The chapter begins by examining the saga of Benjamin Montgomery, an extraordinary ex-slave who purchased the plantation of Confederate President Jefferson Davis after the war. Through energy and hard work, Montgomery became a leading planter in the postwar South during the period of Reconstruction, when the South began the process of resuming its place in the Union. Montgomery's hopes and aspirations, as well as his ultimate failure, symbolized both the possibilities for radical change in the South and the ultimate tragedy of Reconstruction for black Americans.

Presidential Reconstruction

The magnitude of the job of reconstructing the nation forced Lincoln to consider the issue even during the war. He favored a less stringent plan than Congress did, since he wanted to bring states back into the Union quickly and simultaneously build up a Republican party in the South. Radical Republicans in Congress, on the other hand, doubted southern whites' loyalty, wanted to punish the South, and saw blacks as the only sizable loyal group in the region. Lincoln vetoed the Radicals' plan in 1864, but by war's end he seemed to move in the direction of the Radicals.

Lincoln's assassination elevated Andrew Johnson, from Tennessee, to the presidency. In this critical moment, with southerners bewildered and looking for guidance, it became crucial that the president make clear what the federal government required of them. Johnson moved in the summer of 1865 to enact Lincoln's program, but in so doing he changed its terms and lessened its requirements. Under Johnson's guidelines, all the former states of the Confederacy established new state governments in 1865. Yet southern whites refused to give blacks many civil rights enjoyed by whites, instead passing a series of black codes. These laws applied only to blacks, and attempted to keep them an uneducated and agricultural laboring class without property. White southerners' defiant election of prominent former Confederates to office proved equally disturbing to northerners.

Congress repudiated Johnson's program in December 1865, and refused to seat the senators and members of Congress from the former Confederate states. Instead, it extended the life of the Freedmen's Bureau over Johnson's veto in order to provide assistance to freed people (former slaves) and passed the Fourteenth Amendment, sending it to the states for ratification. This amendment made blacks citizens, extended basic civil rights to all citizens, required prominent Confederates to obtain pardons from Congress, and indirectly provided for black male suffrage in the South. Of the Confederate states, only Tennessee ratified the amendment and thus received prompt readmission to the Union. The remaining ten states still lacked congressional representation and remained under military rule. Breaking with Congress, Johnson took his case to the northern people in the fall elections of 1866. To his dismay, Republicans won a sweeping victory, including more than a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress (thus allowing them to override any presidential veto).

Congressional Reconstruction

Given a popular mandate, Republicans in Congress proceeded to enact their own program of Reconstruction, requiring the unreconstructed states to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and adopt black suffrage. States that delayed the process also had to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment, which forbade racial tests for voting. Congress refused, however, to redistribute land to the freedmen, believing that giving blacks the ballot and civil rights was sufficient.

Johnson remained at odds with Congress and tried to obstruct the will of the legislative branch by interpreting laws as narrowly as possible and removing army generals in the South who sympathized with Congress on Reconstruction. When the president attempted to remove Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a Radical Republican, in violation of the new Tenure of Office Act, the House finally impeached Johnson. Despite his obstructionism, the Senate acquitted him by one vote. Those Republican senators who voted for acquittal believed that Johnson had not committed any crime, only political errors, and they were uneasy about using the impeachment process to resolve a political dispute between the two branches of government. Johnson served out the remainder of his term, but the power of the Radicals had peaked.

The Supreme Court refused to intervene in the dispute between Johnson and Congress, and it declined to rule on the constitutionality of Reconstruction. It adopted the position that Reconstruction was an extraordinary situation and thus essentially a political matter.

Reconstruction in the South

Under Congress's program, radical governments assumed power in the South. Despite the complaints and allegations of unreconstructed southerners, black southerners controlled none of these governments. Only in South Carolina, where a majority of the voters were African Americans, did black officeholders approximate their proportion of the population. Black officeholders, whose political abilities ranged widely, generally came from the top rungs of African American society.

In most southern states, black voters proved insufficient to form a majority; the Republican party needed white support as well. Native white southerners called their counterparts who joined the Republicans scalawags; these men were often Unionists from the hill counties, or former Whigs attracted by the party's economic nationalism. Northerners who came to the South after the war and held public office were derisively referred to as carpetbaggers. Contrary to their image, they were not all poor and self-interested, but they proved much more sympathetic to black rights than did southern-born white Republicans and disproportionately held office—especially the highest offices—in the Republican regimes.

The new southern state constitutions adopted some important reforms, most notably the establishment of public schools. But they remained cautious on the issue of racial equality and did not forbid segregation. The southern Republican governments also confronted the problem of rebuilding the war-ravaged South. They sought to encourage industrialization and expand the railroad network. Taxes went up with expenditures, and these governments came under heavy attack for corruption. Corruption certainly existed—indeed, it was a nationwide problem—but opponents exaggerated its extent for partisan purposes. In truth, the major objection of opponents to these governments was that they shared power with blacks.

Black Aspirations

Initially, black southerners thought of freedom largely as a contrast to slavery: it meant the right to move about, to choose their employer, and to prevent physical punishment and the breakup of families. In freedom, blacks moved to protect the black family and gain educational rights. The Freedmen's Bureau initially established black schools in the South, and thousands of adults as well as children enrolled, even though the schools charged a fee. Blacks also left the white-controlled churches and established their own churches with black ministers. They negotiated new working conditions with white landlords, refusing to live in the old slave quarters or work in gangs under the supervision of an overseer. Eventually the system of sharecropping evolved as the way to organize black agricultural labor. The Freedmen's Bureau supervised the contracts between white landlords and black workers, and special Freedmen's Courts adjudicated disputes. The Bureau's record in protecting blacks varied considerably, but in general it had only limited success in getting them fair compensation for their labor.

Planters responded to emancipation by seeking physical and psychological separation from former slaves. They discarded the old paternalist ideal in favor of segregation. Less prosperous than before the war, planters developed a new way of life based on segregation and sharecropping.

The Abandonment of Reconstruction

In 1868 the Republicans rejected all their experienced leaders; they instead nominated and elected Ulysses S. Grant for president. The enforcement and maintenance of Reconstruction thus rested in Grant's hands. Republicans tried to make Reconstruction more secure by passing the Fifteenth Amendment, which forbade a state from denying the right to vote on grounds of race. Efforts to include women's suffrage by forbidding discrimination based on gender failed.

Grant lacked the skill or commitment to make Reconstruction succeed. A series of scandals rocked his administration, creating widespread popular disenchantment and fostering the liberal Republican revolt in 1872. As charges of corruption swelled and public disorder continued unabated in the South, northern public opinion, which never had much faith in the abilities of former slaves, became increasingly disillusioned with Reconstruction. Many decided that erecting the program on black suffrage had proven a mistake. In addition, the beginning of a severe depression in 1874 directed public attention closer to home and gave Democrats control of the House for the first time since 1861.

With the northern commitment weakening, white southerners stepped up their assault on the radical governments in the South. They used social ostracism, economic pressure, and racist appeals to undermine Republican support. Their most effective weapon, however, was terror and violence directed against Republican leaders and black voters. The constant violence in the South during elections further weakened the northern commitment to Reconstruction. Grant acted decisively to suppress the Ku Klux Klan, a leading terrorist organization, but no one seemed capable of stemming the tide of violence.

In the end, a combination of southern white terror and northern white indifference combined to end Reconstruction. The 1876 presidential election failed to produce a clear winner, as both parties claimed to have carried South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, the three southern states still under Republican control. In the end, a special electoral commission declared by a straight party vote that Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was the winner. In private negotiations, Republicans had already agreed to restore home rule in the South in exchange for Hayes' election. This deal became known as the Compromise of 1877. Once in office, Hayes withdrew support for the remaining radical governments in the South, and they collapsed. By 1877, southerners had "redeemed" all of the states of the former Confederacy and Reconstruction had ended, along with the dreams of so many African Americans for equal rights. The courts soon overturned the racial legacy of Reconstruction. By both weakening northern resolve and stimulating southern white resistance, racism played a major role in failure of Reconstruction.