Reconstruction and Its Collapse, 1865–1877

This is Unit One, part one, on Reconstruction from Lincoln's plan to the Fifteenth Amendment. Unit One opens in December eighteen sixty-three, with the first of two plans for bringing the southern states back into the Union. Carry one question through this part: who decides who counts as a citizen? For most of these entries a president and a Congress fight over it. At the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress writes the answer into the Constitution itself, and the answer is birth or naturalization. By the end you will be able to explain what Lincoln's plan and the Wade-Davis Bill disagreed about. To state the Thirteenth Amendment's one exception, and what the Black codes did to a freedman who refused a contract. To state what the Fourteenth Amendment's sections do. To explain what the articles of impeachment against Johnson actually charged. And to state what the Fifteenth Amendment protects.

Three entries on two plans, and the third says what the argument was really about.

Lincoln's plan.

USH2 0001 Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan

Lincoln's plan of December eighteen sixty-three offered a general pardon to most southerners, excluding high-ranking Confederate leaders. Once ten percent of a state's eighteen sixty voters had sworn allegiance to the Union and accepted emancipation, the state could write a new constitution. Lincoln wanted a quick settlement that made emancipation easier to accept.

The plan Congress wrote in reply.

USH2 0002 The Wade-Davis Bill

Benjamin Wade and Henry Winter Davis introduced a stricter plan in February eighteen sixty-four, and Congress passed it that July. It required a majority of a state's voters and officials to take the Ironclad Oath, swearing they had never supported the Confederacy, and it barred refusers from southern political life. Lincoln killed the bill with a pocket veto.

What the two plans really disagreed about.

USH2 0003 Future Loyalty or Past Innocence

Lincoln asked a tenth of a state's eighteen sixty electorate to pledge loyalty to the Union from that day forward. The Wade-Davis Bill asked a majority of voters and officials to take the Ironclad Oath, a sworn denial of any past support for the Confederacy. Ten percent against a majority, and an oath about what a man will do against an oath about what he has already done. The familiar version says the two sides disagreed only about how severe to be. The oaths show a sharper difference. Anyone willing to accept defeat could take Lincoln's oath. Few men in a seceded state could take the Ironclad Oath truthfully, so the bill's majority would have been nearly impossible to reach.

Three entries: the amendment that abolished slavery, and the terms a new president offered the South.

The amendment, and its one exception.

USH2 0004 The Thirteenth Amendment

The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery throughout the United States, the first amendment added to the Constitution since eighteen oh four. The Senate passed it in April eighteen sixty-four and the House in January eighteen sixty-five, and ratification was complete on December sixth, eighteen sixty-five. Its text keeps one exception: involuntary servitude remains lawful as punishment for a crime. Hold that exception.

The terms Andrew Johnson offered.

USH2 0005 Johnson's Amnesty

Andrew Johnson's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, issued in May eighteen sixty-five, offered a sweeping pardon to former Confederates and returned confiscated property to its owners, except the people they had enslaved. The one requirement was to affirm support for the Constitution. Johnson's terms were far milder than the Wade-Davis majority oath.

Who Johnson left out.

USH2 0006 The Twenty Thousand Dollar Exception

Johnson's amnesty excluded Confederate leaders, high-ranking officers, and anyone holding taxable property worth more than twenty thousand dollars. The threshold marked out the planter class by its wealth, and it sent the South's wealthiest planters to Johnson one by one to apply for a personal pardon, which he could grant or withhold himself.

Four entries on what the restored states wrote, and on the federal agency sent to protect freed people.

The Black codes.

USH2 0007 The Black Codes

Southern legislatures passed Black codes in eighteen sixty-five to keep the social and economic structure of slavery without slavery itself. Freed people were barred from voting, from juries, from owning weapons and from renting land. According to the Yawp, South Carolina and Mississippi passed them first, and other states soon followed.

How the codes controlled labour.

USH2 0008 How the Codes Worked

The codes bound freed people to compulsory labour contracts that barred working for more than one employer and held wages artificially low. A freedman who refused a contract was arrested for vagrancy and put to forced labour. Set that beside the exception you are holding. Debt bondage tied many to the same land, and one scholar quoted in the Yawp called the system slavery by another name.

The agency Congress created.

USH2 0009 The Freedmen's Bureau

In March eighteen sixty-five Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, and Lincoln signed it for one year only. Its agents oversaw labour contracts between freed people and their employers. In February eighteen sixty-six Congress moved to widen its powers in answer to the Black codes, and Johnson vetoed the renewal.

What the Bureau built, and the charge against it.

USH2 0010 What the Bureau Built

The Freedmen's Bureau distributed food, reunited families separated by slavery, and established schools, working alongside groups such as the American Missionary Association. Fisk, Hampton and Dillard universities were all founded with its help. Opponents attacked it as wasteful federal activism, and that charge, government doing too much, returns again and again in this course.

Four entries on citizenship, first by statute and then in the Constitution, where the opening question gets its answer.

The first law to define a citizen.

USH2 0011 The Civil Rights Act of 1866

The Civil Rights Act of April eighteen sixty-six declared African Americans citizens and overturned the Supreme Court's eighteen fifty-seven Dred Scott decision. Johnson vetoed the bill, and Congress passed it over his veto anyway. The Yawp calls it the first federal attempt to define American-born residents, except Native peoples, as citizens.

Why Congress then amended the Constitution.

USH2 0012 The Fourteenth Amendment

Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment on June thirteenth, eighteen sixty-six, to write citizenship into the Constitution itself. Section one holds that all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. It also forbids any state to deny any person the equal protection of the laws. Ratification came on July ninth, eighteen sixty-eight. That is the answer to the question this part opened with. Congress decided, and it decided by birth or naturalization.

How the amendment changed representation.

USH2 0013 Representation and the Male Vote

The Fourteenth Amendment ended the three-fifths compromise, counting the whole number of persons in each state for representation in the House. A state's House seats would be cut if it denied the vote to male inhabitants aged twenty-one and over. Note that section two protects only male voters. Readmission of each southern state would depend on ratifying the whole amendment.

The amendment's last two provisions.

USH2 0014 Disqualification and Debt

The amendment barred from office anyone who had sworn to support the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection or rebellion, unless two-thirds of Congress relented. It honoured Union war debts and declared every Confederate debt illegal and void. In eighteen sixty-six most former Confederate states refused to ratify. Tennessee alone accepted, and was readmitted.

Four entries on a president and a Congress in open conflict, ending in the first impeachment.

How Johnson fought the amendment.

USH2 0015 The Swing Around the Circle

Johnson campaigned against the Fourteenth Amendment in late summer eighteen sixty-six with a speaking tour called the swing around the circle. Hecklers provoked damaging replies, and Republicans claimed the president was drunk. The tour backfired. In the eighteen sixty-six midterms Republicans won majorities large enough to override any veto.

What Congress did with those majorities.

USH2 0016 The Reconstruction Acts

The Reconstruction Acts of eighteen sixty-seven, passed over Johnson's veto, divided ten southern states into five military districts under Union generals. They required new state constitutions and a vote for every freedman aged twenty-one and over. Each state had to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before readmission, and by the end of eighteen seventy all had ratified and rejoined.

The law written to restrain the president.

USH2 0017 The Tenure of Office Act

Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act in March eighteen sixty-seven, over Johnson's veto, requiring Senate approval before a president removed certain officeholders. Watch Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a Lincoln appointee and an ally of the Radicals. In August eighteen sixty-seven, with Congress in recess, Johnson suspended him. The Senate reinstated him, and Johnson then fired him outright.

The first impeachment of a president.

USH2 0018 The Impeachment

On February twenty-fourth, eighteen sixty-eight, the House impeached Andrew Johnson, the first impeachment of a president in American history; Digital History gives the vote as one hundred twenty-six to forty-seven. Most of the eleven articles charged that removing Stanton had violated the Tenure of Office Act. The Senate voted thirty-five to nineteen to convict, one vote short of two-thirds, with seven Republicans voting to acquit. The familiar version says Johnson was impeached over Reconstruction. The articles charged him with removing Stanton. The quarrel beneath them was about Reconstruction, but the offence Congress could try him for was the dismissal. Senate dot gov says the acquitting minority wished to protect the office of the president.

One entry to close the part: the amendment written to protect the vote itself.

The Fifteenth Amendment.

USH2 0019 The Fifteenth Amendment

Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment in February eighteen sixty-nine, and ratification was complete on February third, eighteen seventy. The vote is not to be denied on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Section two gives Congress power to enforce it by appropriate legislation, the basis for the Enforcement Acts that soon followed.

Look at what you can now do. You can explain what Lincoln's plan and the Wade-Davis Bill disagreed about: ten percent against a majority, and an oath about what a man will do against an oath about what he has already done, which few men in a seceded state could take truthfully. You can state the Thirteenth Amendment's one exception, involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime, and say what the Black codes did to a freedman who refused a contract: arrest for vagrancy, and forced labour. You can state what the Fourteenth Amendment's sections do: citizenship for all persons born or naturalized, equal protection, the whole number of persons counted for representation, rebels barred from office, and Confederate debts made void. You can explain that the articles of impeachment charged Johnson with dismissing Stanton, while the quarrel beneath them was about Reconstruction. And you can state what the Fifteenth protects: the vote, against denial on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.