Group+Three

Group Three: Ella, Brittany, Abby

Even after the last cloud of gun smoke had cleared, the battle for the South had not yet been won. There still remained the question of what was to become of the post-war South. Would the Democratic government once again rise to power? Would the racial inequalities that had permeated antebellum society be righted? What role would the federal government play in this new South? The North and the South clashed throughout Reconstruction on these and other questions, each attempting to pursue her own vastly different goals. Although at the start of Reconstruction, the North's vim and vigor won her several important advancements, by Reconstruction's end, the South had won the lots on virtually every one of these conflicts.

 The North saw Reconstruction as a period in which they could enable Southern blacks to live independently from Southern whites, whereas the South strove to return to the Antebellum period with regards to black subordination. The North tried to equip Southern blacks with the rights they would need to function independently in society, but Southern whites did all they could to limit and, in some cases, practically abolish such laws. Three amendments were made to the Constitution in order to achieve these goals: the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, giving blacks their personal freedom; the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave blacks citizenship; and, the Fifteenth Amendment, which expanded the franchise and gave blacks political voice. To protect the new rights given to blacks, the federal government endorsed the Freedmen’s Bureau, which helped to provide social services to Southern blacks, such as education. The Military Reconstruction Act aided in the protection of black rights by ensuring that the government of the southern states cooperated with and followed through on the laws established by the essentially northern national government. Although the North tried to protect the new rights, the South went to great lengths to impede their impact and return southern society to its pre-Civil War mentality. Many black rights were taken away once southerners retook control of their state governments. The Black Codes were used by southerners to basically re-enslave the blacks who had just been officially freed by the Thirteenth Amendment and diminish blacks’ new freedom as much as possible. The rights that the Black Codes did not fully inhibit were further deteriorated by the attitudes and actions of southern whites. Violence, such as lynching, was used by members of the white southern society to keep the blacks subordinate and virtually voiceless in a personal and political sense. The Ku Klux Klan and the White League were groups of white southerners who came together to use violence to scare southern blacks into submission and silence. In the reality of the south after Reconstruction, the status of blacks had hardly changed at all compared to before the Civil War. White southerners still owned much of the land in the south and the blacks were at the mercy of the whites once again. Sharecropping, tenant farming, and the crop-lien system were all in place to keep blacks under the control of the white men; blacks had personal privacy and freedom, but these systems limited economic freedom and social mobility, two major components to true freedom. Whites regained the control of the political realm once again by imposing literacy tests and other restrictions. Whites and blacks still lived very much in two different worlds by the end of Reconstruction, making northern efforts of black freedom almost futile.

 During Reconstruction, the North strove to maintain the Republicans’ authority in Congress, while the South worked to place the Democrats back in power. In the South’s absence, Republicans were able to pass a program of national economic legislation that benefited northern business leaders and industrialists. Readmitting the southern states would reunite the Democrats and jeopardize the Republicans’ programs. The Wade-Davis Bill was the North’s first endeavor to delay the re-admittance of the South. When southern states began to elect prominent Confederate leaders as state officials and representatives to Congress, however, Northerners worked even harder to suppress the rise of white southern Democrats. Northern Radicals combined the Confederate states into five military districts and placed a military commander in charge of each district. All adult black males and only white males who had not supported the Confederacy could register to vote. These voters could elect constitutional conventions, which were required to include provisions for black suffrage and to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment offered a clear definition of citizenship, reduced representation in the federal government of states that denied suffrage to any adult male inhabitants, and prohibited federal officials who aided the Confederacy from holding office. Combined with the disenfranchisement of about one-fourth of white southern males, the voting rights of African Americans ensured that the Reconstruction governments of the South were Republican. However, as the federal troops began to leave and the government began to lift most restrictions on suffrage, the South started to take back control of its governments. In states were they constituted a majority, white southerners simply had to vote for their Democrat candidates to regain control. In other states, where African Americans were a majority, white southerners resorted to violence, intimidation, and economic pressure to prevent blacks from voting and to “redeem” their governments. Secret societies, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the White Leagues, used terrorism to frighten or physically bar blacks from voting. More importantly, many whites refused to employ or rent land to Republican blacks. When the last federal troops left the South in 1877, the Democratic Party had was in control of every southern state government.

 Ideologically, the North and South were divided on a strict political line: that of big, national government versus small, state government. Throghout the various stages of Reconstruction, Northern Republican politicians made several attempts towards increasing the role of national government. They established extensive government-run social services, such as public schools. They funded such organizations by raising taxes in Southern states, which, with their heavy focus on states rights, were unaccomstomed to such higher taxes. In addition, radical Republicans also attempted to implement the measure of redistributing land from priveledged whites to other groups, specifically freedmen. This measure was meant to serve twofold: to attempt to create a more equal society for blacks, as has already been discussed, but also to emphasize and exercise the size and power of the national government in a region which had always bucked against such federal power. However, the Reconstruction South had very different political ideologies. Democrats, a political group comprised mostly of Southern whites, believed strongly in states rights and a small national government. Accordingly, they resisted such attempts to expand the scope of federal government in the Southern states. In some cases, such as that of land redistribution, Democrats had the support of the president, and consequently the projects failed. In other cases, such as the growth of social services, Southerners simply refused to acknowledge that such services existed. Some Southerns refused to send their children to public school at all; out of those that did, almost none agreed to send their children to the integrated schools set up by such national organizations as the Freedman’s Beaurau. Soon after the start of Reconstruction, the North began to lose its energy, both in the form of public support and of resources. As the Democratic “Redeemers” began to seep back into government positions, they almost immediately abolished all the social services that had been put in place, and once again lowered taxes. Although for a time Northern Republicans had been able to exercise some governmental power over the South, by the end of Reconstruction, any ground they gained had been lost.

In conclusion, the North may have won the war, but the South won Reconstruction. The North started out strong, radically advocating for and creating black rights, dominating the politics of the nation, and growing larger in its political and social abilities. However, the North’s enthusiasm faded quickly as Southern white unity persisted. Black rights that were granted under the Republican governments set up by the North were belittled and diminished, the Republican governments themselves were ousted in favor of more southern, Democratic ones, and government intervention in everyday life subsided. The South set out during Reconstruction to return to an era much like the pre-Civil War period, and they succeeded.