A Liberal
Dose
December 2,
2021
Troy D.
Smith
“History of
Voting, Part 5: Reconstruction”
Last week we talked about the Reconstruction Amendments. Now
we’re going to look at how they affected the voting rights of African
Americans. The 13th Amendment, ratified on December 6, 1865 (the
Civil War had ended in April), ended slavery. President Andrew Johnson (of Tennessee)
had initiated a Reconstruction program that was remarkably conciliatory to
Southern states, which did not abridge the voting rights of former Confederates
and allowed them to reinstate their local and state governments -this led to,
essentially, the same people being in charge as had been before the war, and
every Southern state drew up “black codes” to control the newly freed back
population. For example, black workers were required to call their employer “master”
and were forbidden to quit their job without the employer’s permission. Any who
did so would be hunted down by “negro catchers” and forced to return. Children
could be forcibly taken from their parents and apprenticed out until adulthood.
African Americans were not allowed to buy alcohol or bear arms, could be
publicly beaten for insolence to a white person, were not allowed out after
dark without papers from their employer, and were required by law to work from
dawn to dusk. They were not allowed to vote.
In other words, they were still slaves, except in name.
Many Northerners were outraged by this turn of events. It
felt like the war had been fought for nothing, as the South seemed to have
mostly returned to the pre-war status quo. This motivated voters in the 1866
midterm elections to turn out many Democrats and moderate Republicans, and
sweep in a large number of what were called “radical Republicans” who were determined to
impose stricter rules on the South. The radical Republicans gained a
supermajority, enabling them to overturn any vetoes President Johnson made
(they also impeached him, though he managed to stay in office -but his power
was broken.) They imposed much a much stricter regimen of Reconstruction, keeping
the former Confederate states under military occupation and martial law -and
enforcing the newly acquired rights of the freed slaves, including the right to
vote.
The 14th Amendment, ratified on July 8, 1868,
declared that everyone born in the United States was a citizen, and therefore had
all the rights of a citizen. Therefore, in the presidential election of that
year, African Americans could vote. In most Southern states, though, any white
men who had served in the Confederate government or as officers in the Confederate
military could not vote, or hold
public office. This lasted for several years. Not only was Republican U. S.
Grant elected president in 1868, but all through the South black men were voted
into public office: as magistrates, city councilmen, state legislators -and
several were elected to Congress. Jefferson Davis’s old Mississippi U. S.
senate seat was won by a black man named Hiram Revels. Even beyond the advances
made by African Americans, Republicans in general won big throughout the South.
It is important to remember that, at that time, Democrats
were the more conservative party and radical Republicans were what we today
would call liberal. Most white Southerners did not like Republicans, and
especially did not like seeing them get elected. Paramilitary groups sprang up
to prevent Republicans from voting -groups like the Red Shirts, the White
League, and the Ku Klux Klan. They focused mostly on black voters, but also
hated white Republicans -whether they were “carpetbaggers” (transplanted
northerners) or “scalawags” (southern-born but supportive of Reconstruction and
black rights). You know their tactics. They would intimidate people -especially
black people -by burning their property (burning crosses didn’t come until the
1900s), beating people up, and often committing murder. In 1871, Congress
passed “the Ku Klux Klan Act”, further empowering the federal government to enforce
the 14th amendment and the more recent 15th (February 3, 1870)
-to protect black voters.
Until 1877, when everything changed.
--Troy D. Smith,
a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech.
His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
A complete list of Liberal Dose columns can be found HERE
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
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