Editing Reconstruction era (section)

===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}}