The Tyranny and Corruption of the Radical Republicans Part 1

Reconstruction after the Civil War

Fine Art Reproduction 1867, Photograph by Granger

*There are two warring schools on Reconstruction today. Up until about 1960 Dunning school prevailed. William A. Dunning and his students viewed the Reconstruction as the most corrupt, tyrannical, and disgraceful period in American history. Most conservatives and moderates after looking at the facts would be appalled at the scandalous injustices of the times.

It is now the Foner school that dominates. Reconstruction did not go far enough. Harsher methods should have been used to remake the South into a more liberal society. Foner’s facts are usually right, but his solutions are generally big government despotism with a liberal flare.

One difficulty in writing about the Reconstruction is the role of the Klan. The Dunning school is willing to look at the Klan in the perspective of Radical Republican and Union League violence against and suppression of white Southerners after the war, while the modern Foner school is unforgiving. References between the distinction of the two Reconstruction schools will follow in whole at the end of this series.

The South was as devasted by anything but what it was, an un-civil war of 1861 to 1865 as much as any nation in the annals of warfare. By the end of the war one out of every four white men and been killed or died of wounds or disease. Over 40 percent of private property including homes, businesses, livestock, and crops had been destroyed. In South Carolina, where Sherman’s men had burned the capitol city of Columbia, over 50 percent of private property was destroyed. Most of this property damage was deliberately inflicted on the civilian population to deny the Confederate Army the logistical means of resistance, but also to demoralize their families and supporters at home. It was ordered in cold calculation by Northern political and military leadership but often executed with self-righteous religious zeal or criminal abandon. At the end of the war as many as 50 thousand homeless and displaced refugees, mostly former slaves, died of famine and disease. Neither Christian teachings nor the modern Geneva Convention condone such total war.

To quote the eminent Southern historian, Clyde Wilson, Professor of History at the University of South Carolina:

“The purpose of Reconstruction was not equality; it was plunder, plunder, plunder.”

As the equally eminent Professor Emeritus of History at William and Mary, Ludwell Johnson, has emphasized, the cardinal underlying objective of Reconstruction was to maintain and enhance the political dominance of the Republican Party, particularly that fraction now referred to as the Radical Republicans.

To avoid a historical misunderstanding, it is necessary to point out that the Republican Party of the Civil War and Reconstruction bears little resemblance to the republicanism of Thomas Jefferson or Ronald Reagan. The Republican Party at that time was a party of big government serving big business. They believe in high protectionist tariffs to protect domestic manufacturing and supported generous government subsidies to powerful railroads, public works, and industrial interests. They were of the Hamiltonian philosophy of highly centralized government power and national banking. The Constitution and especially States Rights were frequently viewed as a hinderance to national prosperity and greatness. There were, however, more moderate and conservative factions in the party. The Radical Republicans were a minority faction within the party but had strong support in the press and were not averse to devious and despotic methods of maintain and exercising power, and neither did Democrats then much resemble the Democrat Party of today. They were more agrarian, social conservative, and strongly committed to the decentralization, limits government outlines in the U.S. Constitution, including States Rights. During the Reconstruction years Conservative and Democrat were close political synonyms. Both parties at the same time were generally conservative on social issues. Modern American liberalism, which is today most often associated with Democrats, ironically had it closest antecedents in the Radical Republicans, who often combined radical abolitionism with a strong belief in the efficacy of an all-powerful government.

For more than a generation before the War, radical abolitionists and their Republican political allies had stigmatized the South as a brutal and backward society in need of punishment, repentance, and remaking. A distorted understanding of the conditions of slavery in the South inflamed the preaching from many Northern pulpits, especially the radical Abolitionist dominated Unitarian churches. Relentless Northern was propaganda that magnified this twisted version of the South into contempt and frenzied hatred for all things Southern. The Northern press seized every opportunity to fan the flames of sectional hatred. The devastation casualties endured by Union forces in conquering the South added real and powerful emotional components to Northern animosity toward the South.

Nevertheless, near the end of the War in his second inauguration speech, President Lincoln had presented a generous vision for bringing the South back into the Union fold. He often quoted words, “…with malice toward none; with the charity for all…to bind up the nation’s wounds,” were set to a new attitude and theme in the restoration of the South to the Union. Lincoln had instructed Grant into accepting Lee’s surrender at Appomattox to “…let him up easy.” Union General J.L. Chamberlain ordered his battle seasoned troops to Appomattox to give a salute of honor to Confederate troops as they passed in final review at that surrender. Robert E. Lee had advised his men to go home and be good American citizens.

Following the assassination of Lincoln, however, goaded by the press and Radical Republicans in Congress, the flames of regional mistrust, hatred, and a desire for vengeance on the South erupted with vehement passion. Lincoln’s Vice President, now President Andrew Johnson, a relatively conservative former Democratic Congressman from East Tennessee, had planned to follow the Lincoln plan for restoring the South to the Union. In this he would be vigorously opposed by the Radical Republicans led by Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania in the House, Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in the Senate, and Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War. Their objective was permanent Republican Party dominance of the nation. A humiliating and vengeful subjugation of Southern States was to be an important instrument of the Radical Republican plan for continued national dominance. Southern States would be remade into Republican States fashioned and tightly controlled by Radical Republicans. Although civil rights idealism played a part in Radical Republican thinking and a very great part in their talk, the main role of former slaves would be ensuring Republican dominance in the South and suppressing and rising political opposition. This would have the effect of opening the South to economic exploitation and dominance by enterprising Northern fortune and office seekers.

Both Union war casualties, and civil right issues would provide fuel for demonizing the South. Waving the “blood shirt” and exaggerated and even fabricated reports of racial injustice and disorder in the South became powerful instruments for gaining and maintaining political power in the North.

The Union loyalist state governments established by President Johnson quietly concentrated on economic recovery during the latter part of 1865 and early 1886. General Grant confirmed this in open reports to the President. Just before the end of the War the Freemen’s Bureau had been established to aid in the economic adjustment of former slaves. By the end of 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery had been ratified by seven Southern legislatures and became law. In July 1866, a Civil Rights Bill was passed to insure Southern blacks the full rights of citizens. Still, the South was relatively quiet, but the Radical Republicans were stirring trouble both in the South and in Congress.

The Radical Republicans leaders proposed a Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing equal protection and due process under the law theoretically to all Americans but also denying public office to former elected officials who had supported the Confederacy. This was not only punitive in spirit but effectively eliminated the most likely source of any political opposition to Republican rule in the South. By February 1867, the Fourteenth Amendment had been temporarily derailed by rejection of ten Southern and three Border State legislatures.

Of course, the Radical Republicans were ready for this. They had been stoking the flames of Northern outrage against the South by reporting numerous crimes against blacks. All this is contrary to the reports of General Grant. Few of these can now be substantiated, but most appear to have been either highly exaggerated or fabricated and some even incited. Many of the reports were telegraphed from Washington. In March 1867, over the veto of President Johnson, Republicans passed the first Reconstruction Act. This act invoked the legal governments of ten Southern States and placed them under martial law, administered in five military districts. This act gave the vote to adult black males and disenfranchised Confederate veterans and former elected officials. This disenfranchised over 85 percent of Southern white men. In addition, Union soldiers stationed in the South were allowed to vote. Ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment was made a contingency for readmission to the Union.

Another act greatly expanded the Freedmen’s Bureau in both size and powers. These powers included rather arbitrary police, and judicial powers, and the ability to levy fines against “civil rights violators.” Corrupt Freedmen’s Bureau agents thereby making a good living.

References:

Dixie After the War: Myrna Lockett Avary, 1906

The Tragic Era: Charles G. Bowers, 1929

The Union League: Washington’s Klan: John Chodes, 1999. Essential reading.

Authentic History of the Ku Klux Klan: Susan Lawrence Davis, 1865, 1877, 1924

*Reconstruction, Political and Economic: William A. Dunning, 1865, 1877, 1907

*Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution: Eric Foner, 1883, 1877, 1988, 2005