Write a Reflection Paper on the reading 'The tragic legend of reconstruction'

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THE TRAGIC LEGEND OF RECONSTRUCTION 1877 IN KENNETH M. STAMPP secrets of the spell the Civil War has cast: it involved high-minded Americans on both sides, KENNETH M. STAMPP is professor of American history at the and there was glory enough to go around. This, University of California (Berkeley) and a specialist on the Civil in fact, is the supreme synthesis of Civil War War. He is the author of among other books. The Peculiar historiography and the great balm that has healed Institution (1956) and And the War Came (1950). The present the nation's wounds: Yankees and Confederates piece is a chapter of his book. The Era of Reconstruction 1865- alike fought bravely for what they believed to be just causes. There were few villains in the drama. But when the historian reaches the year 1865, he must take leave of the war and turn to another epoch. reconstruction, when the task was, N much serious history, and in a durable in Lincoln's words, "to bind up the nation's popular legend, two American epochs- wounds" and "to do all which may achieve and the Civil War and the reconstruction that fol- cherish a just and lasting peace." How, until lowed-bear an odd relationship to one another. recently, reconstruction was portrayed in both The Civil War, though admittedly a tragedy, is history and legend, how sharply it was believed nevertheless often described as a glorious time of to contrast with the years of the Civil War, is gallantry, noble self-sacrifice, and high idealism. evident in the terms that were used to identify it. Even historians who have considered the war "need- Various historians have called this phase of less" and have condemned the politicians of the American history "The Tragic Era," "The 1850's for blundering into it, once they passed Dreadful Decade," "The Age of Hate," and "The the firing on Fort Sumter, have usually written Blackout of Honest Government." Reconstruc- with reverence about Civil War heroes-the tion represented the ultimate shame of the martyred Lincoln, the Christlike Lee, the intrepid American people-as one historian phrased it, Stonewall Jackson, and many others in this galaxy "the nadir of national disgrace." It was the epoch of demigods. that most Americans wanted to forget. Few, of course, are so innocent as not to know Claude Bowers, who divided his time between that the Civil War had its seamy side. One can politics and history, has been the chief dissemina- hardly ignore the political opportunism, the graft tor of the traditional picture of reconstruction, and profiteering in the filling of war contracts, the military blundering and needless loss of lives, for his book. The Tragic Era, published in 1929, has attracted more readers than any other dealing the horrors of army hospitals and prison camps, with this period. For Bowers reconstruction was a and the ugly depths as well as the nobility of time of almost unrelieved sordidness in public human nature that the war exposed with a fine and private life; whole regiments of villains impartiality. These things cannot be ignored, but they can be, and frequently are, dismissed as march through his pages: the corrupt politicians who dominated the administration of Ulysses S. something alien to the essence of the war years. What was real and fundamental was the idealism Grant; the crafty, scheming Northern carpet- and the nobility of the two contending forces: the baggers who invaded the South after the war for Yankees struggling to save the Union, dying to political and economic plunder; the degraded make men free; the Confederates fighting for and depraved Southern scalawags who betrayed great constitutional principles, defending their their own people and collaborated with the enemy; and the ignorant, barbarous, sensual homes from invasion. Here, indeed, is one of the Negroes who threatened to Africanize the South 234 From Commentary, June 1965. Onginally from THE ERA OF RECONSTRUCTION .oce overy tions patriots. 39. The Tragic Legend of Reconstruction become a kind of 'racket.' " As late as 1947, and destroy its Caucasian civilization, Professor E. Merton Coulter, of the University of Most of Bowers's key generalizations can be found in his preface. The years of reconstruction, Georgia, reminded critics of the traditional he wrote, "were years of revolutionary turmoil, interpretation that no "amount of revision can write away the grievous mistakes made in this with the elemental passions predominant. The prevailing note was one of tragedy. abnormal period of American history." Thus, Never have American public men in responsible from Rhodes and Burgess and Dunning to positions, directing the destiny of the nation, been Randall and Coulter the central emphasis of most so brutal, hypocritical, and corrupt. The constitu- historical writing about reconstruction has been tion was treated as a doormat on which politicians upon sordid motives and human depravity. and army officers wiped their feet after wading in Somehow, during the summer of 1865, the the muck. ... The southern people literally were nobility and idealism of the war years had died. put to the torture (by) rugged conspirators. A synopsis of the Dunning School's version of (who) assumed the pose of philanthropists and reconstruction would run something like this: " The popularity of Bowers's book stems Abraham Lincoln, while the Civil War was still in in part from the simplicity of his characters. progress, turned his thoughts to the great problem None is etched in shades of gray: none is of reconciliation; and, "with malice toward none confronted with complex moral decisions. Like and charity for all," this gentle and compassionate characters in a Victorian romance, the Republi- man devised a plan that would restore the South can leaders of the reconstruction era were evil to the Union with minimum humiliation and through and through, and the helpless, innocent maximum speed. But there had already emerged white men of the South were totally noble and in Congress a faction of radical Republicans, pure. sometimes called Jacobins or Vindictives, who sought to defeat Lincoln's generous program. IF BOWERS'S PROSE is more vivid and his anger Motivated by hatred of the South, by selfish intense, his general interpretation of political ambitions, and by crass economic inter- reconstruction is only a slight exaggeration of a ests, the radicals tried to make the process of point of view shared by most serious American reconstruction as humiliating, as difficult, and as historians from the late 19th century until very prolonged as they possibly could. Until Lincoln's recently. Writing in the 1890's, James Ford tragic death, they poured their scorn upon him- Rhodes, author of a multi-volumed history of the and then used his coffin as a political stump to United States since the Compromise of 1850, arouse the passions of the Northern electorate. branded the Republican scheme of reconstruction The second chapter of the Dunning version as "repressive" and "uncivilized," one that "pan- begins with Andrew Johnson's succession to the dered to the ignorant negroes, the 'knavish white Presidency. Johnson, the old Jacksonian Unionist natives and the vulturous adventurers who flocked from Tennessee, took advantage of the adjourn- from the North." About the same time Professor ment of Congress to put Lincoln's mild plan of John W. Burgess, of Columbia University, called - reconstruction into operation, and it was a reconstruction the "most soul-sickening spectacle striking success. In the summer and fall of 1865, that Americans had ever been called upon to Southerners organized loyal state governments, behold." Early in the 20th century Professor showed a willingness to deal fairly with their William A. Dunning, also of Columbia Univer- former slaves, and in general accepted the out- sity, and a group of talented graduate studer.ts come of the Civil War in good faith. In wrote a series of monographs that presented a December, when Congress assembled, President crushing indictment of the Republican recon- Johnson reported that the process of reconstruc- struction program in the South-a series that tion was nearly completed and that the old Union made a deep and lasting impression on American had been restored. But the radicals unfortunately historians. In the 1930's, Professor James G. had their own sinister purposes: they repudiated Randall , of the University of Illinois, still writing the governments Johnson had established in the in the spirit of the Dunningites, described the South, refused to seat Southern Senators and "as a time of party abuse, of Representatives, and then directed their fury corruption of vindictive bigotry."..."To use a against the new President. After a year of bitter modern phrase." said Randall , "Rovernment controversy and political stalemate, the radicals, under Radical Republican rule in the South had resorting to shamefully demagogic tactics, won ar 235 ction 4. THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION overwhelning victory in the congressional elec- era: the corruption was real, the failures obvious, tions of 1866. the tragedy undeniable. Grant is not their idea Now, the third chapter and the final tragedy. of a model President, nor are the Southern Riding roughshod over Presidential vetoes and carpetbag governments worthy of their unquali- federal courts, the radicals put the South under fied praise. They understand that the radical military occupation, gave the ballot to Negroes, Republicans were not all selfiess patriots and that and formed new Southern state governments Southern white men were not all Negro-hating dominated by base and corrupt men, black and rebels. In short, they have not turned history on white. Not satisfied with reducing the South to its head, but rather, they recognize that much of political slavery and financial bankruptcy, the what Dunning's disciples have disciples have said about radicals even laid their obscene hands on the pure reconstruction is true. fabric of the federal Constitution. They impeach- Revisionists, however, have discovered that the ed President Johnson and came within one vote Dunningites overlooked a great deal, and they of removing him from office, though they had no doubt that nobility and idealism suddenly died in legal grounds for such action. Next, they elected 1865. They are neither surprised nor disillusioned Ulysses S. Grant President, and during his two to find that the Civil War, for all its nobility, administrations they indulged in such an orgy of revealed some of the ugliness of human nature corruption and so prostituted the civil service as as well. And they approach reconstruction with to make Grantism an enduring symbol of political the confident expectation that here, too, every immorality. facet of human nature will be exposed. They are The last chapter is the story of ultimate not satisfied with the two-dimensional characters redemption. Decent Southern white Democrats, that Dunning's disciples have painted. their patience exhausted, organized to drive the Negroes, carpetbaggers, and scalawags from power, What is perhaps most puzzling in the legend of reconstruction is the notion that the white people peacefully if possible, forcefully if necessary. One of the South were treated with unprecedented by one the Southern states were redeemed, honesty and virtue triumphed, and the South's brutality, that their conquerors, in Bowers's natural leaders returned to power. In the spring colorful phrase, literally put them to the torture. of 1877, the Tragic Era finally came to an end How, in fact, were they treated after the failure when President Hayes withdrew the federal of their rebellion against the authority of the troops from the South and restored home rule. federal government? The great mass of ordinary But the legacy of radical reconstruction remained Soucherners who voluntarily took up arms, or in in the form of a solidly Democratic South and ocher ways supported the Confederacy, were re- quired simply to take an oath of allegiance LO embittered relations between the races. obtain pardon and to regain their right to vote and hold public office. But what of the Confeder- THIS POINT OF VIEW was rarely challenged unul ate leaders-the men who held high civil offices, the 1930's, when a small group of revisionist often after resigning similar federal offices; the historians began to give new life and a new military leaders who had graduated from West direction to the study of reconstruction. The Point and had resigned commissions in the revisionists are a curious lot who sometimes United States Army to take commissions in the quarrel with each other as much as they quarrel Confederate Army? Were there mass arrests, , with the disciples of Dunning. At various times indictments for treason or conspiracy, trials and they have counted in their ranks Marxists of convictions, executions or imprisonments? Nothing various degrees of orthodoxy, Negroes seeking of the sort. Officers of the Confederate Army were historical vindication, skeptical white Southern- paroled and sent home with their men. After ers, and latter-day Northern abolitionists. But surrendering at Appomattox, General Lee bade among them are numerous scholars who have the farewell to his troops and rode home to live his wisdom to know that the history of an age is remaining years undisturbed. Only one officer, a seldom simple and clear-cut, seldom without its Captain Henry Wirtz, was arrested; and he was tragic aspects, seldom without its redeeming tried, convicted, and executed, not for treason or irtues. conspiracy, but for "war crimes." Wiruz's alleged Few revisionists would claim that the Dunning offense, for which the evidence was rather flimsy, .nterpretation of reconstruction is a pure fabrica. was the mistreatment of prisoners of war in the uon. They recognize the shabby aspects of this military prison at Andersonville, Georgia. 236 most 39. The Tragic Legend of Reconstruction went into the South on slender budgets to build Of the Confederate civil officers, a handful were churches and schools for the freedmen. Under arrested at the close of the war, and there was their auspices the Negroes first began to learn the alk for a time of crying a few for treason. But responsibilities and obligations of freedom. Thus none, actually, was ever brought to trial, and all the training of Negroes for citizenship had its but Jefferson Davis were released within a few successful beginnings in the years of reconstruc- months. The former Confederate President was held in prison for nearly two years, but in tion. In the 19th century most white Americans, 1867 he, too, was released. With a few exceptions, North and South, had reservations about the even the property of Confederate leaders was untouched, save, of course, for the emancipation Negro's potentialities-doubted that he had the of their slaves. Indeed, the only penalty imposed innate intellectual capacity and moral fiber of the on most Confederate leaders was a temporary white man and assumed that after emancipation political disability provided in the Fourteenth he would be relegated to an inferior caste. But Amendment. But in 1872 Congress pardoned all some of the radical Republicans refused to believe but a handful of Southerners; and soon former that the Negroes were innately inferior and Confederate civil and military leaders were serv- hoped passionately that they would confound ing as state governors, as members of Congress, their critics. The radicals then had little empirical and even as Cabinet advisers of Presidents. evidence and no scientific evidence to support What, then, constituted the alleged brutality their belief-nothing, in fact, but faith. Their that white Southerners endured? First, the free- faith was derived mostly from their religion: ali ing of their slaves; second, the brief incarceration men, they said, are the sons of Adam and equal in of a few Confederate leaders; third, a political the sight of God. And if Negroes are equal to disability imposed for a few years on white men in the sight of God, it is morally Confederale leaders; fourth, a relatively weak wrong for white men to withhold from Negroes the military occupation terminated in 1877; and, last, liberties and rights that white men enjoy. Here, an attempt to extend the rights and privileges of surely, was a projection into the reconstruction citizenship to Southern Negroes. Mistakes there era of the idealism of the abolitionist crusade and vere in the implementation of these measures- of the Civil War. some of them serious-but brutality almost none. Radical idealism was in part responsible for In fact, it can be said that rarely in history have two of the most momentous enactments of the the participants in an unsuccessful rebellion reconstruction years: the Fourteenth Amendment endured penalties as mild as those Congress to the Federal Constitution which gave Negroes imposed upon the people of the South, and citizenship and promised them equal protection particularly upon their leaders. After four years of the laws, and the Fifteenth Amendment of bitter struggle costing hundreds of thousands of which gave them the right to vote. The fact that lives, the generosity of the federal government's these amendments could not have been adopted terms was quite remarkable. under any other circumstances, or at any other If Northern brutality is a myth, the scandals of time, before or since, may suggest the crucial the Grant administration and the peculations of importance of the reconstruction era in American some of the Southern reconstruction governments history. Indeed, without radical reconstruction, it are sordid facts. Yet even here the Dunningites would be impossible to this day for the federal are guilty of distortion by exaggeration, by a lack government to protect Negroes from legal and of perspective, by superficial analysis, and by political discrimination. overemphasis. They make corruption a central theme of their narratives, but they overlook IF ALL OF this is true, or even part of it, why was constructive accomplishments. They give insuffi- the Dunning legend born, and why has it been so cient attention to the men who transcended the durable? Southerners, of course, have contributed greed of an age when, to be sure, self-serving much to the legend of reconstruction, but most politicians and irresponsible entrepreneurs were Northerners have found the legend quite accept- all too plentiful. Among these men were the able. Many of the historians who helped to create humanitarians who organized Freedmen's Aid it were Northerners, among them James Ford societies to help four million Southern Negroes Rhodes, William A. Dunning, Claude Bowers, make the dificult transition from slavery to and James G. Randall. Thus the legend cannot freedom, and the missionaries and teachers who be explained simply in terms of a Southern 232 4. THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION literary or historiographical conspiracy, satisfying as the legend has been to most white Southerners. What we need to know is why it also satishes Northerners-how it became part of the inteller- cual baggage of so many Northern historians. Why. in short, was there for so many years a kind of national, or inter-sectional, consensus that the Civil War was America's glory and reconstruction her disgrace? The Civil War won its place in the hearts of the American people because, by the end of the 19th century, Northerners were willing to concede that Southerners had fought bravely for a cause that they believed to be just; while Southerners, with few exceptions, were willing to concede that the outcome of the war was probably best for all concerned. In an era of intense nationalism, both Northerners and Southerners agreed that the preservation of the federal Union was essential to the future power of the American people. Southerners could even say now that the abolition of slavery was one of the war's great blessings- not so much, they insisted, because slavery was an injustice to the Negroes but because it was a grievous burden upon the whites. By 1886, Henry W. Grady, the great Georgia editor and spokes- man for a New South, could confess to a New York audience: "I am glad that the omniscient God held the balance of battle in His Almighty hand, and that human slavery was swept forever from American soil-the American Union saved from the wreck of war.' Soon Union and Confederate veterans were holding joint reunions, exchanging anecdotes, and sharing their senti- mental memories of those glorious war years. The Civil War thus took its position in the center of American folk mythology. were to be governed by a separate code of laws; they were to play no active part in the South's political life; and they • were to be segregated socially. When radical Republicans used federal power to interfere in these matters, the majority of Southern white men formed a resistance move- ment to fight the radical-dominated state govern- ments until they were overthrown, after which Southern whites established a caste system in defiance of federal statutes and constitutional amendments. For many decades thereafter the federal government simply admitted defeat and acquiesced; but the South refused to forget or forgive those years of humiliation when Negrocs came close to winning equality. In Southern mythology, then, reconstruction was a horrid nightmare. As for the majority of Northern white men, it is hard to tell how deeply they were concerned about the welfare of the American Negro after the abolition of slavery. If one were to judge from the way they treated the small number of free Negroes who resided in the Northern states, one might conclude that they were, at best, indifferent to the problem--and that a considerable number of them shared the racial attitudes of the South and preferred to keep Negroes in a subordinate caste. For a time after the Civil War the radical Republicans, who were always a minority group, persuaded the Northern electorate that the ultimate purpose of Southern white men was to rob the North of the fruits of victory and to re-establish slavery and that federal intervention was therefore essential. In this manner radicals won approval of, or acquiescence in, their pro- gram to give civil rights and the ballot to Southern Negroes. Popular support for the radical program waned rapidly, however, and by the middle of the 1870's it had all but vanished. In 1875 a Republican politician confessed that Northern voters were tired of the "worn-out cry of 'southern outrages, and they wished that "the 'nigger,' the 'everlasting nigger' were in- Africa." As Northerners ceased to worry about the possibility of another Southern rebellion, they became increasingly receptive to criticism of radical reconstruction. The eventual disintegration of the radical phalanx, those root-and-branch men who, for a time, seemed bent on engineering a sweeping reformation of Southern society, was another important reason for the denigration of recon. struction in American historiography. To be sure, some of the radicals, especially those who had That the reconstruction era elicits neither pride nor sentimentality is due only in part to its moral delinquencies-remeinber, those of the Civil War years can be overlooked. It is also due to the white American's ambivalent attitude toward race and toward the steps that radical Republicans took to protect the Negroes. Southern white men accepted the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery, with a minimum of complaint, but they expected federal intervention to proceed no further than that. They assumed that the regulation of the freed. men would be left to the individual states; and clearly most of them intended to replace slavery with a caste system that would keep the Negroes perpetually subordinate to the whites. Negroes were to remain a dependent laboring class; they 238
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