Chapter 99 Reconstruction
"As the victors of the conflict we must not punish and destroy those who chose the wrong path, rather rehabilitate them into productive and outstanding citizens."- President Abraham Lincoln 1865
"There is nothing that you people have suffered for that was not due to your own folly."- Major General Ulysses S. Grant 1864
"The GOP has done nothing for nearly forty years besides wave the bloody flag and claim that the Democrats are the root of all evil by starting the Civil War. Rarely do they ever acknowledge their faults and cover their greed and corruption by claiming that everything they do is righteous and American. Ever since Lincoln the ruling Republicans have done nothing but cater to the rich and the elite, leaving the common man behind. It's time for the American people to finally have a President and a party that works for them, not the other way around."- Presidential Candidate William Jennings Byron 1896
The Reconstruction period is a time in American history legally lasting from 1863 til 1872 with the readmission of Alabama into the Union, while socially it has lasted until 1885 with the election of the Cleveland administration. While for most of the United States, Reconstruction is looked upon fondly as a time of healing the scars of the Civil War and promoting the welfare of freed blacks with their rise in society, for nearly a century it was looked upon with scorn in the South. To citizens living in other regions in the United States, this is most often misunderstood as a racial issue due to the rise of the Black states along with the Federal government enforcing racial equality in the former Confederacy. While this was indeed true for the first decades after the Civil War, greater reasons for the tension were caused due to the utter lack of Federal, and by extension national investment in the region and a general feeling of discrimination from the "Yankee" portion of the population for being looked down upon as backwards rednecks who were not "true Americans" for having rebelled against President Lincoln. There are also indeed a number of documented cases of actual abuse by the United States Army during the occupation period along with several legal battles against white aristocrats with the destruction of the plantation economy. With many counties left in impoverished squalor and little hope of advancing beyond meager agriculture, bitterness spread across the region. It wasn't until the Long presidency that the South was able to catch up with the rest of the nation and lingering tensions of distrust were swept away during the Great Pacific-Asian War. However, despite the multiple issues during and after Reconstruction, historians can overall agree that the policies of Lincoln and his successors were in the end beneficial for the healing of the United States and its eventual rise as a great power.
While the final shots of the Civil War came with Jefferson's surrender in Atlanta, there was little time for President Lincoln and Congress to celebrate the resumption of peace as there were still lingering issues from before Fort Sumter, and new ones that had arisen thanks to the fighting in the past two years. While the Union Army was able to win a majority of their battles against the forces of the Confederacy and brought the war to a swifter end then some scenarios that could have arisen, their actions had led to the devastation of the Deep South and now several states were impoverished and could barely sustain themselves. There were still millions of former Confederates who saw Lincoln's ascension to the White House as an illegal affair and saw no wrong in Toomb's actions, the Judas president being a tragic martyr. Finally there was the status of the now freed three million Blacks in the former Confederacy, with the greatest problem being how Lincoln's administration could educate the illiterate former slaves and give them the skills they needed to survive and stand equal to their white brethren. In order to do this Lincoln needed to rule over the South with a strict yet lenient hand, him needing to treat the states like conquered territories before they earned the right to stand as members of the Union. While the Army was downgraded thanks to the end of the war, numbers were still kept high with a total number of 250,000 troops that would stand watch over both the South and the plains territories. Four new military districts were created with the First District of North and South Carolina governed by Major General Stonewall Jackson, the Second District of Florida and Georgia governed by Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, the Third District of Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi governed by Major General Ulysses Grant, the Fourth District of Louisiana and Arkansas with Major General William Rosecrans, and the Fifth District of the Indian territory going to Major General Stephen Kearny. For the next decade the Army would law down the law and keep the peace while the Freedmen's Bureau moved in to help former slaves settle to their new lives. Additionally several bills were passed in the capitol in order to appropriate funds for millions of dollars to be spent on restoring Southern infrastructure to their pre-war state. While the Army was successful in restoring order and keeping the South under federal rule, various isolated insurgencies would try to attack Federal garrisons in order to drive them out of the region. While little widescale success came from these tactics, such moves only helped to tighten the occupation, building resentment on both sides.
A Union officer standing in the way of an angry white mob and a group of Free Blacks
With Lee overseeing the downfall of the Confederacy in the East, most Americans paid little attention to the events in the Indian Territory, otherwise known as the Confederate state of Oklahoma. While Stand Watie had waged a successful guerrilla campaign against the Jayhawkers of Kansas and even committed a number of raids in Missouri, these actions had little of a strategic impact on the war and in the end only served mostly as a nuisance to Washington. With the surrender of Vicksburg, the Confederacy was cut in half and thus Watie was virtually abandoned by Montgomery, him and his coalition of Indian tribes left to their own devices against the onslaught of the Confederate Army. Unfortunately for them Stephen Kearny was in far from a forgiving mood. The brutal horrors of the Civil War in the Kansas left him in far from a forgiving mood and made Kearny believed that the tribes of Oklahoma had to be punished to the fullest for helping to cause chaos on the frontier. After spending the Winter camped out in order to prevent trekking across the plains in the snow, Kearny began his campaign in March of 1863 and crossed the Kansas border to lay waste to any Indian opposition and reclaim the territory for the United States. Against militia and farmers the Confederate Indians could find success, against 35,000 professional veterans, there was little chance that they could ever succeed. For the following three months Kearny began a pursuit of Watie and his men, destroying any Confederate villages that they came across and forcing tens of thousands to wander the plains. With each battle came a high price for the Confederate tribes as they lost manpower by the hundreds and supplies were beginning to run dry. Mattes were made worse in early May when word spread that Chief Opo and his band of Loyalist creek had crossed the Red River and were marching to proclaim their lands, Opo having gathered a coalition of Loyalists and sympathetic Texan Indians who wanted to drive the Civilized Tribes out of the Indian Territory and claim the lands for the Creek Nation. The war in the plains came to a climax on June 4th with the Battle of Broken Arrow, also known as Watie's Last Stand. There Watie along with 3,000 tribesmen made a desperate last battle against 20,000 of Kearny's forces. Outnumbered and surrounded, the Confederate Indian fought bravely but the effort was futile. By the days end Watie and most of his leadership were dead along with over 2800 Indian casualties, the Union Army only taking 1431 casualties. With Broken Arrow came a virtual end to the presence of the Civilized Tribes in the Indian Territory. Thanks to their support for the Confederates, most of the Civilized Tribes were forced off their land and had to move North in newly-created reservations in the new Dakota Territory, killing tens of thousands and forcing the rest to compete for land with the Sioux and live in poverty. In return for their loyalty, Chief Opo and the Creek were allowed to annex a majority of their rival's territories to enlarge the Creek to encompass a majority of the territory. In time laying the foundations for the state of Seqouyah.
Watie's Last Stand
A common mistake in studying American history is the belief that the Emancipation Proclamation was the complete end of slavery. While it is true that the Proclamation in many ways was the death blow of the institution by making it economically unfeasible, it wasn't the complete and total end as there were still five states who legally practiced slavery along with the institution still being technically legal in the territories of the United States due to the Dred Scott case. It wasn't an easy task to handle as Kentucky and Virginia were two of the largest states and mostly pro-slavery, while Missouri itself was still full of tens of thousands of Confederate sympathizers. Lincoln knew though that in order for the victory of the Civil War to have any meaning whatsoever, the vile institution needed to end once and for all. Luckily for him the 1862 Midterm elections allowed the Republicans to extend their majorities in congress, thus creating the conditions necessary for the writing and passing of a constitutional amendment. In the final months of the war dozens of congressmen had been involved in the discussion of the crafting of such an amendment and the details of such were written in various drafts. The first draft of what would eventually become the 14th amendment was submitted to congress on September 12th in a joint resolution by Ohio representative James Ashley and Missouri Senator John Henderson. The amendment called for the complete abolition of slavery all across the country. At first opposition was strong from the border states as they complained that their loyalty to the Union was all for naught with slavery stripped away from them even though they chose to take up arms against Montgomery. Unfortunately for the Loyalist congressmen, the Republican Party was completely united by the cause and abolition rallies were frequent across the Northern states. In addition states such as East Tennessee, Maryland, and Delaware were already making moves to abolish slavery on their own, leaving Missouri, Kentucky, and Virginia alone and isolated. Any sizable form of an opposition was nulled thanks to the Democratic Party being split down the lines on the issue, most Northern Democrats wanting desperately to have unified support for the bill or else they would just be seen as more followers of Toombs. The final nail in the coffin though was word from the West as word spread on how Texas was looking to abolish slavery within their borders. If Texas were to go ahead with abolishment, then the United States would truly be alone in keeping the practice and would be seen as going against their founding tenets of freedom and liberty. Over the winter of 1863, work was finished on the 14th amendment and it managed to be passed by both the House and the Senate on February 15th. For the next six months the bill would be passed around the nation and voted upon in various state legislatures. On October 11th the dreams of Blacks across the nation finally came true as Delaware became the 18th state to ratify the amendment. Thus the 14th amendment became a part of the constitution and slavery would forever be no more within the lands of the United States. Making it a truly free nation.
A Freedmen's Bureau station helping freed slaves
When election time came there was little doubt on what would happen. Abraham Lincoln announced in early Spring that he would seek for reelection as the GOP candidate, riding to the National Convention virtually unopposed and winning the delegate vote in a landslide, keeping Vice President William Seward on the ticket. As the sitting president who kept the nation together and rode the Union to victory in the Civil War in only two short years, Lincoln became one of the most popular presidents of all time (with the exception of the South) only Washington and possibly Harrison being able to eclipse Lincoln's achievements. The only question of the race was just how the Democrats would nominate and what they could salvage from defeat, as there was little realistic chance of them taking a victory unless the Lincoln campaign and the Republican Party somehow acted in a manner that was
worse than Toombs. For the Democrats it was a matter of life or death not centered on winning the White House, but simply staying
relevant and alive as a party. In their short history the Democrats only had their founder Andrew Jackson to call upon as a great president (even Jackson though was unable to stand the test of time as reevaluation in the 20th century places him as one of the worst presidents), the others being the mediocre Johnson, the well-intentioned Douglas who drove the nation further to Civil War, and lastly
Toombs. In many respects the Toombs administration virtually killed the Democrats standing in national politics for seven decades as the Americans who experienced the Civil War as well as the generations that followed equated Toombs with the Democratic party. In their eyes the Democrats were traitors with much of their establishment seceding in the Confederacy and their sitting president defecting to the Rebels. In the North the Republicans milked this in every election, equating any of their Democratic opponents no matter their character as being sympathetic with slavery scum. Worse of all was how two traditional pillars of the Democratic Party, the Immigrants and Catholics, were defecting to the Republicans in droves due to successful national propaganda that depicted the Democrats as fighting only for Anglo-Saxon Protestant supremacy. With many of their leaders either being Confederates or lackluster in performance, the Democrats were forced to nominate the Seymour/Johnson ticket that had been wiped out electorally in the last election. Practically the only reason that the Democrats managed to continue to exist was due to the party seemingly embracing total social conservatism along with economic liberalism in order to act as an alternative to the socially liberal and protectionist policies of the Republicans. On election day the results were a virtual red wipeout as Lincoln and won 192 electoral votes to 48 (Seymour only winning the border states) and a landslide of the popular vote. The Republican hold on congress became a supermajority with the Democrats holding only a fraction of the total seats. Thus began the Third Party System that would last until 1932.
1864 United States Presidential Elections
Lincoln/Seward (R): 192 EV. 2,095,783 votes. 57.61%
Seymour/Johnson (D): 48 EV. 1,541,909 votes. 42.39%
Abraham Lincoln (Left). Horatio Seymour (Right).
On the outside it seemed that the Republicans, only coming into existence less than a decade ago, were a completely hegemonic power within American politics and were an unstoppable force. United as the Party of Lincoln, there was nothing stopping their agenda thanks to their unity and numbers. In many ways this was true, however unknown to the American electorate, the Republicans worst enemies were themselves. The following year after the Civil War had created a rift within the GOP on how exactly to best move forward with reintegrating the South. Lincoln had wanted a moderate path that would allow for full reconciliation and the suffering that had been brought from the war to be laid to rest. Lincoln recognized the need for the Black race to gain their rights, however he cautioned a slow and steady process in order to prevent a race war and the creation of a potential backlash from the white citizens of America. Lincoln's message of unity and forgiveness were seen as betrayal in the eyes of many Republican politicians. They saw the South as the cause of the nation's woes, having seceded in order to solely protect a vile institution and causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans over a senseless war. In their eyes the Southerners were not Americans, they were traitors that deserved to be harshly punished to the fullest extent in order to set an example for future generations. These same politicians also saw Lincoln's efforts towards Blacks as counterproductive. They saw Black Americans as a reliable electorate that could ensure the Republicans stay in power for generations to come and in time could dominate the South and be entrenched in positions of power against the treasonous whites. For them the 14th amendment was not enough, newer civil rights laws needed to be pushed in order to ensure that Blacks were the same as Whites on every single level. It was a task that had to be done quickly with full support. These politicians were known as the Radical Republicans. And in the 1864 Elections they won a majority of seats in congress and state legislatures. The Radicals were ready for a fight with President Lincoln, and they were determined to win.
A/N: Credit for the electoral map goes to Roger Redux.
