Reconstruction and Its Collapse, 1865–1877

This is Unit One, part two, on Reconstruction from the Fifteenth Amendment to the question of whether it failed. Part one closed on the Fifteenth Amendment, which protects the vote against denial on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. This part opens on what those words leave out. Carry one habit through it. Read what a law leaves out as closely as what it says, and when a question has two halves, hold both. The last entry asks whether Reconstruction failed, and the course answers with both halves at once. By the end you will be able to explain what the Fifteenth Amendment left out. To explain how the suffrage alliance split, and what the Supreme Court held in Minor versus Happersett. To describe what the Reconstruction governments built, and who set out to undo them. To name the three events that each ended Reconstruction. And to answer whether it failed, holding both halves.

Three entries on the vote: what the amendment left out, the alliance it divided, and a woman who took the question to the Supreme Court.

What the Fifteenth left out.

USH2 0020 What the Fifteenth Left Out

The Fifteenth Amendment forbids denying the vote on three grounds only: race, color, and previous condition of servitude. It says nothing about literacy, about paying a tax, or about owning property. A state could therefore impose a literacy test or a poll tax on every voter, without naming race at all, and remain inside the amendment's words. The familiar version says the amendment banned literacy tests and poll taxes. It named neither. That omission is the route by which southern states later took the vote from Black men while keeping to the letter of the Constitution.

The alliance the amendment divided.

USH2 0021 The Suffrage Split

The American Equal Rights Association, formed in eighteen sixty-six, joined abolitionists and women's rights advocates in one campaign for universal suffrage. In eighteen sixty-nine Anthony and Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association and demanded the vote for women at once. Lucy Stone and Henry Browne Blackwell accepted a gradual approach that put Black men's suffrage first.

One woman who took it to the Court.

USH2 0022 Minor v. Happersett

Virginia Minor tried to vote in St. Louis in eighteen seventy-two, arguing that her citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment already carried the right to vote. The Supreme Court rejected her claim in eighteen seventy-five. It held that the Constitution does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone. Citizenship and the vote were separate things.

Two entries on who held office in the new southern governments, and on what those governments built.

The Black men elected to office.

USH2 0023 Black Officeholders

Hiram Revels of Mississippi became the first African American senator in eighteen seventy, and Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi became the second. Hundreds more served locally as commissioners, justices, sheriffs and clerks. The anchor counts fifteen Black members of the House in the eighteen seventies, and the Yawp counts fourteen. Both agree on the two senators.

What the new governments built.

USH2 0024 What the New Governments Built

The Reconstruction governments abolished the Black codes, founded public school systems, and invested in railroads, roads and other infrastructure. They built hospitals, orphanages and asylums, and gave relief to the poor, down to firewood and bread, paying for it with land and property taxes. Digital History calls them the nation's first integrated governments, with many substantial achievements.

Three entries on the men who set out to undo those governments, the terror they used, and how Congress answered.

The Redeemers.

USH2 0025 The Redeemers

Southern White Democrats who called themselves Redeemers set out to redeem their states from northern control and restore the old racial order, and by eighteen seventy-one they had taken power in Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia. Redeem was their own word. Digital History says the Redeemers had no scruples about fraud or terror.

The terror.

USH2 0026 The Ku Klux Klan

Confederate veterans founded the Ku Klux Klan in eighteen sixty-six at Pulaski, Tennessee, and the former general Nathan Bedford Forrest came to lead it. It used arson, whipping and murder to keep freed people from voting. The Klan began as a fraternal order and became a terrorist organisation, and by eighteen sixty-eight it had spread to nearly every former Confederate state.

How Congress answered it.

USH2 0027 The Enforcement Acts

Congress answered the Klan with three Enforcement Acts in eighteen seventy and eighteen seventy-one, moving crimes against freed people into federal courts and outlawing intimidation at the polls. The third, the Ku Klux Klan Act, passed in April eighteen seventy-one, let President Grant suspend habeas corpus. These are the acts that part one said the Fifteenth Amendment's second section made possible.

Three entries on what changed the subject: a depression, two scandals, and one last civil rights law.

The depression.

USH2 0028 The Panic of 1873

The Panic of eighteen seventy-three began in September, when the banking house of Jay Cooke and Company failed, and bank runs and closures spread outward from that one failure into a six-year depression. Democrats blamed the Republicans for the hard decade that followed. The Yawp says economic issues then pushed Reconstruction off the national agenda.

The scandals of the same years.

USH2 0029 Grant-Era Scandals

Two scandals marked Grant's administration: the Whiskey Ring, which siphoned federal excise taxes, and Crédit Mobilier, a fraud around the Union Pacific Railroad. Grant's secretary Orville Babcock and Vice President Schuyler Colfax were each tied to one of them. Digital History describes Crédit Mobilier as a construction company through which members of Congress awarded contracts to themselves.

The last civil rights law of the era.

USH2 0030 The Civil Rights Act of 1875

The Civil Rights Act of March eighteen seventy-five required equal treatment in public places and barred excluding African Americans from juries, ten years after the war. Digital History notes that a clause banning segregated schools was defeated. The Supreme Court ruled the act unconstitutional in eighteen eighty-three.

Three entries on the ending, and the third explains why it has more than one date.

The election that ended the era.

USH2 0031 The Election of 1876

In eighteen seventy-six the Democrat Samuel Tilden led the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in the popular vote and held one hundred eighty-four electoral votes, one short of victory. Twenty electoral votes from Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida and Oregon were disputed. The anchor puts Tilden's lead near three hundred thousand votes, and Digital History puts it at two hundred fifty thousand.

How the dispute was settled.

USH2 0032 The Compromise of 1877

An electoral commission voted eight to seven, along party lines, to give Hayes every disputed vote and with them the presidency. Republicans promised to withdraw the remaining federal troops from the South. Digital History places the bargain at Washington's Wormley Hotel in February eighteen seventy-seven. Hayes took office, and the troops were withdrawn that year.

Why Reconstruction has more than one end date.

USH2 0033 Three Dates for One Ending

No single day ended Reconstruction. The Yawp says that by eighteen seventy-six federal opposition to the Klan had weakened as southern Democrats restored home rule, and the anchor says Republicans then governed three states alone: South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida. The disputed election and the bargain that settled it brought the formal end, and in eighteen seventy-seven the last federal troops left the southern statehouses they had protected. So a sentence that says Reconstruction ended in a single year has chosen one of these events without saying so. Ask what ended: federal enforcement, the last Republican state governments, or the military presence.

One entry to close the unit, and it is the question this part promised: whether Reconstruction failed.

Whether Reconstruction failed.

USH2 0034 Whether Reconstruction Failed

The course's two witnesses answer this with both halves at once. The Yawp says Reconstruction achieved Lincoln's paramount desire, the restoration of the Union, and ended legal slavery forever, but that African Americans remained second-class citizens and most of its promises went unmet. Digital History says real gains had been won even though full equality remained an unfulfilled promise: chattel slavery defeated, the gang system of labour ended, the first statewide public schools, the first Black colleges, and about twenty percent of Black southerners owning land by eighteen eighty. The same page speaks of failure and its long costs: racism more deeply embedded, a southern economy dependent on cotton, and one party holding power alone. Two misreadings sit on either side. One treats the Reconstruction governments as corrupt failures and Redemption as a return to order, when both witnesses describe Redemption as an overthrow by fraud and terror. The other treats failure as the whole story, and forgets that the amendments stayed in the Constitution, where later movements found them. The word failure fits what happened to the promise of equality. It does not fit the amendments, which outlasted the governments that ratified them. Hold both halves.

Look at what you can now do. You can explain what the Fifteenth Amendment left out. It forbids three grounds of denial only, and says nothing about literacy, taxes or property, which left the literacy test and the poll tax open. You can explain how the suffrage alliance split, between the vote for women at once and a gradual approach that put Black men first, and say that in Minor versus Happersett the Court held that the Constitution does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone. You can describe what the Reconstruction governments built, schools, railroads, hospitals and relief, and name the Redeemers and the Klan, who set out to undo them. You can name the three events that each ended Reconstruction: federal will fading by eighteen seventy-six, the disputed election settled, and the troops withdrawn in eighteen seventy-seven. And you can answer whether Reconstruction failed, holding both halves. The promise of equality failed, and the amendments outlasted the governments that ratified them.