Why did Presidential Reconstruction Fail

Hunter

First Sergeant
Joined
Apr 23, 2016
My basic thoughts are as follows, but I would like to hear from you:

1) Because of concerns about guerrilla warfare and an alliance between former Confederates with the Maximilian regime in Mexico, President Lincoln pushed for a relatively easy peace in 1865. He wanted the surrendering soldiers to go home and resume their peacetime activities. The circumstances of General Lee's surrender seemed to indicate this would occur.

2) But a few days after that surrender, a group of southerners assassinated Lincoln, thereby enraging many in the North and dispelling much of the good will Lincoln had tried to create.

3) A group of so-called Radical Republicans in Congress saw this as an opening for renewing their previously stalled efforts to push for the imposition of black suffrage in the South. This would dilute the white vote there and prevent the Democratic Party from resuming its supremacy in Congress, and would also theoretically allow the freedmen to protect their freedom and other rights. Black suffrage was anathema to southern whites and would likely have prolonged the war if the South knew this was coming.

4) President Johnson chose to follow Lincoln's course, however, probably for the same reasons as Lincoln He did not require the southern states to include black suffrage guarantees in the constitutions they were to adopt.

5) The key was whether Congress would admit southern congressmen and senators to their seats in Congress when that body convened in December 1865. A majority in the North of both parties opposed black suffrage and, as the furor over the Lincoln assassination began to dissipate, there was a reasonable chance that the South would be allowed to return to Congress. If they had been admitted, presidential reconstruction probably would have succeeded. The Republicans would lose their veto-proof majority and the ability to unilaterally approve constitutional amendments. In short, with northern and southern Democrats again united, there would be no 14th or 15th Amendments and no congressional reconstruction.


6) But the South blew any real chance of that happening. For example, contrary to a federal law adopted during the war that required anyone taking a federal position to0 be able to honestly swear they had been loyal during the war, the South elected men to Congress who everyone knew could not take that oath. They also made a similar political statement by electing men to state offices who had been loyal Confederates. In addition, Unionists and freedmen in the South were subjected to a very hostile environment. This and other incidents created national security concerns in the North and in Congress that the spirit of rebellion and sectional animosity in the South was alive and could lead to another war. At the very least, northern congressmen did not want the South to win through the ballot box what it had lost in the cartridge box, such as slavery and the payment of the South's war-related debts.


7) Thus, when Congress convened in 1865, it did not admit any of the southern congressional delegations. Instead, it established a joint committee to investigate the situation in the South. The ensuing outrage by southerners, coupled with a number of serious acts of violence over the next year, seemed to confirm Congress's concerns and that caution was warranted. Therefore, in 1867, Congress enacted legislation over President Johnson's veto, inaugurating congressional reconstruction. This consisted of placing the southern states (except Tennessee) back under military control, requiring new state governments to be formed with black suffrage, disqualifying and disfranchising a segment of former Confederates from holding public office, and requiring the ratification of the 14th Amendment. If a state complied with these requirements, its loyal congressional delegations would be admitted to Congress. If not, it would remain under martial law.

Thoughts and criticisms?
 
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