In 1877, the reconstruction the United States admitted change to our constitution the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and pledged their loyalty to the a truly United States government. Reconstruction also settled the states’ rights vs. federalism debate that split this union. However, Reconstruction failed by most other measures: Radical Republican legislation ultimately failed under democratic president Andrew Johnson who did nothing to protect former slaves from white persecution and failed to produce fundamental changes to the social foundation of the South economy. When President Rutherford B. Hayes removed the federal military districts from the South in 1877, former Confederate officials and slave owners almost immediately returned to control and suppressed the newly freed blacks from gaining power. With the support of a democratic Supreme Court, these newly empowered white southern politicians passed racist legislation like black codes, voter qualifications, literacy test and other anti-progressive legislation to reverse the rights that blacks and poor whites had gained during Radical Reconstruction.
Meanwhile, the sharecropping system a legal way to keep slave labor of freed blacks on land owned by rich white farmers—became more prevalent throughout the South. With little economic power, blacks ended up having to fight for their own civil rights, as northern whites lost interest in Reconstruction by the mid-1870s. By 1877, northerners were tired of Reconstruction, scandals, radicals, and the fight for blacks’ rights. Reconstruction thus came to a close with many of its goals left unstated, unaccomplished or unfinished.
Radical Republicans in Congress might have impeached President Lincoln after the Civil War, had he not been assassinated, because of he and the Congress had contrasting visions for handling postwar Reconstruction. Lincolns approach to ending the war lifted little repercussions on the southern states for seceding. Ultimately, however, Congress ended up impeaching President Andrew Johnson, who amplified many parts of Lincoln’s blueprint for Reconstruction taking almost all consequences from the south. For example, Johnson vetoed progressive the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Freedmen’s Bureau charter, and the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, all of which were progressive, “radical” bills. At the end of May 1865, President Andrew Johnson announced his plans for Reconstruction, which reflected both his staunch Unionism and his firm belief in states’ rights.
In Johnson’s view, the southern states had never given up their right to govern themselves, and the federal government had no right to determine voting requirements or other questions at the state level. Under Johnson’s Presidential Reconstruction, all land that had been confiscated by the Union Army and distributed to the freed slaves by the army or the Freedmen’s Bureau established by Congress in 1865 reverted to its prewar owners. Apart from being required to uphold the abolition of slavery in compliance with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, swear loyalty to the Union and pay off war debt, southern state governments were given free rein to rebuild themselves. Had Lincoln remained alive, he might have been in the same position himself: he wanted Reconstruction to end quickly and did not necessarily favor progressive legislation. Indeed, Lincoln had made it clear during the Civil War that he was fighting to restore the Union, not to emancipate slaves. It is likely that Lincoln would have battled with Congress over the control of Reconstruction for compromises, blocked key Reconstruction policies, and met opposition form the House as Johnson did in 1868.
After 1867, as reconstruction comes to a close an increasing number of southern whites turned to violence in response to the revolutionary changes of Radical Reconstruction. With pressing economic problems, northerners did not have time to worry about helping former slaves, punishing the Ku Klux Klan, or readmitting southern states into the Union when the Depression of 1873 struck. Though federal legislation passed during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant in 1871 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 1870s 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. Unemployment climbed to 15 percent, and hard currency became scarce.
