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Charles Sumner (MA), Thaddeus Stevens (PA), and the Radical Republicans
● In 1856, only a small group of the Radical Republicans, led by Sumner and Stevens,
supported black suffrage. The Radicals faced long odds, opposed by other
Republicans as well as the Democratic minority.
● Still, they were able to gain broad support from the Republicans, and had several of
their Reconstruction programs enforced.
● Just as Civil War led to emancipation, Reconstruction became bound to black
suffrage.
Black Codes
● All seven Lower South states passed black codes to replace the slave codes.
● Under the Thirteenth Amendment, blacks were given basic rights. But they could not
serve as jury, marry other races, or testify against whites. Some states segregated
blacks. All codes effectively barred former slaves from leaving the plantation.
● Most states required annual contracts between landowners and black agricultural
workers, who could be arrested without lawful employment and forced into labor.
● In short, the codes left freedmen not slaves, but not liberated.
● Many codes’ clauses never took effect as the Union army and Freedmen’s Bureau
swiftly suspended the enforcement of racially discriminant provisions.
● But the codes showed southern intentions and northerners denounced it as southern
defiance. Republicans in Congress agreed, and refused to seat the delegates of ex-
Confederate states when Congress convened in Dec 1865.
● The Joint (House-Senate) Committee on Reconstruction was formed and prepared to
dismantle the black codes, as well as lock out ex-Confederates’ power.
Enforcement Acts
● Background Info: Republican legislatures outlawed vigilantism through laws
providing for fines and imprisonment, but state militia could not enforce the law.
● In May 1870, Congress passed the First Enforcement Act to protect black voters,
but witnesses, afraid of vigilantes, did not testify. Local juries refused to convict.
● The Second Enforcement Act (Feb 1871) provided federal supervision of elections.
● Then, in April, the Third Enforcement Act (also known as Ku Klux Klan Act),
strengthened punishments and empowered the president to use federal troops. It
even allowed for suspension of the writ of habeus corpus. Grant suspended the writ
in 9 SC counties, generating many arrests. Yet most terrorists escaped conviction.
● By 1872, the federal govt. had suppressed the Klan, but vigilantism had served its
purpose. Only a large military presence could have protected black rights, which DC
never provided. Now, federal power in the South began to diminish.
Election of 1868
● Republicans nominated war hero Grant over party leaders. Grant was endorsed by
veterans in the North and uninvolved in the bitter feuds of Reconstruction politics.
● The Democrats nominated Horatio Seymour (NY), an arch-critic of the Lincoln
administration and a foe of Reconstruction.
● Grant ran on his popularity and carried all but 8 states, but the popular vote was
very close. The newly enfranchised freedmen provided Grant’s margin of victory.
Panic of 1873
● Background Info: The postwar brought industrialization and economic expansion,
prompting investors to rush to profit from seemingly boundless opportunities.
Railroads provided the biggest lure. In May 1869, the first transcontinental railroad
heralded a new era. By 1873, 400 corporations existed.
● Philadelphia banker Jay Cooke had helped finance the Union effort with his wartime
bond campaign, and had taken over the Northern Pacific in 1869. Nortern Pacific
securities sold well, but in 1873, the construction costs outran new investments, and
in Sept, he had to close his bank, the largest in the nation.
● Other firms and the stock market collapsed, triggering a 5-year long panic. 18k
businesses and 3m were out of jobs by 1878. Those who still had work suffered
repeated wage cuts. Labor protests mounted, and industrial violence spread.
● The depression also fed a dispute over currency that had begun after the war.
● During the war, Americans had used both national bank notes (IOUs) and paper
greenbacks. Some favored the “sound-money” policy to stabilize the postwar
currency, but others, such as indebted farmers, depended on easy credit.
● Once the depression began, demands for more “easy money” rose, dividing both
parties along with the question of how to repay the federal debt.
● (continued below)
"Exodus" movement
● Devastated from redemption, freedmen, if they could afford to do so, started an
“exodus” movement in the late 1870s. In “Kansas fever” (1879), 4k “exodusters”
from MS and LA joined 10k others who had reached Kansas earlier.
● But the vast majority did not have the resources to migrate, and became stuck in a
crop-lien society.