The Civil War: Postwar Period (1964)

[Music] The Civil War was over, but the battle scars were still on the land and the people. In the South, the war had brought widespread destruction. Many Confederate veterans returned to find their homes in ruins. Much southern land lay uncultivated. Gone were the colorful gardens and productive fields. The war's great destruction had not been confined alone to the land. [Music] Once proud southern cities, Richmond, Atlanta, Charleston, and others were now great heaps of scorched rubble. Somehow the people of the South must resume their place in the national economy and [Music] government. And there was another problem to be solved. 4 million Negroes, no longer slaves, but freed men, must take their place in the new society. At war's end, problems also beset the North. As Union armies were quickly demobilized, northern veterans returned home to cities and towns which had suffered relatively little damage. But many Union veterans faced uncertain [Music] futures. Employment would be a major problem. The northern economy was declining and many factories closed as the North slid toward a post-war depression. Still lingering was an emotional depression in the North. Strong were the memories of the funeral of President Lincoln and of the late president himself, whom many thought might best have bound up the wounds of the nation. The sole object of the government, Lincoln had said, is to again get the southern states into their proper practical relation with the [Music] Union. By the time Congress met in December 1865, a conflict between two approaches for dealing with the South had evolved. On one side was a Republican controlled Congress, which proposed measures that southern whites would find difficult to accept. On the other side of the conflict was the executive branch of the government. President Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, proposed conservative measures that southern whites could more readily accept. President Johnson had retained the men of Lincoln's cabinet and with them had decided that the southern states had never left the Union in law and must be given home rule and representation in Congress as quickly as possible. To achieve this reconstruction, the president proposed that the former Confederate States meet just a few requirements, an oath of allegiance to the United States, invalidate the old ordinances of secession, abolish slavery, and repudiate Confederate debts. In Johnson's opinion, 10 southern states had met these requirements by December 1865. Opposed to President Johnson's conservative plan for the southern states was a group of northern Republican congressmen determined not to lose the fruits of the union's victory. The leaders of this group were Thaddius Stevens, representative from Pennsylvania and Charles Sumner, senator from Massachusetts. These men championed a more radical point of view which held that the former Confederate states should be treated either as territories or as conquered provinces. The radical Republicans objected to the state governments that the president had reorganized, for they believed them to be controlled by Confederate sympathizers who were dealing unfairly with the Negroes. The radical plan was to reject state governments recognized by the executive branch and set up new governments which the Congress would establish. As Congress convened on December 4th, 1865, the radicals prevented the delegates of the presidentially recognized southern states from taking their seats. Further, Stevens proposed that a joint congressional committee on reconstruction investigate the conduct of the southern states. Among other things, the joint committee investigated the black codes laws passed by southern state legislatures which severely restricted the freedom and civil rights of Negroes. In some states, the Black Codes allowed for physical punishment of Negro apprentices and provided for the involuntary servitude of Negroes convicted of vagrancy. In effect, the Black Codes were a return to slavery. Spurred on by the reports of the joint committee on reconstruction, congressional radicals introduced two important bills to bring about the first showdown between Congress and the president. The first bill clearly spelled out the civil rights of all citizens. The second bill extended the life of the Freriedman's Bureau, a controversial agency of the government. The administrators of the Freriedman's Bureau were mostly Union soldiers stationed in the southern states. They carried out various tasks of rehabilitation, principally aiding the newly freed Negroes to find employment and homesteads in the South. But many southern whites deeply resented the Freeman's Bureau and considered it part of an unwanted army of occupation. Sensing the mood of the South, President Johnson vetoed both the Freriedman Bureau and the Civil Rights [Music] Bills, the Northern attacked Johnson as a king and dictator, more sensitive to the wishes of southern whites than to the plight of the Negroes. Congress, under the skilled leadership of the radical group, eventually passed both controversial bills over the presidential vetos. In the meantime, Stevens and the others on the joint committee again challenged the president by proposing the 14th amendment to the Constitution. This precedent shattering amendment first defined citizenship by stating that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. Further, no state government may deprive any person of liberty, property, or life without due process of law, nor deny to any person the equal protection of the laws. The language of the 14th amendment does not clearly state how these provisions are to be applied, but the amendment has been cited repeatedly in cases involving due process, segregation, or legal discrimination. The adoption of the 14th amendment was a severe setback to President Johnson. During the congressional campaigns of 1866, Johnson took his case to the people, pleading for their support of his conservative program of a speedy return of the southern states to the Union without political penalties. But Stevens and the other radicals were out campaigning too. They called on the people to approve congressional policies, enforce civil rights strictly through the 14th amendment, and preserve the fruits of the Union victory. The people responded to the radical appeal, and the election of 1866 returned the radicals to Congress. Once again, this body moved against the South by enacting two important pieces of legislation. The first called for federal military occupation of the south and registration of all eligible voters, negro and white. The second bill was the tenure of office act. This bill stated in effect that civil servants, including cabinet members, must be retained by a president unless removed by consent of congress. When in February 1868, Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War and a radical, was forced out of the cabinet by President Johnson. Congressman Stevens and other radicals regarded this as a violation of the Tenure of Office Act, a high misdemeanor. Accordingly, Stevens and six other Republican congressmen drew up articles of impeachment against their old enemy, the president. Before a packed gallery, the impeachment proceedings against President Johnson began in the Senate chamber on March 5th, 1868. Congressman Benjamin F. Butler, former Union general, opened the prosecution, crying, "We have brought the criminal to the bar and demand judgment at your hands for his so great crimes." Replying for the defense, Senator William Evers warned that dangerous politics have been brought to the head when these names of traitor and rebel have been made current phrases. When the arguments ended, the votes of the senators were pulled. The final tally showed that by a single vote, President Johnson had been acquitted. But he still faced the radical legislative program which had begun with the Reconstruction Acts of 1867. Under these acts, the so-called conquered provinces of the South were divided into five military districts. The governors of these military districts, most of them Civil War veterans, began to remove officials of southern states whose governments were already doomed because they were unacceptable to the radicals. In many cases, the army carried out these orders presumptuously and rudely. [Music] As one after another of the southern officials was removed from state, county and municipal posts, southern resentment against such military tactics grew. In addition to carrying out such duties, the military forces began to register all eligible voters. The registration, especially among Negroes, was widespread. In five of the 10 southern states, a negro voting majority was registered. This was due to the fact that many eligible whites refused to register because of race prejudice. In the elections of delegates to state constitutional conventions, whites tended to vote for the conservative Democrat nominees. Negroes generally cast their ballots for the Republican radicals. A number of the Republican nominees in the southern states were northerners. They were derisively called carpet baggers since some were opportunists who had come to the south for personal gain. Many carpet baggers, however, were conscientious politicians dedicated to aiding the southern states. The carpet baggers often formed political alliances with southerners sympathetic to the radical viewpoint. Such southerners were the scallowags. Though some scallowags were interested only in receiving political support from the carpet baggers, many were honest, sincere men who had supported the Union cause during the Civil War. They were now opposed to Johnson's conservative policies for the South and the carpet baggers were in complete agreement with this. As a result of the elections, a political alliance consisting of scallowags, carpet baggers, and negroes dominated the state constitutional conventions, many of which produced constitutions which were models of enlightened reform. along with Tennessee, which had been readmitted in 1866. Six more southern states were accepted into the Union in 1868 after adopting new state constitutions, electing state legislatures and other state officers, and ratifying the 14th amendment. In 1869, the radical Congress proposed yet another requirement of the remaining southern states. Ratification of the 15th Amendment, which was intended to guarantee Negroes the right to vote. In 1870, the remaining four states met all the requirements. The southern state governments had been reconstructed under congressional radical guidance. Still, there was continued resentment by many southern whites against Negroes, former slaves who were now voters and office holders. Negroes together with carpet baggers and scallowags controlled the state governments. Many whites, convinced that these state legislators had been forced upon them by prejuditial northern legislation, ridiculed these legislatures and accused them of being corrupt and inefficient. All too often, such accusations of corrupt politics were justified. On the other hand, much of the carpet bag legislation expedited the reconstruction of the southern states. Funds were appropriated to reestablish southern industries and agriculture and public works, including free public schools for negroes and for whites. However, the era of carpet bag rule drew to a close in 1874 as Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives, as northerners became engrossed with the problems of economic depression, as Union troops were recalled from occupation duties, and as southern protest groups such as the Kuclux Clan were born. These terrorist lawless groups openly threatening life and property spearheaded a drive for more conservative state governments. The burning cross symbolized the decline of law and order in the [Music] south. 12 years had passed since the veterans of the Civil War had returned to their homes. 12 years of crisis, bitterness, and lack of understanding by the peoples of both North and South. Important problems, among them the protection of the voting rights of Negroes, had not been solved. Nor had the other political and social problems born of the war's aftermath. And a 100 years later, the United States had not yet solved all the problems growing out of the post-war period. [Music]