Reconstruction era

For other uses, see Reconstruction era (disambiguation).

Reconstruction was the attempt from 1863 to 1877 to resolve the issues of the American Civil War, after the Confederacy was defeated and slavery ended. "Reconstruction" is also the common name for the general history of the postwar era 1865 to 1877. Reconstruction addressed how secessionist Southern states would return to the Union, the civil status of the leaders of the Confederacy, and the Constitutional and legal status of the Negro Freedmen. Violent controversy erupted over how to tackle those issues. By the late 1870s Reconstruction had made some progress to provide the Freedmen with equal rights under the law. Several states kept constitutions rewritten during Reconstruction years for many years. Others used separate legislation to overturn some Reconstruction progress.

Reconstruction came in three phases. Presidential Reconstruction, 1863-66 was controlled by Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, with the goal of quickly reuniting the country. It can be said to have begun with the Emancipation Proclamation. Their moderate programs were opposed by the Radical Republicans, a political faction that gained power after the 1866 elections and began Congressional Reconstruction, 1866-1873 emphasizing civil rights and voting rights for the freedmen. A Republican coalition of freedmen, carpetbaggers and scalawags came to control in most of the southern states. In the Redemption, 1873-77, white Southern Democrats (calling themselves "Redeemers") defeated the Republicans and took control of each southern state, marking the end of Reconstruction.

Radical Republican Charles Sumner argued that secession had destroyed statehood alone but the Constitution still extended its authority and its protection over individuals, as in the territories. Thaddeus Stevens and his followers viewed secession as having left the states in a status like newly conquered territory.

Congress rejected Johnson's argument that he had the war power to decide what to do, since the war was over. Congress decided it had the primary authority to decide because the Constitution said the Congress had to guarantee each state a republican form of government. The issue became how republicanism should operate in the South, that is, how the freedmen would achieve citizenship, what the status of the Confederate states should be, and what should be the status of men who had supported the Confederacy.

The Problem of Restoring the South to the Union

Republican leaders agreed that slavery and the Slave Power had to be permanently destroyed, and that all forms of Confederate nationalism had to be suppressed. Moderates said this could be easily accomplished as soon as Confederate armies surrendered and the Southern states repealed secession and ratified the 13th Amendment—all of which happened by September 1865.

President Abraham Lincoln was the leader of the moderate Republicans and wanted to speed up Reconstruction and reunite the nation as painlessly and as quickly as possible. Lincoln formally began Reconstruction in late 1863 with his Ten percent plan, which went into operation in several states but which Radicals opposed. Lincoln vetoed the Radical plan, the Wade-Davis Bill of 1864, which was much more strict than the Ten-Percent Plan. The opposing faction of Radical Republicans were skeptical of Southern intentions and demanded more stringent federal action. Congressman Thaddeus Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner led the Radical Republicans.

After Lincoln's assassination in April 1865, President Andrew Johnson switched from the Radical to the moderate camp. By 1866, however, Johnson, with no party affiliation, broke with the moderate Republicans and aligned himself more with the Democrats who opposed equality and the Fourteenth Amendment. Radicals attacked the policies of Johnson, especially his veto of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which protected the civil rights of freedmen.

The election of 1866 decisively changed the balance of power, giving the Radicals control of Congress and enough votes to overcome Johnson's vetoes and even to impeach him. Johnson was acquitted by one vote, but he remained almost powerless regarding Reconstruction policy. Radicals used the Army to take over the South and give the vote to black men, and they took the vote away from an estimated 10,000 or 15,000 white men who had been Confederate officials or senior officers. The Radical stage lasted for varying lengths in the different states, where a Republican coalition of freedmen, scalawags, and carpetbaggers took control and promoted modernization through railroads and public schools. They were charged with corruption by their opponents, the conservative–Democratic coalition, who called themselves "Redeemers" after 1870. Violence sponsored by the Ku Klux Klan was occasionally overcome by federal intervention.

By 1877, however, Redeemers regained control of every state, and President Rutherford Hayes withdrew federal troops, causing the collapse of the remaining three Republican state governments. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were constitutional legacies of the Radical period that provided the underpinning for later 20th century civil rights legislation. Most states in the South had established public education, although funding was variable. Bitterness from the heated partisanship of the era lasted, but in other ways the North and South undertook reconciliation, which reached a height in the early 20th century.

Loyalty issue

A loyalty issue emerged in the debates over the Wade-Davis Bill of 1864. Wade-Davis required voters to take the "Ironclad Oath," swearing that in the past they never had supported the Confederacy or been one of its soldiers. Lincoln ignored the past and asked voters to swear that in the future they would support the Union. The Radicals lost support following Lincoln's pocket veto, but they regained strength in the mode of vengeance that followed Lincoln's assassination in April 1865.

Suffrage issue

Monument in honor of the Grand Army of the Republic, organized after the war.

Suffrage for ex-Confederates was one of two main concerns. First, both sides tried to keep the other from voting. It was a question of allowing some or all ex-Confederates to vote. The moderates wanted virtually all of them to vote, but the Radicals repeatedly tried to impose the Ironclad oath, which would allow none to vote. Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania proposed, unsuccessfully, that all ex-Confederates lose the vote for five years. The compromise that was reached disenfranchised many ex-Confederate civil and military leaders. No one knew how many temporarily lost the vote, but one estimate was 10,000 to 15,000.

Second (and closely related to discussions about disfranchising ex-Confederates) was the issue of whether freedmen should be allowed to vote. The issue was how to receive the four million former slaves as citizens. If they were to be fully counted as citizens, some sort of representation in voting had to be figured out. If the freedmen could not vote, the South would gain additional seats in Congress by having the benefit of four million "new" citizens counted toward representation, but with only whites representing them. Conservatives (including most white Southerners, Northern Democrats, and some Northern Republicans) opposed black voting. Northern states that had referendums on the subject rejected allowing their own small number of blacks to vote, but that was not the issue.

Lincoln and Johnson took a middle position that would allow some black men to vote, especially army veterans, as service was believed to have made them true citizens. Lincoln proposed giving the vote to "the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks", while, in 1864, Governor Johnson said, "The better class of them will go to work and sustain themselves, and that class ought to be allowed to vote, on the ground that a loyal negro is more worthy than a disloyal white man". As President in 1865, Johnson wrote to the man he appointed as governor of Mississippi, recommending, "If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color who can read the Constitution in English and write their names, and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars, and pay taxes thereon, you would completely disarm the adversary [Radicals in Congress], and set an example the other states will follow."

Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and Stevens, leaders of the Radical Republicans, were initially hesitant to enfranchise the largely illiterate ex-slave population. Sumner preferred at first impartial requirements that would have allowed literacy restrictions on both blacks and whites. However he realized that he would never succeed in passing legislation to disenfranchise illiterate whites who already had the vote. Because public education of poor whites lagged in the South, many poor whites were also illiterate. In 1880, for example, the white illiteracy rate was around 25% in Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, South Carolina, and Georgia and as high as 33% in North Carolina. This compares with the 9% national rate and a black rate that was over 70% in the South.

Sumner soon concluded that "there was no substantal protection for the freedman except in the franchise." This was necessary, he stated, "(1) For his own protection; (2) For the protection of the white Unionist; and (3) For the peace of the country. We put the musket in his hands because it was necessary; for the same reason we must give him the franchise." The support for voting rights was a compromise between moderate and Radical Republicans.

The Republcans believed that the best way for men to get political experience was to be able to vote and to participate in the political system. They passed laws allowing all male freedmen to vote. In 1867, black men voted for the first time. Over the course of Reconstruction, more than 1,500 African Americans held public office in the South. They did not hold office in numbers representative of their proportion in the population, but often elected whites to represent them. (The question of women's suffrage was also debated but was rejected.)

The South's white leaders, who regained power in the immediate postwar era before the vote was granted to the freedmen, renounced secession and slavery, but not white supremacy. People who had previously held power were angered in 1867 when their state governments were ousted by federal military forces and replaced by Republican lawmakers elected by blacks, scalawags and carpetbaggers, but there were leaders in the South who tried to accommodate new conditions.

Johnson's presidential reconstruction: 1865–66

Northern anger over the assassination of Lincoln and the immense human cost of the war led to demands for harsh policies. Vice President Andrew Johnson had taken a hard line and spoke of hanging rebel Confederates, but when he succeeded Lincoln as President, Johnson took a much softer line, pardoning many Confederate leaders and ex-Confederates to maintain their control of Southern state governments, Southern lands, and black people. Jefferson Davis was held in prison for two years, but other Confederate leaders were not. There were no treason trials. Only one person—Captain Henry Wirz, the commandant of the prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia—was executed for war crimes.

In March 1865, Congress had established the Freedmen's Bureau. The Bureau provided food, clothing, and fuel to destitute former slaves and white refugees. It did not, as later myths said, promise 40 acres and a mule.

Although resigned to the abolition of slavery, many ex-Confederates were not willing to accept the granting of civil rights to the freedmen. The defeated feared that after the abolition of slavery, the freedmen would threaten their economic and political preeminence in the South. In the words of Benjamin F. Perry, president Johnson's choice as the provisional governor of South Carolina: "First, the Negro is to be invested with all political power, and then the antagonism of interest between capital and labor is to work out the result."

However, The fears of the mostly conservative planter elite were partly assuaged by the actions of president Johnson, who ensured that a wholesale land redistribution from the planters to the Freedman did not occur. President Johnson ordered that confiscated or abandoned lands administered by the Freedman's Bureau would not be redistributed to the freedmen but be returned to the pardoned owners. Land was returned that would have been forfeited under the provisions of the Confiscation Acts passed by Congress in 1861 and 1862.

The position of the Freedmen in 1865-66 and the enactment of black codes

a Harper's Magazine political cartoon alleging Klan and White League opposition to Reconstruction

Southern state governments quickly enacted the restrictive "black codes". However they were abolished by Congress and seldom had effect because the Freedman's Bureau (not the local courts) handled the legal affairs of freedmen.

Under the black codes, the freedmen had more rights than did free blacks before the war, but they still had only a limited set of second-class civil rights, and no voting rights. Among other provisions, the Black Codes stringently limited blacks' ability to control their own employment. The Black Codes outraged northern opinion. They were overthrown by the Civil Rights Act of 1866 that gave the Freedmen full legal equality (except for the right to vote).

The freedmen rejected gang labor procedures that had been used in slavery and with the strong backing of the Freedman's Bureau they forced planters to bargain for their labor. Such bargaining led to the establishment of the system of sharecropping, which gave the freedmen greater economic independence and social autonomy than gang labor. However, because they lacked capital and the planters continued to own the means of production (tools, draft animals and land), the freedmen were forced into producing cash crops (mainly cotton) for the planters, and they entered into a crop-lien system which eventually led to the permanent indebtedness of the majority of the freedmen.

Northern officials gave varying reports on conditions for the Freedmen in the South. One harsh assessment came from Carl Schurz who reported on the situation in the states along the Gulf Coast. His report (available on-line[[5]]) documents dozens of extra-judicial killings and claims that hundreds or thousands more African Americans were killed:

The number of murders and assaults perpetrated upon Negroes is very great; we can form only an approximative estimate of what is going on in those parts of the South which are not closely garrisoned, and from which no regular reports are received, by what occurs under the very eyes of our military authorities. As to my personal experience, I will only mention that during my two days sojourn at Atlanta, one Negro was stabbed with fatal effect on the street, and three were poisoned, one of whom died. While I was at Montgomery, one negro was cut across the throat evidently with intent to kill, and another was shot, but both escaped with their lives. Several papers attached to this report give an account of the number of capital cases that occurred at certain places during a certain period of time. It is a sad fact that the perpetration of those acts is not confined to that class of people which might be called the rabble.

Carl Schurz, "Report on the Condition of the South," December 1865 (U.S. Senate Exec. Doc. No. 2, 39th Congress, 1st session).

The report includes sworn testimony from soldiers and officials of the Freedman's Bureau. In Selma, Alabama, Major J.P. Houston noted that whites who killed 12 African Americans in his district never came to trial. Many more killings never even became official cases. Captain Poillon describes white patrols in southwestern Alabama "who board some of the boats; after the boats leave they hang, shoot, or drown the victims they may find on them, and all those found on the roads or coming down the rivers are almost invariably murdered. The bewildered and terrified freedmen know not what to do--to leave is death; to remain is to suffer the increased burden imposed upon them by the cruel taskmaster, whose only interest is their labor, wrung from them by every device an inhuman ingenuity can devise; hence the lash and murder is resorted to intimidate those whom fear of an awful death alone cause to remain, while patrols, Negro dogs and spies, disguised as Yankees, keep constant guard over these unfortunate people."

Moderate responses

In response to the Black codes and worrisome signs of Southern recalcitrance, the Radical Republicans blocked the readmission of the ex-rebellious states to the Congress in fall 1865. Congress also renewed the Freedman's Bureau, but Johnson vetoed the Freedmen's Bureau Bill in February 1866. Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, leader of the moderate Republicans, took affront at the black codes. He proposed the first Civil Rights Law, because the abolition of slavery was empty if "laws are to be enacted and enforced depriving persons of African descent of privileges which are essential to freemen... A law that does not allow a colored person to go from one county to another, and one that does not allow him to hold property, to teach, to preach, are certainly laws in violation of the rights of a freeman... The purpose of this bill is to destroy all these discriminations."

The key to the bill was the opening section:

"All persons born in the United States ... are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery ... shall have the same right in every State ...to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom to the Contrary notwithstanding."

Congress quickly passed the Civil Rights bill; the Senate on February 2 voted 33–12; the House on March 13 voted 111–38.

Johnson vetoes; Republicans rally against him

Although strongly urged by moderates in Congress to sign the Civil Rights bill, Johnson broke decisively with them by vetoing it on March 27. His veto message objected to the measure because it conferred citizenship on the Freedmen at a time when eleven out of thirty-six states were unrepresented and attempted to fix by Federal law "a perfect equality of the white and black races in every State of the Union." Johnson said it was an invasion by Federal authority of the rights of the States; it had no warrant in the Constitution and was contrary to all precedents. It was a "stride toward centralization and the concentration of all legislative power in the national government."

File:Free-bur.jpg

The debate over reconstruction and the Freedman's Bureau was nationwide. This 1866 Pennsylvania election poster alleged that Freedman's Bureau money was being lavished on lazy freedmen at the expense of white workers.

The Democratic Party, proclaiming itself the party of white men, north and south, supported Johnson. However the Republicans in Congress overrode his veto (the Senate by the close vote of 33:15, the House by 122:41) and the Civil Rights bill became law. Congress also passed the Freedmen's Bureau Bill over Johnson's veto.

The last moderate proposal was the Fourteenth Amendment, also authored by moderate Trumbull. It was designed to put the key provisions of the Civil Rights Act into the Constitution, but it went much further. It extended citizenship to everyone born in the United States (except visitors and Indians on reservations), penalized states that did not give the vote to Freedmen, and most importantly, created new federal civil rights that could be protected by federal courts. It guaranteed the Federal war debt (and promised the Confederate debt would never be paid). Johnson used his influence to block the amendment in the states since three-fourths of the states were required for ratification. (The amendment was later ratified.) The moderate effort to compromise with Johnson had failed, and a political fight broke out between the Republicans (both Radical and moderate) on one side, and on the other side, Johnson and his allies in the Democratic party in the North, and the conservative groupings (which used different names) in each southern state.

Congress imposes Radical Reconstruction: 1866–73

Republicans in Congress took control of Reconstruction policies after the election of 1866. They passed legislation over President Johnson's vetoes. They passed constitutional amendments against his wishes. Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, and the Republican faction that called themselves "radicals" led efforts to extend suffrage to freedmen. They were generally in control, although they had to compromise with the moderate Republicans. (The Democrats in Congress had almost no power.) Historians generally refer to this period as Radical Reconstruction.

Constitutional amendments

Three new Constitutional amendments were adopted. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery and was ratified in 1865. The 14th Amendment was rejected in 1866 but ratified in 1868, guaranteeing citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, except Native Americans, and granting them federal civil rights. The 15th Amendment passed in 1870, decreeing that the right to vote could not be denied because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The amendment did not declare the vote an unconditional right and only prohibited these specific types of discrimination while specific electoral policies were determined within each state.

Statutes

Congress clarified the scope of the federal writ of habeas corpus to allow federal courts to vacate unlawful state court convictions or sentences in 1867 (28 U.S.C. § 2254).

Re-admission to the union

• Tennessee - July 24, 1866
• Arkansas - June 22, 1868
• Florida - June 25, 1868
• North Carolina - July 4, 1868
• South Carolina - July 9, 1868
• Louisiana - July 9, 1868
• Alabama - July 13, 1868
• Virginia - January 26, 1870
• Mississippi - February 23, 1870
• Texas - March 30, 1870
• Georgia - July 15, 1870

Military reconstruction

With the Radicals in control Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts in 1867. The first Reconstruction Act placed ten Confederate states under military control, grouping them into five military districts:

• First Military District: Virginia, under General John Schofield
• Second Military District: The Carolinas, under General Daniel Sickles
• Third Military District: Georgia, Alabama and Florida, under General John Pope
• Fourth Military District: Arkansas and Mississippi, under General Edward Ord
• Fifth Military District: Texas and Louisiana, under Generals Philip Sheridan and Winfield Scott Hancock

Tennessee was not made part of a military district (having already been readmitted to the Union), and therefore federal controls did not apply.

The ten Southern state governments were re-constituted under the direct control of the United States Army. There was little or no fighting, but rather a state of martial law in which the military closely supervised local government, supervised elections, and protected office holders from violence. Blacks were enrolled as voters; former Confederate leaders were excluded.[Foner 1988 p 274–5] No one state was entirely representative. Randolph Campbell describes what happened in Texas:

The first critical step … was the registration of voters according to guidelines established by Congress and interpreted by Generals Sheridan and Griffin. The Reconstruction Acts called for registering all adult males, white and black, except those who had ever sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and then engaged in rebellion.… Sheridan interpreted these restrictions stringently, barring from registration not only all pre-1861 officials of state and local governments who had supported the Confederacy but also all city officeholders and even minor functionaries such as sextons of cemeteries. In May Griffin … appointed a three-man board of registrars for each county, making his choices on the advice of known Scalawags and local Freedman's Bureau agents. In every county where practicable a freedman served as one of the three registrars.… Final registration amounted to approximately 59,633 whites and 49,479 blacks. It is impossible to say how many whites were rejected or refused to register (estimates vary from 7,500 to 12,000), but blacks, who constituted only about 30 percent of the state's population, were significantly overrepresented at 45 percent of all voters.

All Southern states were readmitted to the Union by the end of 1870, the last being Georgia. All but 500 top Confederate leaders were pardoned when President Grant signed the Amnesty Act of 1872.

African American officeholders

Republicans took control of all Southern state governorships and state legislatures, leading to the election of numerous African-Americans to state and national offices, as well as to the installation of African-Americans into other positions of power. About 137 black officeholders had lived outside the South before the Civil War. Some had escaped from slavery to the North and returned to help the South advance in the postwar era. A number of them had achieved education and positions of leadership elsewhere. Other African American men who served were leaders in their communities, including a number of preachers. As was the case in white communities, all leadership did not depend on wealth and literacy.

Race of delegates to 1867 state constitutional conventions
State	White	Black	% White	Statewide white population (% in 1870)
Virginia	80	25	76%	58
North Carolina	107	13	89%	63
South Carolina	48	76	39%	41
Georgia	133	33	80%	54
Florida	28	18	61%	51
Alabama	92	16	85%	52
Mississippi	68	17	80%	46
Louisiana	25	44	36%	50
Texas	81	9	90%	69

Source: Rhodes (1920) v 6 p. 199; no report on Arkansas

There were very few African Americans elected or appointed to national office. African Americans voted for white candidates as well as for blacks. The Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed the right to vote, but did not guarantee that the vote would be counted or the districts would be apportioned equally. As a result, even states with majority African American population often only had one or two African American representatives in Congress, with the exception of South Carolina. At the end of Reconstruction, four of its five Congressmen were African American.

African Americans in Office 1870-1876
State	State Legislators	U.S. Senators	U.S. Congressmen
Alabama	69	0	4
Arkansas	8	0	0
Florida	30	0	1
Georgia	41	0	1
Louisiana	87	0	1*
Mississippi	112	2	1
North Carolina	30	0	1
South Carolina	190	0	6
Tennessee	1	0	0
Texas	19	0	0
Virginia	46	0	0
Total	633	2	15
See E. Foner, Reconstruction: America's unfinished revolution, 1863-1877 (NY: Harper & Row, 1988), p. 354-5. A list of the 15 African American Representatives elected during Reconstruction A list of the 2 African American Senators elected during Reconstruction

Public schools

W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the first historians to document the freedmen's deep commitment to education and demonstrated that African Americans played a critical role in establishing universal public education as fundamental to southern state constitutions during congressional Reconstruction. Many slaves had taken risks to learn to read although forbidden to do so by law; African Americans started "native schools" before the end of the war; Sabbath schools were another widespread means freedmen created for teaching literacy. When they gained suffrage, black politicians took this commitment to public education to state constitutional conventions.

African American and white Republicans joined to build education at the state level. They created a systems of public schools, which were segregated by race everywhere except New Orleans. Most blacks approved the segregated schools because they wanted to control education for their children, the schools provided jobs for black teachers, and kept their children in a much safer learning environment. In general, elementary and a few secondary schools were built in the cities. But the South had relatively few cities.

In the rural areas the public school was often a one-room affair that attracted about half the younger children. The teachers were poorly paid, and their pay was often in arrears. Conservatives contended the rural schools were too expensive and unnecessary for a region where the vast majority of people were cotton or tobacco farmers. They had no vision of a better future for their residents. One historian found that the schools were less effective than they might have been because of "poverty, the inability of the states to collect taxes, and inefficiency and corruption in many places prevented successful operation of the schools."

File:~KKK.JPG

1868 Republican cartoon identifies Democratic candidate Horatio Seymour (right panel) with KKK violence and with Confederate soldiers (left panel)

Numerous private academies and colleges for Freedmen were established by northern missionaries. Every state created state colleges for Freedmen, such as Alcorn State University in Mississippi. The state colleges created generations of teachers who were critical in the education of African American children.

In 1890, the black state colleges started receiving federal funds as land grant schools. They received state funds after Reconstruction ended because, as Lynch explains, "there are very many liberal, fair-minded and influential Democrats in the State who are strongly in favor of having the State provide for the liberal education of both races."Before this period, however, planters had opposed public education for freedmen and underfunded schools.

Railroad subsidies and payoffs

Every Southern state subsidized railroads, which modernizers felt could haul the South out of isolation and poverty. Millions of dollars in bonds and subsidies were fraudulently pocketed. One ring in North Carolina spent $200,000 in bribing the legislature and obtained millions in state money for its railroads. Instead of building new track, however, it used the funds to speculate in bonds, reward friends with extravagant fees, and enjoy lavish trips to Europe. Taxes were quadrupled across the South to pay off the railroad bonds and the school costs. There were complaints among taxpayers, because taxes had historically been very low, since there was so little commitment to public works or public education. Taxes historically had been much lower than in the North, reflecting a lack of public investment in the communities. Nevertheless thousands of miles of lines were built as the Southern system expanded from 11,000 miles (17,700 km) in 1870 to 29,000 miles (46,700 km) in 1890. The lines were owned and directed overwhelmingly by Northerners. Railroads helped create a mechanically skilled group of craftsmen and indeed broke the isolation of much of the region. Passengers were few, however, and apart from hauling the cotton crop when it was harvested, there was little freight traffic. As Franklin explains, "numerous railroads fed at the public trough by bribing legislators...and through the use and misuse of state funds." The effect, according to one businessman, "was to drive capital from the State, paralyze industry, and demoralize labor."

Taxation during Reconstruction

Reconstruction changed the tax structure of the South. In the U.S. from the earliest days until today, a major source of state revenue was the property tax. In the South, wealthy landowners were allowed to assess the value of their own land. These assessments were almost valueless and the pre-war tax rate was almost nothing. Pre-war southern states did not educate their citizens or build and maintain any infrastructure. State revenues came from fees and from sales taxes on slave auctions. Some states assessed property owners by a combination of land value and a capitation tax, a tax on each worker employed. This tax was often assessed in a way to discourage a free labor market, where a slave was assessed at 75 cents, while a free white was assessed at a dollar or more, and a free African American at $3 or more. Some revenue also came from poll taxes. These taxes were more than poor people could pay, with the designed and inevitable consequence that they did not vote.

During Reconstruction, new spending on schools and infrastructure, combined with fraudulent spending and a collapse in state credit because of huge deficits, forced the states to dramatically increase property tax rates. In places, the rate went up to ten times higher—despite the poverty of the region. The infrastructure of much of the South--roads, bridges, and railroads--scarce and deficient as it was--had been destroyed during the war. In part, the new tax system was designed to force owners of large estates with huge tracts of uncultivated land either to sell or to have it confiscated for failure to pay taxes. The taxes would serve as a market-based system for redistributing the land to the landless freedmen and white poor.

Here is a table of property tax rates for South Carolina and Mississippi. Note that many local town and county assessments effectively doubled the tax rates reported in the table. These taxes were still levied upon the landowners' own sworn testimony as to the value of their land, which remained the dubious and exploitable system used by wealthy landholders in the South well into the 20th century.

State Property Tax Rates during Reconstruction
Year	South Carolina	Mississippi
1869	5 mills (0.5 %)	1 mill (0.1 %) (lowest rate between 1822 and 1898)
1870	9 mills	5 mills
1871	7 mills	4 mills
1872	12 mills	8.5 mills
1873	12 mills	12.5 mills
1874	10.3-8 mills	14 mills (1.4%) "a rate which virtually amounted to confiscation" (highest rate between 1822 and 1898)
1875	11 mills
1876	7 mills
Source	J. S. Reynolds, Reconstruction in South Carolina, 1865-1877, (Columbia, SC: The State Co., 1905) p. 329.	J. H. Hollander,Studies in State Taxation with Particular Reference to the Southern States, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1900) p. 192.

Now that they were called upon to pay a tax on their property, angry plantation owners revolted, and the conservatives shifted their focus away from race to taxes. Former Congressman John Lynch, a black Republican leader from Mississippi, concluded, "The argument made by the taxpayers, however, was plausible and it may be conceded that, upon the whole, they were about right; for no doubt it would have been much easier upon the taxpayers to have increased at that time the interest-bearing debt of the State than to have increased the tax rate. The latter course, however, had been adopted and could not then be changed."

Views of conservatives in the South

The white Southerners who lost power reformed themselves into "Conservative" parties that battled the Republicans throughout the South. The party names varied, but by the late 1870s, they simply called themselves "Democrats." Historian Walter Lynwood Fleming describes mounting anger of Southern whites: "The Negro troops, even at their best, were everywhere considered offensive by the native whites... The Negro soldier, impudent by reason of his new freedom, his new uniform, and his new gun, was more than Southern temper could tranquilly bear, and race conflicts were frequent."

Fleming is a typical example of the conservative pro-white interpretation of Reconstruction. His work defended some roles of the KKK but denounced its violence; Fleming accepted as necessary the disenfranchisement of African Americans because he thought their votes were bought and sold. Fleming described the first results of the Ku Klux Klan movement as "good" and the later ones as "both good and bad." According to Fleming (1907) the KKK "quieted the Negroes, made life and property safer, gave protection to women, stopped burnings, forced the Radical leaders to be more moderate, made the Negroes work better, drove the worst of the Radical leaders from the country and started the whites on the way to gain political supremacy." The evil results, Fleming said, was that lawless elements "made use of the organization as a cloak to cover their misdeeds... the lynching habits of today [1907] are largely to conditions, social and legal, growing out of Reconstruction."

Ellis Oberholtzer (a northern scholar) in 1917 explained:

Outrages upon the ex-slaves in the South there were in plenty. Their sufferings were many. But white men, too, were victims of lawless violence, and in all portions of the North as well as in the late "rebel" states. Not a political campaign passed without the exchange of bullets, the breaking of skulls with sticks and stones, the firing of rival club-houses. Republican clubs marched the streets of Philadelphia, amid revolver shots and brickbats, to save the negroes from the "rebel" savages in Alabama... The project to make voters out of black men was not so much for their social elevation as for the further punishment of the Southern white people—for the capture of offices for Radical scamps and the entrenchment of the Radical party in power for a long time to come in the South and in the country at large."

Reaction by conservatives included the formation of violent secret societies, especially the Ku Klux Klan. Violence occurred in cities and in the countryside between white former Confederates, Republicans, African-Americans, representatives of the federal government, and Republican-organized armed Loyal Leagues. The victims of violence were overwhelmingly African Americans, although white supporters were also attacked.

Redemption 1873-77

Republicans split nationally: Election of 1872

As early as 1868 Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, a leading Radical during the war, concluded that:

"Congress was right in not limiting, by its reconstruction acts, the right of suffrage to whites; but wrong in the exclusion from suffrage of certain classes of citizens and all unable to take its prescribed retrospective oath, and wrong also in the establishment of despotic military governments for the States and in authorizing military commissions for the trial of civilians in time of peace. There should have been as little military government as possible; no military commissions; no classes excluded from suffrage; and no oath except one of faithful obedience and support to the Constitution and laws, and of sincere attachment to the constitutional Government of the United States."

By 1872, President Grant had alienated large numbers of leading Republicans, including many Radicals by the wanton corruption of his administration and his use of federal soldiers to prop up Radical state regimes in the South. The opponents, called "Liberal Republicans", included founders of the party who expressed dismay that the party had succumbed to corruption. Leaders included editors of some of the nation's most powerful newspapers. Charles Sumner, embittered by the corruption of the Grant administration, joined the new party, which nominated editor Horace Greeley. The badly organized Democratic party also supported Greeley.

Grant made up for the defections by new gains among Union veterans, as well as strong support from the "Stalwart" faction of his party (which depended on his patronage), and the Southern Republican parties. Grant won a smashing landslide, as the Liberal Republican party vanished and many former supporters—even ex-abolitionists—abandoned the cause of Reconstruction.

Republican coalition splinters in South

In the South, political–racial tensions built up inside the Republican party. In 1868, Georgia Democrats, with support from some Republicans, expelled all 28 black Republican members (arguing blacks were eligible to vote but not to hold office.) In several states the more conservative Scalawags fought for control with the more radical carpetbaggers and usually lost. Thus, in Mississippi, the conservative faction led by Scalawag James Lusk Alcorn was decisively defeated by the radical faction led by carpetbagger Adelbert Ames. The party lost support steadily as many Scalawags left it; few new recruits were acquired. Meanwhile, the Freedmen were demanding a much bigger share of the offices and patronage, thus squeezing out their carpetbagger allies. Finally some of the more prosperous Freedmen were joining the Democrats, angered at the failure of the Republicans to help them acquire land. Although some Marxist historians, especially W.E.B. Du Bois, looked for and celebrated a cross-racial coalition of poor whites and poor blacks, such coalition rarely formed. Congressman Lynch explains that,

"While the colored men did not look with favor upon a political alliance with the poor whites, it must be admitted that, with very few exceptions, that class of whites did not seek, and did not seem to desire such an alliance."

Lynch explains that poor whites resented the job competition from Freedmen. Furthermore, the poor whites

"with a few exceptions, were less efficient, less capable, and knew less about matters of state and governmental administration than many of the ex-slaves.… As a rule, therefore, the whites that came into the leadership of the Republican party between 1872 and 1875 were representatives of the most substantial families of the land."

Thus, the poor whites became Democrats and bitterly opposed the black Republicans.

Democrats try a "New Departure"

By 1870, the Democratic–Conservative leadership across the South decided it had to end its opposition to Reconstruction as well as to black suffrage in order to survive and move on to new issues. The Grant administration had proven by its crackdown on the Ku Klux Klan that it would use as much federal power as necessary to suppress open anti-black violence. The Democrats in the North concurred. They wanted to fight the GOP on economic grounds rather than race. The New Departure offered the chance for a clean slate without having to refight the Civil War every election. Furthermore, many wealthy landowners thought they could control part of the newly enfranchised black electorate to their own advantage.

Not all Democrats agreed; a hard core element wanted to resist Reconstruction no matter what. Eventually, a group called "Redeemers" took control of the party in the states. They formed coalitions with conservative Republicans, including Scalawags and carpetbaggers, emphasizing the need for economic modernization. Railroad building was seen as a panacea since northern capital was needed. The new tactics were a success in Virginia where William Mahone built a winning coalition. In Tennessee, the Redeemers formed a coalition with Republican governor DeWitt Senter. Across the South Democrats switched from the race issue to taxes and corruption, charging that Republican governments were corrupt and inefficient, as taxes began squeezing cash-poor farmers who rarely saw $20 in currency a year but had to pay taxes in currency or lose their farm.

In North Carolina, Republican Governor William Woods Holden used state troops against the Klan, but the prisoners were released by federal judges. Holden became the first governor in American history to be impeached and removed from office. Republican political disputes in Georgia split the party and enabled the Redeemers to take over. Violence was a factor in neutralizing Republican leaders in the Deep South, with its larger black Republican population. In the North, a live-and-let-live attitude made elections more like a sporting contest. But in the Deep South, it affected the lives of the citizens. As an Alabama Scalawag explained, "Our contest here is for life, for the right to earn our bread...for a decent and respectful consideration as human beings and members of society." In Louisiana Judge T.S.Crawford and DIstrict Attorney P.H. Harris of the 12th Judical District were shot and killed off their horses from ambush October 8, 1873 while going to court leaving two widows and nine orphans. One widow commicated to the Department of Justice that her husband was killed because he was a Union man and "...of the efforts made to screen those who committed a crime..." {US Senate Journal January 13, 1875, pp.106-107}.

Panic of 1873 weakens Republican Party

The Panic of 1873 hit the Southern economy hard and disillusioned many Republicans who had gambled that railroads would pull the South out of its poverty. The price of cotton fell by half; many small landowners, local merchants and cotton factors (wholesalers) went bankrupt. Sharecropping, for both black and white farmers, became more common as a way to spread the risk of owning land. The old abolitionist element in the North was aging away, or had lost interest, and was not replenished. Many carpetbaggers returned to the North or joined the Redeemers. Blacks had an increased voice in the Republican Party, but across the South it was divided by internal bickering and was rapidly losing its cohesion. Many local black leaders started emphasizing individual economic progress in cooperation with white elites, rather than racial political progress in opposition to them, a conservative attitude that foreshadowed Booker T. Washington.

Nationally, President Grant took the blame for the depression; the Republican Party lost 96 seats in all parts of the country in the 1874 elections. The Bourbon Democrats took control of the House and were confident of electing Samuel J. Tilden president in 1876. President Grant was not running for re-election and seemed to be losing interest in the South. States fell to the Redeemers, with only four in Republican hands in 1873, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina; Arkansas then fell after the Brooks-Baxter War in 1874. Political violence was endemic in Louisiana, but efforts to seize the state government were repulsed by federal troops who entered the state legislature and hauled away several Democratic legislators. The violation of tradition embarrassed Grant, and some of his cabinet recommended against further intervention. By now, all Democrats and most northern Republicans agreed that Confederate nationalism and slavery were dead—the war goals were achieved—and further federal military interference was an undemocratic violation of historic Republican values. The victory of Rutherford Hayes in the hotly contested Ohio gubernatorial election of 1875 indicated his "let alone" policy toward the South would become Republican policy, as indeed happened when he won the 1876 GOP nomination for president. The last explosion of violence came in Mississippi's 1875 election, in which Democratic rifle clubs, operating in the open and without disguise, threatened or shot enough Republicans to decide the election for the Redeemers. Republican Governor Adelbert Ames asked Grant for federal troops to fight back; Grant refused, saying public opinion was "tired out" of the perpetual troubles in the South. Ames fled the state as the Democrats took over Mississippi.

1876 election

Reconstruction continued in South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida until 1877. After Republican Rutherford Hayes won the disputed U.S. Presidential election of 1876, the Compromise of 1877 was reached whereby the white South agreed to accept Hayes's victory if he withdrew the last Federal troops. By this point, everyone had agreed that Reconstruction was finished. However, the African-Americans who wanted their legal rights guaranteed by the Federal government were repeatedly frustrated for another 75 years; they considered Reconstruction a failure.

Redeemers in the South

Further information: [[:Jim Crow laws]]

Further information: [[:Disfranchisement after the Civil War]]

The end of Reconstruction marked the beginning of a period, 1877–1900, that saw the steady reduction of many civil and political rights for African-Americans, and ushered in the nadir of American race relations. The process varied by states and towns. In Virginia, the Redeemers gerrymandered cities to minimize Republican seats; reduced the number of polling places in black precincts; made local officials appointees of the state legislature; and did not allow the vote to felons or to people who failed to pay their annual poll tax.

Much of the Reconstruction civil rights legislation was overturned by the United States Supreme Court. Most notably, the court held in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), that the 14th amendment only gave Congress the power to outlaw public, rather than private, discrimination. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) the court went even further, announcing that state-mandated segregation was legal as long as the law provided for "separate but equal" facilities.

Legacy and historiography

The interpretation of Reconstruction has swung back and forth several times. Nearly all historians, however, have concluded it was a failure. In the 1865-75 period, most writers took the view that the ex-Confederates were traitors and Johnson was their ally who threatened to undo the Union's Constitutional achievements. In the 1870s and 1880s many writers argued that Johnson and his allies were not traitors but blundered badly in rejecting the 14th Amendment and setting the stage for Radical Reconstruction.

Among black scholars Booker T. Washington, who grew up in West Virginia during Reconstruction, concluded that, "the Reconstruction experiment in racial democracy failed because it began at the wrong end, emphasizing political means and civil rights acts rather than economic means and self-determination." His solution was to concentrate on building the economic infrastructure of the black community.

In popular literature two novels by Thomas Dixon—The Clansman and The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden — 1865–1900—romanticized white resistance to Northern/black coercion, hailing vigilante action by the Ku Klux Klan. Other authors romanticized the benevolence of slavery and the happy world of the antebellum plantation. These sentiments were expressed on the screen in D.W. Griffith's anti-Republican 1915 movie The Birth of a Nation.

The Dunning School of scholars based at the history department of Columbia University analyzed Reconstruction as a failure, at least after 1866, for quite different reasons. They claimed that it took freedoms and rights from qualified whites and gave them to unqualified blacks who were being duped by corrupt carpetbaggers and scalawags. As one scholar notes, "Reconstruction was a battle between two extremes: the Democrats, as the group which included the vast majority of the whites, standing for decent government and racial supremacy, versus the Republicans, the Negroes, alien carpetbaggers, and renegade scalawags, standing for dishonest government and alien ideals. These historians wrote literally in terms of white and black."

In the 1930s, "revisionism" became popular among scholars. As disciples of Charles A. Beard, revisionists focused on economics, downplaying politics and constitutional issues. They argued that the Radical rhetoric of equal rights was mostly a smokescreen hiding the true motivation of Reconstruction's real backers. While conceding that a few men like Stevens and Sumner were thoroughly idealistic, Howard Beale argued Reconstruction was primarily a successful attempt by financiers, railroad builders and industrialists in the Northeast, using the Republican Party, to control the national government for their own selfish economic ends. Those ends were to continue the wartime high protective tariff, the new network of national banks, and to guarantee a "sound" currency. To succeed the business class had to remove the old ruling agrarian class of Southern planters and Midwestern farmers. This it did by inaugurating Reconstruction, which made the South Republican, and by selling its policies to the voters wrapped up in such attractive vote-getting packages as northern patriotism or the bloody shirt. Historian William Hesseltine added the point that the Northeastern businessmen wanted to control the South economically, which they did through ownership of the railroads. However, historians in the 1950s and 1960s refuted Beale's economic causation by demonstrating that Northern businessmen were widely divergent on monetary or tariff policy, and seldom paid attention to Reconstruction issues.

In the 1960s, neoabolitionist historians emerged, led by John Hope Franklin, Kenneth Stampp and Eric Foner. Strongly aligned with the Civil Rights Movement, they rejected the Dunning school and found a great deal to praise in Radical Reconstruction. Foner, the primary advocate of this view, argued that it was never truly completed, and that a Second Reconstruction was needed in the late 20th century to complete the goal of full equality for African-Americans. The neo-abolitionists followed the revisionists in minimizing the corruption and waste created by Republican state governments, saying it was no worse than Boss Tweed's ring in New York City. Instead they emphasized that poor treatment of Freedmen was a worse scandal and a grave corruption of America's republican ideals. They argued that the real tragedy of Reconstruction was not that it failed because blacks were incapable of governing, but that it failed because the civil rights and equalities granted during this period were but a passing, temporary development. These rights were suspended in the South from the 1880s through 1964, but were restored by the Civil Rights Movement that is sometimes referred to as the "Second Reconstruction."

More recent work by Nina Silber, David Blight, Cecelia O'Leary, Laura Edwards, LeeAnn Whites, and Edward J. Blum, has encouraged greater attention to race, religion, and issues of gender while at the same time pushing the "end" of Reconstruction to the end of the nineteenth century, while monographs by Charles Reagan Wilson, Gaines Foster, W. Scott Poole have offered new views of the southern "lost Cause ."

Reconstruction State-by-state – Significant dates

Only Georgia has a separate article about its experiences under Reconstruction. The other state names below link to specific section in the state history article about the Reconstruction era.

Article on Reconstruction in each State	Seceded from Union	Joined Confederacy	Readmitted into Union	Democratic Party Establishes Control
South Carolina	December 20, 1860	February 4, 1861	July 9, 1868	April 11, 1877
Mississippi	January 9, 1861	February 4, 1861	February 23, 1870	January 4, 1876
Florida	January 10, 1861	February 4, 1861	June 25, 1868	January 2, 1877
Alabama	January 11, 1861	February 4, 1861	July 14, 1868	November 16, 1874
Georgia	January 19, 1861	February 4, 1861	July 15, 1870	November 1, 1871
Louisiana	January 26, 1861	February 4, 1861	June 25 or July 9, 1868	January 2, 1877
Texas	February 1, 1861	March 2, 1861	March 30, 1870	January 14, 1873
Virginia	April 17, 1861	May 7, 1861	January 26, 1870	October 5, 1869
Arkansas	May 6, 1861	May 18, 1861	June 22, 1868	November 10, 1874
North Carolina	May 21, 1861	May 16, 1861	July 4, 1868	November 28, 1870
Tennessee	June 8, 1861	May 16, 1861	July 24, 1866	October 4, 1869

See also

• List of African-American officeholders during Reconstruction
• Carpetbagger
• Dunning School
• Freedman
• Freedmen's Bureau
• History of the Southern United States
• Jim Crow laws
• Neoabolitionists
• Redeemers
• Redemption (United States history)
• Radical Republican
• Scalawag
• Second Reconstruction
• Second Redemption
• Third Party System
• Matthew Butler, involved in Hamburg Massacre of 1876.
• Benjamin Tillman, involved in Hamburg Massacre of 1876.
• Andrew Jackson Houston, organized the Travis Rifles to "protect" post Reconstruction Texas Democrat Government.
• Edward Douglass White-member of the White League of Louisiana-later a US Supreme Court Justice

References

• Barnes, William H., ed. History of the Thirty-ninth Congress of the United States. (1868) useful summary of Congressional activity.
• Barney, William L. Passage of the Republic: An Interdisciplinary History of Nineteenth Century America (1987). D. C. Heath ISBN 0669047589
• Berlin, Ira, ed. Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867 (1982), 970 pp of archival documents; also Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War ed by Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, and Steven F. Miller (1993)
• Blaine, James.Twenty Years of Congress: From Lincoln to Garfield. With a review of the events which led to the political revolution of 1860 (1886). By Republican Congressional leader
• Fitzgerald, Michael W. Splendid Failure (2007) Historical analysis of the Reconstruction and politics involved. ISBN 978-1-56663-734-3
• Fleming, Walter L. Documentary History of Reconstruction: Political, Military, Social, Religious, Educational, and Industrial 2 vol (1906). Uses broad collection of primary sources; vol 1 on national politics; vol 2 on states
• Memoirs of W. W. Holden (1911), North Carolina Scalawag governor
• Hyman, Harold M., ed. The Radical Republicans and Reconstruction, 1861-1870. (1967), collection of long political speeches and pamphlets.
• Lynch, John R. The Facts of Reconstruction. (New York: 1913)Full text online One of first black congressmen during Reconstruction.
• Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States of America During the Period of Reconstruction (1875), large collection of speeches and primary documents, 1865-1870, complete text online. [The copyright has expired.]
• Palmer, Beverly Wilson and Holly Byers Ochoa, eds. The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens 2 vol (1998), 900pp; his speeches plus and letters to and from Stevens
• Palmer, Beverly Wilson, ed/ The Selected Letters of Charles Sumner 2 vol (1990); vol 2 covers 1859-1874
• Pike, James Shepherd, The prostrate state: South Carolina under negro government (1874)
• Reid, Whitelaw. After the war: a southern tour, May 1, 1865 to May 1, 1866. (1866) by Republican editor
• Charles Sumner, "Our Domestic Relations: or, How to Treat the Rebel States" Atlantic Monthly September 1863, early Radical manifesto

Newspapers and magazines

• DeBow's Review major Southern conservative magazine; stress on business, economics and statistics
• Harper's Weekly leading New York news magazine; pro-Radical
• Nast, Thomas. magazine cartoons pro-Radical editorial cartoons
• Primary sources from Gilder-Lehrman collection
• The New York Times daily edition online through ProQuest at academic libraries

Bibliography

• for more detailed list see Reconstruction: Bibliography

Surveys

• Ayers,Edward L. The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (1992) ISBN 0-19-503756-1
• Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt. Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 (1935), 1998 edition reissued with introduction by David Levering Lewis ISBN 0-684-85657-3.) Counterpoint to Dunning School explores the economics and politics of the era from Marxist perspective
• Du Bois, W.E.B. "Reconstruction and its Benefits," American Historical Review, 15 (July, 1910), 781—99 JSTOR
• Dunning, William Archibald. Reconstruction: Political & Economic, 1865-1877 (1905). "Explicitly identified the granting of full Negro citizenship as Reconstruction's central flaw." After the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments, "all the forces that made for civilization were dominated by a mass of barbarous freedmen."
• Walter Lynwood Fleming The Sequel of Appomattox, A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States(1918). Dunning School
• Foner, Eric and Mahoney, Olivia. America's Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War. ISBN 0-8071-2234-3, short well-illustrated survey.
• Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (1988) ISBN 0-06-015851-4. Pulitzer-prize winning history and most detailed synthesis of original and previous scholarship.
• Franklin, John Hope. Reconstruction after the Civil War (1961), University of Chicago Press, 280 pages. ISBN-10: 0226260798. Explores the brevity of the North’s military occupation of the South, limited power of former slaves, influence of moderate southerners, flaws in constitutions drawn by Radical state governments, and reasons for downfall of Reconstruction.
• Litwack, Leon. Been in the Storm So Long (1979). Won Pulitzer Prize for history, based on 1930s interviews with former slaves and diaries and accounts written by former slaveholders, none previously examined by earlier scholars.
• Oberholtzer, Ellis Paxson. A History of the United States since the Civil War. Vol 1 and vol 2 (1917). Based on Dunning School research
• Perman, Michael. Emancipation and Reconstruction (2003).
• Randall, J. G. The Civil War and Reconstruction (1953).
• Rhodes, James G. History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896. Volume: 6. (1920). 1865-72. Narrative by Pulitzer prize winner; argues Reconstruction was a political disaster because it violated the rights of white Southerners.
• Schouler, James. History of the United States of America: Under the Constitution vol. 7. 1865-1877. The Reconstruction Period (1917) online
• Stalcup, Brenda. ed. Reconstruction: Opposing Viewpoints (Greenhaven Press: 1995). Text uses primary documents to present opposing viewpoints.
• Stampp, Kenneth M. The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877 (1967); short survey
• Trefousse, Hans L. Historical Dictionary of Reconstruction Greenwood (1991), 250 entries
• Williams, T. Harry. "An Analysis of Some Reconstruction Attitudes" The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 12, No. 4. (Nov., 1946), pp. 469-486. JSTOR

National politics; Constitutional issues

• Belz, Herman. Emancipation and Equal Rights: Politics and Constitutionalism in the Civil War Era (1978) pro-moderate. online edition
• Belz, Herman. A New Birth of Freedom: The Republican Party and Freedman's Rights, 1861-1866 (2000) pro-moderate.
• Benedict, Michael Les. The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (1999), pro-Radical. online edition
• Benedict, Michael Les. "Preserving the Constitution: The Conservative Bases of Radical Reconstruction," Journal of American History vol 61 #1 (1974) pp 65-90, online in JSTOR
• Blight, David. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2000). Examines national memory of Civil War, Reconstruction, and Redemption, North-South reunion, and the retreat from equality for African Americans.
• Blum, Edward J. "Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898" (2005).
• Donald, David Herbert. Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man (1970), Pulitzer prize winning biography
• Dunning, William A. "The Constitution of the United States in Reconstruction" in Political Science Quarterly Vol. 2, No. 4 (Dec., 1887), pp. 558-602 JSTOR
• Dunning, William A. "Military Government in the South During Reconstruction" Political Science Quarterly Vol. 12, No. 3 (Sep., 1897), pp. 381-406 JSTOR
• Gambill, Edward. Conservative Ordeal: Northern Democrats and Reconstruction, 1865-1868. (1981). Political history of Democratic Party unable to shed its Civil War label of treason and defeatism, even as it successfully blocked a few elements of Radical Reconstruction.
• Gillette, William. Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869-1879. Louisiana State University Press: 1979. Traces failure of Reconstruction to the power of Democrats, administrative inefficiencies, racism, and lack of commitment by northern Republicans.
• Harris, William C. With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union (1997) portrays Lincoln as opponent of Radicals.
• Hyman, Harold M. A More Perfect Union (1975), constitutional history of Civil War & Reconstruction.
• McLaughlin, Andrew. A Constitutional History of the United States (1935) Pulitzer Prize; ch 45-47 are on Reconstruction online version
• McKitrick, Eric L. Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (1961) portrays Johnson as weak politician unable to forge coalitions.
• McPherson, James M. The Abolitionist Legacy: From Reconstruction to the NAACP (1975) (ISBN 0-691-10039-X)
• Simpson, Brooks D. Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861-1868 (1991).
• Stryker, Lloyd Paul; Andrew Johnson: A Study in Courage 1929. pro-Johnson
• Trefousse, Hans L. Andrew Johnson: A Biography (1989)
• Trefousse, Hans L. Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian (1997)

South: regional, state & local studies

• Brown, Canter Jr. Florida's Black Public Officials, 1867-1924
• Campbell. Randolph B. Grass-Roots Reconstruction in Texas, 1865-1880 (1998)
• Coulter, E. Merton. The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky (1926)
• Coulter, E. Merton. The South During Reconstruction, 1865-1877 (1947). Dunning School. region-wide history
• Donald, David H. "The Scalawag in Mississippi Reconstruction," The Journal of Southern History Vol. 10, No. 4 (Nov., 1944), pp. 447-460 JSTOR
• Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt "The Freedmen's Bureau," (1901)
• Ebner, David, and Larry Langman, eds. Hollywood's Image of the South: A Century of Southern Films Greenwood Press. 2001. Ch 9-10 on Reconstruction and KKK.
• Fischer, Roger. The Segregation Struggle in Louisiana, 1862-1877. (University of Illinois Press: 1974) Study of free persons of color in New Orleans who provided leadership in the unsuccessful fight against segregation of schools and public accommodations.
• Fitzgerald, Michael W. Urban Emancipation: Popular Politics in Reconstruction Mobile, 1860–1890. (Louisiana State University Press, 2002. 301 pp. ISBN 0-8071-2837-6.)
• Fitzgerald, Michael R. "Radical Republicanism and the White Yeomanry During Alabama Reconstruction, 1865-1868." Journal of Southern History 54 (November 1988): 565-96. Online at JSTOR
• Fleming, Walter L. Walter Lynwood Fleming Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama 1905.
• Foner, Eric. Freedom's Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders During Reconstruction (Revised edition, LSU Press, 1996) biographies of more than 1,500 officeholders.
• Garner, James Wilford. Reconstruction in Mississippi (1901), Dunning School online edition
• Hamilton, Peter Joseph. The Reconstruction Period (1906), full length history of era; Dunning School approach; 570 pp; chapters on each state
• Harris, William C. The Day of the Carpetbagger: Republican Reconstruction in Mississippi (1979) online edition
• Holt, Thomas. Black over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina During Reconstruction. (University of Illinois Press: 1977). Black elected officials, their divisions, and battles with white governors who controlled patronage and their ultimate failure.
• Kolchin, Peter. First Freedom: The Responses of Alabama's Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction. (Greenwood Press: 1972) Explores black migration, labor, and social structure in the first five years of Reconstruction.
• Morrow, Ralph E. "Northern Methodism in the South during Reconstruction." The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 41, No. 2. (Sep., 1954), pp. 197-218. in JSTOR
• A. B. Moore, "Railroad Building in Alabama During the Reconstruction Period" The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 1, No. 4. (Nov., 1935), pp. 421-441. JSTOR
• Olsen, Otto H. ed., Reconstruction and Redemption in the South (1980), state by state, neoabolitionist
• Perman, Michael. The Road to Redemption: Southern Politics, 1869-1879. University of North Carolina Press. 1984. detailed state-by-state narrative of Conservatives
• Ramsdell, Charles W., "Presidential Reconstruction in Texas ", Southwestern Historical Quarterly, (1907) v.11#4 277 - 317.
• Ramsdell, Charles William. Reconstruction in Texas. Columbia University Press, 1910. Dunning school
• Reynolds, John S. Reconstruction in South Carolina, 1865—1877, Negro Universities Press, 1969
• Rubin, Hyman III. South Carolina Scalawags (2006)
• Russ, Jr., William A. "The Negro and White Disfranchisement During Radical Reconstruction" The Journal of Negro History Vol. 19, No. 2 (Apr., 1934), pp. 171-192 JSTOR
• Russ, Jr., William A. "Registration and Disfranchisement Under Radical Reconstruction," The Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol. 21, No. 2 (Sep., 1934), pp. 163-180 JSTOR
• Simkins, Francis Butler, and Robert Hilliard Woody. South Carolina during Reconstruction (1932), revisionist (Beardian) school
• Stover, John F. The Railroads of the South, 1865-1900: A Study in Finance and Control (1955)
• Summers, Mark Wahlgren. Railroads, Reconstruction, and the Gospel of Prosperity: Aid Under the Radical Republicans, 1865-1877 (1984)
• Taylor, Alrutheus A., Negro in Tennessee 1865-1880 (1974) ISBN 0-87152-165-2
• Taylor, Alrutheus, Negro in South Carolina During the Reconstruction (AMS Press: 1924) ISBN 0-404-00216-1
• Taylor, Alrutheus, The Negro in the Reconstruction Of Virginia (The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History: 1926)
• Taylor, A. A. "The Negro in South Carolina During the Reconstruction" The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 9-11 (1924-1926) (multi-part article) JSTOR full text
• Trelease, Allen W. White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction, (Louisiana State University Press: 1971, 1995). detailed treatment of the Klan, and similar groups.
• Wharton, V. L. "The Race Issue in the Overthrow of Reconstruction in Mississippi," Phylon (1940-1956) Vol. 2, No. 4 (4th Qtr., 1941), pp. 362-370 in JSTOR
• Wiggins, Sarah Woolfolk. The Scalawag in Alabama Politics, 1865-1881 (1991)
• Woody, R. H. "The Labor and Immigration Problem of South Carolina during Reconstruction" The Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol. 18, No. 2 (Sep., 1931), pp. 195-212 JSTOR

External links

• Reconstruction: The Second Civil War 2004 PBS film and transcript connecting the replacement of Civil Rights with segregation at the end of 19th century Reconstruction with 1960s Civil Rights Movement.
• Guide to Reconstruction History links to primary and secondary sources
• PBS' American Experience: Reconstruction Historians Eric Foner, David Blight, and Ed Ayers discuss "Civil Rights During Reconstruction"
• Proclamation of August 1866, declaring the Insurrection at an end.
• Lincoln and Freedom: Reconstruction
• Reconstruction in Mississippi by Donald J. Mabry
• "Reconstruction Historiography: A Source of Teaching Ideas" by Robert P. Green, Jr. (1991)
• In-depth timeline of Reconstruction
• W. S. Simkins, "Why the Ku Klux," 4 The Alcalde (June 1916): 735-748. online