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By Root 1382 0

the Lincoln ticket to pro-Union Democrats. The Radical Republicans had decided the ideology fomenting the war was to be crushed out of the South. President Johnson tried to put Lincoln’s ideas into action, but this entailed opposing the Radical Republicans in Congress who believed they alone possessed the legal right to structure and run the Reconstruction of the South. Johnson, as Lincoln before him, thought Southern Reconstruction flowed from the executive branch as part of the war powers. Incensed by Johnson’s opposition, the House of Representatives impeached him, and failed by only one vote to remove him from office. Nonetheless, the Radicals marginalized President Johnson by enacting their program of southern “reform” over his objections.

Reconstruction of the South

1865 to 1877

Funny Name, Bad Results? What’d you mean you can’t tell?

The war of shot and shell had ended, but the war of words and legislation, ideas and ideologies, continued. The period of Reconstruction was a legislative and cultural war that went on for twelve years, or more, and cleaved profound divides into the “restored” Union. This is one of the most controversial periods in US history, as some view the era as one of great social experimentation with significant successes, and others think it was an outright occupation of American territory and the denial of Constitutional rights to ex-Confederates. If a better peace is the purpose of war (remember Scipio at Carthage?), then the North certainly failed to achieve the objective. Certain events, such as the destruction of the agriculturally rich Shenandoah Valley, Sherman’s devastating march to the sea, the Union blockade starving women and children in the South, and other northern war activities, although no doubt shortening the war, caused southerners to believe the North treated them as savages. Southerners thought they fought against oppression, but the Union treated them all like slave holders. The hatred engendered by the war failed to dissolve. Reconstruction fell far short of helping the traumatized nation recover, as once again the South bowed to overwhelming northern force.

The Radical Republicans under their leaders Representative Thaddeus Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner, considered the South conquered territory and totally under federal control. In addition, they thought Congress controlled Reconstruction issues, not the president. Issues such as who should be allowed to vote (ex-Confederates, blacks, etc.), how the rebel states should be allowed back into the Union, how the residents should be taxed, whether blacks should be allowed to hold public office, and many others were decided along ideological lines drawn hard between the radicals and the moderates in Congress. In the election of 1866, Radical Republicans gained enough congressional seats to override presidential vetoes; thus, the South was controlled by Radical Republicans in Congress, the Carpetbaggers,[144] Freedmen (free blacks), and US Army. Congress decided that readmission to the Union required a state’s voters to swear allegiance to the US Constitution and ratify recent Constitutional amendments, among several other actions. Northern states, logically concerned about the old southern leadership resuming its role and putting former slaves into economic bondage in place of legal bondage, began searching for ways to keep the Negros free and the old south suppressed. Former southern slave owners must not be allowed to resume their pre-war society. Congress, under Republican radical leadership, passed civil rights acts guaranteeing blacks the right to vote and preventing actions to restrict that right. Congress also passed numerous government service laws requiring southern states to provide education and care for orphans and the insane among other social endeavors long available only in the North.[145]

Southerners thought the Union was destroying their culture and taking away their constitutional rights. Even after their loss, southerners were proud of their “cause” and still believed they were right to leave the