Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:02 So, uh, we're back, we're back. We're both alive. Yes. Alive. And we are now online instructors full time. God.
Speaker 1 00:17 Um, yeah. Uh, and there's a difference between doing it intentionally and doing it because you're suddenly forced to do it,
Speaker 0 00:25 right? Yeah. That's been a huge thing. So I, we're supposed to be doing evaluations of one another and I was supposed to have a colleague come in, evaluate my class, my in person class like a couple of weeks ago and they were like, well, now we're just going to, you know, evaluate your online modules. And I'm like, Oh no. Like I didn't design the class to be online. And so it is, it's totally different. A class that's in person and the content that you give, the assignments, everything, it's so different than what you would do if you were to be fully online. And so now I'm, I dunno, I don't feel good about this. Like I'm going to be judged on something that was not intentional, but it's okay.
Speaker 1 01:08 I mean, so this is inspired us to kind of, we're going to continue the podcast, we're going to do some stuff that's a little different, right?
Speaker 0 01:18 Yes. It has inspired us to do so, a little bit different, but probably won't be that different of an experience for people who are listening or who are regular listeners. Yeah.
Speaker 1 01:29 Yeah. I don't think it's going to be an abrupt change. Right. I think it's this, uh, so Hillary approached me a couple of weeks ago and we've been trying to figure out a way to get this thing where he started. Um,
Speaker 0 01:40 and <inaudible>
Speaker 1 01:42 a lot of people are home right now. A lot of parents are home right now having to manage the children's education. Um, and maybe they could use a little bit of help, right?
Speaker 0 01:55 Yeah. So we're going to be offering basically like a sequential, um, us history offering, uh, for like we're going to start with the second half of the U S survey and just kind of go through things chronologically, um, talk about things in the way that we ordinarily do, but do it in a more structured manner where it's chronological,
Speaker 1 02:18 right? So, so well it's chronological and it's thematic within the chronology rights. There are a couple of issues that are going to come up in today's episode. Um, but I mean it's, I imagine a parent would listen to this more than a child unless the child's like maybe junior high school or
Speaker 0 02:38 I really hope children aren't listening to this. Um, yeah. Yeah. Well, but I think a high school student would do fine with it. Yeah. Yeah. I think it can be helpful for like AP us history or something. Right. But I think much younger than that. Um, probably not. Right.
Speaker 1 02:57 So this is geared to kind college age, high school age, and then parents who suddenly find themselves having to be experts on everything
Speaker 0 03:06 at home. Yes. So any parents out there who are trying to teach, for example, this week reconstruction to their AP us history students, this episode is for you.
Speaker 1 03:17 Yeah, so, so Hillary told us there's our, there's our topic for this week is our reconstruction. And uh, it's interesting, uh, both Hillary and I are heavily invested in the 19th century and I know we have some strong opinions about reconstruction. Um, but, uh, let's get to it. Let's, uh, start the podcast.
Speaker 0 03:42 Welcome to an incomplete history. I'm Hillary and I'm Jeff. And where are your hosts for this weekly history podcast
Speaker 0 04:09 reconstruction. I dislike this topic and the positioning of it in the U S survey. And I don't know how you feel about this. I didn't even run this by you, but I want your opinion. So when you teach the U S history survey, there's the, it's usually taught in two parts. The first part is, you know, the founding to the civil war. And then the second part is typically reconstruction through the present. And I don't like that split up. It gives me like insane anxiety to start a class by like let's talk about reconstruction day one. I don't, I don't like it. How did you feel about that?
Speaker 1 04:53 Um, let me first, I start my year survey sequence with the first people setting foot in the American,
Speaker 0 05:00 well, yes, I said to show you a little bit about, but
Speaker 1 05:08 so here's the thing. So at the UC is we actually get three quarters to teach the URS sequence, which means reconstruction comes kind of within a quarter, kind of in the second half, but not towards the end. And that definitely not at the beginning. And I like it because you need context around it. You
Speaker 0 05:27 really need context around it. That's the whole thing is if you ha, and I have students who do this all the time, who take the sequence out of order. So it'd be like, Oh, I'm just going to start with the second half and then I'll go do the first half later. It's like, Oh, you really, really need the context of setting up what goes on. You know, a hundred years prior is important. But I mean really knowing enough about this award is so important in order to even delve into reconstruction. So we'll offer a little context here, uh, but then kind of dive into what is reconstruction and, and what were the, uh, successes and failures and, and what the ongoing debate around that is.
Speaker 1 06:09 So I think it's, it's important for us to kind of first establish what we mean when we talk about reconstruction. So reconstruction is this period at the end of and right after the civil war. Um, and we're gonna talk about a couple of different kinds of reconstruction. Uh, hopefully we'll even have time for a conversation about, is that term even useful? Historians are kind of revisiting that term now and asking is it even in a useful term, but in defense of, of having it at the start of part two, the Euro sequence, I would say this, there are strong threads between reconstruction. What becomes the Jim Crow South at the turn of the century, and then the modern civil rights movement. There's a lot of continuity between those three. And I would hate to not be able to teach reconstruction. And also talk about those other two things.
Speaker 0 07:03 That makes a lot of sense. And I do agree it is important to talk about them in the same semester and in conjunction in conversation with one another. But I can make the argument backwards too, right? Where it's a shame to talk about the constitution and, and talk about the civil war, but not talk about what happens in the wake of that. Right. So it's like, it's hard. I mean, I guess if you were to ask me when should it be cut? I don't, I don't know. I guess I don't have the best answer to that, but, um, you're right, it is an important topic to be able to talk about, uh, alongside what happens in a hundred years after, right. In the 1960s. So, so you're right. But it's, I guess what I'm saying is it's challenging to begin the semester with reconstruction and so you have a different opportunity in the quarter system, but to me it's hard to just dive right in to such a contentious topic.
Speaker 1 08:01 Hmm. Well, I mean, what do you think about, uh, so I know some professors who teach both parts and I've done this before. I teach it in both.
Speaker 0 08:11 That's what I do. So that was going to be my, that is my last module in the first half of the sequence is reconstruction. My first module in the first half of the second sequence is reconstruction. Yes, I absolutely do double dip. But for the students who take it out of order, that doesn't quite help them.
Speaker 1 08:30 But you probably approach it differently in the two sequences, right? I mean, reconstruction I think in the second sequence is usually an unfinished task. Right? Whereas reconstruction in the first one kind of bears lays bare questions about was this was the system that was established in the United States fundamentally flawed from the beginning and we needed some kind reset on it. Um, but before we kind of get to that, which I, for me, that's something I'd like to discuss towards the end is, is where do we place it? I mean, let's, let's set the context up for reconstruction.
Speaker 0 09:08 Okay. So as the civil war comes to a close,
Speaker 1 09:13 should I play like battle music during this or something?
Speaker 0 09:17 I, I've, I think that might be nice
Speaker 1 09:19 buying eyes have seen the glory of the comb hang up. No, I'm chilling
Speaker 0 09:26 free to edit that out. Uh, so at the close of the civil war, and we know we could get into civil war for episodes and episodes and episodes, but at the close of it, we know that slavery has come to an end, but there's no agreement or vision on how to proceed. There are many visions, but there's no agreement on how to proceed. Um, the word slavery had never even been in the constitution until the 13th amendment. Um, which of course a ball is just slavery in the entire union. But the question that comes out of the civil war is what is freedom? Um, what is going to happen to people in the South who were formerly enslaved and now free to people who were fighting and who it's a seeded, uh, you know, what is, how is the country going to move forward? And with all of these questions left unanswered, it, it created fighting.
Speaker 0 10:29 And when I was doing the research for this episode, I was thinking about pivotal moments in history and moments where you have an opportunity to restructure things because something so calamitous has occurred that the very order and structure of things has to change in the wake of that and what the opportunities there can be. And when we look back on reconstruction, we can see so many missed opportunities. Um, and I guess I was just like being thinking too much about what's going on currently with our pandemic about restructuring. But when we think about the civil war, I mean the entire structure of society had to change and when there was no vision for that and no ability to move forward and no agreement, it obviously set the stage for this huge drama to play out. And we touched a little bit on it in our impeachment episode, right, about Johnson. So we can go into a little bit more about that. But I would say that the lingering question though is what is freedom and what does freedom look like for people post civil war.
Speaker 1 11:46 So I'm going to pull a historian move and I'm going to push us aback a little bit. And I, and I would say kind of two things. Kick off reconstruction. First, the emancipation proclamation, right? So the emancipation proclamation given during the civil war, emancipate slaves in the States currently in rebellion against the union, uh, it does not abolish slavery in border States, States like Kentucky. Um, uh, but it opens the window for that. And the second thing is, is Lincoln's 10% plan. So 1863, Abraham Lincoln develops a plan of how you're going to reintegrate the South back into the union. And it's a 10% plan and it's basically a plan that 10% of the voters, a number of numerically from the 1860 election. How'd you pledge allegiance to the United States and obey emancipation laws? And those States would be admitted back in the union wholly there would end, you know <inaudible> it's interesting. I grew up in the South and kind of went through most of my K through 12 in the South. And it's interesting that Lincoln is so demonized because this plan that he puts forward is so minimal requirement wise for the central
Speaker 0 13:08 minimal 10% that I think that that was appeasing beyond.
Speaker 1 13:17 Yeah. Well he said he wanted, he wanted a reconciliation as quick as possible and it's unclear even to this day, did Lincoln want, was he willing to push to have slavery abolished across the country? You kind of have to triangulate from his speeches. You know, the slavery had been abolished in the South for the most part because of the answer patient proclamation, but he kind of prioritized reintegration of the South within the broader union over the rights of freed people over the, you know, over the concerns of, of those formerly enslaved people having to make their way in this country that's come back together. He prioritized the union over that. And I, you know, I think it's important we understand that
Speaker 0 14:06 well in, in doing that had no, again, plan for what the world would look like or how it would take shape for people who were freed from slavery because you're right, it didn't had, hardly had anything to do with helping anybody or making life easier for anybody, but about how do we get back to normal. And it was that excitement or zeal or just strong desire to get back to a sense of normalcy that just wrecked all of the possibilities for fixing longstanding problems and then for helping to fix problems that we're still working with today. Right. Because, because of the excitement to just get everybody back into the union and create, you know, like, let's be friends again. It just wrapped a lot of people out in the cold.
Speaker 1 15:01 Yeah. So, so like Lincoln proposes makes this proposal and his Republicans in Congress, um, really rejected they, eh, and the interesting thing is this, I think there's a division on why they're rejecting it. So some are rejecting it because they think it's too lenient that there's long bloody war has been fought, union blood's been spilled and there has to be payment rendered for that union blood. And then I think you have another group and there is some overlap between the groups that are saying this 10% plan doesn't work because it doesn't ensure that we don't end up with the same system all over again in the South.
Speaker 0 15:44 Exactly. Yeah. Most of the Republicans at the time, and again, we have to reiterate that the parties have since flipped, but most of the Republicans at the time were not keen on just becoming friendly again with the South because they knew that yes, that the old system would perhaps prevail again, but also that if you're thinking about succession, it was treachery. I mean they were traders to the country and there was, there were so many people who were not ready to just shake hands and forget about it and say, let's move on. And so many people in the union, and so many leaders at the time wanted to, in the, in essence, occupy the South and rein and run their government in order to make sure that it ran smoothly and to just say, Oh, well, I just need an oath of loyalty from 10% of the population. There's no way that that was going to cut it. And when Johnson comes in to power and starts, you know, kind of actually sort of going along with some of the things that Abraham Lincoln had wanted, but then even more so had gone even in a, in a more lenient direction. I mean, this just creates a huge splinter, uh, with the Republicans in the North. They're not happy with this, um, acquiescence, right? I mean,
Speaker 1 17:06 well, we get, so we get a good idea. In 1864 when the Republicans, the congressional Republicans put together, put forth their own plan, right? So Lincoln has his 10% plan. Congressional Republicans introduced this way. Davis bill, it passes both the house and the Senate goes to Lincoln, Lincoln vetoes that, um, it would have required 50% of state's voters in 1860 to take this pledge of allegiance. Um, it also, they felt safeguarded, the return to kind of, so to get to guarantee emancipation would continue, but embedded in this idea was this state suicide theory. And they, they're basically argued that any state that rebelled against union then it's, the seeded had forfeited all rights so that anything Congress chose to give them was a gift.
Speaker 0 17:56 I, yeah. Gift. And that was seen as so radical, but to me, looking back on it, it's like, well, yeah, I mean that seems appropriate to me. Um, but it was seen as, as being along some of the more radical lines of appeasement or bringing, bringing the union back together because it was going to make so many people mad. But the fact is though, I mean, when these conversations were happening, the war was ongoing, right?
Speaker 1 18:29 I mean, it's, isn't it interest, isn't it interesting? Lincoln is like making his 10% plan in 1863.
Speaker 0 18:35 Yeah. Yeah. Because it's still the war still raging. And, and so I understand if you're in the heat of that moment where, I mean, you have tens of thousands of people dying, you know, battle after battle after battle. You can see how heated some of the Republicans would be in the North, or some of the folks in the union in the North would be so upset over how many, how much bloodshed there's been that they're, they want punishment. They don't want an easy end to it. And so it's interesting what you said about growing up in the South and that Abraham Lincoln gets such a bad rap in the South. But like, I mean, he wasn't being radical at all.
Speaker 4 19:18 Oh,
Speaker 1 19:19 right. I mean, apart from the fact, I mean, you know, emancipation, but I don't think any of mine, I hope none of my teachers were defending a pushback against emancipation. Um, that's a little frightening. But, so we get, you know, Lincoln's not very radical at all. And the majority of Republicans in Congress actually generally side with Lincoln on this. However, they want Congress to drive this, not Lincoln, right? They want Congress to kind of be in the driver's seat of what reconstruction is going to look like. But then you have this smaller group within the Republican party, the radical Republicans. And what they want to do is they say this is an opportunity to actually reconstruct society.
Speaker 0 20:03 Yes. And, and looking back on it, that's what I was saying is so sad is that it is an opportunity to actually reform society and address longstanding issues and it's just not done. So you have the radical Republicans, Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens, um, were the two, would you say the two leading radical Republicans, and I mean they had, they had visions for the way that things could have run in the South and they were just seen as so, so far out of the field of what was possible. That I think it was out of fear, right? People were too afraid to actually go that and make things different. Um, and what I think a lot of people talk about, Oh, the failure of reconstruction, the failure of reconstruction. I mean, I guess that the failure is from a 21st century perspective. We see all these missed opportunities, but if you're thinking about it from their moment, from that moment, um, they really are trying to just
Speaker 1 21:10 patch up the,
Speaker 0 21:14 the carnage, right, so to speak.
Speaker 1 21:18 Yeah. So we, you know, there's this conflict in the Republican party and the war kind of winds down and Lincoln's assassinated,
Speaker 0 21:28 so sad right there at the end,
Speaker 1 21:31 right there at the end. And I mean it's kind of like FDR not living to see the actual conclusion of world war II. Um, yeah. So Lincoln kind of dies there. Uh, uh, gets assassinated. And Andrew Johnson who found himself vice president because of Lincoln's, uh, conciliatory attitude, right? I mean the South, yes. It's, he had brought this southerner in on the ticket with him and he wanted this healing to take place. So Andrew Johnson suddenly finds himself precedent and many southerners must've been licking their chops after this. Right?
Speaker 0 22:11 Yeah. Cause they knew that they had someone pretty much on their side and that turns out to be the case. It's true.
Speaker 1 22:20 It is. It is, but it isn't. Right. I mean it's the whole thing is, is to look at Johnson's reconstruction proclamation in 1865 that he gives. I mean it, granted some of it's pretty minor, but some of that's pretty substantive, so they have to appeal the ordinances, successor succession, which is fine, but they also have to repudiate Confederate debts. So if anybody owed money to the Confederacy, it was gone. It was just why they had to say that that doesn't exist anymore and they have to ratify the 13th amendment.
Speaker 0 22:53 That's a really short order.
Speaker 1 22:56 It is, but it's more than 10% of the voting population. I know.
Speaker 0 22:59 So I'm glad that we disagree on this. I think he was really, he, I think he was so perfect for the southerners because if you think about it, it's like those are the only requirements that they have to abolish slavery, denounced succession, and not pay debts. All of those things would have happened. All of those things did happen because the war ended just by very virtue of the war ending and the emancipation proclamation like it, it was over. And the fact that he allowed, he granted the States the freedom in managing their local governments and rebuilding their States state by state. I felt like that was just really appeasing them because we, I guess it's hindsight, right? But we do that. Things went right back.
Speaker 1 23:47 Well, what about his disenfranchising all the wealthy southerners?
Speaker 0 23:51 I mean kind of he, so he doesn't grant them pardons initially, but eventually does grant them pardons and like they're still, okay,
Speaker 1 24:02 well that's, so what I want, I want to do is like put us back into May, 1865 that moment he announces what this is going to look like. It seems a little harsher than Lincoln. It doesn't seem as harsh as the radical Republicans. Definitely. But it seems a little harsher than Lincoln wanted.
Speaker 0 24:18 It's hard to say because Lincoln, we never know what Lincoln would have actually, of course, done seeing the war and then actually being confronted with, Hey, now it's time to rebuild. But it, yes, it's a little more, a little more conservative than what Lincoln was proposing initially, but I almost feel like, and maybe I'm wrong, I feel like when Lincoln's proposing these things in 1863, it's like a PS mint. Like, Hey, you know, we're not even mad at you. Just 10% you have to agree with us. We just want this to end. Do you think that there's any possibility that that was a ploy to just get a, to end?
Speaker 1 24:57 Oh yeah. It's that it's a tactic to get them to come back into the union and say, look, things aren't going well. We should just kind of surrender. We're going to be welcomed back. It'll be easy to get 10% to kind of do this loyalty oath and then we can just move on. Yeah. Maybe it was right. I mean, we, that is true. We don't know what Lincoln's actual plan of reconstruction would've looked like, but Johnson's, I mean, here's my take on it. I think southerners, some southerners initially like the idea of Johnson. Um, but then when he announces it and may 65, I think they're a little like, ah, this sounds a little harsher than I thought. I'm going to have to grovel to the president Johnson and ask for a pardon. And, but then Johnson makes it clear pretty quickly that he's willing to issue these pardons like crazy. Um, he goes, he goes pardoned crazy. And the interesting thing is by 1868, he actually some early pardons anybody who had, he had not previously pardoned.
Speaker 0 26:00 Yes. So there's no, I mean, to me it seems like is if there's virtually no punishment whatsoever, and as a matter of fact, they're almost rewarded. So one thing that happens during the civil war is so much land is seized so much property, Southern property, and um, as Sherman is going, you know, marching his way up through the South and burning everything in its wake, he's seizing this land, right? Um, and he gives it away. I mean the, the whole concept of 40 acres and a mule that comes from Sherman, from general Sherman, and he was giving land to freed slaves of former enslaved people. And so he's giving land to all of these black families and he's giving them old mules from the regimen, right. The regimens. Right. They were like, Oh, we're not using these meals anymore. You can take the mule and he's giving them these lands, mostly off of islands, off like the coasts, right.
Speaker 0 26:57 Like these areas like North, South Carolina. Um, and he's just giving people land is like, Oh yeah, this is what we're going to do. Right. Well Johnson comes in and all of that land that has seized, he's like, Oh no, I'm giving it all back. And they had to go and actually make announcements to these folks who had settled on this land and were living on it. Sorry, we're taking it back. So it's not just that they were welcomed back in, but then they were rewarded by getting their land back that they had lost. So I'm sorry, I get so heated when I read this stuff and like get back into it cause I'm just like, why didn't you do that? It was already gone. They had already, they had already, um, capitulated, right. The war was over. And then you give them back what they lost in the war and take it on people who needed it.
Speaker 1 27:49 Well, we are, but I mean, one of the things we talk about and one of the kind of provocative questions you ask students when you talk about reconstruction and then what the situation for formerly and save slaves peoples become kind of towards the end of the 19th century than in at the beginning of the 20th century. Material conditions for some people deteriorate and, and, and it's, it goes against. So, so first of all, you have individual freedom, which is kind of priceless, but at the same time, the South starts to Institute these black codes, right? So when emancipation hits in the, that States surrender and they suddenly have to, emancipation is being enforced because I mean, when Lincoln issues the emancipation proclamation, it's only in theory, right? Until you union soldiers are in the area, it's impossible to enforce. But once they're there, uh, you know, you have people who had been in slaves kind of leaving the plantations.
Speaker 1 28:52 These plantations are left with no workforce. And the States as they move back in quickly create a series of laws designed to guarantee their workforce. So these black codes, um, start to do these contracts. They start to make people sign labor contracts. Um, there are stiff penalties if you violate the labor contracts, the labor, the labor contracts in a lot of ways reminds me of these labor, this labor force, and they create these contracts and the contracts really kind of remind me of those indentured server two contracts where if you did anything that would violate it in any way, um, it would automatically get extended for a certain number of years. Yeah. And
Speaker 0 29:42 that's what's crazy about it, right? It's like anybody who didn't sign any black person who didn't sign a yearly labor contract could be arrested. And guess what happens when you're arrested? You get hired out to work on a state labor project. You will be, that's what, um, you know, of course conduct labor, uh, is happening and leasing, you know, the state would lease out convicts to work in sharecropping essentially. But now there they are enslaved again through the prisons. And this is the, the 13th amendment says this very specifically is that you cannot be enslaved unless you're a prisoner. But you know, establishing these codes that say you have to have a yearly contract working for someone who you may have formally worked for or you'll be arrested if you don't, they're just reinflate. Sharecropping is reinstatement even though, so this is the whole question, right?
Speaker 0 30:37 The surrounding this is what is freedom because yes, you are free, but what does that mean free to do what? Um, and you know, you're not free to do whatever you feel like doing. You're not free to work your own land. You're not free to, you know, have your, your income and support your family and the way that you want to or what, you know what I'm saying? Like it's so stringent, the black codes make it even worse than you're saying that, you know, people's quality of life sometimes diminished after. And that's really controversial to say because I would never argue that people were better off in slaved, but because there was no vision or allowance for their freedom and there was no, uh, establishment of what freedom means. They became Rian slaved and, and in worst conditions and some cases,
Speaker 1 31:34 I mean, you do. So you do have a migration of some people who move out of the South and move to places like Kansas. Right? Um, it's, it's not a huge number, but it is. There are some people who are actually able to escape that system. Um, but it's, it's the material conditions in a lot of ways degenerate because <inaudible> students always get uncomfortable. When I say this, there was some rationale for a slave owner to protect the life of the enslaved peoples.
Speaker 0 32:09 Well, it was your capital. It was your capital property, right? So when we talk about Johnson getting back seized property, Johnson gives back land, but obviously not slaves because slaves are no longer property. But it is a really uncomfortable thing to discuss. But because people were property, they, there was an incentive to care for the property, not as humans, but as an asset. And once, once slaves are no longer property, what is the incentive to care?
Speaker 1 32:41 There's none. There's none, right? Aiming. So you see, you see these former plantation owners or these plantation owners, you see these sharecropping contracts that are just punitive, right? I mean, they, they, you know, they'll, they, you can only spend, you can only buy stuff at the store. The plantation runs the plantation store. They'll loan, they'll kind of give you credit, but then that credit has ridiculous interest rates on it. Um, if you have a bad harvest, that's okay. They'll front you money for next time, however you find yourself suddenly very much way behind on all these payments and you're basically working the rest of your life for these people. And you have no choice because you have a contract that if you try to leave, you can be arrested and put an even worse situation. So the first state to kind of Institute these black codes is Mississippi, right? Um, I mean, it's the heart. It's the heart of the cotton belt. It's the cotton belt States who are kind of driving this. Right. Um, and so we can really get these black codes that start to emerge. But I want to talk about kind of the major congressional acts.
Speaker 0 33:56 Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think that it's important to get into, I mean, do you want to go into the Freedman's Bureau?
Speaker 1 34:02 Um, yeah. I mean, let's, do we want talk about, maybe let's talk about the congressional acts and then we'll talk about the freedom history. So congressional reconstruction, uh, starts. So during this civil war, uh, the Republican Congress is able to accomplish a lot of things they weren't able to do before the civil war. Um, homestead act more Tara, Tara fact, the national banking act, the moral land grant act, and maybe the most important, the Pacific railway act, uh, the Pacific railway act kind of constructing a railroad, a transcontinental railroad had stalled for years because there was no consensus about should it kinda crossed the middle of the country. Should it go through the South? Should it go through the North? And once the civil war happens and Southern congressmen are no longer allowed to be seated, they can just make the decision. And they decided to construct a specific railway act roughly across the middle of the country.
Speaker 1 34:58 And they had done a lot of these things and there's a fear with Johnson's actions that they were losing power. Um, and they moved to something con congressional reconstruction. So the 13th amendment had been ratified early on in reconstruction, but they moved to this creation of a civil rights bill of 1866. And what they do, they do a couple of things. First of all, they give all African Americans citizenship. They outlaw these emergent black codes in the South. Um, and they send it to Johnson. Johnson vetoes it and Congress quickly over, uh, overrides it. They have the votes to override it. So this is basically from 1866, uh, on, um, in April of 1866 when Johnson Vito said Johnson's presidency is neutered at this point.
Speaker 0 36:01 Yeah. And then, so begins the long drawn out, uh, sort of pissing contest. I would say right between between the, between Congress and the executive branch and, and it is just simply because of not having an agreement on a vision for what's going to happen. And it is interesting to see though how United congresses I that is, I mean, well it's because there's, like you said, there aren't people who are seated to oppose, but like it is kind of this cool moment where, but it's like why are they so opposed when they're on they, you know, technically should be on the same side. And you know, I talk to students about this all the time in class. It's like, look, just because you're in the union doesn't mean that you are all in agreement with one another. Right? I mean there's this idea that like, Oh well the union is the savior and they're the best and you know, they helped everything and everyone, I had students when I taught at Penn state, students would say things like this, like all we're on the good side.
Speaker 0 37:03 It's like, well, there's fracture even amongst people in the union. And you can see this play out at a really high level with the executive branch, right? Um, and in there, because there's not, there's no consensus. And, um, you do see though the congressional acts like the Congress to start working together to, um, to move reconstruction forward. And you do have some successful things that come out of it. And then of course the removal of Johnson eventually from office and grant comes in, but you can just see it's kind of a mess. There's just no direction. It's directionless at this moment.
Speaker 1 37:41 Well, so, so the 14th amendment is, uh, Congress, uh, taking that civil rights act of 1866 and making it a constitutional amendment because they want to guarantee that should they lose control of Congress, it would be very difficult to remove those protections that those protections will be in place. Um, so it gives civil rights and citizenship to African Americans, you know, freed slaves
Speaker 0 38:07 citizenship. That's so important,
Speaker 1 38:10 but it doesn't explicitly say voting rights,
Speaker 0 38:13 and that's the loophole or the South obviously exploits it. But to even have to have an amendment that says that black people are citizens. I mean, Whoa.
Speaker 1 38:27 Yeah. And so it also says that, uh, electoral college representation is reduced if a state does not permit black people to vote.
Speaker 0 38:39 Because if you think about it, right? So if you're not allowing citizenship or voting or anything for a huge number of your population, if you're not allowing them to vote, but then they're counted in your population, then there's going to be a large amount of representation to your region or to your state based on population. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's reflective of who's voting, who's allowed to vote and what their interests may be. And this is still an issue in the South, um, is that there's, there's representation, but for people who aren't necessarily represented, um, because of any number of issues, like not having access to polls, not having transportation, not having polls open around them. Um, and, and all through the 19th century and then well into the 20th century, you have intimidation at the polls, burning ballot boxes, shooting people who come try to vote. But the, the punishment was supposed to be don't let everybody vote. Uh, then you don't get the representation. So the 14th amendment sort of pushes that forward where, um, allowing citizenship but then not saying something specifically about voting. So it does cause issues.
Speaker 1 39:52 Yeah. So I mean it's, so, you know, there are other couple of provisions of the 14th amendment, but Johnson campaigns against the 14th amendment, the Republicans win a super majority in the house they win. And the Senate in 1866, they went two thirds in both, which means they can basically, anything they decide to do will happen. The president cannot prevent those things from happening. And this is the beginning of military reconstruction, right? So this is where we get, uh, in the Senate you get Charles Sumner of man of Massachusetts and the house you get that is Stevens from Pennsylvania and reconstruction. Yeah. It's radical reconstruction, military reconstruction. Basically what they're going to do is they're going to use the military to force the South to do these things that they want them to do. And so March of 1867, they divide the South into five military districts. I mean, people within the radical reconstruction, the radical reconstructionist wanted those old States obliterated. They did not want Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas. They did not want them to exist anymore.
Speaker 0 41:05 Not in the way that they had and not borders and everything. Yet they wanted to redraw the map.
Speaker 1 41:12 And this is again, this goes back to that idea. They had a formulated on state suicide that by seceding from the union, they had given up all rights to that, that they had taken a gamble, lost that gamble, and this was going to be the price. Um, they summarily disenfranchised many, many Confederate officers and soldiers. Um, ex Confederate States had to ratify the 14th amendment before they'd even be allowed back in the union. Um, and every state constitution had you guarantee full suffrage for African Americans. So the vote had to be explicitly granted. Mmm. And what did the military reconstruction not do that? So it doesn't give land to former slaves and it doesn't provide education. So it doesn't follow through on, I think we should talk about the Freedmen's Bureau now. It doesn't follow through on some early promises,
Speaker 0 42:16 right? And well, and some, not just early promises, but some of the things that would have made a tra a true transformation of life from enslaved to free, it would have made possible. Right? So the Freedmen's Bureau is established by Congress in 1865 and it's an attempt to organize labor. So, so much of what we've been talking about in this episode is when we're talking about reconstruction and we're talking about reforming things, it's more like reorganizing labor and the labor practice just says, and the way it would look and function for the South. And so the Freedmen's Bureau is established in order to attempt to organize labor. Um, Oh, Howard is put in charge of it. Um, the Freedman's Bureau last from 1865, 1870, they have just a Herculean task in front of them of what they're supposed to be doing. <inaudible> supposed to be establishing schools, providing a to pour and elderly people.
Speaker 0 43:22 They're supposed to be settling disputes between white and black people. Will speak, giving medical care, they're supposed to be running now defunct hospitals that were set up as field hospitals or just be running those to give care to people in the area. Basically what they're tasked to do is like build a whole society again ground up. And you know, they had so many successes by 1869, four years after their establishment, they had erected 3000 schools serving over 150,000, formerly enslaved students. Um, they did ran run hospitals. They did provide medical care. Um, but it was just this impossible task that the Freedman's Bureau was given, um, with, without the proper amount of funding support and, and people, they're right. There are only, I think about a thousand people who are deployed to the South to run the Bureau. And that's not a huge amount, right? If you're thinking about the, just the, the vastness of the region. Um, but what ends up being the major failure here is land reform, right? It's not happening. Um, the land given out, like doled out to people evenly.
Speaker 1 44:40 I mean that's, that's kind of the lesson of inequality in the United States though, right? Is a, and you know, when we kind of later on in a later episode as we kind of moved through the second part of the U S sequence, one of the issues that comes up, uh, post world war two, um, is how homeownership and then that homeownership cascades into things like getting mortgages to pay for college education for, for children. And you know, this, this prevention of black people from being able to get land really prolongs suffering in that community.
Speaker 0 45:23 Most certainly it prolongs suffering and then not allowing access to resources and constantly having to live month to month and never having wealth. That's the point, right? It's not like having some money, but it's wealth. It's inherited wealth and that has been the continual challenge, um, is not having inherited wealth. Um, and if you can't pass down wealth from generation to generation, um, each generation is, is forced to start from scratch in a sense. And it, uh, after world war II, you really do start to see that with, with home ownership. But in the, in the 19th century in this case, I mean there was this huge opportunity to make things better, to make things right, to give land. And, you know, I, I can't help but to say to, I mean I live in the South now. I was not born and raised here. I did not go to school here, but I live here now and you can just drive and drive and drive and drive and there is nothing around.
Speaker 0 46:30 No, there was this idea that the North was going to come in and they were going to build a labor system much like they had with the factories in Northern regions and the railroads and all this kind of stuff. And that never happened. It never happened. And then you have all of this unoccupied land that nobody's allowed to own that could have been distributed. And I'm not talking about like a communist sort of distribution of land or something, but 40 acres and a mule that could have righted so many wrongs, um, at, we're still facing right now to this day. And as I drive around and just see land, land, land, land, I mean there's, this is the most poverty street I'm in Mississippi, right? This is the most poverty stricken state in the nation. I think we're really close to West Virginia and Arkansas. Right? But, um, it's still much of a legacy of slavery, but a legacy of the failure of reconstruction. Um,
Speaker 1 47:29 well there's a stigma, right? So, so you brought up the, I mean the Freedmen's Bureau. I think that's an interesting thing too because it creates a lasting stigma on the black community. In what way? Um, so you see, when the Freedmen's Bureau get started, you start to see, uh, and what I have to add here is I have to remind my students constantly, the North is no racial paradise, no racial Panadol, and you get these Northern cartoonists who start your ladies cartoons and do these kind of grotesque characterizations of, of black men lined up at the Freedmen's Bureau, his office. And kind of the legacy of that is this idea that it kind of continues that paternalistic model of slavery, right? That, that black people needed white masters to actually function, that they were incapable of functioning on their own. And the Freedmen's Bureau in some ways continues that paternalist narrative. I would argue
Speaker 0 48:37 that's a good point. Yes. So there's this idea that there has to be, um, government aid in order for people to even get by. But what's being missed there and is missed now is like, well, if you have, if you're being forced to live off of any sort of aid coming to you because you don't have access to freedom in the same ways that white people do, then of course it's going to look differently. Right? So the one of the really rich documents, or excuse me, one of the really rich archives that I always direct my students to, um, is the WPA narratives, right? Where they went around in the 1930s and interviewed former people who were formerly enslaved or who lived through reconstruction in the late 19th century. Um, and you know, one of the themes that comes out of it in a few different interviews is that former slaves were not given a thing but freedom. And that if you're asking what is freedom, it's like, well, if I can't live and do the things that a white person can do, then I'm not free. And so to have these depictions of the Freedmen's Bureau that are coming from the North that are like these heavily racialized racist depictions of what's happening in the South, it's, it's obvious that that's going to be, have to be what's happening, um, because things aren't being corrected properly, if that makes sense. Right,
Speaker 1 50:02 right. No, no, I'm just saying, I think the Friedmans were, creates this stigma that continues, that persists even up to this day. Right? So I think when Ronald Reagan talks about the welfare queen with our Cadillac and all this stuff, these things, something we will hopefully discuss when we get to the 80s. Um, I think when he does that, he's tapping into this, this deep seated
Speaker 0 50:29 legacy of yeah,
Speaker 1 50:31 right. That, that people, that, you know, that white people kind of wake it one another and say, well, this community wouldn't have done anything at all if at all. If it wasn't the federal government propping them up. Um, and so we, you know, we get the 15th amendment, it gets ratified by 1870 and this is U S grant. I mean, I'm going to skip over this stuff with impeachment. Johnson becomes the first president MPH, he's not far removed from office. Um, uh, just to, right. So just to remind you, Johnson is the first bill Clinton's the second and Donald Trump's the third. None of them is actually removed from office, but all three are in fact impeached. Don't let anybody tell you differently. Um, so you know, Ulysses grant, uh, F a general and the union army becomes president and uh, the 15th amendment is ratified and it actually gives suffrage for black men. Mmm. However, there are a lot of loopholes left in and, and States in the South as well as in the North, uh, start to exploit some of these loopholes. But you know, I want to, before, I don't want our episode, we could easily go hours and hours about this. I want to kind of push forward to kind of some important groups that form during reconstruct.
Speaker 0 51:58 Well, I want to say though, with the 15th amendment, allowing the vote, regardless of race, you have 2000 African Americans who hold public office during reconstruction. 2000 men, 2000 black men, hold office in the very first black Senator in the United States comes from Mississippi. And that's surprising but not right. And so it's important to point that out too, that there were some successes during reconstruction and most particularly it's the establishment of schools. It's the establishment of the very first public school system in the South that state funded. Um, and then also the establishment of higher education in the South and in the form of now called historically black colleges and universities. HBCUs are established in the South and they still function to this day. So there were a lot of successes, but in, in response to those successes, there were groups that formed and I think that that's where you were going. Is that true?
Speaker 1 52:57 Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, so Hiram revels is that first us Senator, the first, um, black man to be a us Senator. I would say this. So the 15th amendment is kind of a mixed bag because many women had been involved in abolition. Mmm. And many women are a little perplexed because the 15th amendment, it would've been very easy to include language about women getting the vote as well. Correct. Was a huge splinter
Speaker 0 53:26 between Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony at this moment. And Susan B. Anthony said, you know, women have worked and lobbied and tirelessly fought for the abolition of slavery and we've covered this in previous episodes. Women are always at the forefront of these groups for abolition. And they said we would like to be included in the 15th amendment and the language of the 15th amendment. And Frederick Douglas said, let the black man have his hour. I believe something to that effect. And there was a major splinter between suffer just a women's right. Women's groups trying to lobby for the vote. Um, and then black men. And of course, you know, black women weren't allowed to vote either. Right. So women were left out of this and it would have been easy. Another huge missed opportunity to right or wrong. Yes. Women have to wait another 50 years to be extended the right to vote in this country.
Speaker 1 54:23 Right. So, I mean, it's interesting, even in its successes, there's, there's failings, right? There are failings that happen in this project.
Speaker 0 54:30 It's a mixed bag like you said. Yes. So
Speaker 1 54:35 during reconstruction, um, 1866, an organization is founded in Pulaski, Tennessee, the KU Klux Klan.
Speaker 0 54:44 And this is essentially the military arm of the democratic party is that's how they function. Yes. The military arm. Yeah.
Speaker 1 54:56 Well they are, they're terrorist, right? They are domestic terrorists.
Speaker 0 54:59 Yes. Um, and
Speaker 1 55:02 they rebelled against, you know, the military. They REL rebelled against what they viewed as radical rule in the South. Um, uh, you know, I think it's, is it Eric Foner I think calls them the terror wing of the democratic party.
Speaker 0 55:18 Yeah. I think he says that the middle <inaudible>
Speaker 1 55:21 I think he used it. I think it uses some really strong language there and their, their goal is actually to, so, uh, chaos and confusion and eventually overthrow reconstruction governments to the South.
Speaker 0 55:33 Yeah. And it's called the reign of terror. Right. Because I think what's important to also establish about this era, about reconstruction, that the civil war ended. Violence did not. Violence in the South did not end by any stretch and actually increased in certain ways because it was more focused toward just ordinary citizens in a sense. And the, um, because the Klan served as this military arm of the democratic party, they had open attacks on Republicans. I mean, it was very political and it was like you said, a terrorist organization, but they, this reign of terror was targeting citizens, targeting politicians. Um, and the, by no stretch of the imagination did violence stop in, you know, APA Matics 1865. Right? This is a very violent time. Um, and the violence shifted, I would say, to be a little more focused and in a way more terrorizing because it wasn't militaries meeting on a battlefield. I mean, these were terrorists going and murdering people in the middle of the night. Hooding themselves, you know, with hoods on, right. I mean, it was Island. Yes.
Speaker 1 56:55 So it's the invisible empire. And here's the thing, much like Bacon's rebellion kind of created a racial language that unites whites have multiple classes during the colonial period. I would argue the KU Klux Klan, the invisible empire that develops in 1866 purposefully recruits from all social classes in the South, all white social classes in the South. And it creates this idea that at the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether you're wealthy or poor, what matters is you are white. That is the thing that matters. And they UN, they annihilate Republican organizations across the South. Um, many black men will not go vote because they understand that, um, going out to vote is running the risk of being killed. Mmm. And they're actually so successful in their first few years that the federal government actually creates a couple of responses, right. The enforcement acts and they send federal troops and to kind of quell this intimidation. Um, this is the very first time the federal government comes in to protect individuals like this.
Speaker 0 58:15 Well, yeah, because it's interesting, right? Because you have this group that is emerged that is militaristic in their tactics, but then you have the United States sending troops in. Again, it's almost like a little mini war has gone off again. Right. I mean in some sense, and I'd be interested in, I'm sure people write about this and discuss this at length, but it is, it's almost as if the war had continued at a certain point that there was a resurgence in a way. Um, but it was put down and the clan went away for mostly right until late 19 teens and early twenties.
Speaker 1 58:57 So we get after this, we get kind of after military reconstruction is there, we get kind of the rise of the solid South, right? The SA, the South is solidly Democrat. They kind of start to construct a new philosophy called the lost cause. So the lost cause has a couple of main components. First of all, it's, it's predicated on pro Confederate patriotism. And you start to see States adopted new state flags that incorporate Confederate symbols. Um, there's a contention that the South thought honorably and valiantly, uh, for independence. Then it was a, that it was all about Southern honor and Valor, um, that, um, they kind of capitalized on wreak on kind of resentment and the humiliation that lingered from the war. And then finally there is a ratcheting up and almost an institutionalization of violence. And there's definitely an institutionalization of discrimination towards black people in the South, but there's almost an institutionalization of violence against black people in the South. And I know this, this coincides with your work on prisons.
Speaker 0 00:05 Well, and with no repercussion anymore because at a certain point I think it's important to sort of end our discussion when talking about the North sort of gives up on reconstruction and just sort of leaves the South to their own devices. The Democrats takeover, they start running the government the way they want to run it. The North is exhausted by it because if you think about the amount of time that's passed, you have enough time that's passed where there's new people who are in government and they're not, as, you know, they're trying to forget about it. There's scandal erupting. People aren't paying taxes, there's tax evasions and all this kind of stuff going on where there's more for people to be worried about. And there's like, you know, just let the South do with the South wants to do. Is that to say? Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:51 Well, ultimately on their Republican party sacrifices any last vestiges of reconstruction for the election of Rutherford Hayes in 1877. I mean, you know, they, Hasan and Sam Tilden, it was an inconclusive election and it has to go. It's contested. And the Republicans strike a bargain that they will actually take the last federal troops out of the South from South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana if Rutherford Hayes is made president. So they're willing to trade a presidency for like the, the last chance they have at real reconstruction and basically from 1877 until the civil rights movement, the situation for black people in the South is dire, dire.
Speaker 0 01:40 And again, the violence doesn't stop. Lynchings are ratcheted up. People are stopped from going to the polls. Sharecropping and crop leans take effect. And people are, for all intents and purposes, Rian slaved, living in horrible conditions with no, um, desire to, you know, improve circumstances of life. Um, access to education. You don't see any more black politicians in the South. It was just during the phase of reconstruction. And yeah, it does have a lot to do with my research on prisons because you start seeing convict leasing programs and not like, we wouldn't call it mass incarceration in the 19th, but, um, black people being arrested in mass and incarcerated, um, to go work in fields, uh, on chain gangs. Uh, and you do see the huge disparity of, um, the races in <inaudible> that are in prison. And also, uh, you have laws that are passed specifically to target black people, right?
Speaker 0 02:44 The black codes, which we talked briefly about, but it's like vagrancy was one of the ones that like, okay, well if you're not working in a field, then you're Vagrant, boom, you're, you're in jail, you're in prison, and then you're going to be leased out. And so, um, it's, it's dire. You're absolutely right. And, and you know, now that we've covered a little bit of it, it is important to recognize the, the period of time between reconstruction 1877 and the civil rights movement is not a short amount of time. I mean, people are suffering for about 100 years more.
Speaker 1 03:24 It's almost a hundred. Yeah, it's almost a hundred years, right? I mean, that's the thing is that so black Americans spend the first hundred years of the nation's existence in slavery. They spent almost the first half. They spend the next substantial period of time in a situation that while it's not, slavery is something bad in its own way. And we see this deterioration, right? So by 1881 we get Jim Crow laws start to get instituted. And by the 1890s, we get Jim Crow. And we're going to talk a lot about this. Lynchings go up and up and up. Um, 1892, uh, 230 black Americans are lynched. Excuse me. I mean, it's a bad situation. And
Speaker 0 04:12 the other thing too though, is like, even if there's migration, right? So we're going to spend the next several weeks dispelling the notion that things are rosy in the North. And Jeff kind of mentioned it previously, but you know, it's not like, okay, well if you migrate to the North and things will be fine and you'll be accepted there. I mean, there is deep seated racism happening there. Um, Jeff's work, a lot of his work is about the West and about settlement of the West and about, um, you know, migration in, in, in ways into the West. And so we'll spend some time talking about that too. It was just like, it wasn't just Mississippi that was oppressing black people. Right. It's like there's nowhere to go and there's no plan for what freedom looks like
Speaker 1 04:54 when the red line is pioneered in the West. Red lining is pioneered in Los Angeles.
Speaker 0 05:00 Yes, exactly. So we'll spend some a good amount of time talking about that, but this does kind of lay the groundwork I think for discussion of, uh, the second half of the survey to understand the missed opportunities, the opportunities that that were taken and were some things that came out of reconstruction that were, you know, positive for the time being. But then so many of those missed opportunities to restructure society and we will see the repercussion of that decade after decade after decade as we go through this sequence.
Speaker 1 05:33 Yeah, definitely. Well, this has been great. It's good to get the podcast going again and hopefully get some information out that people can use in their new roles is master teachers or their children, or if you're just interested in history, uh, if you haven't subscribed to our podcast, go ahead and do that. You can always visit us on an incomplete history.com you can find this podcast wherever you find podcasts. Join us next week. We'll continue this kind of sequence approach to U S history. I'm Jeff Hillary.
Speaker 0 06:05 Thank you for joining us. Until next time. Bye bye.
Speaker 2 06:13 <inaudible>.
