Reconstruction After the Civil War: Third Edition by John Hope Franklin

Author:John Hope Franklin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

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Counter Reconstruction

The reaction of the former Confederates and their supporters to the taking over of the reconstruction program by Congress could hardly have been unanticipated. When abolitionists had called for an end to slavery in the ante-bellum period, white Southerners had said that the North was making war on their institutions and their way of life. Whenever there had been slave revolts or rumors of them, planters, and even most non-slaveholders, were thrown into a frenzy of preparation for the great upheaval that they seemed to think was inevitable. “We must prepare for any eventuality,” they were accustomed to saying; and whether the dangers of which they spoke were real or fancied, they had no intention of being caught short. All too frequently, long before the Civil War came, these fears had erupted with a violence that to some observers made the South appear a dark and bloody land.

Even when the former Confederates were rather firmly in control of Southern state and local governments in the early postwar years, violence was an important part of the pattern of life. In 1866 the head of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Georgia complained that numerous bands of ruffians were committing “the most fiendish and diabolical outrages” on the freedmen. The former slaves themselves made many representations to Congress and the President that they were in constant danger of physical harm at the hands of the former Confederates. Northern teachers of freedmen frequently saw their efforts literally turn to ashes as local white opponents set fire to the African American schools; and the reports of the Bureau contain many instances of bodily harm inflicted upon Northern teachers by those in the South who were unalterably opposed to the education of the former slaves. If violence was an integral part of the old order and even of the new order controlled by former Confederates, it was only natural that it would be a prime factor in any move to oppose the still newer order administered by those whom the former Confederates regarded as natural enemies.

The targets of attack now were, of course, the Union League, the Heroes of America in North Carolina, the Lincoln Brotherhood, a Radical group that flourished in Florida, and other similar organizations. The work of the League was especially reprehensible to the former Confederates. In addition to teaching African Americans what their political rights were and instructing them in the mysteries of voting, the League also fired the self-respect of the former slaves by telling them that they were the social equals of whites. To many who had supported the Lost Cause this was worse than the burning of Atlanta and Sherman’s path of devastation from that city to the sea. Another target was the several state militias, which, in addition to being charged with the responsibility of keeping the hated Radical governments in power, frequently boasted of having black contingents to participate in the discharge of this responsibility. If Radical governments were to be placed in power by “Negro votes”

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