5. CIVIL WAR ... AND RECOVERY

AMERICA RECOVERS (1865-1880)

With Lincoln's assassination, Vice President Andrew Johnson stepped into the presidency – hoping to pursue Lincoln's policy of Northern-Southern reconciliation.  But he lacked the political leverage that Lincoln commanded – and found himself intensely opposed by the Northern Radicals – who were in no mood for reconciliation.  Instead, they wanted the South to pay deeply for its rebellion – and they were intensely focused on demolishing entirely the South's traditional political culture. 

Andrew Johnson – US President 1865-1869

Johnson found himself vetoing bills coming out of a Congress dominated by the Radicals Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner – only to have his veto overturned by a 2/3 vote in Congress.   

Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner
National Archives

Then he vetoed the Congressional bill sponsoring the 14th Amendment affirming the legal equality of all Americans – except for Indians and Confederate rebels – forbidding the latter even from holding office anywhere in the U.S. government – or getting compensation for any loss of property (slaves) or even pensions for service in the Confederate army or government.

Johnson's veto of this last bill enraged the Radicals so deeply that Johnson lost all political footing with Congress.  And in early 1868 the Radicals voted for his impeachment in the House of Representatives.^[1]  

Ultimately, he avoided conviction when the Radicals came up one vote short of the 2/3 vote required for full conviction by the Senate.  But from this point on, for the remaining two years in office, Johnson was totally powerless in the face of a Radical Congress.

Slaves were already being freed as the Union armies moved through the South – although there really was no place for them to go (except follow the Union armies).  With the end of the war the economic picture of the South was so bad that not only did newly freed Blacks have no real opportunity to get themselves established in the New South – but also neither did the Confederate soldiers who had to return to devastated farms – not to mention demolished plantations and pillaged towns and cities. 

At first the South was simply governed by Union army officers – and Northern administrators sent South by the Freedmen's Bureau, individuals who arrived with their luggage (carpet bags) not only to take over local government but also to set up and run schools for the newly freed Blacks.  This helped the Blacks (somewhat) adjust to their new lives of freedom, but intensified the hatred of poor Whites towards Blacks – as well as towards the Northern "carpetbaggers" whom they detested intensely. 

Blacks voting for the first time

A Freedmen's Bureau school for former slaves

Soon local groups such as the Ku Klux Klan began to form up – to defend the traditional South against those attempting to overturn ("reconstruct") Southern culture.  Things got very ugly fast.

Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest forms the
Ku Klux Klan serving as its first Grand Wizard (1867)

Visit of the Ku-Klux – Frank Bellew (1872)

In the 1868 elections the Republicans were quick to nominate war-hero Grant – whereas the Democrats dropped Johnson (the Republican Lincoln had selected the Democrat Johnson as part of his national coalition) and chose New York Governor Horatio Seymour – holding racist views that were not that far away from the views of many Northerners, concerned that Blacks were really not ready for full freedom.  The election was actually quite close – and only the ability of Blacks to vote gave Grant enough votes to win the election.

The closeness of the election stirred the Republican majority in Congress to come up with the 15th Amendment making it illegal for a state to deprive a citizen of the right to vote because of "race, color or previous condition of servitude."  As a condition for readmission to the Union, the last three holdout Southern states – Texas, Mississippi and Virginia – had to approve both the 14th and 15th Amendments – thus adding the 15th Amendment to the Constitution in 1870.

Blacks marching in support of the 15th Amendment
(passed in Congress in February of 1869 – ratified a year later)

Scandal.   But America was actually ready to move on to new things – or actually old things: making money.  Scandals began to erupt in high places because of a new lax attitude concerning society's moral requirements – one of them being the 1869 James Fisk / Jay Gould gold scandal – when these two Wall Street tycoons attempted to acquire the majority of the nation's gold supply, make it scarce and thus more expensive, and consequently reap an enormous reward on the basis of this little ploy.  

Jay Gould / James Fisk

Grant actually broke the Fisk- Gould project by releasing Federal holdings of gold – driving prices back down again.

Grant was actually not to blame for any of this – but there seemed to be no control over this atmosphere of cynical corruption hanging over the nation.  Nonetheless people looked to the President for being in charge of the nation – and blamed him for letting this event occur in the first place.

In 1872 another scandal broke out when it was discovered that Federal money authorized to complete the Union Pacific / Central Pacific railroad across the West to San Francisco had been manipulated in a way to enrich a bank, Crédit Mobilier (but no relationship with the French bank of the same name), set up by Union Pacific director Thomas Durant.  He was enriching himself and his cronies to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, until the operation was brought to light by the New York newspaper Sun, and the scandal caused railroad and bank stock to suddenly drop away.  Once again Grant was blamed for having let things get so far out of hand – though he had no direct role in any of it.

Another scandal typical of the times arose out of the operations of the New York political machine, Tammany Hall, controlled by William "Boss" Tweed.  Tweed not only controlled the city's immense patronage system but also much of that of the New York state itself, using his position to help Fisk and Gould in another of their schemes, the takeover of the Erie Railroad from another adventuresome individual, Cornelius Vanderbilt (who would develop his own vast economic empire) – through the issuing of fake stock. This would cost the New York taxpayers tens of millions of dollars (some say today as much as 100 million even in 1870 dollars) and made a number of Tammany Hall figures extremely rich.

Nonetheless, Grant survived the scandals – and was reelected to a second term as president in 1872 – just before the huge 1873 financial panic.

The 1873 Panic.   Certainly Grant thought he was doing the nation a great favor when he tightened up on the nation's economy by "strengthening" the dollar – by removing readily available silver as a metallic standard for the dollar, leaving only scarce gold as the dollar's basis.  This was timed with the collapse of a major brokerage firm, heavily involved in railroad stocks, which in turn brought down the Wall Street Stock Market.  Then the economy simply folded in on itself as frightened customers rushed to their banks to withdraw their deposits before the crisis spread to their banks, actually precipitating just exactly that crisis itself.  Bank after bank thus failed.

Grant refused to change his gold-only policy, believing the crisis to be only a temporary fluctuation in the economy (which certainly happens from time to time).  But with very low liquidity caused by the gold-only strategy, investors were unable to get businesses back up and running – and the 1873 Panic lasted a full five years.  And when the 1874 Congressional elections rolled around, the Republicans were driven from power.

With Democrats coming to power in Congress, the impetus for Southern Reconstruction slowed down greatly – certainly in the South itself where Democrats took control and did what they could to get things back to "normal."  Then when the next Presidential elections rolled around (1876), the Republicans distanced themselves from Grant and chose Civil-War hero and post-war Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes as their candidate.  The Democrats chose the New York Governor, Samuel J. Tilden, who had become well known because of his crushing of the Tweed machine.  The country thus had two good choices going into the election. 

Rutherford B. Hayes                  Samuel J. Tilden

The vote was so close between these two men that the election had to go to Congress for a final decision.  On the basis of a number of compromise promises, Hayes was finally selected. 

To gain the presidency in 1876, Hayes agreed to recall all
Federal "Carpetbaggers"  from the South. This ended
North-directed Reconstruction. 
The South was on its own now. 

The Radicals' program of Reconstruction had depended entirely on the ability of a militarily victorious North to impose its Radical policies on the South through continuing military occupation.  This policy of imposed "peace and social justice" presumably justified morally the North's program (in the eyes of the Radicals themselves anyway) – but did nothing to lay a moral basis for a post-war South that would of its own be willing to support such imposed changes.  Thus when a huge increase in Indian wars in the American West forced U.S. troops to be pulled out of the South and be sent to the West, the Radical program collapsed completely in the South.  What took its place was a deep bitterness reigning in the South, White against Black, Southerner against Northerner – a bitterness that would take a full century to finally get past.

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Go on to the next section: 

The Battle for the West Resumes

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  Miles H. Hodges