The Reconstruction Years: The Tragic Aftermath of the War Between the States

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© 2014 Walter Coffey. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 01/24/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4918-5192-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-6049-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-5196-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014900717

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Contents

Introduction

1865

1866

1867

1868

1869

1870

1871

1872

1873

1874

1875

1876

1877

Afterword

Recommended Reading

Introduction

T he end of the War Between the States in 1865 began the long, complex, and tragic process of restoring the Union. Like the war itself, the era that became known as Reconstruction lasted longer and caused more misery and destruction than anyone had anticipated.

The war had produced fundamental and permanent changes in America: the economy shifted from an agricultural to an industrial base, over three million slaves were now free, and the new Republican Party now dominated Washington. Perhaps most importantly, the war also established the supremacy of federal power over the states. This led to the unprecedented growth of federal authority that continues to this day. Reconstruction demonstrated how dangerous such growth can be to individual liberty.

Reconstruction is a tragic tale of how government failed to protect the rights of all citizens. It is also a tale of how excessive government intervention in the lives, liberties, and properties of the people can produce unintended consequences. Many of these consequences manifested themselves as violence against those least able to defend themselves: the newly freed slaves.

The federal government had sided with slaveholders before the war by enacting fugitive slave laws and rendering court decisions that relegated blacks to property status. The government then waged war on states attempting to secede from an agent that no longer supported their interests. The government then endorsed slave liberation as it decimated the southern states and prepared to rebuild them in a new image. This produced deep hostilities between not only northerners and southerners, but blacks and whites as well.

The Federal Victory

The Republican majority in Washington had enacted virtually their entire political agenda during the war. This included nationalizing banking, imposing high protective tariffs, subsidizing railroads and other favored industries, and offering free land to businesses and individuals. Prior to secession, most southerners had opposed all of these agenda items.

By war’s end, the former Confederacy had been transformed into a group of conquered states. These states were now compelled to return to a Union that had become exactly what had caused them to secede in the first place. This, combined with the physical and emotional devastation of defeat, generated intense bitterness among southerners.

Slavery, the lifeblood of the southern economy, was now abolished, along with the traditional social order that had existed for generations. As a conquered people, southerners struggled to rebuild their region in the new industrialized, northern-dominated country. The transition would be agonizing.

Just as there was no constitutional provision regarding secession, there was also no provision on how to reunite the Union after secession was denied. Consequently, nobody had a definitive answer as to how (or even whether) the federal government should administer the conquered states. In Washington, the debate initially focused on whether the president or Congress had the authority to manage the reunion.

To the dismay of many congressmen, President Abraham Lincoln had taken it upon himself to administer Reconstruction before the war ended, when the war’s outcome was still in doubt. As federal troops occupied various Confederate states, new governments were installed according to plans devised by Lincoln and his administration.

The Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction

President Lincoln issued a proclamation in December 1863 granting conditional amnesty as an incentive for Confederates to return to the Union without further bloodshed. This proposal was in accordance with the joint congressional resolution of July 1861, which called for preserving the Union with all the dignity, equality and rights of the several States unimpaired. Under this proclamation, the Union could be restored if the following conditions were met:

•   All Confederates (except high ranking officials and those accused of war crimes) swearing allegiance to the U.S. would be eligible for amnesty.

•   Once ten percent of a state’s registered voters (according to the 1860 census) swore allegiance, the state could assemble a constitutional convention.

•   Once a convention was assembled, the new constitution had to recognize the permanent freedom of slaves.

•   Once the new constitution was ratified, the state would receive representation in Congress and be restored to the Union.

Federal military officials were already implementing this plan in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. In those states, Lincoln had appointed military governors to administer new governments. Former slaves were contracted to remain working on their plantations for one year at $10 per month in an effort to stabilize the war-torn southern economy.

Lincoln’s plan reflected his view that secession was illegal, and as such, the southern states had never left the Union; they were merely in rebellion. And in case of rebellion, the states had the right to reform their own governments once the rebellion was put down: . . . the states were never out of the Union… the people of these states, when they returned to their allegiance, had the power of reconstruction in their own hands. Lincoln preferred the term reconstruction over restoration because it was consistent with his view that the Union was indivisible.

Since Lincoln’s proclamation only required ten percent of a state’s voters to be initiated, it became known as the Ten Percent Plan. Lincoln chose that number to offer leniency in exchange for compliance. He also believed that at least ten percent of each state’s voters would be willing to swear allegiance to the U.S. However, the plan was criticized in nearly every political circle in Washington.

Democrats argued that Lincoln had chosen ten percent because he could easily find that many voters willing to support his political agenda. Those voters would then force the rest of the state into compliance by appointing local, county, and state officials who favored the Republican program. This was the same program that had prompted the southern states to secede in the first place.

Civil rights leader Frederick Douglass called the plan undemocratic because ten percent of a state’s voters would dictate to the other ninety percent how that state would be returned to the Union. And since all registered voters in 1860 were white men, blacks would have no input regarding the new state governments. Some criticized Lincoln for not guaranteeing any rights to the former slaves, even though most free blacks in the northern states had very limited civil and voting rights at the time.

In Lincoln’s own party, the politically extreme Republicans known as the Radicals argued that only Congress, not the president, could determine how to restore states to the Union. Radicals also asserted that the ten percent rule would not adequately punish traitors or enable the Radicals to reshape the South to their liking. Many Radicals wanted compliance by at least fifty percent of each state’s voters, through military force if necessary.

Lincoln’s plan was an effort to appease all the differing factions. The requirement for each state to abolish slavery before returning to the Union was a nod to the Radicals. Offering no guarantee of equal rights for freed slaves satisfied Democrats who believed that such guarantees could only be made by states, not the federal government. And the ten percent figure was generally accepted by moderate Republicans.

This first step toward Reconstruction sought to unify the Republican Party without alienating Democrats or the South. But it revealed clear differences in political philosophies that would become greater over time.

The Wade—Davis Reconstruction Bill

In early 1864, Congress responded to President Lincoln’s Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction by passing a bill of their own, formally titled An Act to Guarantee to Certain States whose Governments Have Been Usurped or Overthrown a Republican Form of Government. Sponsored by Senator Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio and Congressman Henry W. Davis of Maryland, this bill established congressional rules for restoring Confederate states to the Union. The plan included the following conditions:

•   Amnesty would be granted to southerners who swore past, present, and future allegiance to the U.S. and who had not supported or served the Confederacy. This was called the ironclad oath, and it was much more stringent than Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan, which only required a pledge of present and future (not past) allegiance.

•   Once fifty percent of a state’s registered voters (according to the 1860 census) took the ironclad oath, the state could assemble a convention to draft a new constitution.

•   The new state constitutions were required to abolish slavery, and Confederate military and civilian officials could not serve in the new state governments.

•   The president could appoint military governors until the states ended their rebellion and formed their own governments, but the appointments would require Senate approval.

This bill was strongly supported by the Radicals in the Republican-dominated Congress because it clearly stated the congressional intent to administer Reconstruction after the war. Opponents argued that the stipulations unnecessarily subjugated the southern states to federal authority, which had been one of the primary causes of secession in the first place. The bill’s harsh terms emboldened the Confederacy to continue fighting, if only to avoid ever having to be subjected to them.

After intense debate, the bill narrowly passed both houses of Congress and was submitted for Lincoln’s signature. However, Lincoln rejected the measure by a pocket veto (i.e., refusing to sign the bill into law before the congressional session adjourned). Lincoln stated that he was unprepared to undermine current Reconstruction efforts under his more lenient plan in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee.

The bill’s sponsors responded by publishing the Wade-Davis Manifesto in the influential New York Tribune. In an unprecedented attack on a president by members of Congress, the manifesto denounced Lincoln’s Reconstruction plan as a dictation of political ambition that presumed on the forbearance which the supporters of his Administration had so long practiced…

Lincoln’s rejection of the bill was called a stupid outrage on the legislative authority of the people. Lincoln was accused of committing a rash and fatal act, prompted by usurpations. He was warned that the authority of Congress is paramount and must be respected, and he should confine himself to his Executive duties—to obey and execute, not make the laws…

The sharp disagreements between Lincoln and his fellow Republicans threatened to split the party in an election year, jeopardizing not only Lincoln’s reelection chances but the entire federal war effort. The moderates and Radicals eventually united in the wake of dramatic federal military successes at Mobile Bay, Atlanta, and the Shenandoah Valley. This propelled Lincoln to reelection in November, and his surging popularity helped him to temporarily fend off Radical calls for harsher Reconstruction measures.

Even so, the Radicals exacted a measure of revenge when Congress assembled in December 1864. Representatives and senators from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee had come to claim seats in Congress after their states had been restored to the Union under Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan. However, the sitting members of Congress refused to admit them. Lincoln noted that Congress had the constitutional right to seat its own members, and he had no authority to insist the new members be admitted.

The Freedmen’s Bureau

By March 1865, it was apparent that the war would soon end, and that slavery would be abolished. To assist slaves in their transition to freedom, President Lincoln signed a bill into law creating the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, popularly known as the Freedmen’s Bureau.

The Bureau’s ostensible purpose was to provide food, clothing, shelter, and fuel to former slaves. Poor southern whites were also included, but few participated. Bureau agents were empowered to marry slave couples and help reunite slave families separated by bondage or war.

In addition, Bureau agents provided medical assistance and education. During the Bureau’s existence, thousands of hospitals, elementary schools, industrial schools, and teacher-training institutions were created in the South. Agents also rented abandoned lands to former slaves and mediated labor disputes between former slaves and landowners.

After losing a war that had destroyed much of their homeland, economy, and way of life, southern whites reacted to the Freedmen’s Bureau with suspicion and resentment. The presence of federal agents reminded southerners of their defeat. And federal intervention in local affairs infringed on the principles of state sovereignty and self-government that so many southerners had fought and died for.

The education provided to former slaves came from northern teachers and federal textbooks printed in northern states, which raised fears that blacks were being taught to hate southern whites. In addition, the education was often funded by local taxpayers, many of whom were landowners and former Confederates that were not allowed to provide any input on curricula content.

Landowners charged that Bureau agents consistently and unfairly sided with the former slaves in labor disputes. Landowners also alleged that agents encouraged blacks not to work by promising them free land and money. The Bureau had proposed to grant every former slave forty acres and a mule to begin a new life of freedom, but that proposal was never carried out.

Southern whites resented that the federal government was granting special privileges to blacks by creating an agency solely to assist them. According to De Bow’s Review, There is no greater propriety for a freedman’s bureau… than there should be for a poor man’s bureau or a rich man’s bureau… Private enterprises must be left to regulate these things.

Southerners charged that Bureau agents were motivated not by humanitarianism but by politics; after all, if agents didn’t turn blacks against whites, there would be no disputes to mediate and the agents’ usefulness would end. Since most agents were Republicans, they often worked to ensure that former slaves were also Republicans, even though most southern property owners and taxpayers were white Democrats. This heightened racial tension, which not only made the Bureau less effective, but actually made blacks more vulnerable to white violence than they otherwise may have been.

The Inauguration of Andrew Johnson

Less than a week after General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, President Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre. Hours after Lincoln’s death, Vice President Andrew Johnson replaced him by taking the oath of office in the presence of congressmen and Lincoln’s cabinet at Washington’s Kirkwood Hotel.

Johnson was the sixth vice president to become president. He was also a Tennessee Democrat, and although he had been the only congressman in the Confederate states to remain loyal to the Union, he was distrusted by the Republican majority in Congress, especially the Radical Republicans.

Johnson’s hatred for the southern aristocracy, which he believed was responsible for the war, gave some Radicals hope that Johnson would take a more punitive approach toward southern Reconstruction than Lincoln had. Speaking to an Illinois delegation, Johnson pledged to continue Lincoln’s policies, but he also declared that the American people must be taught… that treason is a crime and must be punished. This momentarily satisfied the Radicals.

However, the Radicals soon became dismayed by how sympathetic the Democratic press was to the new president. The pro-Democrat New York World suggested that Johnson would play a great role in history by strictly adhering to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and by a wise and conciliatory course toward the masses of the Southern people.

Radical hopes that Johnson would be their ally further dimmed when the new president told an Indiana delegation that the federal government had no power to relegate states to a territorial status, which was what the Radicals were proposing. Johnson also modified his views of the former Confederacy: I say to the leaders, punishment. I also say leniency, reconciliation and amnesty to the thousands whom they have misled and deceived.

The Prostrate South

By war’s end, not only was the South in physical ruin, but the lifeblood of the southern economy—slave labor—was now gone. Southerners were defeated, their traditional way of life was gone, and they were compelled to return to a Union they wanted no part of. This left most southerners destitute and resentful.

Efforts to resume farming proved nearly impossible. Planters no longer had workers to tend the fields. About forty percent of farm animals had been killed or driven off. River valleys that had once provided essential foodstuffs were ruined. Federal military forces had destroyed over two-thirds of southern farm and industrial implements.

The South had experienced a drastic economic downturn just before secession, and the war only made it worse. Confederate currency was worthless, so no credit or capital was available to rebuild the infrastructure. This led to mass unemployment, with many unable to provide basic necessities for themselves or their families. About twenty-five percent of able-bodied southern whites had died in the war, leaving women and children to fend for themselves. Some women offered sex to federal occupation troops for food or money. Starvation was common.

The war cost the South an estimated $3.3 billion in loss of life and property. Not only did southerners have to rebuild their region, but those who had generated the most farm goods had to do it without slaves, which they had never done before. A committee report concluded that emancipation alone resulted in a thirty percent loss of southern wealth. Financial institutions crumbled.

The South’s few industrial centers in cities such as Atlanta, Charleston, Columbia, and Richmond were in ruins. Legal documents were lost in the destruction of local courthouses. Most of the region’s bridges, railroads, and factories were also destroyed.

Federal troops seized or destroyed property belonging to southerners, including about $100 million worth of cotton, and the property owners had no redress against such crimes. Federal military tribunals often overruled local court rulings. Newspaper editors were prohibited from publishing stories about federal abuses.

The vast unemployment, starvation, and destruction led to a rapid increase in crime. The hungry and homeless hid in abandoned or wrecked buildings and robbed passersby at night. Cities were especially dangerous because there was no money to operate streetlights or hire law enforcement. Rural crime also increased, as coaches and stages were robbed on desolate roads.

Nearly four million enslaved men and women were now free from bondage, if not yet legally then in practice. Many left the plantations to start new lives or search for relatives who had been sold or shipped away. This unprecedented black exodus spread fears among southern whites that the former slaves would seek revenge for their bondage.

Even with so many blacks on the move, federal occupation forces were surprised by the number of those who remained on their plantations to help their former masters restore their land. Most of the formerly wealthy planters had no money to pay them. Other blacks tried starting their own farms, but finding and buying affordable farm equipment proved too difficult in most cases.

Blacks also turned to the federal troops for protection. However, the forces often abused them or forced them into menial or humiliating labor. Black women were raped or forced into prostitution. Soldiers expressed their hatred of the former Confederates, which turned many former slaves against their former masters.

By the summer of 1865, the troops began expelling blacks from their camps, forcing them to turn to crime or starve. Thousands of blacks wandered the South in search of work or relatives. Many gathered in the ruins of major cities, waiting for the government to fulfill promises of rations and land. Most promises were not kept.

Northern preachers, many of whom were abolitionists before the war, traveled to the South and stirred black emotion with passionate speeches about what was owed to them for having endured bondage. Politicians traveled with the preachers and pledged equality for all. This intensified racial animosity in a region already devastated by war and poverty. From this, federal politicians began the agonizing process of reconstructing the conquered states.

1865

T he economic recession caused by the war’s devastation was being reversed by increased railroad construction after the war ended. This turned isolated western towns such as Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City into great hubs for the delivery of commodities and livestock from the West. It also helped expand industries that facilitated construction, such as coal, timber, and iron. The new Bessemer process converted iron to more durable steel, which enabled even more construction.

The Union Stock Yard and Transit Company opened in Chicago late this year. Within a decade, the Union Stockyards and the growing use of railroads to transport products made Chicago the largest meatpacking center in the world. Chicago soon became the Midwestern capital of commodities trading as well, with products from western farms pouring into the city via rail.

Congress passed the National Banking Act of 1865, which imposed a ten percent tax on state bank currency notes, effective July 1, 1866. This enabled the federal government to monopolize the U.S. monetary system by virtually taxing all non-federal currency out of existence.

U.S. officials pressured Archduke Maximilian to abdicate as emperor of Mexico. Maximilian had been installed as ruler by French Emperor Napoleon III. Citing the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. protested French influence over Mexico and expressed support for the rebels opposing Maximilian, led by former Mexican President Benito Juarez.

William Sheppard produced liquid soap by mixing one hundred pounds of ammonia with one pound of soap, then thinning the mixture with water. William Bullock developed a printing press that used a continuous roll of newsprint instead of pre-cut sheets; the initial model produced up to 15,000 sheets per hour. James Nason patented the coffee percolator. The Nation began weekly publication with E.L. Godkin as editor.

The Presidential Reconstruction Plan

Shortly after taking office, President Andrew Johnson initiated his version of what had been former President Abraham Lincoln’s Reconstruction plan. There was no constitutional provision for restoring seceded states to the Union, and Lincoln and the Republican Congress had disagreed over what the legal process should be. Johnson moved to continue Lincoln’s policies while Congress was in recess.

First, Johnson declared that all state governments in the conquered states were null and void. Second, he recognized the new governments of Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee, all of which had been reconstructed according to Lincoln’s plan. Third, Johnson ended trade restrictions with the conquered states to begin rebuilding the devastated southern economy.

Johnson then issued the Amnesty Proclamation, which pardoned those involved in the existing rebellion if they swore loyalty to the Union and acknowledged the end of slavery. Several classes of southerners were ineligible for amnesty, including those worth more than $20,000. Johnson sought to punish aristocrats that he believed had started the war. Disqualified southerners were required to personally request a pardon from Johnson and realize the enormity of their crime, whereupon amnesty would be liberally extended.

A second proclamation, drafted by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, restored civil government in North Carolina. Johnson appointed William W. Holden as provisional governor, and after swearing loyalty to the Union, Holden was authorized to organize a convention to draft a new state constitution. Convention delegates would be elected by those who had sworn loyalty to the Union. Delegate eligibility was based on registered voters from the 1860 census, which excluded blacks because they had not been permitted to vote at that time.

The delegates were required to reject the ordinance of secession, repudiate the Confederate war debt, and ratify the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. After the new constitution was drafted, ten percent of registered voters were required to approve it to become law. After it became law, elections would be held for local, state, and federal offices.

The North Carolina Proclamation violated the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of a republican form of government for each state because Holden was not a popularly elected governor, and ten percent of the voters overruled the other ninety. Nevertheless, Johnson used this as the template for restoring the remaining conquered states (South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas) to the Union.

Johnson’s Reconstruction plan was motivated by his desire to restore peace and reunion as quickly as possible, his strong belief in limited federal power, his strict interpretation of the Constitution, the influence of his southern culture, and his belief that whites should govern because blacks were inferior. Johnson also believed that subduing the southern aristocracy would prevent future secession and restore the remaining southerners’ loyalty to the Union.

But perhaps most importantly, Johnson sought to finish what Lincoln had started. The Amnesty and North Carolina Proclamations were very similar to Lincoln’s 1863 Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, and Johnson had told his cabinet that he intended to follow Lincoln’s policies as closely as possible. Republican Party boss Thurlow Weed wrote, I know he went to the White House with that determination.

In keeping with Lincoln’s plan, Johnson rejected Stanton’s suggestion to grant suffrage to black men in North Carolina. Johnson explained that Lincoln had not granted black suffrage in any of the states he reconstructed, instead asking state officials to consider doing so themselves. Johnson noted that voting rights had always been regulated by the states, not the federal government. And considering that most northern states denied black suffrage, forcing such a right on the conquered states would only increase the resentment already harbored by their defeat.

Following Lincoln’s example, Johnson suggested that provisional governors grant black suffrage, if only as a political weapon to use against the Radical Republicans in Congress. Johnson wrote to one governor: If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color who can read the Constitution in English and write their names, and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars, and pay taxes thereon, you would completely disarm the adversary (Radicals), and set an example the other states would follow.

Johnson also urged southern voters to reject former Confederates as officeholders. But neither this nor black voting rights were required by Johnson for conquered states to be restored to the Union; Johnson was only authorized to help the states form new governments, not to dictate how those governments should handle issues involving their own citizens. Secretary of State William Seward said, According to the constitution those citizens acting politically in their respective states must reorganize their state governments. We cannot reorganize for them.

Political considerations also influenced Johnson’s policy. As a southern Democrat, Johnson was virtually surrounded by northern Republicans in Washington, many of whom were Radicals. The conquered states were dominated by fellow Democrats, and Johnson sought to build a political coalition between them and the minority of northern Democrats to offset Republican power.

Johnson opposed efforts by Republicans, particularly Radicals, to use the war to expand their political power beyond the constitutional scope. To stop this power grab, Johnson needed a solid bloc that would support his policies in Washington. Thus, Johnson needed to restore the conquered states to the Union as quickly and as magnanimously as possible, preferably before Congress convened in December.

Most northerners considered Johnson’s plan lenient. But former Confederates argued that being forced to denounce secession was being forced to denounce a constitutional right; that repudiating the Confederate debt would ruin southern credit and discourage the outside investment needed to rebuild the region’s shattered economy; and that abolishing slavery was a state, not a federal, prerogative. Johnson’s demands confirmed what southerners had suspected: the North had fought the war to force its morality on the South, expand federal power, and diminish self-government.

Even so, most southerners accepted Johnson’s plan. They were exhausted and impoverished from the war, and their focus shifted to resuming peaceful lives, rebuilding the southern economy, and ending the military occupation of their land. Moreover, southerners feared that a congressional Reconstruction plan would be much harsher than Johnson’s.

Prominent former Confederates such as General Wade Hampton of South Carolina urged citizens to accept Johnson’s plan and move on with their lives. As a result, most considered it a fair settlement, especially since Johnson was willing to leave the issue of civil and voting rights for newly freed slaves to the states.

Although most delegates to the southern state conventions were Unionists who had opposed secession, they resisted repudiating the war debt. However, Johnson and Seward insisted on repudiation because it would deprive the South of the financial ability to rebel again. Ultimately, all conventions complied. Two states—Mississippi and Texas—rejected the Thirteenth Amendment.

The National Intelligencer congratulated Johnson on his efforts to reunite North and South after such a terrible war. However, it also warned that the Radicals were planning to impose restrictions on the southern states that no northern states would tolerate for themselves.

The Radical Response to Presidential Reconstruction

The Radical Republicans were the harshest critics of President Johnson’s Reconstruction plan. To Radicals, the plan’s leniency threatened to return power to white Democrats who would suppress the rights of freed slaves in the conquered states and challenge Republican dominance in Washington. Perhaps more importantly, the plan could undermine the goal of reshaping the South in the Radicals’ image.

Implementing the Radical aims would entail an unprecedented and unconstitutional expansion of federal power over the states. To provide legal justification, most Radicals subscribed to the notion that the South had committed state suicide by seceding from the Union, and harsh punishment was needed not only to prevent future rebellion, but to protect the rights of newly freed slaves. Thus, Radicals sought to treat the southern states as newly acquired territories or conquered provinces.

The Radical leader in the House of Representatives, Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, argued that the southern states had to be considered conquered territory if the Radicals were to impose their agenda, otherwise congressional interference in state affairs would be rank, dangerous, deplorable usurpation. By treating southerners like a conquered people, they can be refused admission to the Union unless they voluntarily do what we demand.

This differed from the basis on which the North had waged war, as documented in the congressional resolution of 1861. Co-sponsored by then-Senator Andrew Johnson, the resolution stated that this war is not waged on our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for the purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor for the purpose of interfering with or overthrowing the rights of established institutions of those States.

The war had been fought on the premise that secession was illegal, which meant that the southern states could not secede. Instead, they merely rebelled, and when the rebellion was suppressed, they were entitled to return to the Union with the same rights as all the other states.

This premise was supported not only by northern Democrats, but also Republicans such as Indiana Governor Oliver P. Morton, who stated that there is no power to punish rebels collectively by reducing a State to a territorial condition. Prominent Union General John A. Logan said, I disagree with those who think these States are but territories. We fought… upon the theory that a State cannot secede.

Both Presidents Lincoln and Johnson also supported this premise, with Johnson rejecting the Radical argument: The States had brought Congress into existence, and now Congress proposed to destroy the States. It proposed to abolish the original and elementary principle of its being. It was as if the creature turned around on the creator and attempted to destroy him. The debate between conquered provinces and rebellious states caused deep political divisions, both between and within parties.

Southerners believed that being treated like conquered provinces was merely an excuse for Radicals to impose northern values on them against their will. This was evidenced by Stevens’s announcement that he intended to revolutionize Southern institutions, habits, and manners. Radical Wendell Phillips stated that unless the South surrendered its idea of civilization… reconstruction has not commenced. And poet James Russell Lowell said it was the North’s duty by God’s grace, to Americanize the South.

Politics also played a key role in the Radicals’ plans. The Republican Party was strong in the North, but the South and West were traditionally Democratic. If the South was not fundamentally transformed, the Democrats would thwart the Republicans’ economic program of protecting northern industry with high tariffs and taxpayer subsidies.

Democratic New York Governor Horatio Seymour explained that Republicans would not let southerners return to the Union until their ideas of business, industry, money making, spindles and looms were in accord with those of Massachusetts. Republicans had built a powerful economic alliance with industry during the war, and they would not relinquish that power to those they had just defeated.

Radicals were alarmed by Johnson’s liberally extended amnesty plan, under which 13,000 of 15,000 former Confederates requesting pardons were approved. Since former Confederates were almost exclusively Democratic, they could quickly rebuild their political power in the conquered states. To offset this, Radicals supported granting black male suffrage. This would potentially create a massive voting bloc that would permanently support the party of emancipation.

The Radicals’ greatest champion of black suffrage was Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Sumner told a Boston audience that only by granting black men the right to vote would the war waged by Lincoln be brought to an end, so as to assure peace, tranquility, and reconciliation. Radicals such as Sumner believed that southern blacks needed the ability to vote against elected officials who might suppress their liberty.

Sumner strongly denounced Johnson’s refusal to demand black suffrage in the conquered states. He declared that excluding them as Mr. Lincoln had done was madness. Sumner also told colleagues that Johnson’s refusal was inconsistent with what he said to me, and to others, and it was a change, which seemed like a somersault or an apostasy. He dismissed Johnson’s contention that states had the right to determine the voting qualifications of their own citizens.

In a Worcester speech, Sumner produced letters from the conquered states alleging that atrocities were being committed against blacks and proving that the secessionist spirit still prevails. He declared that Congress, not Johnson, had the plenary powers over the whole subject of Reconstruction. He