1.8 Chapter Summary
Chronology
| 1863 | Lincoln issues Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction |
| 1864 | Radical Republicans pass Wade-Davis Bill |
| 1865 | Lincoln assassinated |
| Johnson becomes president | |
| Freedmen’s Bureau created | |
| Southern states pass Black Codes | |
| House forms the Joint Committee on Reconstruction | |
| Thirteenth Amendment passed and ratified, prohibits slavery | |
| 1866 | Fourteenth Amendment passed, establishes citizenship for blacks |
| Fifteenth Amendment passed, giving black males the vote | |
| Republicans sweep off-year elections | |
| 1867 | First Reconstruction Act passed; Tenure of Office Act passed |
| 1868 | Johnson impeached and acquitted |
| Fourteenth Amendment ratified | |
| Ulysses S. Grant elected president | |
| 1869 | National Woman Suffrage Association and American Woman Suffrage Association founded |
| 1870 | Fifteenth Amendment ratified |
| Ku Klux Klan launches terrorist campaign | |
| First Enforcement Act | |
| 1871 | Last of southern states rejoin the Union |
| Ku Klux Klan Act outlaws the Klan and any other groups conspiring to deprive individuals of their Constitutional rights | |
| 1872 | Liberal Republicans nominate Greeley for president |
| Grant reelected president | |
| General Amnesty Act passed | |
| Crédit Mobilier, “salary grab,” and Whiskey Ring scandals uncovered | |
| 1873 | Panic of 1873 begins |
| Colfax Massacre | |
| 1875 | Civil Rights Act of 1875 passed |
| 1876 | Presidential election is disputed |
| 1877 | Compromise of 1877 |
| Hayes becomes president | |
| 1880 | Harris publishes Uncle Remus |
| 1884 | Twain publishes The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
| 1895 | Booker T. Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise” |
| 1896 | Plessy v. Ferguson establishes “separate-but-equal” doctrine |
The 10 Most Important Things to Remember
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln placed the burden of Reconstruction on the shoulders of Andrew Johnson during a critical moment in American history. The insecure and indecisive Johnson proved ill equipped to guide the nation forward.
The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments made citizens of all African Americans and granted suffrage to black adult males. Yet, Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, revised state constitutions, and terror groups like the Ku Klux Klan curtailed African American citizens’ attempts to fulfill their status as citizens and exercise their political rights.
The women’s suffrage movement divided over their stance on the Fifteenth Amendment.
Republicans in the South were mostly comprised of three groups: African Americans, carpetbaggers, and scalawags who, in many places, had a numerical advantage in politics but failed to overcome class-based differences and racism.
Despite his great success as a Union general during the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant proved to be a weak president. His administration was marked by corruption stemming from several of his appointees’ involvement in fraudulent financial schemes.
Over time the combination of the crop-lien system, along with violence and intimidation by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, ended hopes of true freedom for the freed slaves.
The modern American state emerged from the Civil War’s wreckage. Citizens regarded the postbellum United States as more of a consolidated nation and less a union of separate states.
The Compromise of 1877 settled the disputed presidential election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden. In exchange for Hayes being declared the winner, Republican leaders agreed to withdraw Union soldiers from the South. This agreement essentially ended Reconstruction and placed the South’s future in the hands of the Redeemers.
The postbellum South experienced a significant growth in urban industrial manufacturing and railroad-based infrastructure, but not enough to break the grip King Cotton held on the southern economy.
In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment applied only to political rights and not to “social equality.” This doctrine of “separate but equal” remained in effect until Brown v. Board of Education overturned it in 1954.
Annotated Suggested Readings and Media
Eric Foner’s Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (1988) is an impressive synthesis of recent scholarship on all aspects of Reconstruction, with the experience of the freedmen as the central theme. The Era of Reconstruction, 1865–1877 (1965) by Kenneth Stampp is the classic revisionist work on the period. James McPherson’s Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction (1967) includes a basic overview of the events and politics of the time. For a gripping account of Lincoln’s assassination see James L. Swanson, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer (2006).
Ian Polakoff discusses the official end of Reconstruction in The Politics of Inertia: The Election of 1876 and the End of Reconstruction (1973). Roy Morris Jr.’s, Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden and the Stolen Election of 1876 (2003), carefully recreates the story of the election and presents evidence that Republican fraud in the South denied Tilden his presidency.
The role of northern whites in the decline in American race relations after the Civil War is well presented by Edward Blum, who provides a surprising perspective about the role of religion in unifying northern and southern whites in Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898 (2005); and by Chandra Manning who takes the reader inside the minds of black and white Civil War soldiers on both sides of the war through letters, diaries, and newspapers in What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (2007).
Elaine Parsons’ comprehensive examination of the KKK in the 19th century, Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan during Reconstruction (2015), sheds new light on the rise of the Klan and cultural influences from the urban North.
For discussion of northern political life in general during congressional Reconstruction, The Press Gang: Newspapers and Politics, 1865–1878 (1994), by Mark Wahlgren Summers, is an entertaining and insightful read. Summers followed up with A Dangerous Stir (2010) in which he argues fear of the Union’s demise shaped northern efforts during Reconstruction. Brooks Simpson examines Grant’s stance toward Reconstruction and his transition from soldier to politician in Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861–1868 (1991). Alexander Keyssar offers an excellent analysis of the impact of reconstruction on suffrage in The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (2000).
There are numerous studies on the South during congressional Reconstruction. In The Road to Redemption: Southern Politics, 1869–1879 (1984), Michael Perman shows how division within each party in the South led to a merger of moderate factions by the end of Reconstruction. Steven Hahn examines the Reconstruction origins of southern populism in The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850–1890 (1983). James Roark studies the impact of emancipation and Reconstruction on the former slaveholders in Masters Without Slaves: Southern Planters in the Civil War and Reconstruction (1977).
The African American experience during congressional Reconstruction is covered by W. E. B. Du Bois’s still-classic Black Reconstruction in America (1935). Thomas Holt’s Black Over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina During Reconstruction (1977) and Edmund L. Drago’s Black Politicians and Reconstruction in Georgia (1982) examine the experience of blacks in Reconstruction governments. Steven Hahn focuses on the black struggle for political and economic power in the rural south in his masterful A Nation Under Feet (2003). And Philip Dray considers Reconstruction through the experiences of the first black congressmen in Capitol Men (2010).
The role of southern violence in the demise of Reconstruction is discussed in But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction (1984) by George Rable. Nicholas Lemann demonstrates how violent incidents in Louisiana and Mississippi undermined Reconstruction in Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War (2006). Philip Dray’s At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America (2002) describes not only the horrific crimes, but also the culture of lynching that emerged in the South and those who fought against it.
C. Vann Woodward’s classic Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 (1951) is still a valuable treatment, focusing on the rise of a business-oriented middle class in the South after the Civil War. Jonathan Weiner offers a different take in Social Origins of the New South, 1860–1885 (1978). Edward Ayers offers an insightful analysis in The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (1992). On the Lost Cause, see Gaines Foster’s The Ghosts of the Confederacy (1989). Robert Kenzer examines the role of blacks in the economy of the urban South in Enterprising Southerners (1997). David Blight details the success of southern mythmaking in Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2002).
The rise of Jim Crow is also discussed by C. Vann Woodward in another classic, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1955). Michael Klarman traces the long history of legalized segregation in From Jim Crow to Civil Rights (2004). Leon Litwack’s Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (1998) is a comprehensive and moving account of the trials of African Americans in the post-Reconstruction South. The perpetuation of black poverty after slavery is the subject of Jay Mandle’s Not Slave, Not Free: The African American Economic Experience Since the Civil War (1992).
The nonprofit educational organization, Facing History and Ourselves, offers a compelling series of videos on the Reconstruction era, including interviews with scholars of this period. The “Reconstruction Era Video Series” may be found at https://www.facinghistory.org/reconstruction-era/video-series.