Was the Reconstruction act of 1867 success or failure

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Reconstruction was a significant chapter in the history of civil rights in the United States, but most historians consider it a failure.

Evaluate the successes and failures of Reconstruction

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Reconstruction was a failure according to most historians, but many disagree as to the reasons for that failure.
• On the one hand, black Americans earned many political and civil freedoms, including suffrage and equal protection under the law, during Reconstruction from constitutional amendments.
• On the other hand, white-supremacy groups, Jim Crow laws, and state constitutions effectively negated these political gains and subjected black Americans to second-class citizenry.

Key Terms

• Reconstruction Amendments: The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, adopted between 1865 and 1870, the five years immediately following the Civil War.
• Jim Crow laws: State and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States.

Reconstruction was a significant chapter in the history of civil rights in the United States, but most historians consider it a failure because the South became a poverty-stricken backwater attached to agriculture. White Southerners attempted to reestablish dominance through violence, intimidation, and discrimination, forcing freedmen into second-class citizenship with limited rights, and excluding them from the political process.

Failures

The interpretation of Reconstruction has been a topic of controversy. Nearly all historians hold that Reconstruction ended in failure but for different reasons. The following list describes some schools of thought regarding Reconstruction:

• The Dunning School considered failure inevitable and felt that taking the right to vote or hold office away from Southern whites was a violation of republicanism.
• A second school sees the reason for failure as Northern Republicans ‘ lack of effectiveness in guaranteeing political rights to blacks.
• A third school blames the failure on the freedmen not receiving land so they could have their own economic base of power.
• A fourth school sees the major reason for failure of Reconstruction as the states’ inability to suppress the violence of Southern whites when they sought reversal for blacks’ gains.
• Other historians emphasize the failure to fully incorporate Southern Unionists into the Republican coalition.

Regardless of the reasons for failure, Reconstruction, although aimed at improving the lives and civil liberties of freedmen, put many black Americans in conditions that were hardly an improvement from slavery. Although legally equal, black Americans were subject to segregation laws in the South, violence at the hands of white-supremacy groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, and political disfranchisement by state constitutions from 1890 to 1908 that effectively barred most blacks and many poor whites from voting. As W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in 1935, “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.” The conditions of black Americans would not improve until the civil rights era of the 1950s and 60s.

Successes

Despite these failures, important landmarks in civil rights for black Americans were reached at that time. The “Reconstruction Amendments” passed by Congress between 1865 and 1870 abolished slavery, gave black Americans equal protection under the law, and granted suffrage to black men. Although these constitutional rights were eroded by racist violence and Jim Crow laws, blacks still began participating in politics, and these amendments established the legal groundwork for more substantive equality during the civil rights era of the 1950s and 60s. Historian Donald R. Shaffer argued that the gains during Reconstruction for African Americans were not entirely extinguished. The legalization of African-American marriage and family and the independence of black churches from white denominations were a source of strength during the Jim Crow era. Reconstruction was never forgotten among the black community and remained a source of inspiration. The system of sharecropping allowed blacks a considerable amount of freedom as compared to slavery.

Landmark Legislation: The Reconstruction Act of 1867

The Reconstruction Act of 1867 outlined the terms for readmission to representation of rebel states. The bill divided the former Confederate states, except for Tennessee, into five military districts. Each state was required to write a new constitution, which needed to be approved by a majority of voters—including African Americans—in that state. In addition, each state was required to ratify the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. After meeting these criteria related to protecting the rights of African Americans and their property, the former Confederate states could gain full recognition and federal representation in Congress. The act became law on March 2, 1867, after Congress overrode a presidential veto. Admission to representation of the former Confederate states began the next year, with Arkansas leading the way on June 22, 1868.

In what ways was Reconstruction a success? A failure? Explain.

Reconstruction was a success in that it restored the United States as a unified nation: by 1877, all of the former Confederate states had drafted new constitutions, acknowledged the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and pledged their loyalty to the U.S. government. Reconstruction also finally settled the states’ rights vs. federalism debate that had been an issue since the 1790s.

However, Reconstruction failed by most other measures: Radical Republican legislation ultimately failed to protect former slaves from white persecution and failed to engender fundamental changes to the social fabric of the South. When President Rutherford B. Hayes removed federal troops from the South in 1877, former Confederate officials and slave owners almost immediately returned to power. With the support of a conservative Supreme Court, these newly empowered white southern politicians passed black codes, voter qualifications, and other anti-progressive legislation to reverse the rights that blacks had gained during Radical Reconstruction. The U.S. Supreme Court bolstered this anti-progressive movement with decisions in the Slaughterhouse Cases, the Civil Rights Cases, and United States v. Cruikshank that effectively repealed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

Meanwhile, the sharecropping system—essentially a legal form of slavery that kept blacks tied to land owned by rich white farmers—became widespread in the South. With little economic power, blacks ended up having to fight for civil rights on their own, as northern whites lost interest in Reconstruction by the mid-1870s. By 1877, northerners were tired of Reconstruction, scandals, radicals, and the fight for blacks’ rights. Reconstruction thus came to a close with many of its goals left unaccomplished.

Some historians have suggested that had Lincoln not been assassinated, Radical Republicans in the House might have impeached him instead of Andrew Johnson. Defend this argument.

Radical Republicans in Congress might have impeached President Lincoln after the Civil War, had he not been assassinated, because he and Congress had contrasting visions for handling postwar Reconstruction. Ultimately, however, Congress ended up impeaching President Andrew Johnson, who followed many parts of Lincoln’s blueprint for Reconstruction.

In 1863, Lincoln wanted to end the Civil War as quickly as possible. He feared that strong northern public support for the war would wane if the fighting continued and knew that the war was also taking an enormous toll on northern families and resources. Lincoln worried that if the war dragged on, a settlement would be reached that would leave the North and South as two separate nations. As it turned out, his fears were justified: by late 1863, an increasing number of Democrats were calling for a truce and peaceful resolution to the conflict.

As a result, in the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction of 1863, Lincoln drafted lenient specifications for secessionist states for readmission into the Union—an attempt to entice Unionists and those tired of fighting in the South to surrender. His Ten-Percent Plan, part of the proclamation, called for southern states to be readmitted into the Union after 10 percent of the voting public swore a loyalty oath to the United States. In addition, he offered to pardon all Confederate officials and pledged to protect southerners’ private property. Lincoln did not want Reconstruction to be a long, drawn-out process; rather, he wanted the states to draft new constitutions so that the Union could be quickly restored.

Radical Republicans, on the other hand, wanted the South to pay a price for secession and believed that Congress, not the president, should direct the process of Reconstruction. The Radical Republicans saw serious flaws in Civil War–era southern society and were adamant that the South needed full social rehabilitation to resemble the North. Many Republican Congressmen also aimed to improve education and labor conditions to benefit all of the oppressed classes in southern society, black and white. To quicken this transformation of the South, Congress passed a series of progressive legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the First and Second Reconstruction Acts, the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

In the end, Radical Republicans in the House impeached President Andrew Johnson in 1868 because he repeatedly blocked their attempt to pass radical legislation. For example, Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Freedmen’s Bureau charter, and the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, all of which were progressive, “radical” bills. Had Lincoln remained alive, he might have been in the same position himself: he wanted Reconstruction to end quickly and did not necessarily favor progressive legislation. Indeed, Lincoln had made it clear during the Civil War that he was fighting to restore the Union, not to emancipate slaves. It is likely that Lincoln thus would have battled with Congress over the control of Reconstruction, blocked key Reconstruction policies, and met as vindictive a House as Johnson did 1868.

Explain how three of the following shaped northern politics during Reconstruction: a) black codes b) the Depression of 1873 c) Crédit Mobilier d) the “Swing Around the Circle” speeches e) the Resumption Act of 1875

The Crédit Mobilier scandal, the Depression of 1873, and the Resumption Act of 1875 focused attention away from the South and onto political and economic woes in the North. All three thus played a role in ending Reconstruction.

In the 1860s, executives of the Union Pacific Railroad created a dummy construction company called Crédit Mobilier and then hired themselves out as contractors at high rates to earn large profits. The executives bribed dozens of Congressmen and cabinet members in Ulysses S. Grant’s administration, including Grant’s vice president, to allow the scam to work. The scheme was eventually exposed, and many politicians were forced to resign. Along with other scandals, such as the Fisk-Gould gold scandal and the Whiskey Ring, Crédit Mobilier distracted northern voters’ attention away from southern Reconstruction and toward corruption and graft problems in the North.

When the Depression of 1873 struck, northern voters became even less interested in pursuing Reconstruction efforts. Unemployment climbed to 15 percent, and hard currency became scarce. With pressing economic problems, northerners did not have time to worry about helping former slaves, punishing the Ku Klux Klan, or readmitting southern states into the Union.

Moreover, the Republican Party’s adherence to unpopular, strict monetary policies in response to the depression—such as the Resumption Act of 1875—opened the door for the Democratic Party to make large political gains, accelerating the end of Reconstruction. The Resumption Act reduced the amount of currency circulating in the economy in an effort to curb inflation caused by the depression. Although the act improved economic conditions in the long run, it made for harder times in both the North and South in the short run. The Act was Republican-sponsored, so Democrats were able to capitalize on its unpopularity to rally support for their party. This increased popularity translated into election victories that enabled Democrats to retake the South, bringing Reconstruction to a close.