“[The Civil War] was begun in the interests of slavery on both sides. The South was fighting to take slavery out of the Union, and the North fighting to keep it in the Union; the South fighting to get it beyond the limits of the United States Constitution, and the North fighting for the old guarantees;—both despising the Negro, both insulting the Negro.”
- Frederick Douglass
The Civil War had turned American society completely on its head. For nearly 300 years, Southern aristocracy relied upon a system that enslaved and debased Blacks. By 1865, this aristocracy had been destroyed - physcially, economically, and morally. At war's end, the Federal Government was in possession of 800,000 acres of Southern land, either confiscated or abandoned by former landowners. Of the South's economy, $4 billion had been invested in human property. That property value was erased. Cities had been destroyed, farmland razed, railroads pulled up. The Southern economy had been destroyed. Furthermore, one-fifth of the South's white population had been killed in the war.
To former slaves, freedom was otherworldly.
"What the Negro did was to wait, look and listen and try to see where his interest lay. There was no use in seeking refuge in an army which was not an army of freedom; and there was no sense in revolting against armed masters who were conquering the world. As soon, however, as it became clear that the Union armies would not or could not return fugitive slaves, and that the masters with all their fume and fury were uncertain of victory, the slave entered upon a general strike against slavery by the same methods that he had used during the period of the fugitive slave. He ran away to the first place of safety and offered his services to the Federal Army. So that in this way it was really true that he served his former master and served the emancipating army; and it was also true that this withdrawal and bestowal of his labor decided the war."
From Black Reconstruction in America by W.E.B. Du Bois.
The question of what to do with the freedmen was first answered by General Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15, issued in January, 1865. During his army's March to the Sea, tens of thousands of freedmen joined the march, trailing behind the caravan as it proceeded to Savannah, Georgia, that state's primary port. Following the capture of that city, Sherman realized the awkward baggage he had acquired. He conferred with representatives of the freedmen and asked them what they really wanted. They indicated that they wanted land.
Sherman gave them land. 400,000 acres of coastal plains and the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia was divided between 40,000 freedmen. Land was central to the vision of the future to newly freed slaves. Without land of their own, they feared that they would have no choice but to return to the plantations. Even before emancipation, communities of free blacks existed in the South, small and economically independent. Many of these communities and many of those newly formed did indeed return to the plantations, claiming them for themselves. Reclaimed plantations were overwhelmingly run in a democratic manner, with labor and profit shared freely within the community.
On March 3, 1865, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands was created to aid freedmen with legal food and housing, oversight, education, health care, and employment negotiation. The Freedmen's Bureau, as it was commonly called, was intended to last for only one year. By the end of that year, it had effectively become a military court that settled legal disputes between freedmen and their employers. The Freedmen's Bureau was key in the first year of Reconstruction for establishing equal footing for freedmen in the South.
Unsurprisingly, the Bureau was attacked vehemently. Lincoln's death on April 15, 1865 and Andrew Johnson's inauguration hours later put an end to Lincoln's vision of Reconstruction. Officials assigned to the Bureau were incompetent, underfunded, and hindered legally in what they could achieve. President Johnson vetoed an effort to expand the Bureau's authority.
Before his death, Lincoln had addressed freedmen in Richmond, Virginia, saying, "In reference to you, colored people, let me say God has made you free. Although you have been deprived of your God-given rights by your so-called masters, you are now as free as I am, and if those that claim to be your superiors do not know that you are free, take the sword and bayonet and teach them that you are." As it turned out, it was more often whites than Blacks to initiate racial violence.
From May 1 to 3, Memphis, Tennessee broke into violence as white mobs rampaged through black neighborhoods. Ignited by an altercation between white policemen and Black soldiers tasked with patrolling the city, the events left 46 blacks and 2 whites killed, 75 people injured, 100 houses robbed, 5 women raped, 91 homes, 4 churches, and 8 schools burned. Congressional investigations reported that black soldiers had acted with restraint, but Southern opinion was largely that Blacks were organizing similar altercations in other cities.
President Johnson had won favor with Republicans, who made him Lincoln's Vice President, for his anti-slavery and anti-planter attitudes. But when Johnson realized the implications of Reconstruction was Black citizenship, the President sought to allow the former Confederacy into Washington through the back door. He set up reconstituted Southern governments, with racist conservatives at their helms. Former Confederate generals and politicians were re-enfranchised. Johnson moved to restore land rights Southerners and rescinded Sherman's order, which had served as the basis for land redistribution in much of the South up to that point. Johnson removed Black troops from Southern cities.
Soon, states established new "Black Codes". In Georgia, it was illegal for Black freedmen to “stroll or wander in idleness.” In Alabama, the former “master” had first rights in compulsory apprenticeship of Black children without parental consent under the guise of “providing the with guardianship and ‘good’ homes until they reach the age of consent at twenty-one”. Laws against hunting and fishing meant freedmen were deprived of autonomous food collection.
Johnson's Reconstruction outraged Northern opinion and Republicans in Congress acted only more fervently to finish the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, guaranteeing citizenship to anyone born in the United States. From 1866 to 1869, the Republican Congress and President Johnson (who had been ousted from both parties) worked against each other. Johnson encouraged Southern states to not ratify the Reconstruction Amendments, though their ratification would help guarantee their re-admission to the Union.
Radical Reconstruction by Congressional Republicans and, (from 1869) President Grant passed several acts in addition to the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to guarantee equal rights and access for Black freedmen. Federal troops and marshals were dispatched across the nation to oversee elections. By 1871, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida were still under direct Military Reconstruction government and had yet to ratify the necessary amendments.
The conclusion of the Civil War was the end of an era 300 years long. Today, the fight for reconstruction is viewed as the chief watershed of American history. Its repercussions were immediate, striking, and far-reaching and are ultimately the beginnings of the Second American Revolution.
