Failings of Reconstruction

To date, I have written two books dealing with our Federal Government – A Broken Sausage Grinder; Is Our Government Fundamentally Flawed?, and Our American Story: Fixing the Sausage Grinder.  In my research for both books, I have discovered events in our history that were not referenced in my history books.  I have also discovered the absence of information that should have been included as basic support of points that were contained in those history books.  These two findings have caused my investigative methods and standards to become much more critical.

This essay deals with Reconstruction following the Civil War.  I am writing about Reconstruction because my research has left me wanting for a more complete set of facts regarding the “who, what, when, where, why, and how” leading to the outcomes we now find ourselves having to deal with.  High in my thinking is the word “reconstruction” itself.  What was supposed to be reconstructed?  It would make sense if our conversation were about reconstructing roads or bridges, but “reconstruction” is used as a stand-alone descriptor.  We could guess about the meaning, but we shouldn’t have to do that when we are one hundred and fifty-seven years after the fact.  Let’s try to pull a story together.

The first arrival of black Africans is credibly documented in terms of the basics, but four hundred and three years after the fact we have questions that were not foreseen.  Those first “twenty and odd” black Africans were taken from a Portuguese slave ship, San Juan Bautista, bound for Veracruz by two British Privateers.  In August of 1619 the Privateers, White Lion and Treasurer, landed at Point Comfort, near Jamestown Colony where the black Africans were traded for provisions.  Slavery, as an institution, did not exist in the colonies at that time, but the mere fact of this trade tells us that the seeds were already planted.

Two of the black Africans, Anthony and Isabella were married and gave birth to the first Black child born in English America on January 3, 1624.  The child, a boy, was baptized in 1624 and given the name William Tucker in honor of Point Comfort Commander William Tucker who they served at the time.  We do ourselves injustice if we don’t take note of the Christian names and practices that are part of this element of our history.  From the start, we have been imposing Christian values on the slaves.

Over the intervening years following 1619, enslaved Black Africans continued to be brought to the Colonies and in 1641, Massachusetts passed its Body of Liberties, which first gave legal sanction to slavery.  Other colonies followed the Massachusetts lead and over the next one hundred and thirty-five years the colonies grew and prospered to include the legalization and further expansion of what became known as that “peculiar institution” of slavery.  The following tabulation is from https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/slave-population-of-the-early-united-states.html:

YEAR	Slave Population
1790	697,681
1800	893,602
1808	Importation of slaves is Constitutionally ended.
1810	1,191,362
1820	1,538,022
1830	2,009,043
1840	2,487,355
1850	3,204,313
1860	3,953,760

On April 19, 1775, the Revolutionary War was started at Lexington and Concord.  The stated reason for the conflict was colonies objection to “taxation without representation” in the British Parliament.  The quote has been written differently in other places where it appears: “taxation without representation is tyranny.”  I ask my readers to hold this thought forefront and notice how often the relationship reappears over the course of our history.  Take note of who is imposing their will in these situations.

Another quote often reenters our conversations about these times, and it is from the Declaration of Independence.  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”  As we study these words, we see evidence of hypocrisy because we know that the founders did not mean “all men” in an inclusive interpretation.  We should also take note of the fact that our Declaration of Independence was not and is not one of our governing documents, so the words do not carry anything actionable in our subsequent history.

By the mid-1780s five of the first thirteen states (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island) had abolished slavery in their state constitutions.  Vermont was not yet a state, but slavery had already been abolished in its constitution.  The abolition state list was not long, but it was growing.

Our first governing document was the Articles of Confederation, and it refers only to “free citizens” which, by exception, would exclude slaves.  The Articles of Confederation only remained in effect for eleven years before the need for better governing guidance was necessary.  There are many reasons for writing the Constitution of the United States and none of those reasons are relevant to our discussion here so we will simply take note of the fact that the document was passed by the Continental Congress on September 17, 1787, and was ratified on June 21, 1788.

At the time of the ratification of our new Constitution, we had no political parties or factions as they are often called.  That said, it only took a few years for elected officials to recognize the power of collective relationships.  Our first political parties were called Pro-Administration and Anti-Administration.  Essentially, they favored the thinking of President George Washington and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson.

As the Constitution was being written, the issue of slavery was a hot button topic and threatened to scuttle the entire project.  The effort was to survive by the development and inclusion of the three-fifths compromise in the language of the Constitution.

Under the three-fifths compromise, each slave was counted as three fifths of a person for the purpose of apportioning representation in the House of Representatives for each of the states.  The slaves could not vote at that point, so the white population of the slave states had better representation as a result.  We can imagine that there were tensions in the northern, non-slave states, stemming from this procedure.

In accordance with the Constitution, the importation of slaves came to an end in 1808.  That did not mean that the demand for slave labor ended.  As the market for planter industry crops continued to grow so to the need for more slaves seemed insatiable.  As that “peculiar institution” of slavery was waning in the North, slaves were sold to interests in the South.  Capitalism being what it is, some of the slave trading interests in the so-called border states started breeding their slaves for domestic sale.  In like manor, some of the slave holders also participated in the procreation of future slaves.  These slave breeding activities took the immorality of slavery to a new low and even those who participated were ashamed of their involvement.  Be that as it may, the overall slave demographic grew as we see in the earlier tabulation.

From 1788 until 1861 the number of states increased as new states joined the Union and the balance of free states and slave states was maintained.  In all, twenty-three more states joined during that period and eight of them were “slave states.”  The real sensitivities were triggered in 1850 with the admission of California as a free state.  At that time, the House of Representatives was already controlled by free states.  With California’s admission to the Union, the Senate also became a free state majority.

This is the point in time that we want to understand the mindset of the major actors of the day.  The Southern actors were pro-slavery, and their leading proponents were persons from the planter aristocracy.  The planter aristocracy only made up about seven percent of the White demographic, but their power was huge.  The White demographic was about five and a half million strong and included lots of poor White people who were related to the planter industry as overseers and other lesser support rolls.  These poor whites identified with the planter aristocracy.

The slavery demographic numbered about four and a half million with most involved, in some way, with the planter industry.  The greatest number were field hands.

For the people of the South, the issue was slavery.  With it, the planter industry could flourish, the planter aristocracy could maintain their opulent lifestyle, and the economy of the United States could grow because almost everyone was connected in one way or another to the raw materials coming from the planter industry.  Without it, the unemployed slave population would quickly plunge the nation’s economy into recessionary territory because the slaves were a critical component in the production of the planter industry crops.  And the White population of the South could not imagine life without slaves.

President Abraham Lincoln did not think the Southern states could secede from the Union because there was no provision in the Constitution to support such an action and all the states had sworn to support the Constitution.

The people of the Northern states would suffer from the economic slow-down that would surely result from secession, but there was also a strong abolitionist sentiment that could not be denied.  The White population of the North was also conflicted by what to do with the slaves if they were freed.  It was one thing to see abolition as a moral imperative, but quite another thing to have a Black man living next door.  There were also lots of people who could only support half measures because making the slave fully equal with the White people just didn’t seem workable.

Last, but not least, was the mindset of the slaves themselves.  Full equality was certainly the goal, and the highest priority was the vote.  Nearly as high on that list was the ownership of land because without land there could be no manhood, no equality, and no justice.

President Lincoln was elected in November of 1860.  His election marked the time in our national politics when the Legislative Branch and the Executive Branch were both controlled by free states.  The fears of this eventuality had been foreseen in the South and plans had been publicly discussed so there was no real surprise when South Carolina’s Legislature passed its Ordinance of secession on December 20, 1860.  Hopes were shattered four days later when, on Christmas Eve, South Carolina’s Legislature passed their Declaration of Secession.  President Lincoln was not even sworn into office and the first state was gone.  During January of 1861, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana would follow South Carolina’s lead.  Texas seceded in February and during his travel to Washington, D.C., President Lincoln’s security is said to have thwarted an assassination attempt in Baltimore, Maryland.  The secessions continued and all of President Lincoln’s efforts to assuage the fears of the Southern states fell on deaf ears.  On April 12, 1861, the Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumpter in Charleston Harbor.  The Civil War had moved from a fear to a reality.

The battles of the Civil War were largely fought in the Southern states so the Southern infrastructure would suffer the greatest damage.  Southern properties received the greatest destruction and, with that destruction, the greatest loss of wealth personally and collectively.

As battles were fought, the agricultural work of slaves was interrupted and, in many cases, ended.  Therefore, as the Civil War progressed there were more and more ex-slaves with no way to support themselves or their families, so they began to follow the Union troops in the hopes of finding some small work or support to maintain themselves.  It wasn’t through great agreement between the legislature and the command structure of the Union Army, but ex-slaves began being enlisted in the Union Army and fighting alongside the White troops.

On September 22, 1862, President Lincoln announced his intention to release his Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.  His Proclamation was released as an Executive Order to his military officers regarding how to treat the slaves that were in the rebellious Southern states and being freed by the Civil War.  It is important to understand that the Emancipation Proclamation had no impact on slaves residing in states that were not in rebellion.  The lines of communication were not as fast and as clear in those days so the fog of war was thicker than we might think.  The leaders of the time had to do their best not to create fog or encumber other leaders who were working to accomplish the same goals.  Therefore, the documentation we find regarding events of the time, often seem to document disagreement.  Imagine yourself with the responsibility of helping the ex-slaves find gainful employment – all four and a half million of them.  Fire up your search engine and tell it to look for the Freedmen’s Bureau.  You will find it enlightening.  Somewhere within that time period, you will find that over one hundred thousand Black troops were fighting for the Union Army and that without their participation there is good reason to believe that the Union Army would have lost the Civil War.

Nearing the end of 1863, President Lincoln took the wraps off his Plan for Amnesty and Reconstruction.  It was December 8, 1863, and his work was still in draft form, but he wanted to hear from others what they were thinking.  The President’s Plan became known as the ten percent plan because it required one for every ten voters in the 1860 election to swear an oath to the Constitution.  When the threshold was crossed, those citizens could assemble to draft a new state constitution.  Certain high-ranking officials from the Confederate government were ineligible for participation.  When the Radical Republicans got a look at the draft they were not impressed.  From the point of view of their constituents the Southern states should be punished before they could be allowed to rejoin the Union.  So, we have Radical Republicans in disagreement with a Republican President and the result of this dysfunction is inaction when it came to dealing with the reconciliation of the Civil War aftermath.

The slavery question was the easiest part, and we know this by the agreement and passage of the 13^th Amendment of our Constitution.  It was January 31, 1865, and the 13^th Amendment was sent to the states for ratification.  There was continued dysfunction when it came to what rights the freedmen should have, going forward.  The one thing that dysfunction tells us is that equality between the Black man and the White man was not generating serious consideration.  President Lincoln’s Amnesty and Reconstruction Plan was in trouble.

We can be confident that the debate was continuing, but not a lot of agreement was bubbling to the surface.  We can also be confident that the end of slavery under the unratified 13^th Amendment did not convey citizenship to the freedmen and a substantial part of our population still harbored racist sentiments towards them.

We can’t know whether progress was being made when President Lincoln was assassinated on April 15, 1865.  What we can say is that our new President, Andrew Johnson, was a member of the Democratic Party and was less likely to agree with those Radical Republicans than was President Lincoln.

As the 13^th Amendment was progressing through the ratification process, the secessionist states began to pass new legislation which would be known as “black codes.”  These “black codes” varied from state to state, but the intent was to incumber the rights of Black people and limit their rights, as nearly as possible, to their situation prior to the Civil War.  We might say that a slave by any other name, is still a slave and that was the goal of the White folk.

The Civil War was essentially ended on April 9, 1865, when General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant following the Battle of Appomattox Court House.  Another notable surrender led to a now famous ceremony in Texas.  On June 19, 1865, General Gordon Granger, standing on the balcony of Galveston’s Ashton Villa, read aloud the contents of “General Order No. 3”, announcing the total emancipation of those held as slaves in the State of Texas.  The date has become known as “Juneteenth”, “Freedom Day”, and “Emancipation Day.”  Other Confederate generals followed suit until the last surrender took place on June 23, 1865, when Brigadier General Stand Watie finally surrendered to Lieutenant Colonel Asa C. Matthews at Doaksville, Oklahoma.

  The 13^th Amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865, which was approximately 10 months after its passage and with that ratification came the opportunity to work more seriously on the rights of the freedmen.

The next significant event to take place was the passage of the 14^th Amendment to our Constitution on June 13, 1866.  When we study the first section of that amendment, we get a generalized look at the planned rights of the freedmen.  Section 1 of the 14^th Amendment reads as follows:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.  No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

If we didn’t know different, we would say that the freedmen were citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside and they were to have equal rights with the White citizens.  That said, those “black codes” remained on the books and those “black codes” were designed to “abridge the privileges or immunities” of those same freedmen.  So, the first question of the day was whether, or not, the 14^th Amendment would be ratified.

Reconstruction, ill-defined though it was, had to continue.  On July 16, 1866, Congress passed the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill which was supposed to aid in the integration of the ex-slaves into the White community.  President Andrew Johnson vetoed H.R. 613. To continue in force and to amend an act entitled “An act to establish a Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees,” and for other purposes.  The President’s Veto was overridden by the House (103-33) and the Senate (33-12).

A few days later, on July 24, 1866, the State of Tennessee was readmitted to the Union.  Tennessee was the first state to be readmitted to the Union.

On March 2, 1867, Congress passed the first of four Military Reconstruction Acts.  The Military Reconstruction Acts were four statutes passed during the Reconstruction Era addressing the requirement for Southern States to be readmitted to the Union.  Fulfillment of the requirements of the Acts was necessary for the former Confederate States to be readmitted to the Union from military and Federal control imposed during and after the American Civil War. The Acts excluded Tennessee, which had already ratified the 14th Amendment and had been readmitted to the Union on July 24, 1866.

Throughout this period of President Johnson’s administration, if Congress passed something, President Johnson probably vetoed it.  We are not surprised to learn that on February 24, 1868, the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Johnson.  The Senate fell short of convicting the President on May 16, 1868, on one of the Articles of Impeachment.  The Senate decided to recess for a week to rethink their future course on the subject.  The Senate called themselves back into order, tried the President on more of the Articles of Impeachment and again fell short, by one vote of a conviction on May 26, 1868.

On June 20, 1868, President Andrew Johnson vetoed a bill to readmit the State of Arkansas to representation in Congress.  His veto was overridden two days later, and Arkansas was readmitted to the Union.  Three days after that, on June 25, 1868, Louisiana and Florida were readmitted into the United States.  That very same day, the President vetoed a different bill to readmit the States of North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida to representation in Congress.  Once again Congress overrode the President’s veto.  So, on July 4, 1868, North Carolina and South Carolina were readmitted to the United States.  Then on July 14, 1868, Alabama was readmitted into the Union.

At this point the states of Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia remained under reconstruction.

After two years of ratification effort, on July 9, 1868, the 14^th Amendment was finally ratified.  The ratification of the 14^th Amendment became a prerequisite for readmission to the Union in the case of those states that had not yet been readmitted.

Our history is not well documented around the events relating to the State of Georgia and its readmission to the Union.  Apparently, Georgia was required to ratify the 14^th Amendment to our Constitution before being readmitted, but they did not.  The State of Georgia seems to have run afoul of some other parts of the reconstruction process as well and the result was the State of Georgia being required to once more undergo military rule and Radical Reconstruction.

The presidential election of 1868 was held on November 3^rd and Ulysses S. Grant (R) defeated Horatio Seymour (D).  That said, on Christmas day, in 1868, President Johnson granted unconditional pardons to all Civil War rebels.

I am often asked if our current political dysfunction is the worst we have ever endured?  I ask the person to compare our current situation to our Civil War and Reconstruction experience because I think that those times were arguably more dysfunctional though it might be a tossup.

The ‘black codes” continued to haunt the daily lives of Black people throughout the Southern states.  The White Supremacist ideology had spread and gone underground.  The ratification of the 14^th Amendment should have settled the question of citizenship and several other of the privileges or immunities of the Black people living in those Southern states, but there was still much disagreement when it came to the Freedmen voting.

On February 26, 1869, Congress passed the 15^th Amendment to our Constitution and sent it for ratification by the states.  The 15^th Amendment, if ratified, would explicitly give the Freedmen the right to vote.

It was January 26, 1870, when Virginia was readmitted to the Union.  A few days later, on February third, the 15^th Amendment was ratified.  But we shouldn’t get too celebratory because those “black codes”, a.k.a. Jim Crow laws effectively blocked the Black vote.  Later in the month, on February 23, 1870, Mississippi was readmitted to the Union.  And on March 30, 1870, the state of Texas was readmitted.

Finally, on July 15, 1870, Georgia again rejoined the Union as the last former Confederate state to be readmitted.  That said, readmission to the Union did not mean that the military occupation would soon be over.  We know from our research that the military occupation lasted in some of the states until after the 1876 Presidential Election.  And our 20/20 hindsight tells us that the Jim Crow laws continue to circumvent the complete equality of Black people right up to today.

I mentioned up front that I was uncomfortable with the term reconstruction because I couldn’t find a good definition of what was being reconstructed.  I still don’t have that good definition, but I have developed a better educated idea of what happened.  First, the states desiring readmission had to revise their state constitution to remove slavery and bring their constitutional language into agreement with the United States Constitution.  Second, they had to submit their new state constitution to the Federal legislature for approval.  Finally, they had to demonstrate to the Federal authorities that they could embrace and follow the new organization defined by their constitution.  The process was complicated by the assassination of President Lincoln, the lack of a good plan for their readmission, the military oversight of the activities, the delays necessitated by the sequential passage and ratification of the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments to our Constitution.  We must also accept that the whole reconstruction goal was not given enough time to be implemented.  We were trying to change “hearts and minds” and that doesn’t happen overnight.

The Sausage Grinder is Broken, will you help to fix it?  If you haven’t read A Broken Sausage Grinder; Is Our Government Fundamentally Flawed?, you’re not prepared for the job.

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