Post Civil War America

Not infrequently, whether on blogs or in other arenas where people discuss political history, the immediate post-Civil War period comes up. People are interested in the period right after the war, say late 1865 and 1866, before Reconstruction policy had fully formed. People often wonder whether other alternatives to the disaster of Reconstruction were possible. See for example the recent post on Lawyers Guns Money about the possible hanging of Confederate leaders like Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. I think it might be useful to think about what the possibilities for post-Civil War America looked like given the political and social climate of the time.

My feelings are that it is highly unlikely that a profoundly different result would have occurred even if Andrew Johnson was not president and an aggressive Reconstruction policy had been immediately implemented in the South. Let's exam what I believe to be a best case scenario. Let's say that Lincoln doesn't name Johnson VP in 1864. But remember, Lincoln almost lost that election. Nearly 1/2 of the North voted for Democrat George McClellan and his policy of a peaceful settlement with the South that would let them go on their way. He named Johnson because he wanted to project an image of national unity and reconciliation. So even if he doesn't name Johnson, he still would have named at the best a fairly conservative Republican, probably from a border state like Kentucky or Maryland. It is unlikely I suppose that such VP X when he becomes President X, would have been as obstructionist to the Congress as Johnson was or have allowed the Confederate states back in so easily that Georgia could send Confederate VP Alexander Stephens to the Senate immediately after the war. Evidence suggests that the South was willing to capitulate to northern demands immediately after the war. So perhaps the Black Codes would never have been implemented, nor the KKK formed. Maybe the freed slaves really do get their 40 acres and a mule. Maybe large numbers are even moved to the Great Plains, perhaps west Texas, Kansas, or even the Indian Territory, what later became Oklahoma.

But remember that there was tremendous hostility to blacks in the North. There were states that had laws before the Civil War that barred free blacks from living there. There was tremendous and often violent hostility among the white working class to black competition for jobs. Even the Republican Party, which worked so hard to free the slaves, did so more out of a free labor ideology than compassion for the plight of blacks in America. These were the same people who soon after the war subscribed to ideas of Social Darwinism and opposition to any government intervention to help immigrant labor in northern factories. With the exception of some of the radicals, Republicans opposed slavery because they believed that labor should be freely contracted with employers as opposed to coerced. Thus once the slaves were free, they were on their own and the government had only a minimal duty to assist them. In addition, Abraham Lincoln had to repeatedly stress that he did not believe in social integration and mixing, something that I do not believe was lip service. The vast majority of northerners wanted nothing to do with blacks, even as they fought for the freedom of slaves.

So by the 1880s and 1890s, I don't think that conditions for African-Americans in this country would have turned out all that differently if Johnson had not become president. It's still unlikely that the South would not have started implementing Jim Crow legislation. There's no evidence suggesting that a different course in the first years of Reconstruction would have changed the opinion of the white working class toward blacks. Early trade unions had strict racial segregation and this remained until after World War II. Even if the KKK had not started, plenty of anti-black violence still would have occurred. The KKK was torn apart by arrests of its leaders by 1871 and that certainly didn't stop lynchings. There's not much reason to feel that stronger implementation of Reconstruction immediately after the war would have made much difference here either.

One might disagree with this assessment and it is quite negative. But given the political and social realities of the time, I just have trouble believing that the historical struggles of African-Americans would have turned out any different with a more vigorous implementation of Reconstruction after the war.