began, The Civil War. Socially this war had been brewing since the beginning of slavery.
This controversial subject had been the object of debate mainly because it required a
balance between free and slave states. Slavery was also a big issue between the
Democrats in the 1860 election because they could not agree on the issue of popular
sovereignty. This eventually led to their splitting which opened up the doors for Lincoln
to take office. After Lincoln was inaugurated in 1860 seven states ceded and later four
more. The south believed they were within their constitutional right to cede. In South
Carolina's Declaration of Causes for Session the state says, "Powers not delegated to the
United States by the constitution...are reserved to the states (Doc A)." This leaves
Lincoln at a quandary over the age old constitutional issue of Nullification and session
debated back in the day of the Virginia Kentucky resolutions and Hartford Convention.
He resolves that it is not within the states power to cede and brings the nation to war. The
eventual victory for the North would bring about one of the greatest changes in history;
the Emancipation Proclamation that forever ended slavery and changed the southern way
of life.
With Slavery no more and a Southern society in ruins more changes had to be made in the
Reconstruction revolution. After Lincoln's and Johnson's plans for reconstruction failed,
the Republicans who now controlled congress took the reigns. Socially there was the
large issue of all these freedmen with nowhere to go, who are now demanding equality. In
a petition written just after the war in 1865 from African Americans to the Tennessee
Convention the blacks say, "If we are called to military duty...should we be denied the
right to vote (Doc C)." That same year a letter to the Freedmen's Bureau (a group
dedicated to helping protect blacks and their rights), from a group of blacks was asking
for homesteads so they may have the same rights as white land owners (Doc E). With the
need to help these newly freed blacks and protect them from those endorsing things like
the Black Codes, states had to develop a constitution with special specifications to
black's rights. The constitutional changes that occurred not only to the state governments
but to the national governments as well were the thirteenth amendment that ended
slavery, the fourteenth that made blacks citizens, and the fifteenth that gave blacks the
right to vote as illustrated in The First Vote (Doc G). The latter developments changed
the south and America forever. The entire southern way of life was flipped upside down
economically and socially. Sharecropping and the crop-lien system emerged to solve the
labor shortages, blacks status increased, and education expanded; these are some of the
main results of the Reconstruction Revolution.
The Final revolution of this time unfortunately was that of the Redeemers. Since the
beginning the conservatives had been fighting reconstruction in the South. The South had
always had people (the democrats) opposed to black suffrage. Gideon Wells said, "The
Federal government has no right...to dictate the matter of suffrage (Doc D)." To resolve
these conservatives would require literacy tests to vote, and reinstate property
requirements. These methods were ways around the vague constitutional developments of
the 15th amendment. Violence was also used as a means to control the black population
in the South. The Klu Klux Klan and White League would use terrorist acts on blacks and
lynch many innocent blacks to discourage them from voting as illustrated in (Doc I).
Blacks were also segregated from whites, which after the Supreme Court case of Plessy v.
Ferguson was deemed legal as long as they had equal opportunities; however, the blacks
did not have equal opportunities but it still allowed the whites to avoid the 14th
amendment. Finally, in the Compromise of 1877 Rutherford B. Hayes was elected
president and withdrew the troops from the south. The north believed that with the vote
the blacks could take care of themselves and they also had their eyes focused on the West.
However, with the soldiers gone the blacks became once again subject to the will of the
whites. This is where history is debated on whether reconstruction was a success because
the Redeemer revolution reverted the south back to a segregated area of tension once
again.
The façade that was America changed significantly from 1860 to 1877. The constitution
had been written a century prior leaving out many key issues. To address these issues
revolutions took place and in the end change was made. The debate over slavery and
cession led to finally freeing those who never deserved oppression. The end of the Civil
War brought about the need for black rights and new ways of life. Opposition to these
revolutions led to the reverting revolution that turned back the clock taking away once
again what so many died for. The social and constitutional developments that helped fuel
these revolutions are responsible for some of the nation's greatest achievements like the
13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, and some of the worst like segregation.