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Though the victory of the North in the American Civil War
assured the integrity of the United Stales as an indivisible nation,
much was destroyed in the course of the conflict, and the
secondary goal of the war, the abolition of the system of slavery,
was only imperfectly achieved.
The defeat of the Confederacy (Southern states) left what had been
the country's most fertile
agricultural area economically destroyed and its rich culture devastated.
At the same time, the legal abolilion of slavery did not ensure
equality in fact for former slaves. Immediately after the Civil
War, legislatures in ihe Southern slates, fearful of the ways
in which former slaves might exercise the right to vote and also
eager to salvage what they could of their former way of life, attempted
to block blacks from voting. They did this by enacting "black
codes" to restrict the freedom of former slaves. Although "radical"
Republicans in Congress tried to protect black civil rights and
to bring blacks into the main-stream of American life, their efforts
were opposed by President Andrew Johnson, a Southerner who had remained
loyal to the Union during the Civil War. He served as a Republican
vice president, and was elevated lo the presidency on the assassination
of Abraham Lincoln.[...]
Congress nevertheless was able to press forward with its program
of "Reconstruction," or reform, of the Southern states,
occupied after the war by the army of the North. By 1870, Southern
states were governed by groups of blacks, cooperative whites and
transplanted Northerners (called "carpetbaggers").
Many Southern blacks were elected to state legislatures and to Congress.
Although some corruption existed in these "reconstructed"
state govern ments. they did much to improve education, develop
social services and protect civil rights. Reconstruction was bitterly
resented by most so Southern whites, some of whom formed the Ku
Klux KJan, a violent secret society that hoped to protect white
interests and advantages by terrorizing blacks and preventing them
from making social advances. By 1872, the federal government had
suppressed the Klan, but white Democrats continued to use violence
and fear to regain control of their state governments, ss Reconstruction
came to an end in 1877, when new constitutions had been ratified
in all Southern states and all federal troops were withdrawn from
the South.
Despite Constitutional guarantees. Southern blacks were now "second-class
citizens" - that is, they were subordinated to whites, though
they still had limited civil rights. In some Southern states, blacks
could still vote and hold elective office. There was racial segregation
in schools and hospitals, but trains, parks and other public facilities
could still generally be used by people of both races.
Toward the end of the century, this system of so segregation and
oppression of blacks grew far more rigid. In the 1896 case of Plessy
v. Ferguson, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution
permitted separate facilities and services for the two races, so
long as these facilities and services were equal. Southern state
legislatures promptly set aside separate -but unequal - facilities
for blacks. Laws enforced strict segregation in public transportation,
theaters, sports, and even elevators and
cemeteries. Most blacks and many poor whites lost the right to vote
because of their inability to pay the poll taxes which had been
enacted to exclude them from political participation and their failure
to pass literacy tests. Blacks accused of minor crimes were sentenced
to hard labor, and mob violence was sometimes perpetrated against
them, Most Southern blacks, as a result of poverty and ignorance,
continued to work as tenant farmers. Although blacks were legally
free, they still lived and were treated very much like slaves.
Jonathan Rose
U.S. Information Agency. 1986
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