To prevent the president from obstructing its reconstruction program, Congress passed several laws restricting presidential powers. These laws prevented him from appointing Supreme Court justices and restricted his authority over the army.
The Tenure of Office Act barred him from removing, without Senate approval, officeholders, who had been appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate. In northern Alabama, conflict between returning Confederates and Unionists approached the level of a guerilla war. Both sides used control of local courts to punish opponents for wartime misdeeds or to expel unwelcome neighbors.
Unionist leaders in Alabama joined with those from other southern states to press Congress for what was termed "Radical" Reconstruction, meaning wholesale disfranchisement of former Confederates and full voting rights for blacks.
Robert M. Patton As those events transpired, the Alabama legislature and Gov. Robert Patton also confronted difficult financial issues. The state government struggled to provide food to starving citizens and renegotiate Alabama's debt with financial markets, thus warding off state bankruptcy. Just before Congress enacted its version of Reconstruction, giving blacks the right to vote, the outgoing legislature approved a law providing state aid for railroad development.
Such measures had been passed piecemeal before the war, especially in the s, when Gov. John Winston had vetoed dozens of subsidies. Now, during the last days of Presidential Reconstruction , subsidies for all railroads built finally became state policy.
Nothing concrete came of it immediately, but these precedents became important once Congressional Reconstruction placed state government in different hands. In March , Congress enacted the first of what would be four Military Reconstruction acts so named because it divided the former Confederacy into militarily controlled districts , essentially overturning the previous postwar settlement that President Johnson had established.
These laws called for southern states to create new constitutions that included equal suffrage for freedmen and at least temporary disfranchisement and exclusion from office of a vaguely defined portion of former Confederate office holders.
John Pope Congress gave the army the responsibility to oversee the Reconstruction process and protect people from violence. Alabama was placed in the Third Military district, under Gen. John Pope in Atlanta. Both Pope and Brig. Wager Swayne , his subordinate in Montgomery , favored equal suffrage and encouraged Reconstruction on this basis. In Alabama, Governor Patton and some elements of the existing leadership supported cooperation with the terms prescribed by Congress.
Patton hoped that by doing so, he could keep Reconstruction out of the hands of the most extreme Unionists and secure terms that the Congressional Republican majority would accept.
Congressional recognition would encourage outside investment and promote political stability. Patton and his supporters were effective in their efforts, and the new electorate endorsed a constitutional convention, with an official report of some 18, whites, nearly a third of those registered, having voted in favor of creating a new constitution. These political changes had social implications as well throughout the countryside. Many freedmen joined the Union, or Loyal, League , a secret organization that spread through the plantation belt under the leadership of Unionists, Freedmen's Bureau agents, and other political outsiders.
Newly politicized freedpeople sought ways to escape gang labor, tight supervision, and other holdovers of the slave system, and even began to talk about land redistribution. These developments, combined with another failed cotton crop in , further encouraged efforts to reorganize the plantation system on different terms. One aspect of this was the shift from gang labor to decentralized tenant farming , and especially sharecropping, which at least distanced the freedpeople from the hated practices of slavery.
The shift to family-based sharecropping proved a long-term feature of Alabama's economy. Republicans, supported by freedmen, dominated the constitutional convention that gathered in Montgomery in November , and Alabama thus became the first state to undergo the Congressional Reconstruction process.
The bulk of the delegates were native white Alabamians, predominantly Unionists, but approximately 18 of the members were African Americans. Often outnumbered in their home locales, extreme Unionists pressed for widespread disfranchisement of former Confederates and pushed to ban them from public office.
While Lincoln took a moderate approach to Reconstruction, Congress sought to impose harsh terms on the South. From until his death, President Abraham Lincoln took a moderate position on Reconstruction of the South and proposed plans to bring the South back into the Union as quickly and easily as possible.
Voters then could elect delegates to draft revised state constitutions and establish new state governments. All Southerners, except for high-ranking Confederate Army officers and government officials, would be granted a full pardon. Lincoln guaranteed Southerners that he would protect their private property, though not their slaves.
By , Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas had established fully functioning Unionist governments. This policy was meant to shorten the war by offering a moderate peace plan. Lincoln feared that compelling enforcement of the proclamation could lead to the defeat of the Republican Party in the election of , and that popular Democrats could overturn his proclamation.
Radical Republicans hoped to control the Reconstruction process, transform Southern society, disband the planter aristocracy, redistribute land, develop industry, and guarantee civil liberties for former slaves. Although the Radical Republicans were the minority party in Congress, they managed to sway many moderates in the postwar years and came to dominate Congress in later sessions.
The bill stated that for a state to be readmitted, the majority of the state would have to take a loyalty oath, not just ten percent. Lincoln later pocket vetoed this new bill. This agency provided food, shelter, medical aid, employment aid, education, and other needs for blacks and poor whites. It also attempted to oversee new relations between freedmen and their former masters in a free-labor market.
With the help of the bureau, the recently freed slaves began voting, forming political parties, and assuming the control of labor in many areas. However, Congress continued to pass more radical legislation. During this era, Congress passed three important Reconstruction amendments.
The Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery was ratified in The Fourteenth Amendment, proposed in and ratified in , guaranteed U. Congress also passed the Reconstruction Acts. These initially were vetoed by President Johnson, but later were overridden by Congress. The first Reconstruction Act placed 10 Confederate states under military control, grouping them into five military districts that would serve as the acting government for the region. One major purpose was to recognize and protect the right of African Americans to vote.
Under a system of martial law in the South, the military closely supervised local government, elections, and the administration of justice, and tried to protect office holders and freedmen from violence. Blacks were enrolled as voters and former Confederate leaders were excluded for a limited period. The Reconstruction Acts denied the right to vote for men who had sworn to uphold the Constitution and then rebelled against the federal government. As a result, in some states the black population was a minority, while the number of blacks who were registered to vote nearly matched the number of white registered voters.
In addition, Congress required that each state draft a new state constitution—which would have to be approved by Congress—and that each state ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the U. Constitution and grant voting rights to black men. Lincoln is typically portrayed as taking the moderate position and fighting the Radical positions.
There is considerable debate about how well Lincoln, had he lived, would have handled Congress during the Reconstruction process that took place after the Civil War ended. The other camp believes that the Radicals would have attempted to impeach Lincoln, just as they did his successor, Andrew Johnson, in While Andrew Johnson favored punishment for Confederates after the Civil War, his policies toward the South softened during his presidency. Both Northern anger over the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln as well as the immense cost of human life during the Civil War led to vengeful demands for harsh policies in the South.
When he became president, however, Johnson took a much softer line and pardoned many of them. Additionally, no trials for treason took place. Only Captain Henry Wirz, commandant of the prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia, was executed for war crimes. The participation of African Americans in southern public life after would be by far the most radical development of Reconstruction, which was essentially a large-scale experiment in interracial democracy unlike that of any other society following the abolition of slavery.
Southern Black people won election to southern state governments and even to the U. Congress during this period. After , an increasing number of southern whites turned to violence in response to the revolutionary changes of Radical Reconstruction. The Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations targeted local Republican leaders, white and Black, and other African Americans who challenged white authority.
Though federal legislation passed during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant in took aim at the Klan and others who attempted to interfere with Black suffrage and other political rights, white supremacy gradually reasserted its hold on the South after the early s as support for Reconstruction waned. Racism was still a potent force in both South and North, and Republicans became more conservative and less egalitarian as the decade continued. In —after an economic depression plunged much of the South into poverty—the Democratic Party won control of the House of Representatives for the first time since the Civil War.
When Democrats waged a campaign of violence to take control of Mississippi in , Grant refused to send federal troops, marking the end of federal support for Reconstruction-era state governments in the South. In the contested presidential election that year, Republican candidate Rutherford B.
Hayes reached a compromise with Democrats in Congress: In exchange for certification of his election, he acknowledged Democratic control of the entire South. A century later, the legacy of Reconstruction would be revived during the civil rights movement of the s, as African Americans fought for the political, economic and social equality that had long been denied them. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!
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