HTY 104

Outline week 1

Civil War and Reconstruction

Prewar:

The North was relatively urban, manufacturing, yeoman farmers, dense populations, well developed infrastructure (rr's, schools, roads, etc). Northernors were usually pro-tariffs, free labor, competitive.

The South was overwhelmingly rural, dispersed populations, a small but dominant planter elite, the plantation system produced staple crops (cotton, rice, tobacco, sugar) with unfree labor. Southernors were almost uniformly anti-tariff and jealous of states rights.

The battleground was over which system would characterize America's expansion into new territories. The defense of slavery became the flash point during the 1850s, leading to secession upon Lincoln's election.

The War took on Three Themes:

First, the political battle was centered on whether or not to preserve the Union. This was the call to patriotic service.

The second trend was a push for social justice for slaves, that came to the fore during the gradual transition of the war aims.

Third, the critical transition in politcs (control of power) was the ascendence of the pro-business Republicans in the Congress as Southern Democrats withdrew. They rushed through Congress a number of pro business programs that they had been previously unable to get passed over Southern opposition.

The Transition of Northern war aims

Lincoln's transformation on slavery:

1858: "I will say that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races-that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." Fourth Debate with Stephen Douglas at Charleston, IL

1861: Lincoln negated Fremont's declaration of emancipation in Missouri . Lincoln said in an open letter to Horace Greely, "If I could save the Union by freeing all of the slaves, I would do so. If I could save the Union by freeing none of the slaves, I would do that. If I could save the Union by freeing some and leaving others, I would do that also."

1862: Lincoln remained uncommitted. He expressed his concern for the importance of border states and his doubts of whether freedmen would fight when he wrote his thoughts on emancipation: “I admit slavery is the root of the rebellion, at last it is the sine qua non. The ambition of politicians may have instigated them to act but they would have been impotent without slavery as their instrument. I will also concede that emancipation would help us in Europe, and convince them that we are incited by something more than ambition…it would weaken the rebels by drawing off their laborers…but I am not so sure we could do much with the blacks. If we were to arm them, I fear that in a few weeks the arms would be in the hands of the rebels. Another thing….there are fifty thousand bayonets in the Union Armies from the border slave States. It would be a serious matter if in consequence of [an emancipation] proclamation they should go over to the rebels.”

By 1862, Blacks deserted plantations wholesale to Union lines where they were  held by Union troops as “Contraband of War.”  On Sept. 17, 1862, Union forces hurled back a Confederate invasion of Maryland in the Civil War Battle of Antietam (23,100 were killed, wounded or captured, making it the bloodiest day in United States military history). Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation in September, to take effect at the new year.

January 1, 1863 Emancipation Proclamation: limited in scope (it did not apply to 450,000 in MO, MD, KY, DE or 275,000 in Union occupied TN, or thousands more in Union controlled areas of LA and VA.), but rippled throughout the slave population of the South.

1863  Black Soldiers join the Union Army as soldiers: The Mass 54^th.

Gettysburg Address

Wartime Reconstruction

1863-1864: Lincoln’s 10% plan, generous reconciliation was intended to shorten the war.

1864 Congress counters with Wade-Davis (strict censure of South, including an Ironclad Oath to regain voting rights). Radical Republicans led by Ben Wade, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and Wendell Phillips enunciated an ambitious agenda: “I hold that the south is to be annihilated. I mean the intellectual, social, aristocratic South—the thing that represented itself by slavery and the bowie-knife, by bullying and lynch law, by ignorance and idleness…I mean a society which holds for its cardinal principle of faith that one-third of the race is born booted and spurred and the other two thirds saddled for the first to ride…That South is to be annihilated.” The radical agenda was too much for Lincoln, he did not believe that the country would support it, so he let it die by way of a pocket veto.

1865: Nearly 200,000 Black soldiers represented 10% of the Union Army, though at reduced pay levels from whites, denied commissions, and often relegated to labor battalions.

1865 February: The Mass 54th marches through Charleston singing “John Brown’s Body.” Over 4,000 Blacks joined a parade with a banner reading, “We Know No Master But Ourselves” Similar scenes in Richmond in April. Lincoln was besieged by grateful Blacks who hailed him as their Messiah. One man recalled, “I felt like a bird out of a cage. Amen. Amen.”

1865:  XIIIth Amendment abolished slavery and the Freedmen’s Bureau was established.

Economic ramifications of the Civil War:

Funding for National Railroad ended the debate over Northern/Southern Route (On May 10, 1869, a golden spike was driven at Promontory, Utah, marking the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States.)

Tariff (higher than previously possible)

National Currency

Manufacturing fortunes and capital formation

Homestead Act

Morrill Act for Land Grant Colleges (our legacy)

National Mineral Act: opened up millions of acres to mining

Increase in national power

Note how these major policy decisions support the nationalist economic programs which are directly descended from old Whigs.

Key war impact: Capital Formation: explosive growth of iron manufacture, coal mining, shoe and textile manufacture

Post war Reconstruction

At War’s end: Three main axes of contention over direction of post-war America.

1. North, i.e. Radical Republicans, versus unreconstructed South

War of words: Reconstruction or Northern Occupation

2. Who runs it—President or Congress

Presidential Reconstruction

Congressional Radical Republican Vision for universal civic and social equality.

3. Freedmen versus Old South “The death of slavery did not mean the Birth of Freedom”

Jubilee and Frederick Douglass: “demand power”

Southern Freedman’s visions:

Mobility: family, work

Personal freedoms

Legal equality, e.g. legalized marriages

Independent Black churches

Schools and social welfare

Choice of labor relations (initially denied by Black Codes)

Land: 40 Acres and a Mule (Congress retreats from redistribution)

PHASE 1: Presidential Reconstruction (Johnson) was characterized by lenient readmission criteria (During the war Johnson was strongly anti-South, but not particularly pro-Black rights: “Damn the Negroes, I am fighting those traitorous aristocrats.”)

Pardons: In 1864 Johnson had declared, “Treason must be made odious, and traitors must be punished.” But after assuming the presidency on April 15, 1865, following Lincoln's assassination, he very soon found himself issuing immense numbers of pardons—to virtually everyone who asked—over 7,000 in the first year. That meant that political power and confiscated property was restored to them. States rights: Johnson was a believer in limited government and a strict construction of the Constitution. Where Republicans believed that Black suffrage should be a requirement for readmission of the Southern states, Johnson believed the national government had to respect states rights to set policies. Johnson insisted that Blacks possessed “less capacity for government than any other race of people…White men alone must manage the South.”

Goals: Limited national government and "strict construction" of Constitution.

Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and funding for the Freedmen’s Bureau

Results: Freedom or its Shadow? Codes mandated long-term labor contracts, coercive apprenticeships, criminal penalties for breach of contract, harsh penalties for vagrancy, etc. This directly contradicted the Northern belief in the mobility of the worker, the principles of Free Labor. One reason behind the Black Codes: A Gender dimension: as male ex-slaves began to exercise their authority as heads-of-household, freed from the personal tyranny of the master-slave system, they often wished to keep their wives out of the fields. The Black Codes refuted the notions of free labor so thoroughly that they alarmed many Republicans who were not social idealists: One New Yorker asked about the future of freedmen, “Will the United States give them freedom or its shadow?”

Phase 2: Congressional Reconstruction

Radical Republicans override vetoes Reconstruction Act—divided the South into 5 military Districts Impeachment: missed by a vote XIVth Amendment: birthright citizenship, equal protection under the law, end of 3/5s clause.

The Political coalition for Reconstruction  Crashed on the rocks of Taxes.

Scalawags  (Southern Unionists): southern born white republicans, some who wanted to spearhead a modernization of the South. For some upcountry scalawags, reconstruction offered a reshuffling of the cards that had always favored the interests of large planters—thus a class based choice of action.

Carpetbaggers: not only opportunists (there were many who went southward with federal appointments, etc, to organize industry, serve as lawyers, etc) but also school teachers, missionaries, medical workers, political organizers, social welfare professionals…the majority were veterans, tended to be middle class and reasonably well educated Black activists and politicians : proof of potential, e.g. P.B.S. Pinchback, Lt Gov of LA, Mississippi sent two Black men to the U.S. Senate (Hiram Revels and Blanche Bruce); another 20 Black men represented southern states in the House of Representatives. More importantly, thousands of freedmen joined political organizations called the Union League—grassroots groups supporting the Republican platform for reconstruction. Southern Response To Congressional Reconstruction Democrats and The Redeemed South Black Codes Campaigns of terror and intimidation

The KKK and General Nathan Bedford Forrest

Response: Congress passed the Force Act (1870) followed by invigorated Civil Rights Act of 1871.

Congress responds: XVth Amendment (1870) NB: the 15th did NOT forbid literacy tests, poll taxes, property tax or educational requirements. Also note objections from women's movement over omission of "sex" in outlawed exclusions for voting right) and  Enforcement Acts.

The Sharecropping System

The Freedmen’s farm: Sharecropping became the dominant labor system: Once things began to settle, and the forced labor contracts of the Black Codes were history, Blacks tended toward a labor relation with planter capital known as sharecropping. Early in the post-war there were a few radical experiments in Black cooperative communities—most notably on the old plantation of Jefferson Davis and his brother Joseph—but the normative mode was contract labor. Gradually Blacks exercised sufficient leverage to make crop sharing deals which allowed them to locate independently away from the old slave quarters, allowed them to remove their women from field work. The sharecropping system offered an alternative to gang labor and white supervision. The drawback was debt peonage—supplies from company store, the property owner could dictate prices paid.

The Tide Begins To Turn Away From Reform:

Economic issues take center stage.

Northern Republicans seek alliance with old Southern Whigs, Northern Workers battle Recession, Liberal Republican Horace Greeley declares “Root Hog or Die” in turning from civil rights to business interests, Federal troops shifted from the South to the West.

         1876 Hayes-Tilden Election: confirmation of national consensus for economic growth. Finally in 1877 all Federal troops stationed in the South return to the North in defense of industry (RR Strike—the first national strike against the first national industry).

Accomplishments:

The War meant the end of the plantation slavery system and insured the supremacy of industrial capitalism.             

The Amendments: powerful constitutional basis for resurrecting the fight for Civil Rights over the course of the following century.

The power of the national state was greatly enhanced by the experience of war. Given the confirmation of a national citizenship with equal protection under the law the newly empowered federal government became the “custodian” of liberty.

The economic agenda of the wartime Congress set the stage for economic transformation.