Pro-Civil War Reconstruction as a Key Turning Point in American History

Post-Civil War Reconstruction

In 1860, the federal budget was $63 million and in 1865, federal government expenditures totaled approximately $1.3 billion, not including the money spend by the Confederate government (Civil pp). In 1879, an estimate placed war-related costs to that date at $6.1 billion, and one estimate places expenditures for the Confederacy through 1963 at $2 billion, after that date, records are not available (Civil pp).

The Confederate states lost two-thirds of their wealth during the war, resulting in wide-scale economic destruction in the South (Civil pp). The loss of slave property through emancipation accounted for much of this, however the economic infrastructure was severely damaged, including railroads and industries, more than one-half of all farm machinery destroyed, and forty percent of all livestock had been killed (Civil pp). Between 1860 and 1870, Northern wealth increased by fifty percent, while Southern wealth decreased by sixty percent (Civil pp).

The end of the Civil War left Americans to grapple with pressing questions over what to do with the South after its defeat and overthrow of slavery (Reconstruction pp). Although debate concerning certain issues continued for decades after the war, the time period traditionally assigned to Reconstruction is 1865 to 1877 (Reconstruction pp). This period began an intense national struggle over the shape of society and government in the postwar South, and ended with the collapse of the last Southern state governments under Republican control and the tacit acknowledgment that the federal attempt to remake the South was over (Reconstruction pp).

Northerners believed that the South should be remade into a society based on free labor, equal rights, and the republican form of government guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States (Reconstruction pp). This view was especially widespread in the Republican Party, which dominated national politics, in part because the dominant Democratic Southern states had withdrawn their representatives after secession (Reconstruction pp). Those Republicans who took the lead in pressing for a far-reaching restructuring of the South were known as Radicals (Reconstruction pp). One proposal supported by Radicals was the Wade-Davis bill, which would have required one-half of a state's white male citizens to swear loyalty to the Constitution before a new state government could be formed (Reconstruction pp). An alternative was President Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan, which allowed a government to be based on the loyalty of one-tenth of white males (Reconstruction pp). In January 1865, Congress passed the 13th Amendment which abolished slavery throughout the Untied States, and to help the transition to freedom, Congress also established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, commonly known as the Freedmen's Bureau, designed as a relief agency for needy refugees that proved clothing, food and fuel for both blacks and whites (Reconstruction pp).

After Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson took office, a Tennessee Democrat who did not share the Republican commitment to remaking the South (Reconstruction pp). Johnson believed that a small number of wealthy aristocrats were responsible for the Confederate rebellion, and so pursued a policy of leniency toward former rebels and one of neglect toward former slaves (Reconstruction pp). He offered amnesty to all who pledge the oath of allegiance, except for those with a post-war wealth of more than $20,000, who had to apply to him personally for pardon (Reconstruction pp). He also ordered that abandoned plantations be returned to their former owners, and sought to quickly restore political rights to the Southern states, requiring each state to draft a new constitution outlawing slavery and disavowing secession (Reconstruction pp). New state governments passed a series of acts known as black codes, which sharply restricted the rights of the newly freed slaves, and included vagrancy laws, under which blacks who were viewed as unemployed could be hired out as forced labor; apprenticing laws, under which children without proper care, as defined by the courts, could be bound out to white employers; and severe limitations on black occupations and property holding (Reconstruction pp). Dismayed, the Republican majority in Congress refused to seat the representatives sent by the Southern states (Reconstruction pp).

In 1866, over-riding Johnson's vetoes, the Freedmen's Bureau Bill was extended for another year, and the Civil rights Bills, which extended citizenship to blacks by defining all persons born in the United States as citizens (Reconstruction pp). However, Johnson clung to basic Democratic beliefs rooted in pre-Civil War vision of states' rights, weak central government, and white supremacy (Reconstruction pp).