High School: Lesson 2
Lesson Essential Question: How did Lincoln’s views on Reconstruction affect policies of his successors and the American government?
Estimated duration of lesson: 2 days (based upon a 60 min. block)
Academic Expectations: 2.20 Students understand, analyze, and interpret historical events, conditions, trends, and issues to develop historical perspective.
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Program of Studies: Understandings |
Program of Studies: Skills and Concepts |
Related Core Content for Assessment |
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SS-H-HP-U-US1 Students will understand that U.S. History can be analyzed by examining significant eras (Reconstruction, Industrialization, Progressive Movement, World War I, Great Depression and the New Deal, World War II, Cold War, Contemporary United States) to develop chronological understanding and recognize cause-and-effect relationships and multiple causation. |
SS-H-HP-S-3 Students will research issues or interpret accounts of historical events in U.S. history using primary and secondary sources (e.g., biographies, films, periodicals, Internet resources, textbooks, artifacts):
a)
compare, contrast
and evaluate the approaches and effectiveness of Reconstruction
programs |
SS-HS-5.2.1 Students will compare and contrast the ways in which various Reconstruction plans were approached and evaluate the outcomes of Reconstruction. DOK 2 |
Learning Targets:
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Students Will Know…… |
Students will be able to….. |
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Lesson Summary
Students will read and discuss Lincoln’s plans for reconstruction and then analyze documents from the Johnson, Grant and Hayes administrations to see if the Lincoln goals were carried out.
Students will predict the short and long term goals of Lincoln’s, Radical Republicans’, Southern whites’ and freedmen. These will be confirmed through reading, watching video and research.
Students will list and explain the positive and negative reactions to equality under Reconstruction.
Instructional Set/Bell Ringer
Day One: Ask students to make a list of the things they know about President Lincoln’s Reconstruction plan. A simple KWL sheet or bulleted information on a sheet of paper will do.
Day Two: Have students read the article “The Betrayal of the Freedmen.” Ask if they agree or disagree with its commentary. Discuss the embellishments or omissions from what they have found so far.
Transition
Day One: Discussion of the general problems associated with Reconstruction.
Day Two: Ask students what constitutional issues may arise from the different Reconstruction plans.
Lesson Assessment
Classroom discussion and analysis of the key issue—were Lincoln’s goals of Reconstruction accomplished?
Learning Experience
Day One:
Students will read President Lincoln’s 2nd inaugural address and his last public speech to gain an insight of President Lincoln’s reconstruction beliefs. Students will need either hard copies of the speeches (provided in resources at the end of the lesson) or if they are in a lab setting, information where the speeches can be found (provided in additional notes section).
Groups of three, students will list and discuss broad goals that Pres. Lincoln called for in these speeches. Students will also discuss what barriers would slow or stop these plans and list them as well.
Groups will then examine three documents from the Johnson, Grant and Hayes administrations and see if Pres. Lincoln’s goals were met.
Grant and Hayes inaugural addresses (Johnson did not give one)
Next, have students read the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. They should take notes on any changes or similarities to Lincoln’s plan.
Day Two:
Students are to research and note the important facts and consequences around two Supreme Court cases U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876) (website and/or information provided below), and Plessey v. Ferguson (1896)
This will give the students insight into the successes and failures of Pres. Lincoln’s reconstruction plan.
Students should use the Supreme Court case Plessey v. Ferguson (1896) as a long range reference to reconstruction goals. It claimed equality was available. Ask students to discuss why it was not really equality and what else the Supreme Court could have done. Discuss current discrimination policies that are provided by the Constitution or a court case, but still do not provide equal access or protection.
Lesson Wrap Up
Classroom discussion and analysis of the key issue—were Lincoln’s goals of Reconstruction accomplished?
Additional Lesson Activity Notes
Access to the internet would be helpful, but not necessary to do the research.
- website has beneficial research links
- investigate the myths of reconstruction
- U.S. Grant’s first inaugural address
- Rutherford B. Hayes inaugural address
- http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0163_0537_ZS.html
Resources
Plessey v. Ferguson case also provided below
http://www.quotablelincoln.com/lincoln6_books.php
During the Civil War, Lincoln exercised powers no previous president had wielded; he suspended the writ of habeas corpus and frequently imprisoned accused Southern spies and sympathizers without trial. Some scholars have argued that Lincoln's political arrests extended to the highest levels of the government including an attempted warrant for Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, though the allegation remains unresolved and controversial (see the Taney Arrest Warrant controversy). On the other hand, he often commuted executions. The war was a source of constant frustration for the president, and it occupied nearly all of his time. After repeated difficulties with General George McClellan and a string of other unsuccessful commanding generals, Lincoln made the fateful decision to appoint a radical and somewhat scandalous army commander: General Ulysses S. Grant. Grant would apply his military knowledge and leadership talents to bring about the close of the Civil War.
Despite his meager education and “backwoods” upbringing, Lincoln possessed an extraordinary command of the English language, as evidenced by the Gettysburg Address, a speech dedicating a cemetery of Union soldiers from the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. While most of the speakers—e.g. Edward Everett—at the event spoke at length, some for hours, Lincoln's few choice words resonated across the nation and across history, defying Lincoln's own prediction that "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here." Lincoln's second inaugural address is also greatly admired and often quoted.
Lincoln was the only President to face a presidential election during a civil war (in 1864). The long war and the issue of emancipation appeared to be severely hampering his prospects and an electoral defeat appeared likely against the Democratic nominee and former general, George McClellan. Lincoln formed a Union party which composed of War democrats and republicans. However, a series of timely Union victories shortly before election day changed the situation dramatically and Lincoln was reelected.
The reconstruction of the Union weighed heavy on the President's mind. He was determined to take a course that would not permanently alienate the former Confederate states. "Let 'em up easy," he told his assembled military leaders Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Gen. William T. Sherman and Adm. David Dixon Porter in an 1865 meeting on the steamer River Queen. When Richmond, the Confederate capital, was at long last captured, Lincoln went there to make a public gesture of sitting at Jefferson Davis's own desk, symbolically saying to the nation that the President of the United States held authority over the entire land. He was greeted at the city as a conquering hero by freed slaves, whose sentiments were epitomized by one admirer's quote, "I know I am free for I have seen the face of Father Abraham and have felt him."
Amendment XIII (1865)
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Amendment XIV (1868)
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Amendment XV (1870)
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Students can explore these Court cases for further insight to Reconstruction failures (or successes)
- Ex parte Milligan (1866)
- Texas v. White (1869)
- U.S. v. Reese (1876)
- U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876)
2nd inaugural address given March 4, 1865 by President Lincoln
http://www.angelfire.com/my/abrahamlincoln/Inaugural2.html
At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then, a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new would be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this, four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war, seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invoked His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Last speech given by President Lincoln, April 11, 1865
http://www.angelfire.com/my/abrahamlincoln/Lastspeech.html
We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression can not be restrained. In the midst of this, however, He, from Whom all blessings flow, must not be forgotten. A call for a national thanksgiving is being prepared, and will be duly promulgated. Nor must those whose harder part gives us the cause of rejoicing, be overlooked. Their honors must not be parcelled out with others. I myself, was near the front, and had the high pleasure of transmitting much of the good news to you; but no part of the honor, for plan or execution, is mine. To Gen. Grant, his skillful officers, and brave men, all belongs. The gallant Navy stood ready, but was not in reach to take active part.
By these recent successes the re-inauguration of the national authority -- reconstruction which has had a large share of thought from the first, is pressed much more closely upon our attention. It is fraught with great difficulty. Unlike the case of a war between independent nations, there is no authorized organ for us to treat with. No one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man. We simply must begin with, and mould from, disorganized and discordant elements. Nor is it a small additional embarrassment that we, the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to the mode, manner, and means of reconstruction.
As a general rule, I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I can not properly offer an answer. In spite of this precaution, however, it comes to my knowledge that I am much censured for some supposed agency in setting up, and seeking to sustain, the new State Government of Louisiana. In this I have done just so much as, and no more than, the public knows. In the Annual Message of Dec. 1863 and accompanying Proclamation, I presented a plan of reconstruction (as the phrase goes) which, I promised, if adopted by any State, should be acceptable to, and sustained by, the Executive government of the nation. I distinctly stated that this was not the only plan which might possibly be acceptable; and I also distinctly protested that the Executive claimed no right to say when, or whether members should be admitted to seats in Congress from such States. This plan was, in advance, submitted to the then Cabinet, and distinctly approved by every member of it. One of them suggested that I should then, and in that connection, apply the Emancipation Proclamation to the theretofore excepted parts of Virginia and Louisiana; that I should drop the suggestion about apprenticeship for freed-people, and that I should omit the protest against my own power, in regard to the admission of members to Congress; but even he approved every part and parcel of the plan which has since been employed or touched by the action of Louisiana. The new constitution of Louisiana, declaring emancipation for the whole State, practically applies the Proclamation to the part previously excepted. It does not adopt apprenticeship for freed-people; and it is silent, as it could not well be otherwise, about the admission of members to Congress. So that, as it applies to Louisiana, every member of the Cabinet fully approved the plan. The Message went to Congress, and I received many commendations of the plan, written and verbal; and not a single objection to it, from any professed emancipationist, came to my knowledge, until after the news reached Washington that the people of Louisiana had begun to move in accordance with it. From about July 1862, I had corresponded with different persons, supposed to be interested, seeking a reconstruction of a State government for Louisiana. When the Message of 1863, with the plan before mentioned, reached New-Orleans, Gen. Banks wrote me that he was confident the people, with his military co-operation, would reconstruct, substantially on that plan. I wrote him, and some of them to try it; they tried it, and the result is known. Such only has been my agency in getting up the Louisiana government. As to sustaining it, my promise is out, as before stated. But, as bad promises are better broken than kept, I shall treat this as a bad promise, and break it, whenever I shall be convinced that keeping it is adverse to the public interest. But I have not yet been so convinced.
I have been shown a letter on this subject, supposed to be an able one, in which the writer expresses regret that my mind has not seemed to be definitely fixed on the question whether the seceded States, so called, are in the Union or out of it. It would perhaps, add astonishment to his regret, were he to learn that since I have found professed Union men endeavoring to make that question, I have purposely forborne any public expression upon it. As appears to me that question has not been, nor yet is, a practically material one, and that any discussion of it, while it thus remains practically immaterial, could have no effect other than the mischievous one of dividing our friends. As yet, whatever it may hereafter become, that question is bad, as the basis of a controversy, and good for nothing at all -- a merely pernicious abstraction.
We all agree that the seceded States, so called, are out of their proper practical relation with the Union; and that the sole object of the government, civil and military, in regard to those States is to again get them into that proper practical relation. I believe it is not only possible, but in fact, easier, to do this, without deciding, or even considering, whether these states have even been out of the Union, than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had ever been abroad. Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between these states and the Union; and each forever after, innocently indulge his own opinion whether, in doing the acts, he brought the States from without, into the Union, or onlygave them proper assistance, they never having been out of it.
The amount of constituency, so to speak, on which the new Louisiana government rests, would be more satisfactory to all, if it contained fifty, thirty, or even twenty thousand, instead of only about twelve thousand, as it does. It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers. Still the question is not whether the Louisiana government, as it stands, is quite all that is desirable. The question is "Will it be wiser to take it as it is, and help to improve it; or to reject, and disperse it?"
"Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation with the Union soon by sustaining, or by discarding her new State Government?" Some twelve thousand voters in the heretofore slave-state of Louisiana have sworn allegiance to the Union, assumed to be the rightful political power of the State, held elections, organized a State government, adopted a free-state constitution, giving the benefit of public schools equally to black and white, and empowering the Legislature to confer the elective franchise upon the colored man. Their Legislature has already voted to ratify the constitutional amendment recently passed by Congress, abolishing slavery throughout the nation. These twelve thousand persons are thus fully committed to the Union, and to perpetual freedom in the state -- committed to the very things, and nearly all the things the nation wants -- and they ask the nations recognition, and it's assistance to make good their committal. Now, if we reject, and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them. We in effect say to the white men "You are worthless, or worse -- we will neither help you, nor be helped by you." To the blacks we say "This cup of liberty which these, your old masters, hold to your lips, we will dash from you, and leave you to the chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when, where, and how." If this course, discouraging and paralyzing both white and black, has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical relations with the Union, I have, so far, been unable to perceive it. If, on the contrary, we recognize, and sustain the new government of Louisiana the converse of all this is made true. We encourage the hearts, and nerve the arms of the twelve thousand to adhere to their work, and argue for it, and proselyte for it, and fight for it, and feed it, and grow it, and ripen it to a complete success. The colored man too, in seeing all united for him, is inspired with vigilance, and energy, and daring, to the same end. Grant that he desires the elective franchise, will he not attain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps toward it, than by running backward over them? Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it? Again, if we reject Louisiana, we also reject one vote in favor of the proposed amendment to the national constitution. To meet this proposition, it has been argued that no more than three fourths of those states which have not attempted secession are necessary to validly ratify the amendment. I do not commit myself against this, further than to say that such a ratification would be questionable, and sure to be persistently questioned; while a ratification by three fourths of all the States would be unquestioned and unquestionable.
I repeat the question. "Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation with the Union sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new State Government?
What has been said of Louisiana will apply generally to other States. And yet so great peculiarities pertain to each state; and such important and sudden changes occur in the same state; and, withal, so new and unprecedented is the whole case, that no exclusive and inflexible plan can safely be prescribed as to details and colatterals. Such exclusive, and inflexible plan, would surely become a new entanglement. Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.
In the present "situation" as the phrase goes, it may be my duty to make some new announcement to the people of the South. I am considering, and shall not fail to act, when satisfied that action will be proper.
United States v. Cruikshank
http://www.csamerican.com/SC.asp?r=92+U.S.+542
[92 U.S. 542]
Waite Court, Decided 9-0, 3/27/1876
In this case, decided during the height of the Reconstruction in the South, the Court opted for a careful reading of the Fourteenth Amendment and refused to expand federal jurisdiction, even though the outcome clearly denied justice.
At issue was a troubling event in which an armed white mob in Colfax, Louisiana attacked and killed over one hundred blacks during a hotly contested gubernatorial election. Three white ringleaders were brought to trial and convicted under the federal Enforcement Act of 1870, which made it a crime to interfere with any citizen's constitutional rights. The defendants then appealed what they felt to be faulty indictments.
The effect of Reconstruction since the close of the Civil War had been to vastly expand federal power, especially in the South. It was no secret that many of the Acts and methods employed to carry out Reconstruction were less than constitutional and would never have withstood Court scrutiny in different times, or in the North. The Court was sensitive to this, and was prepared to resist further attempts at expansion.
In this environment all nine justices agreed that the indictments in Cruikshank were, in fact, faulty. As brought under the Enforcement Act, the indictments failed to allege the denial of specific federal rights:
- The right of assembly contained in the First Amendment, and the right to bear arms in the Second only protect against congressional intrusion.
- Viewed constructively -- a perspective unfortunately long since abandoned -- the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment protect citizens only from state action, not from the actions of other citizens.
- Because the indictments did not allege that the defendant's actions were based upon race, interference with the victims' right to vote was also not federally actionable.
Ultimately the Court placed the responsibility for trying and punishing the offenders in the Colfax Massacre back on the state of Louisiana -- where such punishment was unlikely. The outcome of Cruikshank certainly did nothing to stem the racial violence of the Reconstruction period.
Although the Court has since properly incorporated the First Amendment into the Fourteenth to make it applicable to the states (it has yet to do so with the Second), barring that the Cruikshank Court's strict reading of federal jurisdiction under the Constitution was not incorrect.
In cases like this one where a proper reading of the Constitution seems to produce an egregiously unjust outcome, it's easy to question the validity of the former. But with good leadership, just outcomes can be produced without twisting the legal foundation of the world's most successful nation.
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/scripts/jimcrow/glossary.cgi?term=u&letter=yes
United States v. Cruikshank: (1876) This case arose out of the bloody Colfax, Louisiana, riot on Easter Sunday, 1873, in which 280 African Americans were massacred. Federal prosecutors indicted scores of whites under the Civil Rights Enforcement Act of 1870 (see Enforcement Acts). In a staggering blow to the power of the federal government to protect the civil rights of blacks, the Court quashed the indictments on the grounds that they had failed to clearly indicate the racial intentions of the arrested whites to deprive blacks of their civil rights. Justice Joseph P. Bradley, in writing for the majority, stated that the Fourteenth Amendment authorized federal action against state laws that denied rights but did not permit federal action against the actions of private individuals. He also wrote that while the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Amendments did allow federal action to prevent the private denial of rights, they did so only on the specified basis of race, color, or previous conditions of servitude. This ruling along with the ruling in U.S. v. Reese, gave primary authority to the states in matters of civil rights.
Plessy v. Ferguson
http://www.csamerican.com/SC.asp?r=163+U%2ES%2E+537
[163 U.S. 537]
Fuller Court, Decided 7-1, 5/18/1896
Read the
actual decision
Plessy is famous for having constitutionalized the concept of "separate but equal" accommodations for blacks, a doctrine which legitimized Jim Crow and led to the civil rights strife of the mid twentieth century.
The dispute arose over a Louisiana statute, typical of the Jim Crow laws being passed at the time, which required railroads to provide "separate but equal" accommodations for blacks and whites, and required travelers to use only those cars set aside for their race. A New Orleans coalition of creoles and blacks decided to test the constitutionality of the law.
Plessy agreed to create the conditions for the case. One eighth black, he was considered legally black, though appearing white. In buying a railroad ticket, he made sure that the conductor was aware of his mixed race. When he seated himself on a white car and refused to move, he was arrested.
Plessy charged that his rights under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments were violated by the law and, when the Louisiana courts refused to acknowledge his claims, he appealed to the Supreme Court.
In his majority opinion, Justice Henry B. Brown held that the Thirteenth Amendment only prohibited acts which threatened a return to slavery, which Louisiana's law clearly did not. He further stated that the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection of the laws did not apply, since the Louisiana statute did not inherently treat blacks as inferior -- that the feelings of inferiority came from blacks' perception of the law. He also expressed the futility of trying to create laws that flowed against the long-held customs and sentiments of the people.
To insure that his position met with popular support, Justice Brown equated the separation of races on railway cars with the similar separation in the state educational system -- the latter being a particularly strongly held sentiment of the white majority.
In his lone dissent, Justice John Marshall Harlan rejected the notion that the Thirteenth Amendment was restricted to slavery itself, instead proposing, with a vagueness usually eschewed by the Court, that it also addressed the "badge[s] of servitude". In an oft-repeated phrase -- which actually came from one of Plessy's attorneys -- Justice Harlan stated that the "Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens."
In expanding the constitutionality of enforced segregation to include a field so broad and delicate as education, the Court fairly well assured the civil rights actions of a half century later. As much as anything else, the doctrine of separate but equal was blown away by the fact that Jim Crow's separate accommodations never approached equal.
Commentary on Hayes and reconstruction
The Betrayal of the Freedmen? Rutherford B. Hayes and the End of Reconstruction?
http://www.rbhayes.org/hayes/scholarworks/display.asp?id=503
By Roger D. Bridges
"Hideous things happened in the decades after the Civil War. Freed slaves who tried to vote were beaten, jailed, lynched. Jim Crow laws and the Ku Klux Klan stopped thousands from registering." That is how Associated Press reporter Katherine Rizzo opened a recent column about Rutherford B. Hayes and the abortive efforts by the Hayes Presidential Library to secure federal funding. Taking her cue from the opposition of a St. Louis Congressman (Democrat William Clay), Rizzo told the familiar story of Hayes election and its massive negative impact on the results of Reconstruction. According to her, Clay said: "I'm not saying this guy was totally bad. I'm saying what he did was incredibly obnoxious and corrupt." Rizzo reported that Clay believed that "a deal cut in 1877 to give Hayes the presidency 'had a devastating effect on black Americans.'"
Rizzo summarized the story as follows:
Hayes, a Republican, lost the popular vote in 1876 but assumed the presidency after considerable controversy and negotiation. The Electoral College gave him a one-vote edge over his Democratic opponent, but Democrats challenged the decision on grounds that some states submitted two sets of returns.
Facing the possibility the country would be left without a president, both parties considered taking the office by force.
But in the end, the Republicans struck a secret deal with Southern Democrats in Congress, who agreed not to dispute the Hayes victory in exchange for a promise to end Reconstruction and withdraw federal troops from the South.
Hayes made good on the deal. He swiftly ended Reconstruction and pulled federal troops out of the last two occupied states, South Carolina and Louisiana.
"Instead of withdrawing, he should have sent additional troops out there," Clay said. "An 1871 report to Congress says that in nine counties in South Carolina, there were 35 lynchings, 262 black men and women were severely beaten, and over 100 homes were burned. The Ku Klux Klan was already riding roughshod."
Historians have debated whether more troops would have stopped the Klan or caused a larger blood bath, said Dan T. Carter, a history professor at Emory University in Atlanta.
"I would question whether he had any political options," he said. "He did not have the support of the American people and did not have support even in his own political party."
Nonetheless, "he basically was knuckling under to terrorism," Carter said. "The congressman's exactly right. Hayes should have stood up to the American people and said, 'We're doing this terrible thing,' and instead he came up with this mealy-mouthed political bargain."
Clay had earlier detailed his opposition in a letter to Congressman Paul E. Gillmor, a Republican who represents the district where the Hayes library and home is located. He concluded that
The election of President Hayes was achieved through the conniving of members from both parties in Congress, the governor of a northern state and a member of the United States Supreme Court. This conspiracy was entered into by those who were determined to deny former black slaves their citizenship rights. It involved a commitment to withdraw the federal troops from southern states.
Hayes is mostly remembered for two important incidents, both unscrupulous and unprincipled. First, he and his party participated in a scheme to throw the election into the House of Representatives for resolution by conjuring up phony challenges to electors in several stares. Second, Hayes was named president by a panel that was tainted by the obvious offering of something of value to ascertain the one vote necessary to be declared the victor.
Paul, I have devoted my entire adult life to defending the concept that "All men are created equal and entitled to certain inalienable rights". The career of President Rutherford B. Hayes flies in the face of everything I believe this country should stand for. Therefore, I am compelled to oppose any effort to pay honor to his memory.
A man who claimed to be a Hayes relative called during a live C-SPAN tour of the Hayes Home and wondered "why is it that the best kept secret in history is that Rutherford B. Hayes ought to be the hero of all Southerners cause he ended the military occupation of the South in 1876?".
Clay's views, however, have not always been the dominant view. Early historians and political scientists agreed with Hayes that there was little he could do toward insuring the rights of blacks beyond getting assurances from local leaders. In 1915, retired Columbia University Professor of Political Science and Constitutional Law, John W. Burgess declared in his Larwill Lectures at Kenyon College that Hayes believed he had acted both consistently honorably. Burgess noted Hayes "greatest struggle which he had with himself . . . was the question whether he was deserting the just cause of the black man and delivering him back to servitude. Had he not been able to convince himself that his policy of restoring the autonomy of the State governments in the south would not lead to this result, he certainly could never have followed it . . . ." Burgess contended, moreover, that Hayes had behaved the only way a man with his understanding of the Constitution could have acted. Hayes, according to Burgess, recognized that while the national government and the returning boards had jurisdiction over federal returns, once the state had resumed its rightful power under the Constitution, the federal power could not intervene in purely state affairs. Thus there was no inconsistency in counting the Republican electoral votes while accepting Democratic returns at the state level. Without dwelling on the subject here, let me say that this, indeed fairly represents Hayes' views.
Despite the work of several recent historians (notably Michael Les Benedict, Vincent P. DeSantis and Ari Hoogenboom), Clay and Carter's views of the election, the subsequent compromise, its results, and Hayes' complicity continue to hold sway. Although he seems to understand Hayes dilemma, Eric Foner probably sums up the most commonly held notion that "All in all, 1877, confirmed the growing conservatism of the Republican party and portended a new role for the national state in the post-Reconstruction years. . . . To be sure, neither the humanitarian impulse that had helped create the Republican party nor the commitment to equal citizenship that evolved during the war and Reconstruction, entirely disappeared. Southern issues, however, played a steadily diminishing part in Northern Republican politics and support for the idea of federal intervention to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments continued to wane." Even William Gillette, who is generally critical of what he sees as the Republican and Hayes retreat from Reconstruction and protection of blacks and white unionists, agrees that "the reaction of most northern Republicans ranged from enthusiastic relief that the issue of the use of troops in the south would no longer intrude into every campaign, to fatalistic acceptance of the necessity of withdrawal." Still, he writes, "the end of reconstruction could have been achieved with more finesse."
Did Hayes cynically end Reconstruction in order to regain peace and stability as charged by so many writers? Did he knowingly sacrifice human and political rights for party gain? Finally, was there an alternative that Hayes could have profitably pursued? These are difficult questions to answer, and may be no more profitably pursued than the question "What if the South had won the Civil War?" It is clear, however, that by 1876-77, a majority of white Americans were weary of continuing to battle southern intransigence, especially when there appeared some possibility that the South was ready to give more than lip service to the rights promised by the Civil War Amendments.
As early as 1875, Rutherford B. Hayes believed the time had come for the nation to turn away from force and to embrace education as the panacea to the race problem--the root of the continuing refusal by Southerners to accept reconstruction. From his home in Fremont where he had retired after two terms as Ohio Governor, he advised his Texas friend (and old college roommate) Guy Bryan "that the most important thing in Texas, as everywhere else, is education for all. . . . I recognize fully the evil of rule by ignorance. . . . But the remedy is not, I am sure to be found in the abandonment of the American principle that all must share in government. The whites of the South must do as we do, forget to drive and learn to lead the ignorant masses around them." Later that same year, still retired, but soon to return and begin campaigning for his third term as Governor, Hayes noted in his diary that "I do not sympathize with a large share of the [national] party leaders. . . . I doubt the ultra measures relating to the South . . . ." Later, after accepting the Republican gubernatorial nomination, Hayes again wrote his friend: "As to Southern affairs 'the let-alone policy' seems now to be the true course . . . . The future depends largely on the moderation and good sense of Southern men in the next House of Representatives. . . . I think we are one people at last for all time."
Hayes' 1875 election over a popular Democrat to an unprecedented third term as Ohio Governor catapulted him into presidential politics. Although he proclaimed himself indifferent to the prospect of being the Republican candidate, he realized that he was so. It was thus no surprise when the Republican Convention turned to him in 1876 when none of the leading candidates could command a majority of the delegates. He had a good war record, he had Radical credentials, had loyally supported President Grant, and was governor of a state necessary to for success in the election. Moreover, he was acceptable to the reform wing of the party.
Hayes views on Reconstruction, but not on civil rights and suffrage, had evolved over the years. In the pre-Civil War years, while an attorney in Cincinnati, he had often defended blacks and runaway slaves. When Lincoln was elected President, Hayes believed that the Union must confront the South. He was ready to risk conflict and dissolution rather than permit the expansion of slavery. In Congress, after the war, he had supported Radical Reconstruction and had opposed the conciliatory views of Andrew Johnson. In 1868, he had strongly supported black suffrage in Ohio although it was not popular statewide.
His views on the importance of reconciliation between the sections discussed with Guy Bryan, and the resulting salutary effect of race relations in the South soon became public knowledge. In early May newspapers published a letter from Bryan in which the Texan (or Texian as Hayes would say) saying that Hayes would even be acceptable to a southern Democrat. He wrote:
Although I am and have long been from principle, a Democrat, and expect to support and vote the Democratic ticket at the next Presidential election, yet, I hope Gov. Hayes will receive the nomination of the Republican party-for if your party should be successful, there is no distinguished member of it I would rather see President than Rutherford B. Hayes, for I know him well, and I believe that he is honest, that he is capable, and that he will be faithful to the Constitution. Having been in Congress four years, and Governor of Ohio the third time, he has experience, and is a Statesman of incorruptible integrity-besides being a sound lawyer and patriot. One who, if elected, would be President for the whole country, and not for a section. What the South most needs is good local government, and one in the Presidential chair who will do all he can under the Constitutions, Federal and State, to promote it. I believe if elected Hayes will do this.
After Hayes received the nomination, however, he made clear that he preferred not to use the term "local government." As he was rehearsing his thoughts for the obligatory letter of acceptance to the Republican party to Carl Schurz, Hayes wrote:
I now feel like saying something as to the South, not essentially different from your suggestions, but am not decided about it. I don't like the phrase, by reason of its Democratic associations, which you use---"local self-government"---in that connection. It seems to me to smack of the bowie-knife and revolver. "Local self-government" has nullified the Fifteenth Amendment in several States, and is in a fair way to nullify the Fourteenth and Thirteenth. But I do favor a policy of reconciliation, based on the observance of all parts of the Constitution---the new as well as the old---and, therefore, suppose you and I are substantially agreed on the topic.
His letter firmly committed him to the protection of black rights by his insistence that before there could be reconciliation there must be assurances that southern politicos would respect the Civil War amendments and the subsequent legislation to enforce them. Further, he insisted that in order to insure continue Republican success, and leadership as the South resumed greater local control, that the party must continue to wave the "bloody shirt." Hayes certainly believed that some of the leading make weights of the party agreed with his assessment. Late in the campaign, he noted in his Diary: "He [Blaine] has almost precisely my views and hopes as to the South. By conciliating Southern whites, on the basis of obedience to law and equal rights, he hopes we may divide the Southern whites, and so protect the colored people."
When Hayes thought he had lost the election, again his concerns turned to the South and "about the colored people especially." He was convinced that Tilden would be unable to control the baser elements of southern leadership. It would prove of untold evil and calamity to the Southerners themselves. Not only would southern blacks be harmed, he warned, but the entire South would suffer because northern capital would cease to flow and a tremendous out-migration of blacks and white would occur.
As it became more and more clear that the results were not as clear cut as Hayes had thought on election night, and the first few days thereafter, he began to support efforts to secure his election and to assure there could be both reconciliation and protection of the rights and obligations conferred by the Civil War amendments. He recorded in his Diary on December 12, 1876, that he had received assurances from southern Democratic leaders (including Lamar of Mississip, Hampton of South Carolina, and "probably Gordon of Georgia" that they would not oppose Hayes' ascension to the White House, that they would support abolition of the color line and that they would support "measures to secure the colored people of all of their rights." When it became clear that the Electoral Commission probably would decided in his favor, he began to compose a speech that he might give at Fremont before departing for Washington. In that proposed speech (never delivered), he intended to affirm the sentiments in his Letter of Acceptance. If, however, he were to write the letter at the moment he thought he "would give that part on the Southern question greater emphasis." He then recorded exactly what he intended to support:
"What is required is: First, that for the protection and welfare of the colored people, the Thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth Amendments shall be sacredly observed and faithfully enforced according to their true intent and meaning.
"Second, We all see that the tremendous revolution which has passed over the southern people has left them impoverished and prostrate, and we all are deeply solicitous to do what may constitutionally be done to make them again prosperous and happy. They need economy, honesty, and intelligence in their local governments. They need to have such a policy adopted as will cause sectionalism to disappear, and that will tend to wipe out the color line. They need to have encouraged immigration, education, and every description of legitimate business and industry. We do not want a united North nor a united South. We want a united country. And if the great trust shall devolve upon me, I fervently pray that the Divine Being, who holds the destinies of the nations in his hands, will give me wisdom to perform its duties so as to promote the truest and best interests of the whole country.
As Hayes assumed office and began the delicate negotiations to end the difficulties in South Carolina and Louisiana, he continued to maintain the position that the protection afforded by the amendments and federal laws must be upheld in spirit by southern leaders. At the same time, he was convinced that if the rule of law was ever to return to the South, each state must decide local matters for themselves. "The real thing to be achieved," he noted, "is safety and prosperity for the colored people. Both houses of Congress and the public opinion of the country are plainly against the use of the army . . . . The wish is to restore harmony and good feelings between sections and races. This can only be done by peaceful methods." He continued by noting, however, that the federal government must "adopt the non-intervention policy, except so far as may be necessary to keep the peace." As if to underscore his insistence on supporting the rights of all citizens, he appointed the nation's most visible and influential black leader District Marshal.
Thus, at the beginning of his administration, Hayes had set out in clear lines his southern policy. He wanted to eliminate political acts of violence committed against Blacks. He insisted, and believed, that white southerners would adhere to the tenets of the Civil War constitutional amendments. He insisted that the federal government had a responsibility to provide aid for education and public improvements. He also believed it was essential that honest government by educated citizens be restored to the South. Finally, he believed those governments could best be achieved by insuring that blacks could receive an education and thus participate intelligently in elections. As educated electors, he believed both parties would vie for their votes and thus insure their participation.
Perhaps his most telling support, but most disappointing, was his refusal to accept riders to military appropriation bills that repealed laws protecting federal Black voting rights. In 1878 and 1879 he vetoed seven consecutive Army Appropriation Bills for that reason. Well before 1880 it was clear to Hayes that his experiment had failed. He explained the failure by noting the loss of northern will to continue the fight to secure inviolate Black rights. He asserted in an address to a grand reunion of Ohio soldiers in August 1880 that the Union had been saved, and slavery abolished, by war. But, he said, securing peace, prosperity, and the protection of human rights required education. "As long as any considerable numbers of our countrymen are uneducated, the citizenship of every American in every State in impaired." He said that in particular the south had been devastated by the war and need education that those states lacked the funds to provide. Quoting A. H. H. Stuart of Virginia, Hayes insisted that "'Where millions of citizens are growing up in the grossest ignorance, it is obvious that neither individual charity nor the resources of impoverished States will be sufficient to meet the emergency. Nothing short of the wealth and power of the Federal Government will suffice to overcome the evil.'" Hayes insisted then, that the same principle that applied to public works should apply to education. The national government should, by "appropriations from the Treasury of the United States," support local public education. In an 1880 letter to Frank Hatton of Burlington, Iowa, Hayes admitted "there is still in our country a dangerous practical denial of the equal rights with respect to voting secured to colored citizens by the fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution.." Again the answer was education. Hayes continued to hold these views to the end of his life.