This page last updated 25 September, 2019.
US HISTORY THROUGH FILM
Lincoln
*As the Civil War was clearly nearing its
completion, the question arose about what to do with a
defeated South. Indeed,
Lincoln and some other leaders had been thinking about this
for some time.
*As early as 1863 Lincoln created a plan
for bringing the Southern states back into the Union. According to his
theory that they had never seceded in the first place, this
was a fairly simple affair.
Lincoln’s plan required 10% of the voters registered
in each Southern state in 1860 to swear allegiance to the
Union, so it was called the Ten Per Cent Plan. The state would
then elect a new government and, once accepted by Lincoln,
function as a state of the Union again. Finally, Lincoln
would pardon any Confederate who would swear an oath of
allegiance to the Union and accept the federal policy on
slavery, but it denied pardons to all Confederate military
and government officials and anyone who had killed black
prisoners of war.
*The Radical Republicans in Congress
thought this was too soft on the South, and refused to seat
elected representatives from Louisiana, Arkansas, or
Tennessee after those states sent them to Congress under
Lincoln’s Ten Per Cent Plan in 1864.
*The Radical Republicans instead created
the Wade-Davis Bill, and passed it in 1864. Many Radicals felt
that the Southern states, by leaving the Union, no longer
had equal rights and deserved to be treated as conquered
provinces that might one day begin the process of admission
all over again. Radical
Republicans believed the South needed a complete
Reconstruction of its society.
Among many tougher restrictions, the Wade-Davis Bill
required fifty percent of ex-Confederate men to take an oath
of allegiance and swear that they had never borne arms
against the United States.
After all, they could be called traitors if they
did—the Constitution defines treason as making war against
the United States. It
also had stronger protections for emancipation than did
Lincoln’s Ten Per Cent Plan.
Lincoln refused to sign this bill at a time when
Congress was not in session, thus using the pocket veto to
prevent it going into effect.
*Therefore, as 1865 began, nothing was
resolved. Lincoln
was known to still favour a mild plan for reunification,
welcoming the Southerners back into the Union as brothers
who had gone astray, while many Radicals wanted to punish
White Southerners and protect the newly freed slaves.
*Among other things, the issue of slavery
remained. Although
the Emancipation Proclamation had ended slavery in all areas
still in Rebellion as of January 1, 1863, slavery was still
legal in areas the U.S. Army occupied by that point
(although realistically many slaves in those areas had
already escaped or been confiscated by the Army). Furthermore,
slavery was still legal in the Border States that had
remained loyal, although a couple were in the process of
banning it. Finally,
the Emancipation Proclamation itself was basically an
executive order based on a wartime emergency, and
theoretically might be reversed by some later President or
by Congress.
*Therefore, many opponents of slavery
wanted to amend the Constitution itself to ban slavery
forever throughout the United States. If this amendment
passed, it would become the XIII Amendment to the US
Constitution. A
bill to create such an amendment was first introduced in
Congress in December, 1863, and the Senate finally wrote
what became the final version in February, 1864 and then
passed it 38 to 6 in April, 1864.
*However, it also had to be passed by the
House of Representatives, and in both houses of Congress it
had to be passed by a 2/3 majority. That had been easy
in the Senate, but would be harder in the House. And once it passed
through Congress, it would have to be ratified by ¾ of the
states (27 of 36 at that time).
*By January, 1865, the Republicans were
ready to have the House of Representatives vote on the
Amendment, but it was not clear if there would be enough
votes. Many
Democrats opposed the Amendment, and even some Republicans
were unhappy with some elements of it.
*Complicating matters, some Confederate
leaders, including Vice-President Alexander Stephens, were
interested in peace talks, but passage of an Amendment
completely banning slavery would make those peace talks much
more difficult.
--Introduce Lincoln
-Lincoln was released in 2012
and was based on a number of books on Lincoln,
particularly the Pulitzer prize-winning Team of Rivals
published in 2005 by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
-The movie focuses
on January, 1865 when Lincoln and other supporters of the
Amendment were trying to win enough support in the House
of Representatives to pass the Amendment. There are also a
couple of scenes in March and April of that year, too. Overall, it is
very accurate, although some things are exaggerated or
simplified and some things are compressed into one month
of film time that really took place over several months.
-Most
of the filming took place in Richmond, although a few
scenes were shot elsewhere in Northern Virginia, including
Petersburg. The
Virginia State Capital was modified to serve as both the
interior and exterior of the US Capitol building (which
creates some inaccuracies—the House of Representatives are
shown meeting in a room with many large windows, but the
real House had recently moved into their current chamber,
which has no windows).
Overall, though the scenery is very good.
-Likewise,
the costuming is very good, and even the makeup is
outstanding. Most
of the historical characters (and most of the characters
who appear are historical, although the names of some
opponents of the Thirteen Amendment were changed so as not
to embarrass their living descendants) very closely
resemble the people they are supposed to represent, even
down to the distinctive haircuts and facial hair that
several had, although one or two look pretty different
from their actual historical counterparts, notably Francis
Preston Blair.
-Abraham
Lincoln is the 16th President of the United
States. He
loves to tell stories, to such an extent that it sometimes
annoys people who want to get down to serious business,
but most people love it.
Daniel Day-Lewis who portrays him went to great
lengths to re-create the voice and accent that
contemporaries described Lincoln as having. On the other
hand, in a couple of instances in the movie, Lincoln loses
his temper very vocally and publicly, which many
historians feel is inaccurate, as he was famous for his
patience and for almost never using bad language (unless
it was part of a funny story, such as the story he tells
about Ethan Allen in the movie, which was supposedly one
of his favourite stories ever). On the other
hand, he was known to argue with his wife, and that is
depicted in the film too.
-Mary
Todd Lincoln is Abraham’s wife. They have a
difficult marriage with frequent arguments, including
about her spending habits.
Mary may have also been mentally disturbed. If so, it may
have been partly because of the loss of two of her
sons—Eddie, who had died in 1850 a month before his 4th
birthday, and Willie, who had recently died in 1862 of
typhoid fever, just one year into Lincoln’s presidency. Besides Eddie
and Willie, the Lincolns had two living sons.
-Tad
Lincoln is almost twelve, and very wild, but never
disciplined by his parents, who love him very much. He enjoys
disrupting Cabinet meetings and playing pranks in the
White House, including locking doors, charging admission
to visitors, and setting up a food stand in the lobby. He drove his
private tutors crazy, and at this point is essentially
illiterate. He
is fascinated by the war, and has been made a 2nd
Lieutenant of artillery by the Secretary of War.
-Robert
Lincoln is the Lincolns’ oldest son, 21 years old at this
point, and currently is studying at Harvard Law School,
where he recently finished his bachelor’s degree. He has a distant
relationship with his parents, partly because when he was
young, his father was often away arguing cases in court or
working in politics.
-William
Henry Seward was once Lincoln’s rival for the Republican
nomination for the presidency, and was named Secretary of
State to win his support.
Early on, he thought he would run things from
behind the scenes. Over
time, however, he came to deeply respect Lincoln, and
served him faithfully during the War.
-Edwin
M. Stanton is Lincoln’s Secretary of War. He had met
Lincoln once before the war, and thought he was an
ignorant country bumpkin, and was openly rude to him
during a trial in which they were supposed to be working
on the same side. Furthermore,
he was a Democrat, but one who supported the War, and
eventually joined Lincoln’s cabinet, and after he got to
know him better, became very close to him and respected
him deeply, too.
-Thaddeus
Stevens is a Representative from Pennsylvania and an
outspoken opponent of slavery and even an outright
advocate of complete racial equality, which even among the
anti-slavery movement was seen as fairly extreme at the
time. He had
helped with the Underground Railroad, and one house in
which he lived even had a secret chamber where runaways
could be hidden. Stevens
is a leader of the Radical Republicans who want a complete
end to slavery and to punish the South for slavery and
rebellion. He
walks with a cane because he has a club foot.
-Show
Lincoln
-#1
the Battle of Poison Spring was fought on 18 April, 1864
in Arkansas. Black
Union soldiers were slaughtered, as usually happened to
Black Union troops captured by the Confederates—the most
infamous case was the Fort Pillow Massacre, committed by
soldiers under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest. At Poison
Spring, some of the Union soldiers were scalped or
otherwise mutilated by Choctaw Indians in the Confederate
Army, many of whose homes had been raided by the US Army.
-#6
is basically true. Lincoln
did have dreams before many major battles, and the dream
shown in the movie is very closely based on a description
of his dreams Lincoln once gave the Secretary of the Navy.
-#18
is true. Lincoln
interfered with many civil rights: he arrested
people without a writ of habeus corpus (similar to a
warrant), including the governors and legislatures of
Maryland and Kentucky to make sure they did not vote for
secession, and when the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court, Roger B. Taney told him this was illegal, Lincoln
threatened to imprison him, too. Lincoln
sometimes shut down newspapers, and had some civilians
tried by military courts (later declared to be
unconstitutional).
-#21
introduces Fernando Wood of New York City, a strongly
anti-war Democrat, who had previously been mayor of New
York and was briefly arrested by the New York State
Militia and charged with inciting a riot in 1857, when he
refused to allow the newly-created Metropolitan Police to
replace the Municipal Police who had been used as a tool
of the Democratic Party machine. During a later
term as mayor at the start of the Civil War, he had
proposed that New York City secede from the Union. As shown in the
movie, he was one of the leaders of the opposition to
ratifying the XIII Amendment.
-#26
may not really be where Seward and Merrick spoke, but
there really is an amputated leg in the Army Medical
Museum donated to it by General Daniel Sickles after it
was shot off on the second day of the Battle of
Gettysburg. Sickles
visited it every year on July 2nd. Furthermore, the
men working for Seward, known as the Seward Lobby, were
real people, although in reality they spent a lot of their
time in New York City trying to influence newspaper
editors so that they would publish articles and editorials
that would support the Amendment. They were also
more respectable and respected people than they are
portrayed as in the movie—indeed, at least one refused any
payment for his services, saying he had done if just for
the cause of ending slavery.
-#32
is true. Mrs.
Lincoln one point she spent so much on re-decorating the
White House that she was investigated by Congress,
embarrassing Lincoln so much that he paid at least part of
the bills out of his own pocket, worried about what the
country would think about spending on flubdubs while the
nation was at war.
-#33
is true, and would guide his approach to the
Reconstruction of the South after the War.
-#35
is basically true. In
the 1850s, there were attempts by private armies of
Southerners to take over parts of Mexico as well as
Nicaragua, Honduras, and Cuba. William Walker
of Tennessee actually did take over Nicaragua briefly
before being driven out of power by an alliance of
neighbouring countries, and he was captured and executed
during his attempt to take over Honduras.
-#36 does sound
scary! Later,
though, many white Southerners would support giving women
the vote, partly to balance out the votes of Black men.
-#39
may be an underestimate—some historians estimate the
number of deaths to be at least 650,000, perhaps as high
as 700,000—more than 2% of the entire American population
at the time.
-#40
is true. Lincoln
issued many pardons (including those described in this
scene), to the annoyance of Stanton.
-#41
and most of the events relating to the Peace Commission
are basically true, although a few things are compressed
to make things quicker for the movie.
-#45
is correct—there were massive piles and burial pits for
all the arms and legs amputated in military hospitals.
-#47
is true, and Robert was given the rank of Captain,
although it was Mary Lincoln who kept Robert out of the
Army for so long. Lincoln
himself was a little embarrassed that Robert got this
special treatment, because he said every mother would like
to be able to keep her son out of the Army.
-#48
is probably true. Furthermore,
following the death of her son Tad in 1871, she became
increasingly erratic and had difficulty managing her own
finances. Robert
Lincoln was put in charge of her finances and even had her
committed to a mental institution in 1875, although she
managed to smuggle letters out to friends who found a
lawyer who could get her released after three months and
eventually put back in charge of her own money.
-#49
is not true. Lincoln
would not appear on anything worth 50¢ until 1869, and
that was a 50¢ paper bill.
He would not appear on a coin until the Lincoln
Cent was issued in 1909 (for his hundredth birthday).
-#52
indirectly refers to one aspect of the Free Soil Movement. One reason some
people did not want slavery to expand into the West was
because they feared it would crowd out small farmers who
would not be able to compete with large plantations, so it
wasn’t just about disapproval of slavery, but also out of
a desire to avoid being undercut by unpaid labour.
-#56 is only true if
the person making a false statement is under oath.
-#57
is inaccurate on a couple of counts. First, members
of the House of Representatives do not vote by state, but
rather alphabetically by last name (at least until 1973,
when most votes began to be cast on electronic voting
machines stationed throughout the House chamber). Furthermore, all
of the Representatives from Connecticut supported the
Amendment, and shortly after the movie was released, a
modern Congressman from Connecticut wrote a letter of
complaint to Steven Spielberg about that.
-#60
is probably true. Although
not definitively proven, it was widely rumoured at the
time that Thaddeus Stevens had a long-standing romantic
relationship with his mixed-race housekeeper, Lydia
Hamilton Smith, and many historians also believe it to be
true. He left
her a large sum of money in his will as well as permission
to take any furniture in his house. She used the
money to purchase the house for herself. Although Stevens
was buried in an integrated cemetery in Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, Lydia was buried in a Catholic cemetery
elsewhere in Lancaster.
-#62
is true. Lincoln
wanted the Southern states brought back into the Union as
quickly and painlessly as possible, although he also
believed that there was no way to maintain slavery. According to
Alexander Stephens, who was the only person to write in
detail about the meeting, Lincoln even suggested he would
get Congress to spend $400 million to help reimburse
Southerners for their slaves, although that would have
worked out to only a little over $100 per slave, quite a
bit less than their full value.
-#63
was also a reasonable fear, and in the end, Radical
Republicans did all they could to punish the South,
although eventually the Northern public got tired of the
effort involved and backed off by early 1877.
-#64
turned out to be true.
By the time of Lincon’s death, Louisiana,
Tennessee, and Arkansas had all ratified the XIII
Amendment, although in all of those states, many White
Southerners were prevented from voting because of their
support for the Confederacy.
Some other Southern states (occupied by the US
Army) would ratify the Amendment over the course of the
year, and it would officially become part of the
Constitution on December 18, 1865, although some states
would not ratify it until later, most recently
Mississippi, which voted to ratify it in 1995, although
the paperwork was not filed correctly, so that Mississippi
did not officially ratify the Amendment abolishing slavery
until 2013 (and 14 states in the West still have not
ratified it).
-#70
is significant, in that one part of the Republican Party’s
platform in the 1860s was to build a Transcontinental
Railroad, and with massive loans and massive gifts of land
to two railroad companies, they did so between 1863 and
1869.
-#73
is true, and as shown in the movie, Tad Lincoln was at
another theatre watching a play called Aladdin at
the time, although he was quietly taken home and told in
private about his father’s death, and the theatre manager
did not announce it to the audience as a whole until Tad
was out of the building.
-#74
is also true, although the President was shown curled up
in his deathbed, whereas he was actually laid out flat,
but had to be laid out diagonally across the bed because
he was too tall to stretch out normally.
-#75
is what Secretary of War Edwin Stanton said when Lincoln
died. He then
organized a merciless hunt for Lincoln’s assassins and the
subsequent trial of all those captured (although John
Wilkes Booth himself was killed while on the run).
-#76
is a slight flashback to Lincoln’s second Inaugural
Address on March 4, 1865.
-Robert Lincoln was not present
at his father's assassination in 1865. He was at the
White House, and rushed to be with his parents, where
Robert attended his father's deathbed. Later, in 1881,
Robert Lincoln was named Secretary of War for President
James A. Garfield's and was with him when he was shot on 2
July, 1881. In
1901, President William McKinley invited Robert Lincoln to
the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, where
the president was shot on 6 September 6, 1901. Although Robert
Lincoln was not an eyewitness to the event, he was just
outside the building where the shooting occurred. He was very
careful never to meet a president again.
*The surrender of Lee and Johnston in
April 1865, although a great victory for the North, was
overshadowed by the great national tragedy of Lincoln’s
death, a tragedy for both North and, it turned out, for the
South.
*John Wilkes Booth was a famous actor
from a family of famous actors (although his father and
especially his brother were considered better than he). The Booths were
originally from England, but John Wilkes Booth was born and
raised in Maryland and lived in Richmond and Washington
immediately before and during the War. Although he hated
Blacks and hated the North for the destruction and
humiliation faced by the South, he never joined the
Confederate Army. Instead,
he devised a scheme to kidnap Lincoln, whom he blamed above
all others, and exchange him for Confederate prisoners held
in the North. This
plan did not amount to anything, but later, he and a number
of conspirators hatched a plot to kill Lincoln, Johnson,
Seward, and Grant.
*On the evening of 14 April, 1865,
Lincoln went to Ford’s Theatre to see a popular play called
‘Our American Cousin.’
Booth, who got mail at the theatre, knew Lincoln
would be there. Grant
was also supposed to be there, but Mrs Grant disliked Mrs
Lincoln, and they made up a flimsy excuse about a trip out
of town to avoid it, and another officer took his place.
*During Act III, scene 2, the funniest
line in the play was guaranteed to get a laugh. Hoping to use this
to cover the sound of his gunshot, Booth sneaked into the
Presidential box and fired his derringer into the back of
Lincoln’s head. The
president collapsed immediately. Booth leapt to the
stage, catching his spur in the bunting and breaking his
leg. He cried
‘sic semper tyranis’ and limped from the theatre. Doctors tried to
help Lincoln (but probably made things worse). He lived through
the night, comatose, and died the next morning at 7:22. Secretary Stanton
said ‘now he belongs to the ages.’
*The man assigned to kill Seward tried
and failed. Seward
had suffered a fall not long before and was wearing a neck
brace when he was attacked.
His attacker tried to cut his throat, but was foiled
by the metal brace. Seward’s
face and hands were badly cut up and he was expected to die,
but he survived, although thenceforth he only had his
photograph made in profile.
*The man assigned to kill Andrew Johnson
changed his mind at the last minute and never attacked him.
*It is likely that no-one ever rose from
humbler beginnings to become president than did Andrew
Johnson. His
parents were poor farmers in North Carolina, and he was an
illiterate tailor who never went to school. He taught himself
to read and his wife taught him to cipher. He had been a
successful Tennessee politician, serving as mayor of
Greeneville before being elected governor, Congressman,
Senator, and then appointed military governor during much of
the War before Lincoln chose him, the most prominent loyal
Southern Democrat, as running mate for the Union Party in
1864. He was
famous for supporting the interests of poor whites against
big slave-owners.
*One of the first major actions of his
presidency, of course, was the capture and execution of
Booth’s accomplices, although this was largely directed by
Edwin Stanton. Booth
himself was killed during the attempt to capture him. Four of Booth’s
accomplices, three men and one woman (Mary Suratt, the first
woman executed by the US Government), were executed, and
four others were imprisoned.
*The War left the South devastated, and the North relatively
untouched, although still deeply bitter about the loss of
lives and the murder of Lincoln.
*Half the Southern capitals had been
captured or destroyed, along with many other cities, most of
the South’s few factories, her cotton gins, her banking
systems, and large sections of her railroads. Before the War,
five railroads converged on Columbia, SC, but after the War
she was 20 miles from the nearest functioning rail line.
*$2 billion worth of slaves had been lost
to the South, a vast investment vanished along with the
investment in other improvements to the plantations over the
years and in worthless Confederate paper money and bonds. Livestock and
crops had been stolen or destroyed. Many Southerners
also felt the Lost Cause had been a just one. They would belong
to the US again, but they did not have to like it.
*The freedmen did not just represent a
huge financial loss for the South or the disruption of a
social system dating to the foundation of most Southern
states. It also
meant a loss of labour for planters who suddenly had no-one
to plant or harvest their crops. Furthermore, there
was now an immense number of Blacks without any clear idea
what to do next.
*Even before the war drew to a close,
both Lincoln and Congress began to formulate plans to deal
with the South and with Southerners, both black and white. One of their first
creations was the Freedmen’s Bureau, formed on 3 March 1865
and intended to help free blacks on their way to becoming
productive citizens.
*The Freedmen’s Bureau was a sort of
welfare agency. It
was meant to offer food, medical care, legal advice, and
education to both freedmen and white refugees. Later it would
help blacks vote when they got that right.
*The Bureau did offer education, and it
was gladly accepted by freedmen of all ages. Sherman had given
tracts of up to 40 acres and occasionally the loan of Army
mules to slaves freed during his march. ‘Forty acres and a
mule’ came to symbolise Federal willingness to help former
slaves and even redistribute private property. Some radical
members of Congress wanted to offer this to more freedmen,
and passed a forty acres and a mule law, but it was rarely
implemented and later defeated by Johnson, who rescinded all
its grants.
*On 29 May 1865, Johnson issued his own
plan for Reconstruction, known as Presidential
Reconstruction. It
was based on Lincoln’s Ten Per Cent Plan, although it was
not identical to it. It
disenfranchised rich Confederates worth over $20,000, and a
few other prominent (but less wealthy) Confederate leaders,
although they could appeal for individual pardons
personally, mostly so that backwoods Johnson could gloat
over their humiliation and defeat. Southern states
would have to call special state conventions to repeal the
ordinances of secession and repudiate all Confederate debts. This had the good
effect of not leaving the South in debt, but, according to
some interpretations, taken by Radical Republicans, meant
that the South could not pay pensions to Confederate
veterans, either. Finally,
the Southern states had to ratify the XIII Amendment. States that did
all this could return to the Union without other trouble,
because Johnson saw them as being fellow states of the
Union. The
Radical Republicans did not approve, but Congress was not in
session and could not do much.
By the end of 1865, four Southern states (Tennessee,
Arkansas, Louisiana, and Virginia) had re-joined the Union
under Johnson’s terms.
Several states refused to ratify the XIII Amendment,
but enough states did so that it became part of the
Constitution in December 1865.
*As the Southern states returned to the
Union, they found their own ways to deal with the freedmen. All the Southern
states created laws to limit the rights and opportunities of
the freemen. These
were called Black Codes.
These varied in severity from state to state, but had
more or less the same goals.
They meant to provide a stable workforce for the
South and to control the Black population.
*In order to work, Blacks had to sign
labour contracts, obliging them to work for a set period of
time, typically a year, for one master. Usually they were
only paid at the end so they would not dare leave early, and
they could have their pay docked for any number of reasons,
some real and some not.
Contracted labourers who ran away could be hauled
back forcibly, generally forfeited back pay, and sometimes
were fined and then put to work to pay off the fines.
*The rights of freedmen were also
limited. Although
they were legally free and could now marry and enjoy some
other rights, they could not vote, serve on juries, or, in
some places, own land or even rent or lease it. Blacks could be
punished for idleness and vagrancy by being forced into
labour contracts. Despite
all the assumptions behind the Black Codes, most Blacks
wanted to do honest work—few if any wanted to be vagrants. The problem was
finding work that treated them better than slaves.
*Without capital, and with nothing to
offer but their labour, Freedmen many became share-croppers,
working for a share of the crops that they grew. Others became
tenant farmers, technically renting the land and paying the
rent out of the proceeds from the sale of crops, but always
in debt and unable to leave or control their lives because
they had to buy new seed, clothes, and other supplies each
year, which the subsequent harvest barely paid off. The same things
happened to many poor whites, as the poor of both races were
reduced to something very like slavery.
*Northerners asked if these Black Codes
were what they had fought for since Sharpsburg. Congressional
Republicans certainly felt it was not.
*When Congress re-convened on 4 December,
1865 after a nine-month recess, the Republicans were shocked
to see Southern Democrats back in town, many of them
prominent former Confederates, including generals, cabinet
officials, and even the former Vice-President, still under
indictment for treason.
*Not wanting to lose power to a bunch of
traitorous rebel Democrats, the Republicans refused to let
their new colleagues take their seats in the House and
Senate. Congress’
refusal to seat the new congressmen angered President
Johnson, however. He
had thought he was restoring the Union more or less as
Lincoln wanted it done—with malice towards none, with
charity for all.
*The Republicans, now that they saw their
power, created what would become the XIV Amendment. It conferred civil
rights (including citizenship but not the vote) on freedmen,
reduced representation of states in Congress and the
Electoral College if they denied Blacks the right to vote,
disqualified any former Confederates who had earlier held
federal office from ever holding a federal or state office
again, and guaranteed the national debt while repudiating
the Confederate debt.
*Under Congressional Reconstruction in
1866 and 1867, the old Ten Per Cent Plan applied with the
additional requirement that all states ratify the XIV
Amendment before returning to the Union. Tennessee did so,
but Johnson encouraged the rest of the South not to, and
they happily obliged.
*On 2 March, 1867, Congress passed the
Reconstruction Act. Along
with later acts, it abolished all Southern states (except
Tennessee) saying they had forfeited their right to be
states by their secession.
The states were divided into five military districts
comprising between one and three old states, with each
district having a military governor and about 20,000
occupying troops.
*The Southern states under military
reconstruction were required to ratify the XIV Amendment and
to give Black males the right to vote. Many whites also
lost the right to vote temporarily. The Reconstruction
Act did not do what some Radicals and African-Americans had
hoped though, neither offering free education nor forty
acres and a mule. The
plan was to create friendly state governments and new state
constitutions that would eventually let Congress and the
Army pull out.
*The Radicals were afraid that once they
left the South, the old Black Codes would return. So, one year after
the ratification of the XIV Amendment in 1868, Congress
wrote the XV Amendment which made it illegal to deny the
franchise on the basis of race or former condition of
servitude. This
was ratified in 1870 by Republicans freely elected in the
North and elected under military rule in the South.
*The Radicals were increasingly
frustrated by that drunken tailor Johnson. The Radicals had
an ally in the executive branch, though. Secretary of War
Stanton was on their side and often told them what Johnson
was up to, essentially serving as a spy against the
president on behalf of Congress. This angered
Johnson almost as much as Johnson angered Congress. Furthermore, it
gave Congress an idea for a pretext for impeachment.
*In 1867 Congress declared that since the
Senate had to confirm all Cabinet appointments, that also
meant that the Senate had to confirm any removal from office
of any Cabinet member during a president’s term. This was called
the Tenure of Office Act.
Congress knew Johnson, who badly wanted to fire
Stanton, was likely to break this, and they turned out to be
right.
*On 5 August, 1867 Johnson requested
Stanton’s resignation.
Stanton refused and the Senate backed him up. Stanton barricaded
himself in his office, even after Johnson named General
Grant as his replacement.
Grant eventually turned the job down to show support
for Stanton.
*This gave Congress what they needed. For violating the
Tenure of Office Act Johnson was impeached by the House of
Representatives. During
the Senate trial, however, Johnson behaved himself, was
quiet, sober, and conciliatory, when he even appeared in the
Senate chamber at all.
His defence suggested that the law was
unconstitutional (and the Supreme Court would officially say
so in 1926). The
prosecutors had a fairly flimsy case, and Johnson was
acquitted, although only by one vote.
*Congress would remain the most important
part of the government for the rest of the century. The late
1800s would be characterised by relatively weak presidents
(almost all of them Republicans elected by Union veterans)
facing a more powerful Congress (often controlled by a slim
majority of Democrats, at least in the House, and with the
support of the entire South behind them, as no Southerner
would ever vote for the Party of Lincoln). Although voter
turnout was very high, the differences between the two
parties were fairly trivial and few great policies were
enacted.
*With the army to protect them, black men
in the South voted in great numbers. Black Southerners
were elected to the conventions that created new state
Constitutions and they were elected to local, state, and
even federal offices. Between
1868 and 1876, 14 black Congressmen and 2 Senators (Hiram
Revels and Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi) were sent to
Washington from the South.
*Southerners cursed the Yankees who came
South to take part in Reconstruction and the new
governments, calling these people carpetbaggers, suggesting
that they were poor, no-account people at home who carried
everything around in a cheap suitcase made of carpet scraps. The only thing
worse than a carpetbagger was a scalawag, a Southerner who
became a Republican after the Civil War. Most of these men
had been Whigs and Unionists before and during the war, but
some were former Democrats who changed parties when it
became obvious who was running the show.
*The stereotype of these scalawags and
carpetbaggers was that they were corrupt, opportunistic
profit-seekers out to take advantage of the defeated South
under a corrupt government.
In some cases that was true—the 19th Century after
the Civil War was characterized by government corruption at
almost all levels. However,
many were simply businessmen and even reformers who wanted
to modernise the South, although many were, of course, not
averse to making some money on the deal. One carpetbagger
governor with an $8,000 annual salary managed to make
$100,000 in one year through graft.
*Some, of course, did treat
Reconstruction as a period of imperial rule, which is why no
West Virginian owns the mineral rights on his own lands. Indeed, some
historians have described the South as an ‘internal colony’
in which it could be exploited for raw materials in the same
way that Europeans of the 19th Century exploited
their colonies overseas.
*Former slave-owners are incensed to see
their former slaves running their states, especially when
they could not vote or hold office themselves. They resented
being a conquered people prevented from even voting by an
occupying army that seized property and bullied former
rebels into obedience.
*To fight back, Southerners formed
resistance organizations.
On Christmas Eve, 1865 the Ku Klux Klan was formed in
Pulaski County, Tennessee.
The name came from the Greek 'kyklos,' meaning
'circle.’ The
Ku Klux Klan attacked freedmen, carpetbaggers, and scalawags
in order to scare them away from things the Klan did not
want them doing, especially voting or holding public office,
but even to keep Black from buying their own property,
especially in towns near White people. Enemies of the
Klan were harassed, kidnapped, and often murdered. 1,000 Louisianans
alone were supposedly killed by the Klan in 1868, and 300
Republicans were killed across the South, including a
Congressman.
*Congress was outraged by the Klan’s
activities. In
1870 and 1871 Congress passed the Force Acts, which gave the
US Army tremendous power to use force against anyone
suspected of participating in violence through the Klan or
any similar group. Under
the president at that time, Ulysses S. Grant, the Army was
very active in suppressing the Klan under these laws.
*One irony of the creation of new state
constitutions by Black legislators and Yankee carpetbaggers
is that once the Southern states were back in the Union and
the white population could vote again, those Black men and
carpetbaggers lost most of their powers under the new
‘redeemed governments’ elected once Reconstruction ended one
state at a time.
*These Redeemer governments had to be
careful not to re-create de facto
segregation too quickly, as they could be re-occupied, and
some were. Southern
governments remained volatile, but they began to run
themselves as soon as they could, and by 1870 most Southern
states were back in the Union.
*In 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes, Republican
Governor of Ohio ran against Samuel Tilden, Democratic
Governor of New York, for the presidency. Hayes was a Civil
War veteran, a fact his supporters mentioned often, thus
‘waving the bloody shirt.’
Tilden was more popular, however, and won a slight
majority of the popular vote.
*In the Electoral College, however,
things were closer. Several
states--Florida, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Oregon--had
one or more of their electoral votes questioned, so that
twenty votes were unallocated at the end of 1876. The election was
close—if Tilden got even one of the disputed votes, or if
Hayes got them all, that man would win.
*Tilden probably should have won, but the
Democrats were afraid to complain too loudly, because they
feared (unjustifiably) that Grant would set himself up as
military dictator if pushed too far. Republicans were
upset, but some were willing to let Tilden in. Some Blacks were
supposedly afraid that if Tilden did win, slavery would be
re-established. It
was a very tense situation.
*Congress had to decide what to do, so
they set up a special committee. The committee had
7 Democrats, 7 Republicans, and one honest man. However, at the
last minute, the neutral man, David Davis of the Supreme
Court, was appointed to the Senate and resigned his
judgeship and his spot on the committee. He was replaced by
a Republican. Not
surprisingly, the commission voted 8 to 7 in favour of
Hayes.
*The Democrats were furious. However, rather
than have a constitutional crisis, a bargain was reached: the Compromise of
1877. Tilden
would let Hayes take office without complaint, but in return
Reconstruction would end in the South, and some money would
be spent to improve the Southern states in ways they wanted.
*By this point almost every Southern
state was part of the Union again, but as government
scrutiny declined the South returned to its old ways. The Black Codes
were replaced by Jim Crow Laws, civil rights were ignored,
and Black suffrage was limited. Furthermore, the
North and especially the South would remain bitter about the
war for generations to come.