Editing Reconstruction era (section)

==Congressional Reconstruction==
[[File:Seymour US Reconstruction antidem poster.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|1868 Republican cartoon identifies Democratic candidates Seymour and Blair (right) with KKK violence and with Confederate soldiers (left).]]
Concerned by multiple reports of abuse of black freedmen by Southern white officials and plantation owners, Republicans in Congress took control of Reconstruction policies after the election of 1866.{{sfnp|Foner|2014b|pp=224–227}} Johnson ignored the policy mandate, and he openly encouraged Southern states to deny ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment (except for Tennessee, all former Confederate states did refuse to ratify, as did the border states of Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky). Radical Republicans in Congress, led by Stevens and Sumner, opened the way to suffrage for male freedmen. They were generally in control, although they had to compromise with the moderate Republicans (the Democrats in Congress had almost no power). Historians refer to this period as "Radical Reconstruction" or "congressional Reconstruction".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Teed |first1=Paul E. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kpMeCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA51 |title=Reconstruction: A Reference Guide |last2=Ladd Teed |first2=Melissa |publisher=ABC-CLIO |year=2015 |isbn=978-1-61069-533-6 |location=Santa Barbara |pages=51, 174&nbsp;ff}}. Foner (1988) entitles his sixth chapter "The Making of Radical Reconstruction". Benedict argues the Radical Republicans were conservative on many other issues, in: {{cite journal |last=Benedict |first=Michael Les |date=1974 |title=Preserving the Constitution: The Conservative Basis of Radical Reconstruction |journal=[[Journal of American History]] |volume=61 |issue=1 |pages=65–90 |doi=10.2307/1918254 |jstor=1918254}}</ref> The business spokesmen in the North generally opposed Radical proposals. Analysis of 34 major business newspapers showed that 12 discussed politics, and only one, ''[[Iron Age (newspaper)|Iron Age]]'', supported radicalism. The other 11 opposed a "harsh" Reconstruction policy, favored the speedy return of the Southern states to congressional representation, opposed legislation designed to protect the freedmen, and deplored the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Kolchin |first=Peter |date=1967 |title=The Business Press and Reconstruction, 1865–1868 |journal=[[Journal of Southern History]] |volume=33 |issue=2 |pages=183–196 |doi=10.2307/2204965 |jstor=2204965}}</ref>

The South's White leaders, who held power in the immediate post-bellum era before the vote was granted to the freedmen, renounced secession and slavery, but not White supremacy. People who had previously held power were angered in 1867 when new elections were held. New Republican lawmakers were elected by a coalition of White Unionists, freedmen and Northerners who had settled in the South. Some leaders in the South tried to accommodate new conditions.

===Constitutional amendments===
Three constitutional amendments, known as the Reconstruction amendments, were adopted. The Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery was ratified in 1865. The Fourteenth Amendment was proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868, guaranteeing [[United States citizenship]] to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and granting them federal civil rights. The Fifteenth Amendment, proposed in late February 1869, and passed in early February 1870, decreed that the right to vote could not be denied because of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". Left unaffected was that states would still determine voter registration and electoral laws. The amendments were directed at ending slavery and providing full citizenship to freedmen. Northern congressmen believed that providing Black men with the right to vote would be the most rapid means of political education and training.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

Many Blacks took an active part in voting and political life, and rapidly continued to build churches and community organizations. Following Reconstruction, White Democrats and insurgent groups used force to regain power in the state legislatures, and pass laws that effectively [[Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era|disenfranchised]] most Blacks and many poor Whites in the South. From 1890 to 1910, Southern states passed new state constitutions that completed the disenfranchisement of Blacks. U.S. Supreme Court rulings on these provisions upheld many of these new Southern state constitutions and laws, and most Blacks were prevented from voting in the South until the 1960s. Full federal enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments did not reoccur until after passage of legislation in the mid-1960s as a result of the [[civil rights movement]].{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

For details, see:
{{Prose|section|date=October 2020|reason=WP does not inject "see also" lists right into the middle of articles. These things needs to be put into a proper paragraph that explains their relevance and interconnection to the material being presented here. This is also a confused mixture of sweeping topics and very narrow articles on specific legal cases.}}
* [[Redeemers]]
* [[Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era]]
* [[Jim Crow laws]]
* ''[[United States v. Cruikshank]]'' (1875),<ref>{{cite journal |last=Pope |first=James Gray |title=Snubbed landmark: Why ''United States v. Cruikshank'' (1876) belongs at the heart of the American constitutional canon |journal=[[Harvard Civil Rights–Civil Liberties Law Review]] |volume=49 |issue=2 |pages=385–447 |date=Spring 2014 |url=http://harvardcrcl.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/385_Pope.pdf |access-date=November 15, 2015 |archive-date=January 20, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170120170455/http://harvardcrcl.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/385_Pope.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Greene |first=Jamal |title=Thirteenth Amendment optimism |journal=[[Columbia Law Review]] |volume=112 |issue=7 |pages=1733–1768 |jstor=41708163 |date=November 2012 |url= http://columbialawreview.org/thirteenth-amendment-optimism/ |url-status=dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150107063310/http://columbialawreview.org/thirteenth-amendment-optimism/ |archive-date=January 7, 2015}} [https://web.archive.org/web/20151117023919/http://columbialawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/1733-1768.pdf PDF version].</ref> related to the [[Colfax Massacre]]
* [[Posse Comitatus Act]] (1878)
* ''[[Civil Rights Cases]]'' (1883)
* [[Civil rights movement (1896–1954)]]
* ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'' (1896)
* ''[[Williams v. Mississippi]]'' (1898)
* ''[[Giles v. Harris]]'' (1903)

===Statutes===
The [[Reconstruction Acts]], as originally passed, were initially called "An act to provide for the more efficient Government of the Rebel States".<ref>{{cite web |title=A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774–1875 |url=http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=014/llsl014.db&recNum=459 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201203193317/http://www.memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=014%2Fllsl014.db&recNum=459 |archive-date=December 3, 2020 |access-date=October 21, 2020 |website=[[American Memory]]}}</ref> The legislation was enacted by the 39th Congress, on March 2, 1867. It was vetoed by President Johnson, and the veto then overridden by a two-thirds majority, in both the House and the Senate, the same day. Congress also clarified the scope of the federal writ of [[habeas corpus]], to allow federal courts to [[Vacated judgment|vacate]] unlawful state court convictions or sentences, in 1867.<ref>28 [[United States Code|U.S.C.]] §&nbsp;2254.</ref>

===Military Reconstruction<!-- Section linked from Arkansas -->===
[[File:Reconstruction military districts.svg|thumb|right|upright=1.5|Map of the five Reconstruction military districts
{{Legend|#000|[[First Military District]]}}
{{Legend|#009F6B|[[Second Military District]]}}
{{Legend|#C40233|[[Third Military District]]}}
{{Legend|#FFD300|[[Fourth Military District]]}}
{{Legend|#0087BD|[[Fifth Military District]]}}]]
With the Radicals in control, Congress passed the [[Reconstruction Act]]s on July 19, 1867. The first Reconstruction Act, authored by Oregon Sen. [[George Henry Williams]], a [[Radical Republican]], placed 10 of the former Confederate states—all but Tennessee—under military control, grouping them into five military districts:{{sfnp|Foner|1988|loc= ch. 6}}
* [[First Military District]]: Virginia, under General [[John Schofield]]
* [[Second Military District]]: North Carolina and South Carolina, under General [[Daniel Sickles]]
* [[Third Military District]]: Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, under Generals [[John Pope (general)|John Pope]] and [[George Meade]]
* [[Fourth Military District]]: Arkansas and Mississippi, under General [[Edward Ord]]
* [[Fifth Military District]]: Texas and Louisiana, under Generals [[Philip Sheridan]] and [[Winfield Scott Hancock]]

20,000 U.S. troops were deployed to enforce the act.

The five [[Border states (American Civil War)|border states]] that had not joined the Confederacy were not subject to military Reconstruction. West Virginia, which had [[West Virginia in the American Civil War|seceded]] from Virginia in 1863, and Tennessee, which had already been re-admitted in 1866, were not included in the military districts. Federal troops, however, were kept in West Virginia through 1868 in order to control civil unrest in several areas throughout the state.<ref>{{Citation |title=Journal of the Senate of the State of West Virginia for the Sixth Session, Commencing January 21, 1868 |date=1868 |pages=10 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gzotAQAAMAAJ |place=Wheeling |publisher=John Frew |via=Google Books}}</ref> Federal troops were removed from Kentucky and Missouri in 1866.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Phillips |first=Christopher |title=The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2016 |isbn=9780199720170 |edition=1st |location=New York |pages=296}}</ref>

The 10 Southern state governments were re-constituted under the direct control of the United States Army. One major purpose was to recognize and protect the right of African Americans to vote.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Chin |first1=Gabriel Jackson |date=September 14, 2004 |title=The 'Voting Rights Act of 1867': The Constitutionality of Federal Regulation of Suffrage During Reconstruction |journal=North Carolina Law Review |volume=82 |issue=5 |pages=1581 |ssrn=589301}}</ref> There was little to no combat, but rather a state of [[martial law]] in which the military closely supervised local government, supervised elections, and tried to protect office holders and freedmen from violence.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|loc=ch. 6–7}} Blacks were enrolled as voters; former Confederate leaders were excluded for a limited period.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|pp=274–275}} No one state was entirely representative. Randolph Campbell describes what happened in Texas:<ref>{{Cite book |last=Campbell |first=Randolph B. |title=Gone to Texas: a history of the Lone Star State |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-19-513842-9 |location=New York |page=276}}</ref>{{sfnp|Rhodes|1920|loc=v. 6: p. 199}}
{{blockquote|1=The first critical step&nbsp;... was the registration of voters according to guidelines established by Congress and interpreted by Generals Sheridan and Charles Griffin. The Reconstruction Acts called for registering all adult males, white and black, except those who had ever sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and then engaged in rebellion.... Sheridan interpreted these restrictions stringently, barring from registration not only all pre-1861 officials of state and local governments who had supported the Confederacy but also all city officeholders and even minor functionaries such as sextons of cemeteries. In May Griffin&nbsp;... appointed a three-man board of registrars for each county, making his choices on the advice of known scalawags and local Freedmen's Bureau agents. In every county where practicable a freedman served as one of the three registrars.... Final registration amounted to approximately 59,633 whites and 49,479 blacks. It is impossible to say how many whites were rejected or refused to register (estimates vary from 7,500 to 12,000), but blacks, who constituted only about 30 percent of the state's population, were significantly over-represented at 45 percent of all voters.}}

===State constitutional conventions: 1867–1869===
The 11 Southern states held constitutional conventions giving Black men the right to vote,{{sfnp|Foner|1988|pp=316–333}} where the factions divided into the Radical, "[[Conservative Republicans (Reconstruction era)|conservative]]", and in-between delegates.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hume |first1=Richard L. |title=Blacks, Carpetbaggers, and Scalawags: the Constitutional Conventions of Radical Reconstruction |last2=Gough |first2=Jerry B. |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |year=2008 |isbn=9780807133248 |location=Baton Rouge}}</ref> The Radicals were a coalition: 40% were Southern White Republicans; 25% were White and 34% were Black.<ref>{{cite conference |first1=Jeffery A. |last1=Jenkins |first2=Boris |last2=Heersink |title=Republican Party Politics and the American South: From Reconstruction to Redemption, 1865–1880 |url=http://faculty.virginia.edu/jajenkins/Jenkins%20Heersink%20SPSA%202016.pdf |date=June 4, 2016 |page=18 |conference=2016 Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico |url-status=dead |archive-date=2016-04-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160418074800/http://faculty.virginia.edu/jajenkins/Jenkins%20Heersink%20SPSA%202016.pdf}}</ref> In addition to expanding the franchise, they pressed for provisions designed to promote economic growth, especially financial aid to rebuild the ruined railroad system.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|pp=323–325}}{{sfnp|Summers|2014a|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}} The conventions set up systems of free public schools funded by tax dollars, but did not require them to be racially integrated.<ref name="Tyack Lowe">{{cite journal |first1=David |last1=Tyack |first2=Robert |last2=Lowe |title=The constitutional moment: Reconstruction and Black education in the South |journal=[[American Journal of Education]] |date=1986 |volume=94 |issue=2 |pages=236–256 |jstor=1084950 |doi=10.1086/443844|s2cid=143849662}}</ref>
[[File:This is a White Man's Government.jpg|thumb|right|"This is a white man's government", [[Thomas Nast]]'s caricature of the forces arraigned against Grant and Reconstruction in the 1868 election. Atop a black Union veteran reaching for a ballot box: the New York City Irish; Confederate and Klansman [[Nathan Bedford Forrest]]; and big-money Democratic Party chairman [[August Belmont]], a burning freedmen's school in the background. ''[[Harper's Weekly]]'', September 5, 1868.]]
Until 1872, most former Confederate or prewar Southern office holders were disqualified from voting or holding office; all but 500 top Confederate leaders were pardoned by the [[Amnesty Act of 1872]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Cooper |first1=William J. Jr. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=foGTgJkUOTEC&pg=PA436 |title=The American South: A History |last2=Terrill |first2=Thomas E. |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-7425-6450-3 |edition=4th |location=Lanham |page=436 |author1-link=William J. Cooper Jr.}}</ref> "Proscription" was the policy of disqualifying as many ex-Confederates as possible. For example, in 1865 Tennessee had disenfranchised 80,000 ex-Confederates.{{sfnp|Zuczek|2006 |loc=Vol. 2 p. 635}} However, proscription was soundly rejected by the Black element, which insisted on universal suffrage.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|p=324}}{{sfnp|Perman|1985|pp=36–37}} The issue would come up repeatedly in several states, especially in Texas and Virginia. In Virginia, an effort was made to disqualify for public office every man who had served in the Confederate Army even as a private, and any civilian farmer who sold food to the Confederate States Army.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gillette |first=William |title=Retreat from reconstruction: 1869–1879 |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |year=1982 |isbn=9780807110065 |edition= |location=Baton Rouge |pages=99}}</ref>{{sfnp|Zuczek|2006 |loc=Vol. 1 p. 323; Vol. 2 pp. 645, 698}} Disenfranchising Southern Whites was also opposed by moderate Republicans in the North, who felt that ending proscription would bring the South closer to a republican form of government based on the [[consent of the governed]], as called for by the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Strong measures that were called for in order to forestall a return to the defunct Confederacy increasingly seemed out of place, and the role of the United States Army and controlling politics in the state was troublesome. Historian Mark Summers states that increasingly "the disenfranchisers had to fall back on the contention that denial of the vote was meant as punishment, and a lifelong punishment at that&nbsp;... Month by month, the un-[[Republicanism|republican]] character of the regime looked more glaring."{{sfnp|Summers|2014|pp=160–161}}

===Election of 1868===
{{Main|1868 United States presidential election}}
During the Civil War, many in the North believed that fighting for the Union was a noble cause—for the preservation of the Union and the end of slavery. After the war ended, with the North victorious, the fear among Radicals was that President Johnson too quickly assumed that slavery and Confederate nationalism were dead and that the Southern states could return. The Radicals sought out a candidate for president who represented their viewpoint.{{sfnp|Smith|2001|pp=455–457}}

In May 1868, the Republicans unanimously chose [[Ulysses S. Grant]] as their presidential candidate, and [[Schuyler Colfax]] as their vice-presidential candidate.{{sfnp|Calhoun|2017|pp=41–42}} Grant won favor with the Radicals after he allowed [[Edwin Stanton]], a Radical, to be reinstated as secretary of war. As early as 1862, during the Civil War, Grant had appointed the Ohio military chaplain [[John Eaton (General)|John Eaton]] to protect and gradually incorporate refugee slaves in west Tennessee and northern Mississippi into the Union war effort and pay them for their labor. It was the beginning of his vision for the Freedmen's Bureau.<ref>{{cite book |last=Simpson |first=Brooks D. |title=The Freedmen's Bureau and Reconstruction: Reconsiderations |publisher=Fordham University Press |year=1999 |isbn=9780823219346 |editor1=Cimbala |editor-first=Paul A. |edition=1st |place=New York |chapter=Ulysses S. Grant and the Freedmen's Bureau |editor2=Miller |editor-first2=Randall M. |name-list-style=amp}}</ref> Grant opposed President Johnson by supporting the Reconstruction Acts passed by the Radicals.{{sfnp|Smith|2001|pp=437–453, 458–460}}

In northern cities Grant contended with a strong immigrant, and particularly in New York City an Irish, anti-Reconstructionist Democratic bloc.<ref name="Montgomery">{{cite book |last1=Montgomery |first1=David |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ktsm2lS5BegC&pg=PA130 |title=Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862–1872 |publisher=Alfred Knopf |year=1967 |isbn=9780252008696 |location=New York |pages=130–133 |access-date=9 October 2020 |via=Google Books}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gleeson |first=David |date=2016 |title=Failing to 'unite with the abolitionists': the Irish Nationalist Press and U.S. emancipation |journal=Slavery & Abolition |volume=37 |issue=3 |pages=622–637 |doi=10.1080/0144039x.2016.1208911 |issn=0144-039X|doi-access=free }}</ref> Republicans sought to make inroads campaigning for the Irish taken prisoner in the [[Fenian raids]] into Canada, and calling on the [[Presidency of Andrew Johnson|Johnson administration]] to recognize a lawful state of war between Ireland and England. In 1867 Grant personally intervened with [[David Bell (Irish Republican)|David Bell]] and [[Michael Scanlon (poet)|Michael Scanlon]] to move their paper, the ''Irish Republic'', articulate in its support for black equality, to New York from Chicago.<ref name="Knight">{{cite journal |last1=Knight |first1=Matthew |date=2017 |title=The Irish Republic: Reconstructing Liberty, Right Principles, and the Fenian Brotherhood |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/680371/summary |url-status=live |journal=Éire-Ireland |publisher=Irish-American Cultural Institute |volume=52 |issue=3 & 4 |pages=252–271 |doi=10.1353/eir.2017.0029 |s2cid=159525524 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201201141335/https://muse.jhu.edu/article/680371/summary |archive-date=December 1, 2020 |access-date=9 October 2020}}</ref><ref name="Yanoso">{{cite book |last1=Yanoso |first1=Nicole Anderson |title=The Irish and the American Presidency |publisher=[[Routledge]] |year=2017 |isbn=9781351480635 |location=New York |pages=75–80}}</ref>

The Democrats, having abandoned Johnson, nominated former governor [[Horatio Seymour]] of New York for president and [[Francis Preston Blair Jr.|Francis P. Blair]] of Missouri for vice president.{{sfnp|Simon|2002|p=245}} The Democrats advocated the immediate restoration of former Confederate states to the Union and amnesty from "all past political offenses".{{sfnp|Peters|Woolley|2018b}}

Grant won the popular vote by 300,000 votes out of 5,716,082 votes cast, receiving an [[Electoral College (United States)|Electoral College]] landslide of 214 votes to Seymour's 80.{{sfnp|Smith|2001|p=461}} Seymour received a majority of white votes, but Grant was aided by 500,000 votes cast by blacks,{{sfnp|Simon|2002|p=245}} winning him 52.7 percent of the popular vote.{{sfnp|Calhoun|2017|p=55}} He lost Louisiana and Georgia primarily due to [[Ku Klux Klan]] violence against African-American voters.{{sfnp|Foner|2014a|pp=243–244}} At the age of 46, Grant was the youngest president yet elected, and the first president elected after the nation had outlawed slavery.{{sfnp|McFeely|2002|p=284}}{{sfnp|Smith|2001|p=461}}{{sfnp|White|2016|p=471}}