Black Reconstruction In America

Black Reconstruction in America is an in-depth material class analysis of the political economy and history of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction era. The book assumes a fair degree of prior knowledge about the basic facts of these historical events.

In the mid-19th century in the United States, debates around enslavement became increasingly heated. A key site of contestation over enslavement was the frontier territories like Kansas and Missouri. The Free Soil party opposed the expansion of enslavement into the Western territories. Between 1854 and 1859 there was a series of violent skirmishes between pro-enslavement and abolitionist groups in Kansas during a period called “Bleeding Kansas.” An abolitionist leader in Bleeding Kansas was Kansan evangelical John Brown, who along with his sons led a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia in 1859 in the hopes of sparking a revolt amongst enslaved persons. Although John Brown was later executed for his role in the raid, these battles were a prelude to the Civil War.

In 1860, Republican Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election. Although he was not a staunch abolitionist, he sided with the Free Soilers and opposed the expansion of enslavement into the Western territories. In response to his election, 11 Southern pro-enslavement states drafted and ratified Ordinances of Secession between 1860 and 1861, creating the Confederacy. On April 12th, 1861, after months of mounting tension, the newly-formed Confederacy attacked Fort Sumpter in South Carolina and the Civil War began.

On January 1st, 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation declaring the enslaved Black people of the South to be free. This significantly weakened the Confederacy as freedmen fled bondage and began to fight on behalf of the Union. Lincoln won re-election in 1864. On May 26th, 1865, the Confederacy surrendered. Shortly after, on April 15th, President Lincoln was assassinated by a radical Confederate, John Wilkes Booth. His vice president, Southern populist Andrew Johnson, became president.

Following the surrender of the Confederacy, the Union created a process for the former Confederate states to rejoin the federal government. This is the period known as Reconstruction. Military dictatorships were installed in the Southern states which oversaw the creation of new state governments and new state constitutions. Southern state governments were required to ratify the three Reconstruction Amendments: The Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished enslavement; the Fourteenth Amendment, which made freedmen citizens of the United States; and the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted Black Americans the right to vote. During this time, Black Americans were allowed to vote and hold political office for the first time in history in many Southern states. Many of these new state governments were dominated by Republicans. Once the federal government was satisfied that the Southern states had met these and similar requirements, they were readmitted to the Union and the federal military dictatorship was withdrawn.

When the federal government withdrew its oversight of the Southern state governments, Democrats and Conservatives used voter intimidation, suppression, and other measures to reduce Black suffrage and ensure Democratic control over the state was reasserted. The federal government, led by President Ulysses S. Grant, generally declined to intervene to enforce Reconstruction legislation. Although the timing varies somewhat state by state, it is generally agreed by historians that Reconstruction ended in 1877.