Originally published at Reckonin.com
“Reconstruction,” 1865-1877
Through most of the 20th century, American historians of every stripe (except Communists) agreed that “Reconstruction” was an ugly period in our history – a regime of corruption, tyranny, bad leadership, and dangerous deviation from American principles. Honest historians found a vast treasury of evidence for this interpretation that is available but now ignored.
The most celebrated historians now present Reconstruction as a noble effort to establish equality for African Americans that failed because of violence by the supposed Southern ruling class. The standard Marxist theory of class conflict prevails.
It is worth noting that the term “Reconstruction” does not have any relation to rebuilding the South devastated by war. It refers to “reconstructing” of “the Union” on Republican Party terms.
Southerners white and black were left to rebuild a society as best they could in a land of unprecedented poverty and disruption. It is notable that hostility between black and white Southerners was not caused by the war. In the first period after the war relations were largely friendly. White Southerners accepted emancipation in good faith and often with relief. They were genuinely grateful that there had been no significant slave revolt during the war. Cooperative efforts were under way to restore economic life.
This peaceful period ended when the Republican Congress enacted Presidential Reconstruction in 1868 and dismissed Andrew Johnson’s efforts for a gentler policy. That policy (supposedly favoured by Lincoln) lacked much, resting upon restoring a State to the Union when 10% of voters swore loyalty to the U.S. government, not exactly democracy, but it was a peaceful way forward.
Presidential Reconstruction turned the Southern States into Military Districts where a general’s writ was supreme over any civil authority. Imagine: the great Commonwealth of Virginia was now Military District no. 1! Most Americans remain unaware that a large part of the country was under military occupation for a decade. President Grant was a virtual dictator over the people of the Southern States and regularly sent the army to protect corrupt regimes.
White Southerners were deprived of the vote and citizenship. Republicans appeared and organized and armed the black population with secret meetings and oaths, encouraging them to provocations against real law and order. Racial hostility was deliberately created by outsiders.
Southerners were faced with trying to restore a devastated economy. Local and state government was under control of unsavory outsiders (carpetbaggers) who taxed and looted. Quite often carpetbaggers were people who had left their Northern States under indictment.
Elections were coerced and fraudulent. The defenders of Reconstruction argue that the Reconstruction regimes instituted progressive measures new to the backward South like public schools. Nice, except nearly all the money was robbed by Republican officials, many of whom became rich on looted funds. Republican officials made millions on corrupt “railroad” bonds.
South Carolina did not finish paying off those fraudulent bonds until 1955.
The Southern economy as a whole did not really begin to recover some prosperity until World War I, and today income remains below the rest of the Union. The African Americans in the end got nothing from Reconstruction except a temporary franchise and some minor graft for a selected few.
Though the Southern States were not States but military districts, they were required to ratify the 14th Amendment before they could be readmitted to the Union as States.. It would not have been ratified without the controlled Southern States. The 14th Amendment has been the source of continuing damage to the Constitution and American society and it was never legally ratified, a great and lasting legacy of “Reconstruction.”
The current interpretation is that a noble egalitarian reform of the South was defeated by white Southern violence. It is never mentioned who initiated violence. This is a fraudulent interpretation because there never was any Northern commitment to equality for the black people of the South. That is imaginary. The Northern stand was to use the blacks to maintain power and keep them out of the North and West. The point of “Reconstruction” was to keep the Republican party in power and provide loot for its well-connected.
Reconstruction ended when the last occupying troops were withdrawn in 1877. Republicans realised that electoral votes from new Western States made their rule safer and that carpetbaggers had become so corrupt that they were fighting among themselves for the spoils and could no longer be supported by the army.
The views expressed at AbbevilleInstitute.org are not necessarily those of the Abbeville Institute.
Equality does not exist and never will. The effort to impose such things that don’t exist means anarchy and despotism.
I believe you mean ‘chaos’ not anarchy. Imposing fictions and totalitarian despotism are the inevitable consequences of rulership; the absence of rulers is anarchy.
Another great piece, Dr. Wilson. You are proving why retirement cannot happen for you yet! I hope you are joying your time with family.
The older I get, the more I agree with John Randolph of Roanoke than John Taylor of Caroline-both fine Southerners.
Let the historians write their fables. I know the truth: the South survived not because of Reconstruction, but in spite of it.
i love my bikes …asylum in the NL please?
Your portrayal of Reconstruction is far too kind. Although it was ended on paper after the election of Rutherford B. Hayes in an election tainted by widespread fraud, Reconstruction has never ended in reality. Northern adventurers who relocated to The South to bleed us dry stirred up unparalleled violence and destruction, which has been resurrected in both the Obama and Biden administrations.
I appreciate your kindness as well as your informative articles. You are a true patriot.
Reconstruction ended when there was nothing else of value left to steal.
Scalawag is a slur far worse than Carpetbagger.
De jure segregation was largely, not entirely, a reaction to the excesses of Reconstruction. It enhanced and hardened existing racial bias – common to the era both North and South – into racial prejudice along a spectrum of intensity and motivations.