Chapter 11
In This Chapter
● Surveying the damage to the South after the Civil War
● Reconstructing the South — and the Union
● Examining Johnson’s road to impeachment and Grant’s corrupted administration
The bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln at the end of the Civil War may also have killed any chance of coming up with a practical solution toward putting the country back together — and figuring out what to do with 3.5 million former slaves who had won their freedom but not much else.
In this chapter, you find out how a defiant South, a wrathful and power-mad Congress, and a stubborn and nasty-tempered president combined to make a mess of what’s known as the Reconstruction period. Additionally, you discover how a very good military leader became a very bad political leader and how one political group managed to steal a presidential election.
A Southern-Fried Mess: Life in the South after the Civil War
The 11 Southern states that had decided to leave the Union in 1860 and 1861 were basket cases by 1865. Only Texas, where there hadn’t been that much fighting, was in relatively decent shape. Southern cities such as Atlanta, Charleston, and Richmond were in ruins.
Few businesses of any kind were still operating, little capital was available to start new businesses, and few outsiders were willing to risk investing in the area. For example, 7,000 miles of railroad track were laid in the South between 1865 and 1879. In the rest of the country, 45,000 miles were laid.
Whipped
"A city of ruins, of desolation, of vacant houses, of widowed women, of rotting wharves, of deserted warehouses, of weed-wild gardens, of miles of grass-grown streets, of acres of pitiful and voiceful barrenness — that is Charleston, wherein rebellion loftily reared its head five years ago . . . I fell into some talk with [a local resident] . . . when I asked him what should be done, he said 'you Northern people are making a great mistake in your treatment of the South. We are thoroughly whipped; we give up slavery forever; and now we want you to quit reproaching us. Let us back into the Union, and then come down here and help us build up the country.'"
— Massachusetts journalist Sidney Andrews, 1865.
Before the war, the South’s economy had been based almost strictly on agriculture, mainly cotton, tobacco, and sugar, and all these industries suffered, especially cotton. Southern cotton production in 1870 was half what it was in 1860. The education system in the South had virtually disappeared, along with the old plantation system. More than 250,000 of the South’s young men were gone, too. “Pretty much the whole of life has been merely not dying,” wrote the Southern poet Sidney Lanier about the Reconstruction period.
The next sections describe two post-war changes in Southern life. One was a federal agency that was established to provide aid to free slaves and improve their lives. The other was a new farming practice, known as sharecropping, that would ultimately make life more difficult for both ex-slaves and poor whites.
Getting help from the Freedman's Bureau
For millions of African Americans, the whole of life post-Civil War had become pretty darn confusing. They had their freedom but didn’t know what they should do with it. Few former slaves had any education or training. Some thought freedom meant freedom from work; others were fearful that to continue working for white people would put them in danger of being enslaved again. And many believed a widespread rumor that the Federal government would be giving each slave “40 acres and a mule” to start their own farms.
Such a plan never existed, but in 1865, the federal government did organize the Freedman’s Bureau, an agency designed to help freed slaves during their transition from slavery to freedom by providing food, education, and other support. From 1865 to 1868, the bureau helped as many as 200,000 former slaves learn to read. About 10,000 black families were settled by the bureau on land that had been confiscated by Union troops, although most of them were eventually forced off the land by whites who swindled them out of it or used dubious legal means.
Blanche Kelso Bruce
Next time you have a $2 bill that was printed in say, 1880, in your pocket, take a look at the signatures on it. One of them belongs to a Virginia native who started life as a slave and became a prosperous landowner and United States senator.
Blanche Kelso Bruce was born in 1841 and worked as a field hand. When the Civil War began, Bruce escaped. He eventually settled in Missouri, where he organized the state's first school for African Americans. In 1869, Bruce moved to Mississippi, where he held a series of political offices. In 1874, he became the first African American to be elected to a full term in the U.S. Senate. As a senator, Bruce investigated banking scandals, advocated economic aid for freed slaves, and helped obtain levee system and railroad projects for Mississippi.
In 1880, Bruce was appointed registrar of the U.S. Treasury, where his duties required a facsimile of his signature on U.S. currency. He was also a lecturer, a writer, and an educator. Bruce died in 1898, having left his name in American history — and on a lot of money!
Becoming sharecroppers
Most blacks and many whites couldn’t afford to buy land of their own, so a new form of farming became the basis for the Southern agricultural economy: sharecropping. Under sharecropping, the farmer farmed land owned by someone else, and the two shared the profits.
That was the ideal, but in most cases, the sharecropper had to borrow money to make ends meet until the next crop was harvested. This borrowing left him with so little when the crop was harvested that he had to borrow on the next crop. Thus, many sharecroppers, both black and white, became virtual slaves to debt.
The sharecropping system was dominant in many parts of the South, replacing the plantation system. In 1868, perhaps one-third of the area’s farms were tended by renters. By 1900, that percentage grew to about 70 percent. The system, coupled with low cotton prices and the ravages of the boll weevil, virtually guaranteed that few farmers could become successful, no matter how hard they worked.
What would Lincoln have done?
One of the topics American historians like to speculate on is what might have happened if Lincoln hadn't been killed. Would he have been able to come up with a plan to reunite the states and give the former slaves their rightful place in society? Would that have led to better race relations sooner in America?
Probably not. Lincoln, like most mid-nineteenth century white Americans, felt it was impossible to just free the slaves and make them socially equal. "There is an unwillingness on the part of our [white] people, harsh as it may be, for you free colored people to remain with us," he told a group of African Americans during the war. Lincoln's hope was to resettle the freed slaves somewhere else, either in Africa or the Caribbean. But most black Americans had no firsthand experience with Africa or any other country except the United States — the country in which they were born — and they had no desire to leave.
Piecing the Union Back Together
Prior to his assassination in 1865, Lincoln laid the groundwork for dealing with slavery and reuniting the Union. In 1864 and early 1865, he pushed Congress into passing the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which barred slavery. He also set out a general plan for reuniting the country when the fighting was done, assuming the North won. Under this plan, most Southerners could become U.S. citizens again simply by taking a loyalty oath. Those who couldn’t, mostly high-ranking Confederate officials, could apply for the reinstatement of their citizenship on a case-by-case basis. After Lincoln was killed, his vice president, Andrew Johnson, adopted practically the same plan.
In the following sections, you find out more about the conditions under which the Southern states reentered the Union and how blacks in the South paid the price for the victory of their freedom.
Demanding loyalty and legislating equality
When 10 percent of a state’s population had taken an oath of loyalty to the Union, the state could set up a new government and apply for readmission to the Union, as long as it agreed to give up slavery and provide an education system for blacks. By the time Congress convened in December 1865, all the Southern states had organized new governments, ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, and elected new representatives and senators for Congress.
But Congress, dominated by Radical Republicans, those who sought harsh reprisals against the South for the war and immediate equal rights for freed slaves, didn’t like the deal. For one thing, many of the men elected to represent the Southern states in Washington, D.C., were the same people who’d run the Confederacy — including Alexander Stephens, the ex-Confederate vice president who was in federal prison awaiting trial on treason charges. That kind of in-your-face attitude irritated the Radical Republicans, who felt Southerners weren’t sorry enough for causing the war.
Even more infuriating to the North were the Black Codes. These codes were established by Southern state legislatures to keep the former slaves “under control.” They varied from state to state and did give blacks some rights they hadn’t had before, such as the power to sue in court, own certain kinds of property, and legally marry. But the Black Codes also prohibited blacks from bearing arms, working in most occupations other than farming or manual labor, and leaving their jobs without permission. They restricted African Americans’ right to travel and fined them if they broke any of the codes. To the Radical Republicans, and even many moderate Northerners, the Black Codes were simply a substitute form of slavery.
To combat the Black Codes, Congress passed a series of bills designed to strengthen the rights of blacks — and President Johnson vetoed them either as unconstitutional interference in states’ rights or as infringing on the powers of the presidency. One thing he couldn’t veto, though, was the Fourteenth Amendment, because the Constitution required that proposed amendments go directly to the states for approval. The amendment, ratified in 1868, entitled all people born or naturalized in the United States — including slaves — to U.S. citizenship and equal protection under the law.
Sorry — Not!
"Oh I'm a good old rebel / Now that's just what I am; / For the 'fair land of freedom,' / I do not care a damn. / I'm glad I fought agin it / I only wish we'd won / And I don't want a pardon / For anything I've done."
— from a popular Southern song, 1865-1866.
Using violence to keep blacks down
Many whites in the South were outraged by the Fourteenth Amendment, particularly poorer whites who already felt they were competing with exslaves for jobs. Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), Knights of the White Camellia, and Pale Faces sprang up. They used weird costumes and goofy rituals to intimidate blacks from exercising their rights. When intimidation failed, they and other white mobs and paramilitary groups resorted to violence. Hundreds of African Americans were beaten, driven from their homes, or brutally murdered as a result of these groups’ actions.
The terrorist activities of the white supremacist groups were very effective in “keeping blacks in their place.” And the groups had unwitting allies in the current president of the United States, Andrew Johnson, and Northerners who were losing interest in reforming the South.
Blacks weren’t the only targets of the KKK and similar groups; carpetbaggers and scalawags were also terrorized. Carpetbaggers were Northerners who came to the South to participate in its reconstruction — and make a lot of money in the process. Scalawags were Southerners who worked in concert with the carpetbaggers. Although it’s true some of these people were basically just vultures feeding off the defeated Southern corpse, many of both groups actually did a lot of good, reviving the school system, helping rebuild the railroads, and so on.
A lamp, a cow, and a hot, hot town
The year 1871 was a long and dry one in Chicago, Illinois. A drought had made the bustling city tinder-dry and certainly not a place to be careless with fire. But on the morning of October 8, 1871, someone was. Legend has it that someone was a Mrs. O'Leary, on DeKoven Street. Supposedly, she went to her barn to milk the cow, the cow kicked over the kerosene lamp, and one of the most disastrous fires in U.S. history began. (Mrs. O'Leary later denied the story.)
However the fire started, by the time it was out more than 24 hours later, it had killed 250 people, left nearly 100,000 homeless, destroyed more than 17,000 buildings, and done close to $200 million worth of damage.
Contributions poured in from around the world, as did government help. Fortunately, the fire missed the city's vital railroad yards and stockyards, and within a few years Chicago was able to rise from the ashes.
The Tailor-Made President:
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson may have been the poorest president ever, at least in terms of his humble beginnings. He was born in North Carolina to impoverished parents, and his father died when Johnson was just 3 years old. He never went to school and instead became a tailor’s apprentice at the age of 14.
Johnson taught himself to read and became involved in politics at the age of 17. When the Civil War broke out, he became military governor of Tennessee. In 1864, the Republican Lincoln picked the Democrat Johnson to be his vice presidential running mate. The thought was that a pro-Union Democrat would balance the ticket and attract more votes.
But when Lincoln was killed, the country was left with a stubborn and ill-tempered president who had none of Lincoln’s gift of leadership. Johnson didn’t like blacks, didn’t like rich Southerners, and didn’t like the Republican-controlled Congress. In 1866, Johnson took what was called a “Swing around the Circle,” traveling around the Northern states to campaign for Democrats running for Congress and against the Fourteenth Amendment, which would give blacks full citizenship.
Thaddeus Stevens
He had a clubfoot, a razor tongue, and was one of the most sincere white men in America when it came to rights for African Americans. Thaddeus Stevens was born in 1792 in New England. He moved to Pennsylvania, where he practiced law, got into politics, and was first elected to the House of Representatives and later the U.S. Senate.
Stevens was that rarity of rarities — an honest politician. He was unmoved by either flattery or criticism. But he was also fanatical in his hatred for the South, a hatred fueled in part by the destruction of his Pennsylvania factory by Southern troops on their way to Gettysburg. Stevens never married, but for years he had a black housekeeper who was rumored to be his lover. (Stevens never confirmed or denied this gossip.)
As the most radical of the Radical Republicans, Stevens virtually led the country for more than a year because of his power in Congress. He advocated taking the land from the South's wealthiest plantation owners and dividing it among former slaves. But that was too radical even for his colleagues. He did, however, successfully push for other laws designed to protect the basic rights of African Americans.
When Stevens died in 1868, he was buried in a black cemetery. "I have chosen this," read his epitaph, "that I might illustrate in my death the principles which I advocated through a long life: Equality of Man before His Creator."
Elizabeth Blackwell
Elizabeth Blackwell wanted to be a doctor, and she got to be one because of a joke. Blackwell was born in England in 1821, the daughter of a sugar broker. She moved with her family to America when she was 11.
Blackwell was rejected by 17 medical schools before she applied to New York's Geneva Medical College in 1847. The faculty, opposed to letting her in, decided to leave her admission up to a student vote. As a joke, the all-male student body approved her admission. But the joke was on them when just two years later Blackwell graduated at the head of her class and became the first woman to earn a medical degree in America or Europe. "Sir," she told the dean upon accepting her diploma, "by the help of the most high, it shall be the effort of my life to shed honor on this diploma."
And shed honor she did. After U.S. hospitals refused to hire her, Blackwell opened her own clinic in New York City, where she was eventually joined by her sister and a third female physician. In 1868, she opened the Women's Medical College of New York, which remained open until 1899, when Cornell University Medical School began admitting women. Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century, Blackwell was a champion of women's roles in medicine. She died in 1910.
In the following sections, you can see how Johnson’s presidency unfolded, from his lack of power compared to Congress and his ultimate impeachment.
Taking control of Congress
Johnson’s “Swing around the Circle” (described in the preceding section) was a disaster. The president was booed and jeered by Northern crowds who viewed him as a pro-South bozo. The Republicans dominated the election and had such overwhelming majorities in Congress that they easily passed any bill they wanted — and then just as easily overrode Johnson’s vetoes.
Pushed by Radical Republicans, such as Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania (see the nearby sidebar for more on Stevens) and Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, Congress passed a series of Reconstruction acts designed to force the South into line. One Reconstruction act, passed in 1867, divided the South into five military districts, each governed by a general and policed by the army. To be allowed to reenter the Union and get rid of military rule, Southern states had to agree to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. They also had to modify their state constitutions to give African Americans the right to vote. This stipulation was particularly galling to Southerners, because many Northern states didn’t allow Blacks to vote.
"Seward's Folly"
By 1867, Russia was ready to dump Alaska. After all, there didn't seem to be as many furbearing animals as there used to be, and the British might take the land anyway. It just so happened that U.S. Secretary of State William Seward was in a buying mood. Seward had heard from Americans in Russia that Alaska had loads of fish, fur, and other natural resources. Plus, buying the area would get the Russians completely out of North America. So in 1867, he offered $7.2 million — about 2 cents an acre — and the Russians said "da."
Most Americans thought buying what they believed amounted to a distant, giant icebox was dumb. The press sneered at the purchase, labeling it "Seward's Folly," "Walrussia," and "Seward's Polar Bear Garden." But Congress went along with the deal, in large part because Russia had been the only European country to support the North during the Civil War. Alaska became the first U.S. possession that wasn't geographically connected to the rest of the country. It also turned out to be a pretty good deal when gold was discovered there in 1897. Then "Seward's Folly" paid off thousands of times over.
Adding salt to the wound, Congress also approved and sent to the states the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed all adult males everywhere the right to vote. This amendment was passed to ensure the Southern states didn’t go back on their promise to give blacks the ballot (and also because the Radical Republicans were embarrassed to be from Northern states that didn’t let African Americans vote). Enough Southern state legislatures were dominated by carpetbaggers, former slaves, and other people whose loyalties were to the Radical Republicans to ensure the amendment’s ratification. However, Southern states gradually got around the law anyway by requiring blacks to pass difficult “literacy” and “citizenship” tests before they could vote.
The Fifteenth Amendment greatly angered many American women, who found that they were now second-class citizens to black males as well as white ones when it came to voting.
One result of giving newly freed slaves the right to vote was that they elected some of their own to state legislatures. The resulting black-white governments in some states created sound, fair tax and education systems; built roads and levees; and gave property rights to women. In other states, the government was dominated by leeches and thieves of both races, although white politicians were by far the worst offenders. One carpetbagger governor managed to “save” more than $4 million on an annual salary of $8,000 a year.
Impeaching a president
Radical Republicans weren’t satisfied with being able to overturn Johnson’s vetoes. They wanted him out of the White House, which, according to the Constitution, would then fall to the leader of the Senate, Ohio’s Benjamin Wade.
To get what they wanted, the Radicals laid a trap. Congress passed a bill that required the president to have Senate approval before he could fire any of his appointees. Johnson, who believed the act was unconstitutional, promptly took the bait and fired his secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, whom he considered a Radical Republican stooge.
Following Stanton’s dismissal, Congress impeached Johnson in late February 1868 for violating the law, and the Senate put him on trial. The country regarded the whole situation as a great melodrama: Tickets to the Senate gallery were the toughest buy in town. On May 16, 1868, the first of three votes was taken to remove Johnson from office. All three were 35 to 19 — one short of the two-thirds needed. Seven Republican senators voted against removing Johnson from office.
All of these men sacrificed their political careers by voting against Johnson’s removal, but they may very well have preserved the U.S. government. Removing Johnson solely on political grounds could’ve created the basis for a congressional dictatorship, whereby Congress could dominate the presidency by threatening to dump any president who didn’t go along with its wishes.
The trial may also have marked the beginning of the end of Northern interest in Reconstruction. Many Northerners were as prejudiced against blacks as many Southerners. They were sick of the issue and wanted to put the war, and its aftermath, behind them. “The whole public are tired out with these autumnal outbreaks in the South,” wrote a federal official to a Southern governor, in refusing to provide military aid when the KKK interfered in local elections. “Preserve the peace by the forces of your own state.”
Growing Corruption in Politics
When Americans elected Ulysses S. Grant president in 1868, they expected him to be the same kind of chief executive as he was a general — brave, tenacious, and inspiring. But Grant had no political experience and little political philosophy. Neither did many of the people he appointed to be his cabinet advisors and top aides. His one asset was his personal honesty, and, unfortunately, it was an asset not shared by the people around him.
A generous crook
"The Great Fisk died this morning. No loss to the community — quite the reverse — but it's a pity he should have escaped the state prison in this way . . . By talent and audacity he raised himself to the first rank among business scoundrels . . . illiterate, vulgar, unprincipled . . . [but] he was liberal to distressed ballet dancers and munificent to unfortunate females under difficulties."
— Lawyer George Templeton Strong, describing the death of "robber baron" James "Jubilee Jim" Fisk in 1872.
Almost from the time Grant took office, his administration was awash in corruption. Scandal after scandal broke over the White House like waves: Cornering the gold market, attempting to annex the Caribbean island of Santo Domingo, speculating on railroads, ripping off the Native Americans, and stealing liquor tax revenues were all grist for the corruption mill. Grant’s administration became known as the “Great Barbecue” because everyone helped themselves. For more on the growing corruption in American politics, check out the next few sections.
Taking a cue from Washington, D.C.
Political corruption was by no means limited to the federal government or Grant’s administration. State and local governments were tainted by scandal as well, and the country was soon caught up in what writer Mark Twain labeled “The Gilded Age.” It seemed everyone was in a fever to make money, and the most money-hungry individuals became known, not always with disdain, as robber barons.
In California, Colis P. Huntington and others bribed legislators and congressmen to get concessions for their railroad. In Pennsylvania, John D. Rockefeller bought and bullied lawmakers to aid his Standard Oil Company. The worst situation of all may very well have been in New York City, where a political boss named William M. Tweed created a web of elected officeholders, bureaucrats, and contractors and looted more than $100 million from the city treasury.
Bounce this idea off the wall
Dr. Benjamin Franklin Goodrich was a Civil War surgeon who became an Ohio businessman after the war. His business was finding things to do with rubber, which a fellow named Charles Goodyear had figured out could be treated with high heat and sulfur — a process called vulcanization — so it would stay flexible under hot or cold conditions.
Goodyear died in debt in 1860 before he could find a practical use for the substance. But Goodrich, who had watched a friend's house burn down after a leather fire hose burst, knew exactly what he wanted to produce. In 1870, his company began making the world's first rubber hoses (and one of the first rubber products of any kind).
By the following year, rubber gaskets, bottle stoppers, clothes-wringer rollers, and other items were being produced. Watering can manufacturers may have cursed them, but to gardeners and firefighters, Goodrich's hoses were a godsend.
Trying to change the tides
Despite the stench of scandal from his first term, Grant was reelected in 1872, easily defeating Democratic candidate Horace Greeley, the longtime editor of the New York Tribune. But by 1874, the scandals and the mess of Reconstruction — which ruined Republicans’ chances of winning anything in the South — combined to let the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives.
With all the corruption — and the public’s growing disgust — it wasn’t surprising that in 1876 both political parties nominated presidential candidates known for their integrity. The Republicans put up Rutherford B. Hayes, a former Union general who had been governor of Ohio for three terms. The Democrats countered with New York Governor Samuel B. Tilden, who had gained admiration for helping bring down the Boss Tweed Ring in New York City.
Fixing a presidency (and not in a good way)
The race between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel B. Tilden turned out to be perhaps the most tainted presidential election in American history. When the returns came in, Tilden seemed to have 203 electoral votes compared to Hayes’s 166. But the Republican Party leaders, who controlled the people who oversaw the elections, arranged to invalidate thousands of Democratic votes in Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana, which changed the electoral vote count to 185-184 in favor of Hayes.
Indigestion on wheels
One day in 1872, a man from Providence, Rhode Island, one Walter Scott, loaded a wagon with sandwiches, boiled eggs, and other food and parked it outside a downtown newspaper office in the evening. Because all the restaurants in town closed at 8 p.m., Scott had plenty of customers. Soon other "lunch wagons" began rolling down streets all over American cities. In 1884, a guy in Worcester, Massachusetts, named Sam Jones got the idea to put stools in his lunch wagon so customers could sit down.
The wagons drew complaints from residents and competing restaurant owners and were banned or restricted in many towns. So the wagon owners simply rolled their wagons onto vacant lots, took off the wheels, and called themselves restaurants. By the 1920s, people were eating as many breakfasts and dinners at the wagons as lunches, and rather than lunch wagons, people started calling them diners.
Naturally, the Democrats challenged the new results, and a special commission was created to look into the matter. The commission consisted of ten members of Congress, five from each party, as well as five members of the Supreme Court (three Republicans and two Democrats). The commission voted 8-7, right along party lines, to give the election to Hayes.
Northern Democrats were outraged, but Southern Democrats saw an opportunity and offered a deal: They agreed to drop any challenge to the commission’s vote if Hayes promised to remove the last of the federal troops from Southern states and let the states run their own affairs. The Republicans eventually agreed, and Hayes became president. As a result, the Reconstruction period came to an end. African Americans were largely abandoned by the federal government, and white Americans outside the South turned their attentions elsewhere, mostly to the West.