Black Reconstruction Essays - Reconstruction Era, United States

Black Reconstruction The true significance of slavery in the United States to the whole social development of America, lay in the ultimate relation of slaves to democracy. What were to be the limits of democratic control in the United State? If all labor, black as well as white, became free, were given schools and the right to vote, what control could or should be set to the power and action of these laborers? Was the rule of the mass of Americans to be unlimited, and the right to rule extended to all men, regardless of race and color, or if not, what power of dictatorship would rule, and how would property and privilege be protected? (184) This was the dilemma facing the Northern bourgeoisie in the face of the audacious lawlessness of the South. Northern industrialists had their own reasons for pursuing civil war with the South. They looked upon free Negro labor as a source of profit, and considered freedom, that is, a legal doing away with individual physical control all, that the Negroes or their friends could ask. They did not want for Negro labor any special protection or political power or capital, any more than they wanted this for Irish, German, or Scandinavian labor in the North . When, however, the South went beyond reason and truculently demanded not simply its old political power but increased political power based on disfranchised Negroes, which it openly threatened to use for the revision of the tariff, for the repudiation of the national debt, for disestablishing the national banks, and for putting the new corporate form of industry under strict state regulation and rule, Northern industry was frightened and began to move towards the stand which abolition-democracy had already taken; namely, temporary dictatorship, endowed Negro education, legal civil rights, and eventually even votes for Negroes to offset the Southern threat of economic attack. In the Republican Party, both Radical Republicans as well as pragmatic industrialists struggled for control of the party. Eric Foner describes the Radical Republicans as " a self-conscious political generation with a common set of experiences and commitments, a grass-roots constituency, a moral sensibility, and a program for Reconstruction. Radicals had long insisted that slavery and the rights of Blacks must take precedence over other political questions. " 8 These radicals, or in Du Bois ' s words the " abolition-democracy, " took the reins of the Reconstruction process and dashed to the left. Stevens and Sumner led the charge. The pursuit of a Radical Reconstruction reflected these priorities. Congress quickly took three actions to protect the rights of Southern Blacks. Drafting the Fourteenth Amendment as a way to guarantee the r ights of freedmen as citizens. This was necessary because the 1857 Dred Scott decision ruled that Blacks were " property not people. " Moreover, without the rights of citizenship there would be no way for Blacks to protect themselves from the excesses of racist state governments. Congress moved to extend the life of the Freedmen ' s Bureau. The Freedmen ' s Bureau was an agency in the South meant to advocate for newly freed slaves in the transition from slavery to freedom. The Bureau was charged with establishing schools, dividing the confiscated land of Confederate planters, supervising contracts between Black freedmen and their landlords, and mediating other disputes. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Under its provisions ex-slaves became citizens who enjoyed " the full and equal benefits of all laws. " The bill gave federal courts the power to intervene when state and local governments denied full protection of the law. Andrew Johnson, of course, vetoed all of this legislation. But his actions only angered moderate Republicans and pushed them toward the Radicals, giving the Radicals the two-thirds majority needed to overturn a presidential veto. Johnson became more vitriolic in his race hatred and openly campaigned with Democrats to undo all civil rights legislation. This only led to his intense political isolation, resulting in a landslide electoral victory for Republicans in the fall of 1866 helping to usher in Radical Reconstruction. The radicals tied Black suffrage to Reconstruction. Before Congress, Sumner persuasively argued, Without their votes we cannot establish stable governments in