UNIT 5 TOPIC 11
Failure of Reconstruction H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : American and National Identity
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain how and why Reconstruction resulted in continuity and change in regional and national
understandings of what it meant to be American.
It’s the end of Unit 5 and I wish I could tell you that Reconstruction in the United States ended like a fairytale. But it
ended more like a Greek tragedy.
RECONSTRUCTION SUCCESSES
Before we get to all the tragic failures , let’s start by acknowledging that during Reconstruction, black
Americans did have some successes , especially early on. And the soil out of which those successes
grew was a Battle Royale between Congress and President Andrew Johnson over who would
control Reconstruction policies . Remember from the last video that Andrew Johnson became president
because Abraham Lincoln got assassinated shortly after he was elected to a second term. That was
a real problem because reuniting the North and South after the war would require no small amount of
shrewd wisdom and political imagination and diplomatic skill . If we compare Reconstruction to a
symphony , Lincoln showed up to the task with an expertly crafted , delicate, yet powerful Stradivarius
whose sounds could soar and bring the whole orchestra into tune. But Johnson possessed none of
Lincoln’s skill and showed up to the performance with a cowbell , thinking that if he just beat it hard enough,
the beautiful music of reunion would pour forth, and Congress would fall on their faces with gratitude. The
point is, Johnson wasn’t nearly as equipped , either in skill or temperament, to bind the deep wounds
of the nation.
Regardless, let’s talk about some of the successes gained during the early Reconstruction years, and then
come back to Johnson and how he tried his absolute best to undo that progress. The first success was
the establishment of the Freedmen's Bureau in 1865. It was essentially a welfare agency tasked with
assisting both poor whites and freed blacks in the South after the war. To that end, the Bureau provided
food and shelter to those who needed it, and in the beginning, granted freed people land that had
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UNIT 5 TOPIC 11
Failure of Reconstruction H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : American and National Identity
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain how and why Reconstruction resulted in continuity and change in regional and national
understandings of what it meant to be American.
RECONSTRUCTION SUCCESSES cont’d
formerly been the possession of white planters . The land distribution is going to be a big issue of
contention. Additionally, the bureau established thousands of schools for black children and a handful
of universities for black adults . For example, in 1867, the first all-black college in the South was
established, namely, Shaw University , whose land was purchased with a combination of private funds
and money from the Freedmen’s Bureau.
The second success in the early years of Reconstruction was the rise of Black Americans entering
political office. Over the course of the Reconstruction years, more than 2000 black men were elected
to political office, mostly in local offices and state legislatures, but also a handful were elected to the
House of Representatives and Senate. Much of the political participation of black Americans was facilitated
by groups like the Union League , an organization that formed during the war in order to support
Lincoln’s second election and to help facilitate pro -Union policies. But after the war, they opened many
chapters throughout the South and helped black men register to vote and educated them to make
sure they would vote Republican.
There are other examples of early successes I could give you, but we need to return to President Johnson and
his fantastic attempts to squash these successes. Johnson was himself a Southerner and an enslaver
and he had very little desire to fundamentally reshape Southern society into a place in which blacks and
whites were equal . He made every effort he could to veto congressional legislation that supported
black Americans, like, for example, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 . Johnson argued that imposing
federal laws to protect racial equality violated states’ rights and that the South could really figure itself
out with respect to the whole race thing.
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UNIT 5 TOPIC 11
Failure of Reconstruction H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : American and National Identity
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain how and why Reconstruction resulted in continuity and change in regional and national
understandings of what it meant to be American.
RECONSTRUCTION SUCCESSES cont’d
In 1867, Radical Republicans gained a supermajority in Congress, and they used that power to take
control of Reconstruction away from Johnson and into their own hands. One of the most consequential
decisions they made was to pass—over Johnson’s veto—the Military Reconstruction Acts which divided the
South into five military districts and staffed them with U.S. troops to ensure that racial equality laws were
being upheld. They also passed the Enforcement Acts during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant , which
allowed the federal government to ensure that southern states were not marginalizing black voters . They
passed other similar laws as well, like the Civil Rights Act of 1875, all of which demonstrate that the Radical
Republicans in Congress meant to control the process of Reconstruction.
SUMMARIZE the notes from the previous page in your own words. (2-4 sentences)
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UNIT 5 TOPIC 11
Failure of Reconstruction H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : American and National Identity
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain how and why Reconstruction resulted in continuity and change in regional and national
understandings of what it meant to be American.
RECONSTRUCTION FAILURES
Let’s consider some of the abject failures that led, ultimately, to a woefully incomplete
Reconstruction, and I’ll give you two major examples. First, the rise of sharecropping . It was generally
agreed that for the formerly enslaved blacks of the South to thrive socially and economically, they had to
own land. This was proven true in the beginning of Reconstruction when wartime orders mandated
that freedmen be granted land that formerly belonged to Confederates. However, Andrew Johnson, no
friend of black people, rescinded the order and redistributed those lands back to their former white
owners leaving many black Southerners destitute and without hope of economic independence.
With so many black Southerners without an acre of land to their name, they needed some way to earn
a living . As it happened, all the white cotton planters needed laborers since their enslaved
workforce had been forcefully taken from them. That’s when we see the rise of a new labor system
in the South, namely sharecropping. Under this system, black farmers , and quite a few poor white
farmers as well, entered into a contractual relationship with a plantation owner. They would be given tools
and their own plot of land to farm in exchange for a percentage of the harvest due to the landowner.
While in theory this arrangement seemed to contribute to black farmers’ economic independence ,
in practice, it was simply race-based slavery by a different name. Sharecroppers had to buy household
items on credit while waiting for their harvest, and it was the plantation owners selling the farmers
those goods. Bad harvests and corrupt accounting practices meant that many black sharecroppers found
themselves deeply indebted to plantation owners and were therefore bound to the land living by the
strict rules enacted by the planters . If that smells a lot like slavery to you, then your sniffer is working
just fine . This arrangement persisted into the 20th century and prevented generations of
families from achieving economic independence and building wealth that they could pass down to their
children.
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UNIT 5 TOPIC 11
Failure of Reconstruction H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : American and National Identity
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain how and why Reconstruction resulted in continuity and change in regional and national
understandings of what it meant to be American.
RECONSTRUCTION FAILURES cont’d
The second category of failure during Reconstruction was the constant erosion of black civil rights, and
much of this occurred as a result of Supreme Court decisions. For example, in a series of cases known as the
Slaughterhouse Cases and, later, United States v. Cruikshank , the Court systematically restricted
the protection of civil rights guaranteed in the 14th amendment. The Cruikshank case was the result of
violence against black people in Louisiana during what became known as the Colfax Massacre .
Louisiana’s election for governor in 1872 was loaded with corruption and the results were, not surprisingly,
hotly contested . Since the Democratic candidate favored the imposition of white supremacy laws
in Louisiana, a group of black Louisianans occupied the town courthouse in order to protest against such
policies. Long story short, a white mob arrived, made up of no small number of the white supremacist
terror organization known as the Ku Klux Klan , and murdered somewhere between 60 and 150 of
the black men in the courthouse and throughout the surrounding neighborhood. When this case came
before the Supreme Court, the judges ruled that the 14th amendment did not protect black Americans from
an attack against their civil rights if their attackers were private citizens, which is to say, not the federal
or state government . As a result of this ruling, the Ku Klux Klan, now immune from federal or state
prosecution, unleashed enormous amounts of violence against Southern blacks.
SUMMARIZE the notes from the previous page in your own words. (2-4 sentences)
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UNIT 5 TOPIC 11
Failure of Reconstruction H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : American and National Identity
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain how and why Reconstruction resulted in continuity and change in regional and national
understandings of what it meant to be American.
END OF RECONSTRUCTION
By the end of Reconstruction, the postbellum South looked eerily similar to the antebellum South and could
already be considered a failure. But the official end of Reconstruction occurred in 1877 as the
result of a hotly contested presidential election .
In the presidential election of 1866, the Democrat Samuel J. Tilden ran against the Republican
Rutherford B. Hayes . By all counts, Tilden probably should have won the election. However, Congress
was responsible for certifying the election and because twenty electoral votes were contested, the
rival factions could not come to an agreement. They struck a deal in what became known as the
Compromise of 1877 . To be clear, this wasn’t an official , written agreement, but rather one made in
secret , and the deal went like this. The Republican, Rutherford B. Hayes, could have the presidency in
exchange for the removal of federal troops from the South. In truth, there was already plenty of support
for ending the federal occupation of the South, even by northerners who had grown weary of the constant
focus on Reconstruction and wanted to move on to other things. A big part of that weariness came
from the profound economic suffering caused by the Panic of 1873 , and the reemergence of corruption
in party politics. As federal troops were removed from the South, most of the Republicans went with
them. That gave a whole slew of “ Redeemer ” Democrats the opportunity to rise to power and
shape Southern society into their own image. They styled themselves as redeemers because their goal
was to cleanse the South of the corrupting effects of racial equality policies forced on them by the
Northern Republicans. That is exactly what happened, and the tragedy of Reconstruction’s failure will
continue to haunt us in the next unit as well.
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UNIT 5 TOPIC 11
Failure of Reconstruction H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : American and National Identity
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain how and why Reconstruction resulted in continuity and change in regional and national
understandings of what it meant to be American.
SUMMARIZE the notes from the previous page in your own words. (2-4 sentences)
RESPOND to the learning objective with an evidence-based, argumentative thesis.
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain how and why Reconstruction resulted in continuity and change in regional and
national understandings of what it meant to be American.
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