World History: The American Civil War and Reconstruction

When we looked at the end of slavery we briefly discussed the American Civil War. The Civil War has been regularly referred to as the 'Second American Revolution' for the immense cultural and political changes that came with the war. We also have to discuss the end of the war - a particular part of American history called 'Reconstruction'. When we have discussed wars previously on World History we have looked very little about the extensive period after the war has ended. Reconstruction was just as important as the Civil War itself, and has been described by Eric Foner as the 'unfinished revolution'. Today we will look at the Civil War, abolition, slavery, and how Reconstruction was used to try and repair the nation as well as emancipate newly freed slaves.

Slavery in the United States

A plantation 

Slavery was the divisive issue in the USA until it was abolished in 1865. While slavery was coming to an end in the Caribbean and the newly independent Latin American states it was thriving in the American South. For some time after the American Revolution slavery had been defended on the basis that it was a 'necessary evil' until after 1793. The invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney allowed cotton to be grown on a widescale which saved the institution, and helped expand it. The plantation economy came to dominate the South - a small elite where only a quarter of white southerners owned slaves. With the rise of abolitionism discussions of slavery being a 'necessary evil' were replaced by statements that it was a 'positive good' - owners presented themselves as parents protecting their 'children' from economic poverty of the North or Africa, and that the Bible, particularly Leviticus, justified slavery. This patriarchal nature of slavery extended to the family - women belonged to their husband, divorce was rigidly prohibited, and husbands could legally beat their wives unless the diameter of the stick was larger than a thumb. Plantation owners at times resembled feudal lords in Europe - non-slave owning whites were economically dominated by the plantations, and even duelling continued long in the South after it was abolished in the North. Abolitionist media was strongly censored and outright burnt, slaveowners in Congress got a gag rule silencing abolitionist petitions. 

By the start of the Civil War there were around 4 million slaves - in Louisiana and Mississippi there were more slaves than free blacks and whites. Slavery was brutal and dehumanising; slaves were barred from owning property and arms, testifying in court, from the 1830s barred from learning to read and write, and regularly saw their families torn apart. Violence was very common despite the laws prohibiting the killing of slaves. The whip remains synonymous with slavery. Women regularly faced sexual violence - in 1855 a slave called Celia in Missouri killed her master as he tried to rape her, normally the court viewed it in terms of self-defence but as she was a slave she was not a 'woman' in the eyes of the law and sentenced to death. However, as she was pregnant her execution was postponed as not to deprive her owner's heirs of their property rights. Families regularly were torn apart - 70% of slaves could be expected to be sold during their life. Most slaves worked on plantations where they were more likely to face brutality through direct violence or the elements. Solomon Northup in 12 Years a Slave describes toiling on a cotton plantation:

In the latter part of August begins the cotton-picking season. At this time each slave is presented with a sack...When a new hand, one unaccustomed to the business, is sent for the first time into the field, he is whipped up smartly, and made for that day to pick as fast as he can possibly. At night it is weighed, so that his capability in cotton picking is known. He must bring in the same weight each night following. If it falls short, it is considered evidence that he has been laggard, and a greater or less number of lashes is the penalty. 

Slavery's oppression had its limits. Despite laws prohibiting it some owners taught slaves, especially house-slaves, how to read - by 1865 10% of slaves were literate. Frederick Douglass in 1845 described how his mistress started teaching him until her master prohibited it, and then in secret he got local children to help him learn. Meanwhile, some slaves were used as overseers and were allowed to use arms. Slaves also resisted, normally through means such as go-slows, breaking ploughs, filling their cotton sacks with rocks etc. Rebellion did happen - such as those led by Denmark Vesey (1822) and Nat Turner (1831) - but unlike their Caribbean counterparts in Haiti and Jamaica they were brutally crushed and resulted in harsh reprisals. Free blacks were massacred by whites following Nat Turner's rebellion as an example, and as he was a preacher sermons were rigidly restricted. Escapes could happen - the Underground Railroad organised by Harriet Tubman helped many slaves escape to the North or Canada. Due to the difficulties, especially following the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, runaway slaves were mostly fit young men. Most slave narratives, where we get the most information about the conditions of slavery, were written by those with unique circumstances - Henry 'Box' Brown mailed himself to Philadelphia and freedom, Frederick Douglass managed to educate himself, and Solomon Northup was a freeman from the North who was kidnapped. There are also issues of self-editing - Harriet Jacobs had to downplay sexual violence performed on her. Regardless, these accounts were integral to the abolitionist movement - Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman put pressure on Lincoln to fight slavery. In the 1930s the WPA got historians to interview former slaves and many were forced to change their accounts to accommodate white historians. When interviewed by African-Americans they were far more honest - one woman gave an entirely different account to the story she told a white historian.

Frederick Douglass

Slave culture also emerged. Through folk stories and songs which last to this day, and helped inspire later music genres, including the blues. With their families being torn apart (Northup describes vividly the trauma a woman named Eliza goes through as she is separated from her children), violence, and poor living conditions a culture developed to cope with it all. African folklore, music, and crafts merged with American counterparts, and Christianity offered solace to many. Abolitionist movements started becoming strong. Due to restrictions they were largely limited to the North where slavery had long since died out. Frederick Douglass became a icon in the abolitionist movement, and his writings became widespread. Many of the later proponents of women's suffrage, including Susan B. Anthony, made their mark by first engaging in abolition.

The Road to Disunion

Where the origins of the Civil War lie has been hotly debated; William Freehling, whom I took the term 'The Road to Disunion' from, placed the origins all the way back to 1776. The American Revolution had left the question of slavery unanswered and the emphasis on a union of states meant that many in the US identified far more with their state than the nation. Furthermore, everything about the US was geared to a compromise between slavery and non-slavery - Washington D.C. is located where it is due to this compromise. In 1819 Missouri started drafting a constitution to join the Union, however, there were debates about whether it should be a slave-state - in 1820 Senator Jesse Thomas of Illinois proposed that Missouri could be a slave-state if Maine, which had long abolished slavery, was also accepted into the Union, and remaining territory below Missouri's southern boundary would allow slavery. The 'Missouri Compromise' would become a focal point in debates over slavery. Over the next thirty years the North and South would become further polarised. While the South remained rural to preserve slavery the North became industrialised and urban - New York's population rose from 33,131 people in 1800 to 813,669 in 1860. Things again came to ahead in 1846 with the Mexican-American War - seen as one of the major events in causing the Civil War. Abolitionists, including the young Abraham Lincoln, criticised the war for supporting slavery and the annexation of half of Mexico in 1848 raised the issue of slavery once more. Four positions emerged about the newly annexed territory: the first, 'Free Soil' suggested by David Wilmot that slavery should be banned in the West; the second suggested by President James Polk, was extending the Missouri Compromise to the Pacific; the third, was suggested by John Calhoun who argued that slaveowners should be able to take slaves to federal land if they wished; and finally, was the idea of 'Popular Sovereignty' which suggested allowing people in the territories decide. People had hoped that they would have a long time to reach a compromise - the discovery of gold in California in 1848 caused 500,000 to move there in three years. The Compromise of 1850 tried to sort it out: the Texan borders were fixed and admitted as a slave state; California was admitted as a free state; Utah and New Mexico Territories could decide whether to become slave or free; the slave trade, but not slavery, was abolished in D.C.; and a new stringent Fugitive Slave Act was passed bringing the issue of slavery to the doors of Northerners.

A depiction of Harpers Ferry

The Compromise didn't help. Abolitionists and pro-slavers became more intense. In 1852 Uncle Tom's Cabin became widely read in the North as the pro-slavery Democrats came to power in the election of that year when the opposing Whigs fell apart. This brings us to Sectional Crisis of the 1850s. In 1854 Democrats Stephen Douglas proposed the building of a Trans-Continental Railroad through unorganised federal territory, however, the Missouri Compromise meant that Douglas couldn't make it a slave state. Douglas ensured that the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed splitting the territory in two where 'popular will' would determine whether it would be a free or slave state. To try and tip the balance pro and anti-slavery settlers moved to Kansas causing 'Bleeding Kansas'. A sporadic civil war, where Native Americans lost the most as they had their lands taken from them, broke out. However, the passing of the act upset Northern Democrats and some joined with the Whigs to form a new party - originally called the Anti-Nebraska Party it soon became known as the Republican Party. This was a party made of abolitionists, disaffected Democrats, and former Whigs, including Lincoln. The new party soon was caught in the intense politics of the 1850s. Bleeding Kansas even saw violence in Congress: Republican Charles Sumner in 1856 blamed the South for Kansas so was beaten with a cane by South Carolina Senator Preston Brooks. Brooks was dismissed, but shortly after re-elected, and his supporters wore necklaces of broken canes to show their support for him. Meanwhile, militant abolitionist John Brown became enraged by Brooks so continued intense fighting in Kansas. In October 1859, aided by information supplied by Harriet Tubman but opposed by Frederick Douglass, Brown and 21 other men raided Harpers Ferry, Virginia with the intention of seizing the armoury in order to aid an uprising to free the southern slaves. His raid failed and his execution made him a martyr for abolition. The 1857 Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford further enraged abolitionists when the court declared that black Americans were not citizens.

The bombardment of Fort Sumter

The straw that broke the camel's back would be the 1860 election. The previous election had heavily divided the US - especially on North-South lines - and the serving president, James Buchanan, had done little to solve the issue. In 1860 the Republicans had chose Lincoln to be their presidential candidate, he seemed the perfect choice: an ardent supporter of the Union, was from Illinois so could carry 'doubtful states', publicly opposed the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party so could attract immigrant votes, and had expressed abolitionist sentiments in the past. However, he was feared in the South despite his moderation. Lincoln openly called for the halt in the expansion of slavery - not its abolition - but he was seen as paving the way for an abolitionist president. Meanwhile, the Democrats became split on regional lines, so during the election Lincoln took both the North and 40% of the popular vote. This caused South Carolina in December 1860 to secede, the next month six other states followed, and Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis was elected president of the newly declared Confederate States of America (CSA). At his inaugural address Lincoln attempted accommodation stating that 'I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery' but also warned that 'In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war'. As this was happening, since January 1861, CSA forces had surrounded Fort Sumter which was a fort, held by 15 Union soldiers, in Charleston Harbor. Lincoln decided to make the CSA fire first - he sent a ship with food to the fort causing the CSA to fire on Sumter. The major surrendered, more states seceded, but the South had began fighting.

Lincoln

I briefly want to discuss Abraham Lincoln and his involvement. Lincoln came from a humble farming family in Kentucky, protested the war with Mexico, and had a successful career as a lawyer in Illinois where he also got into politics. Depending on what sources you read you can get the idea that he was an abolitionist, in others that he was firmly against abolition. In the 1858 debate with Senator Stephen Douglas he declared that Douglas 'is not in favor of making any difference between slavery and liberty' while in his inaugural address vowed not to 'interfere with the institution of slavery'. Albeit, in the Douglas debate he firmly stated that while an African-American 'is as much entitled to these [rights] as the white man...he is not my equal in many respects'. Lincoln can be described as a 'quasi-abolitionist'. He re-entered politics thanks to Kansas-Nebraska stating that he 'hated slavery as much as any abolitionist' but the key phrase is 'as any abolitionist' - although detesting slavery he was willing to compromise. He saw slavery's expansion as snuffing out American liberty but could accept its continuation. During the Civil War he firmly became an abolitionist thanks to the influence of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, and through political pragmatism. Hence why a year after he famously wrote that if he could preserve the Union without freeing a slave he would, he would issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln can, therefore, be described as a quasi or moderate abolitionist.

The War

The First Battle of Bull Run

My speciality is political and socio-cultural history so I am not confident with military history. As a result, I won't go into too much detail about the fighting itself. At first everyone believed that it was meant to be a short war - the Battle of Bull Run/Manassas of 21 July 1861 was originally envisioned as the only battle that would take place. Instead it turned into a bloody mess between two untrained armies and the war would last until 1865 claiming somewhere between 620,000 and 750,000 lives. At first it was unclear who would win. The North had greater manpower, resources, and industry whereas the South had the better generals and cotton. Cotton was very important in the global textile economy and the CSA had hoped to use that to entice Europe into aiding them. Napoleonic France did consider it - Louis Napoleon wanted a free hand in Latin America which a unified US prevented - and these plans were only abandoned when Britain refused to intervene. Secession had created intense patriotism - in the North there was the obvious desire to preserve the Union, but why did Southern whites join? After all, there were Unionists in the South - West Virginia exists today as it chose to secede from Virginia - and not all slaves states joined the CSA. Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware all also chose to remain in the Union. Joseph Glatthaar has explained why average whites joined - $11 a month was a good wage for them, pride in the South, a hope that meeting wealthier soldiers could create post-war contacts, white supremacy (you're not the bottom of society when there are slaves), and a desire that they too could own slaves in the future. 

Aftermath of Antietam

The Union relied on Winfield Scott's 'Anaconda Plan' - Scott was the highest ranking general who planned to encircle and squeeze the Confederates. The navy would blockade the ports, the army would occupy the Mississippi river, and then, as the CSA was losing resources, the cities would be easy pickings. Meanwhile, the CSA, relying on General Robert E. Lee, planned a 'Offensive-Defensive' strategy - they would be primarily defensive and would make a few incursions into Union territory. At first, the CSA saw quick success. Using railways they managed to resupply their army at Bull Run and the disastrous Peninsula Campaign of March-July 1862 allowed Lee to route the flotilla army. The Union had hoped to land troops south of the capital of Richmond and march north but they were intercepted by Lee. In September Lee pushed into the Union hoping that a decisive victory would encourage Europe to recognise the CSA - at Antietam/Sharpsburg the Union won a narrow victory. The decisive turning point, however, were the battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July 1863. As Lee pushed into Pennsylvania Union General Ulysses Grant was taking city after city along the Mississippi. Gettysburg was one of the most destructive battles - three days of fighting claiming 51,112 casualties and the destruction of Lee's army. Simultaneously, Grant lay siege to the last fort, Vicksburg, and during a lengthy siege, aided by naval bombardment, the fort fell. It was a disaster for the CSA - the Army of Potomac had smashed Lee's forces as Grant captured 30,000 soldiers. The Union got a morale boost thanks to this. Grant was put in charge of the eastern forces as William Tecumseh Sherman was placed in the west. Between the two the CSA began collapsing, even after costly defeats - Grant saw 2,000 casualties in 20 minutes when he attacked Cold Harbor in Virginia. In 1864 there were two campaigns: Overland under Lee and the 'March to the Sea' under Sherman. Grant aimed to pick off Lee's forces in Virginia - at the end of six weeks of fighting Grant lost 60,000 to Lee's 30,000 in intense trench warfare. It aimed to give Lee no breathing room and it succeeded, albeit it earned Grant the title of 'butcher of men'. Sherman aimed to move from Chattanooga to Atlanta destroying local infrastructure in order to break the CSA's economy. It succeeded and in September 1864 Atlanta fell. It would take until April 1865 though for the war to finally end when Lee surrendered at Appomattox.

A Civil War submarine

The Civil War saw incredible changes to warfare. Like the Crimean War it brought the brutal reality of war to the homefront - injured men from trench warfare returned home missing limbs and photos from Antietam became widely distributed. When abolition became a firm part of the North;s aims photos of the freed slave Gordon was also distributed. Telegraphs and railways allowed the quick distribution of supplies and orders - something not seen in many wars before. Trains were perhaps the most important arsenal in fighting the war - troops could quickly be transported across the nation and Atlanta was Sherman's desire as it was the centre of the CSA's railway. Hot air balloons were first used to spy on Confederate lines, and the Confederates tried to use the first submarines to break the Union's naval blockade. Drafting was used to actually get fighters when volunteers started growing thin - the 1863 New York draft riot soon developed into a race riot when whites started attacking African-Americans whom they blamed for the war. In the South drafting exposed divisions in society leading to what African-American historian Charles Wesley in 1937 to describe as 'Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight'. Those who owned 20 slaves, later 15, were exempt from the draft which meant poor whites were more likely to be drafted.

African-Americans and Abolition

The photo of Gordon

The Civil War was caused by slavery and ended slavery. The Confederates, and many Unionists, portrayed the war as a fight to end or preserve the Union, but throughout the war it firmly became linked to slavery. Immediately, General Benjamin Butler declared any captured slaves 'contraband of war', they were not free but not slaves either, despite official protests who feared the border states seceding. It soon became a successful policy, aided by the immense numbers of fleeing slaves, and by the end of 1861 became official policy, and led to the formalisation of the Confiscation Acts. African-Americans were very influential in driving policy - the Confiscation Acts were only passed due to the numbers of slaves escaping. Meanwhile, prominent individuals were influencing Lincoln - he changed his plans to send emancipated slaves to Liberia to what would become the Reconstruction policy. After something would happen which would be known as the 'Second Revolution', writing in London Karl Marx wrote that 'Up to now we have witnessed only the first act of the Civil War - the constitutional waging of war. The second act, the revolutionary waging of war, is at hand'. The Battle of Antietam gave Lincoln the opportunity the begin emancipation and issued the Emancipation Proclamation. From January 1 1863 3 million states in unoccupied Confederate land 'henceforth shall be freed'. In reality, very few slaves were directly freed by the Proclamation but it transformed the Union army into a liberating one - as it marched south it would free the slaves. The capture of Atlanta allowed Lincoln to be re-elected allowing the Thirteenth Amendment which abolished slavery. For this reason John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln in 1865.

The 54th Massachusetts regiment

African-Americans fought in the war as well. Douglass had been lobbying Lincoln to allow African-Americans to serve but he was fearful that it would anger the border states. Instead, originally they were used as scouts and spies, (including Harriet Tubman), as well as cooks, cleaners, and builders for fortifications. Lincoln eventually relented, especially as volunteers began becoming thin on the ground, and segregated units led by white officers were formed. In a white supremacist nation they were paid less, given worse assignments, and blamed in draft riots, but when they fought they dispelled the notion of black inferiority created by centuries of dehumanisation. The photo of Gordon became a rallying cry so by 1865 2,000 black soldiers had enlisted. The Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts regiment became one of the most famous African-American regiments, and Lincoln purposefully chose to be surrounded by black guards when he visited Richmond when the Confederates surrendered. However, the Confederates were very unwilling to view African-Americans as legitimate soldiers. Acting as an existential threat to southern slavery the white officer was executed and the soldiers were either taken as slaves or executed. A famous example was the 1864 Fort Pillow Massacre. Future founder of the Ku Klux Klan, Nathan Bedford Forrest, butchered the African-American garrison who had surrendered. 

Women and the War

Women also played a role in the war. As we have seen Harriet Tubman was integral in influencing Lincoln and aiding the Union army. For northern women new opportunities were offered by the war. Setting the stage for the First World War women became nurses and founded the American branch of the Red Cross. Grassroots relief campaigns emerged as part of the newly formed United States Sanitary Commission which gathered money, medical supplies, clothing, and books for both soldiers and freedmen. Women were integral in forming the Sanitary Fairs as New York City's three-week long fair of 1864 raised over $1 million. Clara Barton went out of her way to help injured soldiers personally nursing wounded soldiers and helped organise supply lines. As the war progressed women increasingly engaged in nursing, factory work, and white-collar jobs, however, sexism meant that their actions were ignored or seen as an extension of their 'natural' care-giving role. As suffrage movements placed emphasis on supporting the war this meant that they could not capitalise on their efforts. However, this discrimination meant that feminists emerged after the war to fight for women''s rights - Mary Livermore in Chicago became a noted example. Confederate women served similar roles where Rose Greenhow even ran an espionage service in D.C.! However, only wealthy women managed to take advantage of the opportunities offered by their male relatives going to war. Small farms collapsed with the absence of extra hands, unable to compete with plantations, so flooded Confederate authorities with letters demanding assistance. Independence seemed to be unfeasible in women's letters and led a bread riot in 1863. It was so devastating for the Confederacy that Jefferson Davis literally threw money at women rioting to get them to go away!

Why the North won

Atlanta's devastated railroad

Advantages the South had over the North soon vanished by 1863. The rise of Sherman and Grant gave the North effective generals - especially after one of the South's best generals, Stonewall Jackson, was accidentally shot and killed by his own side. The urbanised North with greater industrial power, production, telegraphs, and railways gave the North a far greater strategic advantage compared to the Confederacy. Sherman's destruction of infrastructure decimated the South's already feeble industry. Slave economies hampered the South, especially following the Emancipation Proclamation. Europe had firmly turned against slavery so defeat at Antietam and Gettysburg, as well as Lincoln proclaiming emancipation, alienated Europe from intervening - Lincoln was proudly declared the 'Great Emancipator', statues of him were built in Edinburgh, and he was made a citizen of San Marino. The CSA had banked on Britain, in particular, supporting them due to cotton; instead Britain increased cotton farming in India, to the expense of Indians, and began buying from Egypt. The Emancipation Proclamation encouraged slaves to flee which deprived the Confederacy of their labour. Hyperinflation hit. Not only was the CSA attempting to fight a war but also trying to create a new nation, they had printed new textbooks to be taught in schools and issued new currencies. To fund this they took out huge loans and printed more money. In 1862 bacon cost 33 cents, it rose to $7.50 in 1865. Wages for soldiers started shrinking leading to desertions from poorer whites, and 1 million refugees were created thanks to the fighting. Through these reasons the North won the war.

Presidential vs. Radical Reconstruction

It is one thing to win a war but another thing to win a peace. As shown by Eric Foner Reconstruction did not begin with the official surrender - Lincoln had planned, and started implementing, Reconstruction as early as 1863. It had two aims: re-admit the seceded states and emancipate the former slaves. However, there were divisions about how this should be done. Of course, Lincoln by this time had pushed for emancipation with the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment, but there were limits. Lincoln drafted the 10% - if 10% of voters pledged loyalty to the Union the state could be readmitted - whereas 'Radical Republicans' in Congress wanted it to be at 50%. In the end, Lincoln vetoed Radical Republican requests. In March 1865 the Freedman's Bureau was formed to help refugees and help freed slaves in their transition from slaves to freedom. We will never know how Lincoln would have overseen post-war Reconstruction thanks to Booth's bullet. His vice-president, Andrew Johnson, was a Democrat, an anti-abolitionist, and only chosen to be Lincoln's vice-president as a way to reconcile the South. Johnson clashed with Radical Republicans, especially Thaddeus Stevens who was a firm abolitionist. Again, if Stevens had not died of old age in 1868 Reconstruction could have been a greater success. In contrast to Republican wishes Johnson reduced Union military presence from 152,000 to 38,000 within a year, and pardoned 7,000 Confederate leaders. He further tried to veto the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments - legal equality before the law and the right to vote based on race - and was almost impeached. 

A cartoon of the Freedmen's Bureau

In 1868 Ulysses Grant was elected president and was more than willing to make Reconstruction work. Oliver Howard was given greater power over the Freedmen's Bureau. The Bureau aimed to educated newly freed slaves and divide former plantation land in order to create independent black farmers. 'Forty acres and a Mule' was promised for newly freed slaves, but education saw successes. By 1870 over 1,000 new schools for African-Americans were formed. Grant was also keen to break opposition to Reconstruction, and groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) began diminishing as Reconstruction went along. As we'll see, initial successes turned to ash.

Failures

It is undeniable that Reconstruction failed - an 'unfinished revolution' in the words of Eric Foner. Despite opposition from Radical Republicans the white planter class soon took control of the South again, and it became worse when key Radicals, like Stevens, were sidelined, retired or died. As early as 1867 the medical systems of the Freedmen's Bureau was dismantled and by 1872 the project was abandoned entirely. Whites soon moved to ensured that newly emancipated slaves lost access to political and economic freedom. Whites from the North were described as 'carpetbaggers' as their white allies in the South were called 'scalawags' - both were subjected to violence. African-Americans and their allies were regularly terrorised by white supremacist militias, most notably the KKK, who were controlled by planters. Unlike later versions the Reconstruction era KKK were less organised and hierarchical; many of the symbolism and actions we associate with the KKK comes from the movie Birth of a Nation. Lynchings, arson attacks, and race riots became endemic in the South. White elites also sought to disenfranchise freed slaves. In 1869 a former slave in Tennessee said that 'I do not see none of my color in office...When a white man kills a black man by having black men on the jury bench we then could defend our rights before the law'. However, the 'Black Codes', the precursors to Jim Crow, stripped free slaves of their rights. In 1870 an Alabama court made a beaten black woman raise $16.45 to take her attackers to court believing she would be unable to; when she did the case was dropped. 1872 saw Kentucky blacks were barred from testifying in court, and 1870 saw the implementation of a poll tax in Tennessee to disenfranchise blacks. 'Grandfather laws' were passed - meaning you could vote only if your grandfather could - and strict literacy tests for eligibility to vote were all implemented. Vagrancy laws forced freedmen back onto their old plantations and sharecropping indebted freedmen permanently tying them to the land. 1877 Reconstruction came to an end. The Republicans lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College - to get the presidency they made a deal with the Democrats. They would build a railroad and abandon Reconstruction for the presidency. 

Black Reconstruction

Hiram Revels

William Du Bois has highlighted how Reconstruction was not an entire failure when looking at it from the bottom up. This view later influenced Eric Foner. For newly freed slaves it offered a brief 'time in the sun'. The passing of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, as well as the 1866 Civil Rights Act, affirming all citizens are equal before the law, allowed African-Americans assert their own civil rights. Furthermore, before the implementation of the Black Codes there were African-American politicians who rose to prominence in the South. Jonathan Gibbs became Secretary of State for Florida, Hiram Revels became Senator for Mississippi, Jefferson Long became Representative for Georgia, and Josiah T. Wells became Representative for Florida to name a few. Even after through disenfranchisement and political intrigue they lost their positions and the vote what began under Reconstruction continued. Black faith and education managed to exist despite white opposition forming a separate and thriving black community. Thanks to this, Eric Foner has argued that the Civil Rights Movement became the 'Second Reconstruction'. Emancipation in the 1860s and 1870s allowed the formation of new communities which could resist oppression, and created the conditions for the generation of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks to express their rights.

Conclusion

The statue of General Lee, the Confederate army flag, and Nazi imagery at Charlottesville in 2017

It is easy to see why Reconstruction is seen as a 'second' or 'unfinished' revolution. Through war Americans started identifying themselves with their own country instead of their own state. It further destroyed the slave system and gave freedom to 4 million people. Reconstruction showed an attempt to create a new society, and the failure to do so set the stage for the continued oppression of African-Americans. Meanwhile, memories of the Civil War have been insidiously been shifted for political purposes. The 'Lost Cause Myth' has shaped discussions of the Civil War to be about Southern emancipation in the face of Northern aggression, you may see it referred to as the 'War of Northern Aggression', where slavery is downplayed. Many of the statues, or places named after, Confederate leaders were erected around the time when African-American civil rights movements were growing, 1900-20 and 1950-60. Recently the alt-right has used the Civil War to push white supremacy - as seen with the 2017 Charlottesville Protest which saw the alt-right murder a protester. This revising of history has become ingrained in American culture - Gone with the Wind romanticises the Confederacy while the play The Clansman, and its film adaption Birth of a Nation, led to the return of the KKK in 1915 as it portrays the KKK as heroes. Although the parties have shifted Republicans today still claim to be the 'Party of Lincoln' - ironic considering Lincoln saw one of the greatest state interventions in US history - and until the 1930s African-Americans overwhelmingly voted Republican. What is important to remember is the importance of African-Americans in the Civil War and Reconstruction - they ensured that slavery was destroyed and that their rights could survive long after the government lost interest.

The sources I have used are as follows:

-David Herbert Donald, Jean Harvey Baker, and Michael F. Holt, Civil War and Reconstruction, (New York, NY: 2001)

-Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, Updated Edition, (New York, NY: 2014)

-Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty! An American History, Fourth Edition, (New York, NY: 2014)

-Solomon Northup, 12 Years a Slave, (London: 1853/2014)

-Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, (Boston, MA: 1861)

-Frederick Douglass, Narrative  of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, (Boston, MA: 1845)

-William Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, (New York, NY: 1935)

-Gore Vidal, (ed.), Selected Speeches and Writings by Abraham Lincoln, (New York, NY: 1992)

-Joseph Glatthaar, 'Everyman's War: A Rich and Poor Man's Fight in Lee's Army', Civil War History, 54:3, (2008), 229-246

-William Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Volume 1, Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854, (Oxford: 1990)

Thank you for reading. Next time we will be looking at the British Empire in India. For other World History posts we have a list here. For future blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.