virtually bankrupt by way of having no land. The democratic movement at the time, as opposed to the political scene in the United States today, was centered around limiting government and allowing entrepreneurship in capitalism to reign free. In consequence, the Republicans were victim to an endless slew of undermining policies enacted by the Democrats, who fought bitterly to eliminate the seeds of progress in the ideas espoused by the new Republicans, especially given that the stakes in partisan conflict were raised because of the new black politicians. Different policies saw the parties experiencing mixed levels of success in different states, since the economic situation had become highly variable from region to region.
The speed of execution with which the new constitutions were penned and passed was dependent on the strength of the progressive black movement in the given state. Spontaneous lashes of white supremacy violence and personal slander were known to ruin lives and careers, and this would become prevalent to different degrees throughout the Reconstruction and in the future. Some states demonstrated humility in accepting the new realities, while other states such as South Carolina and Louisiana saw proponents of emancipatory policies faced with intimidation and death threats on a public and private daily basis. The war had practically not ended in these states, and it was only in 1876 that the last armed forces were removed from Florida, as a gesture of the newly named president elect Rutherford B. Hayes, who had won after a close and heated
campaign. It would be appropriate to introduce a past retrospective on these events in a way adequately interpreted by a diverse range of historians.
Contemporary European critics argue that the Civil War was demonstrative of one of the failures of the democratic experiment in the United States, pointing out other civilized nations at the time which not only abolished slavery earlier, but did so with little to no bloodshed. The Civil War remains the bloodiest war in American history, and similar criticisms have been made of the Reconstruction efforts that followed. Historians argue that although noble and praised as one of the more honorable presidents, Abraham Lincoln applied little practical forethought to the problem of whether the slaves were in any way prepared for emancipation. Listless hordes of unqualified labor suddenly flooded the market in a manner which crushed the Southern economies. People who were forbidden by threat of death to read half a decade earlier were now expected be citizens, and many experts in the field claim that the fundamental problem of leadership doomed Reconstruction efforts from the start. They support this claim by stating the few politicians who truly had African American interests at heart were hopelessly outnumbered by greedy northern prospectors, looking to carve up the decayed ruins of Southern businesses among themselves. Not only were the freed men left to basically fend for themselves after the war, but the old aristocracy and Confederate
elite had not nearly been removed to the extent that would have been necessary for true reform. For this reason, the modern day perspective concerning the Era of Reconstruction perceive it mainly as an either hypocritical or misguided effort, weak and ineffective in substantially changing the realities of blacks in America. Tired, disenchanted and disaffected from the Civil War, both Northern and Southern electorates lost the inertia necessary for the social pyramid to shift significantly during Reconstruction. Dubbed by one historian (Eric Foner, Reconstruction) as America's “unfinished revolution,” the legal, political and economic policies that were necessary for true emancipation would wait another hundred years (during the Civil Rights movement) before being put up for serious consideration by mainstream society. Though many modern perspectives imply the Civil War and the end of slavery as a logical inevitability of a progressive society, many do not account for the disturbance created by its demise. American business, expansion, politics and history is rooted in the slave trade, and this was not something one president could sign away with a few proclamations. A similar cultural revolution today would be difficult to imagine, even considering all the advances in communication technology, public oversight and transparency, and military capability. Again, though noble in its intentions, the age of freedom and emancipation was slow to grab hearts and minds that still remembered the power and glory of the old ways. Ex-landowners and slaveholders could not abandon memories of a prosperous South, and no one could ignore the fact that the slave empire was key in winning territory and influence from Mexico, which would cement the United States' position as leader of the Americas. Politically speaking, the White House as well as the judiciary branch of government had historically been in the hands of Southerners from the start. Their influence in the suppression of abolitionary movements, the forced return of runaway slaves, and the geographical stake comprising half the nation's landmass has not gone unnoticed. The deep rooted dynamic at play on a local, federal, executive and social level was far too complex to be undertaken as one massive overhaul after the war. The odds discussed above against any true 'Reconstruction' may still have been manageable had the movement against them been unified. Three salient divisions are typically named when discussing the differences between Northeners and Southerners who only wanted peace and prosperity. The North, bitter from military conflict instigated by the South's stubbornness, would aggressively demand reparations, revenge and forced assimilation. Humiliated caucasian southerners were divided between those accepting of unconditional surrender to the new order, and those who would refuse to budge an inch to any 'Yankee' policies. Freed blacks also saw conflict amongst themselves, as well as clashes between erratic flows of urban and rural populations. Religious sanctuaries and churches, as well as their leaders, were not safe from attacks by supremacists, ex-confederates, or basically anyone confused and armed. As with all radical, rapid and unexpected revolutions, there were pockets of solidarity and strength which fueled the hopes of the newly emancipated people. Blacks especially who could read became quickly established as a viable threat to remnants of the old order, and would take advantage of their new liberties to form democratic conventions – these would raise awareness and indignation among black and white communities alike, and generally center around the talking point that every man in the new America deserved a chance to adequately support himself and his family. Though many obstacles would be placed in the way of progress, those who sacrificed everything during the era which followed the Civil War would not be forgotten: the election of black Congressmen and a consistent insistence on political involvement has seen the African American community defeat racial provisions to voting amendments, segregation in the educational system, and inequality in the workplace. By this definition, it can be said that the Reconstruction of society following the Civil War still has not been completed, and for good reason.

References
Foner, Eric. Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction (Knopf: 2006), 268p.
Franklin, John Hope. From Slavery to Freedom (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), 686p.

Langguth, A.J. After Lincoln: How the North Won the Civil War and Lost the Peace (2014), 464p.

Lemann, Nicholas. Redemtion: The Last Battle of the Civil War, (2006).

Levine, Bruce. The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil war and the Social Revolution that Trahsformed the South (2012).