History Before 1865

Colson Liu
Professor McCormick

The Civil War and the following Reconstruction had significant impacts on the country

and its citizens. The war and the after effects deeply affected the country and there

were impacts for all Americans, regardless of race, geography and status. These events

abolished slavery and established citizenship and voting rights for former slaves, helped

decide the balance between federal and states’ rights, and started the transformation of

the economy of the South.

The Reconstruction period after the war was designed to bring the northern and

southern states back together to form one whole nation. This was an incredibly difficult

task. As Davidson noted in A Little History, “But how to achieve that new birth? How to

knit together a national so badly torn?...The process of bringing the Union together

again was called Reconstruction; and it was the hardest peacetime task the nation had

faced” (Davidson, 169). Reconstruction had to achieve several things: it had to set up a

new economy for the South, ensure that federal authority and states’ rights were clear

and it had to bring people back together and heal the wounds so we could become one

stable nation.

The impact was somewhat different for each of the different groups. For Southern

plantation owners, the war and Reconstruction could have dramatically changed their

way of life. When slavery was abolished, it was a major threat to their main source of
labor. Davidson asks the question “How do we reconstruct work? White planters faced

huge changes in the way they managed their fields. They used to tell slaves what to do

- not bargaining over how much they get paid or how much time they need off”

(Davidson, 172 ). Some Southern plantation owners lost tons of money and labor and

essentially became poor whites. Others tried to maintain their livelihoods by switching to

sharecropping. Some planters had a change of heart about the plantation system. As

Davidson says, “By the time the war ended, some planters had come to see that slavery

was wrong and that the Declaration of Independence meant more than they had ever

been able to see before” (Davidson, 170).

Northern whites ended up being more politically active during Reconstruction. Most of

them actually did not want to be equal to blacks but they did want to get rid of slavery;

they looked at slavery and thought, if one person could be put into slavery, then anyone

could. But they did not see themselves as equals; Northern whites saw themselves as

superior to blacks and, like the Southern whites, they did not want to compete with the

former slaves for employment (George Fitzhugh, Sociology For The South). They

feared a former slave uprising and takeover of government where they would potentially

be ruled by their former property and worried about them wanting to seek revenge.

However, many African Americans did not wish that to happen to their former owners.

Yes, many of them were very bitter about the way these people treated them and some

possibly wanted revenge for what the plantation owners did, but most of them thought it

could be the start of a new age where both blacks and whites were discussing big
political issues and would decide together how they shall solve these issues

(Reconstruction: The Second Civil War).

For African Americans, the war and Reconstruction had the potential to majorly shift

their lives. Slavery was abolished with the 13th Amendment. The amendment was

proposed during Lincoln’s reelection but it wouldn’t be passed until the end of 1864 by

Congress. After that it took another decade before the amendment was ratified on

December 6th, 1865 (Lecture. McCormick Week 15).

Nevertheless, African Americans were freed from slaveholders and began to try to

figure out their lives. “Now consider the freed people, reconstructing their own lives.

Under slavery, millions of husbands have been sold away from their wives. Children had

been torn from parents after the war the roads were clogged with former slaves in

search of loved ones” (Davidson, 172) Some of the social successes of Reconstruction

were the establishment of institutions for African Americans, such as schools, churches

and the Freedmen's Bureau, to help former slaves reconstruct their lives.

The people of the South were also figuring out how to handle their new world; for a

period of time, social norms were no longer as clear. “Before the war, slaves had to get

off a sidewalk quickly if a white person came along and had to bow and take off their

hats. Reconstruction meant the right to walk on sidewalks and many whites were

angered when black soldiers who had fought for the Union refused to hop in the muddy

street” (Davidson, 173). The Black Codes were soon implemented, these were a series
of laws that restricted the rights and freedoms of African Americans, in order to maintain

the supremacy of whites (Davidson, 170).

President Johnson was not necessarily the best leader the nation could have to lead

people through these big changes (Reconstruction: The Second Civil War). Johnson

was most concerned with readmitting the Southern states to the Union. He wanted

Reconstruction over and done with, so he was focused on getting the South integrated

back into the Union as quickly as possible. He was more lenient when it came to

whether the South would be punished for the war and for what many considered

treason. “When former Confederates flocked to the White House, asking for special

pardons, he changed his tune about those ‘stuck up aristocrats’ and issued over 13,000

pardons in two years” (Davidson, 170-1).

Johnson was also an advocate of states’ rights which was a very different vision than

the Radical Republicans, who wanted to see things move more slowly, and wanted to

see the South make many more impactful changes. They were looking for the South to

be held accountable and to be punished for the war and they wanted to see stronger

policies that would protect African Americans. They wanted rights for black people.

(Davidson, 171) Congress rejected the South’s new state governments and divided the

region into five military districts, supervised by Union officers. Unfortunately with

Johnspon’s pardons, Northerners were surprised to learn that ten Confederate leaders

were elected to serve in Congress. “When Republicans objected, Johnson began calling

them traitors for giving black citizens too many rights.” (Davidson, 171).
While there were different viewpoints on the Civil War and Reconstruction, there is no

argument about the profound and lasting impact they had on our country. The war and

its aftermath resulted in many political, social and economic changes. The country saw

the abolition of slavery, the establishment of citizenship and voting rights for the former

slaves, the establishment of important social structures like the Freedmen’s Bureau and

schools, and it redefined the balance between federal and states’ rights. But there were

also areas where the country did not make progress and in some cases even seemed

to go backward. The white Southerners resisted some of the Reconstruction efforts to

give rights to former slaves and help them create new lives. Jim Crow and the Ku Klux

Klan intimidated and terrorized Southern blacks and kept people from obeying the civil

rights laws. Also, the white landowners ended up keeping a lot of the land, which meant

that the former slaves would not have as much economic help in putting together their

new lives (Reconstruction: The Second Civil War).

As Fredrick Douglass summed it up well when looking back on this ideological period of

time he said, “The sectional character of this war was merely accidental and its least

significant feature. It was a war of ideas, a battle of principles and ideas which united

one section and divided the other; a war between the old and new, slavery and freedom,

barbarism and civilization; between a government based upon the broadest and

grandest declaration of human rights the world ever heard or read, and another

pretended government, based upon an open, bold and shocking denial of all rights,

except the right of the strongest” (American Yawp Reader, 1878).

Davidson, James West. A Little History of the United States. Yale University Press,

2016.

“Reconstruction: The Second Civil War.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service,

www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/reconstruction/.

George Fitzhugh, Sociology For The South, Or The Failure Of Free Society

(Richmond, VA: A Morris, 1854), Appendix, 253-255.

The American Yawp Reader,

www.americanyawp.com/reader/reconstruction/frederick-douglass-on-rememberin

g-the-civil-war-1877/.

Nick McCormick Lecture, Week 15.