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Our History
A Survey of United States History, Volume Two - From 1865

v1.1 Steven M. Gillon

Chapter 1 Reconstruction and the New South, 1865–1900

[Women] do double duty, a man’s share in the field, and a woman’s part at home. They do any kind of field work, even ploughing, and at home the cooking, washing, milking, and gardening.

—Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, African American teacher and poet

In January 1893 the entire town of Paris, Texas, turned out to witness the “lynching” of Henry Smith, an African American man accused of the brutal slaying of a four-year-old white girl. A mob of more than one hundred men apprehended Smith in Arkansas and brought him back to Texas. The local paper, which covered the story in all its gruesome details, reported that the train carrying Smith “was met by a surging mass of humanity 10,000 strong.” Shops were closed for the occasion and schools “were dismissed by proclamation of the mayor.” Shackled and surrounded by “guards,” Smith was “placed on a carnival float in mockery of a king upon his throne” and escorted into the town center where he was tied to “a scaffold, six feet square and ten feet high, securely bound, within the view of all beholders.” For the next fifty minutes, family members of the dead girl tortured him, thrusting “red-hot iron brands” into “his quivering body.” “It was horrible,” the paper observed, “the man dying by slow torture in the midst of smoke from his own burning flesh.” The irons were applied first to his feet and legs, but then “were rolled up and down Smith’s stomach, back, and arms. Then the eyes were burned out and irons were thrust down his throat.” The crowd loved the spectacle, cheering “every contortion of his body.” After the hot irons were applied, the crowd poured kerosene over his body and set him on fire. The reporter noted matter-of-factly that “curiosity seekers” went home with souvenirs from the event, even “pieces of charcoal.”

Barbaric scenes like this one became common in the South in the last decades of the nineteenth century as the nation struggled with the legacy of war and the burden of race. Although lynchings occurred throughout the United States, the majority took place in southern and border states. Mississippi led the nation, followed by Georgia and Texas. Before the Civil War most victims were white, but by the 1890s, the majority of people lynched were African American. Most were men, but between 1882 and 1927, ninety-two women were also lynched; seventy-six of them were black. Some of the victims, like Henry Smith, stood accused of murder, but others were killed for such trivial offenses as “disputing with a white man,” attempting to register to vote, “unpopularity,” or “peeping in a window.” None received a fair trial. The suspected crimes varied, but the purpose was the same: the white South used lynchings to intimidate the local black population and maintain social control during a turbulent and uncertain time.

The experiments of the Reconstruction era (1863–1877), referring to the government policy toward the defeated South, brought intense struggles between groups with competing notions of government power, individual rights, and race relations. President Andrew Johnson, believing he was following Abraham Lincoln’s plan for a quick “restoration” of the Union, rigidly supported states’ rights, leniency toward the former rebels, and noninterference in attempts to restrict the rights of the freed people. Radical Republicans, who included former abolitionists and freed slaves, challenged Johnson’s program and were able to seize control of Reconstruction policy in 1866. Wielding the power of the national government, they hoped to punish unrepentant planters, ensure the political and economic rights of the former slaves, and solidify the Republican Party’s control of the South.

African Americans were central players in the Republican effort to “reconstruct” southern society. Freed from the bonds of slavery, they moved to strengthen old institutions such as the family and church, to create new political institutions, and to secure economic independence. Despite important gains, black experiments in freedom were soon frustrated by white Democrats who clamored for the “redemption” of the defeated South. Using violence and intimidation, “Redeemers” successfully fought to recreate the white-dominated social order that had existed before the war. In the face of determined southern Democrats and internal divisions in the North, the Republicans backed away from their commitment to Reconstruction, leaving the experiment incomplete. The “New South” that emerged from war and Reconstruction had changed in significant ways, but for many African Americans it bore striking similarities to the South of old.

This chapter will explore the following questions:

  1. Why did President Johnson and congressional Republicans divide over Reconstruction policy?

  2. What did the Radical Republicans hope to accomplish, and what role did government play in their methods?

  3. How did African Americans respond to freedom and political participation? How did southern whites react to black participation?

  4. Why has Reconstruction been called “America’s unfinished revolution”?

  5. How did the New South reflect the failure of Reconstruction? How different was it from the Old South?