Black Reconstruction In America
69 pages • 2-hour read
W. E. B. Du BoisBlack Reconstruction In America
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Chapters 8-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section includes discussion of anti-Black racism and enslavement.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Transubstantiation of a Poor White”
Du Bois summarizes the economic system in the United States at the end of the Civil War in 1865. In the North, a “dictatorship” of industrial capital was on the rise. It sought to expand to the South. To do so, it formed a temporary alliance with those who sought to expand suffrage to Black men. Du Bois notes that, had white labor organizers allied with newly freed Black labor, they could have resisted industrial capital, but they did not. Instead, by 1876, Southern oligarchs had allied with Northern capital against labor.
Du Bois analyzes Reconstruction efforts by the federal government and the role of Andrew Johnson in shaping its progress. On April 14th, 1865, President Lincoln was assassinated and Andrew Johnson, his vice president, became president of the United States. Johnson was a Southerner who was known for his anti-aristocracy politics. He was also a racist who had enslaved eight people. In 1864, he gave a speech supporting abolition but insisting on white supremacy. DuBois also notes that Johnson was known to be a “drunk,” which may have contributed to his bombastic behavior and alienation from more temperate leaders in government. He did not share Lincoln’s sympathy toward Black Americans. Senator Sumner advocated for Black suffrage and he thought Johnson was sympathetic to his views. However, Johnson ultimately allied with Secretary of State Seward, who felt that the former Confederate states should be readmitted to the Union without requiring Black suffrage.
While Congress was in recess, Johnson unilaterally pursued Reconstruction along this line. He pardoned over 14,000 former rebels. He became close with many of the planter class he had formerly repudiated. Meanwhile, Sumner and other supporters of Black suffrage continued to advocate in the press and in public. Some state Republican parties endorsed this position, and it grew in popularity. In December 1865, the 38th Congress, led by Thaddeus Stevens, began to meet. They were determined to take back control of Reconstruction from the executive branch. Stevens wanted to reappropriate Southern plantation land and distribute it to freedmen, but Northern capitalists objected to this “dangerous” precedent. A Committee of Fifteen was formed to debate the particulars of Congressional Reconstruction.
A particularly contentious element was population counts for reapportionment following emancipation. Previously, enslaved Black people had been counted as three-fifths a person for the purpose of apportionment for political representation. The South now wanted freed Black people counted for full representation without giving them the right to vote. This would grant Southern white leaders outsized power in the newly reformed Congress.
On February 6th, 1866, Congress passed the Freedman’s Bureau law to make the Freedman’s Bureau a permanent department. Johnson vetoed the bill. This created a rift in the Republican party. When Johnson gave a drunken, self-aggrandizing address justifying his actions at a celebration for George Washington’s birthday, public opinion began to turn against him. Sumner, his most vocal rival, gained in power and popularity. Johnson then vetoed the Civil Rights Bill on March 27th. The Committee of Fifteen and Congress began to draft the Fourteenth Amendment which, among other things, would attempt to reduce apportionment in states that did not grant Black suffrage, although this clause was never enforced. Johnson militated against it, including to Frederick Douglass, insisting that racial equality would cause a race war. Stevens was disappointed that the final draft of the Fourteenth Amendment did not make Black suffrage a requirement of Southern apportionment, but he knew it was the best compromise he could ensure politically at that time. However, it did make Black Americans “citizens” by law.
In 1866, midterm elections were held. Johnson, alienated from the Republican party by his rhetoric and vetoes, attempted to create a “Johnson Party,” but it was unsuccessful. Du Bois notes Johnson “showed genius for saying the wrong thing” (282). Republicans won large majorities in many states and Congress. When the 39th Congress met that December, Johnson sent a message to them that illustrated how he had “made strong alliance with those who would restore slavery by another name” (286). Du Bois describes this as the “transubstantiation of Andrew Johnson” (286) from defender of democracy and the poor to defender of dictatorship and the wealthy due to his ignorance and racism.
Chapter 9 Summary: “The Price of Disaster”
Du Bois analyzes the beginnings of the Black labor movement and its relationship to existing white labor movements in the United States and the question of Black suffrage.
It took many months for states to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment after its introduction in 1866. During this time, concern began to grow in the North that its ratification would increase Southern (largely Democratic) political power if Black men did not have the right to vote. Some states independently considered extending the franchise. For instance, Nebraska was permitted to join the Union only after it included Black suffrage in its state constitution.
In 1867, the Committee of Fifteen introduced a Reconstruction law that placed the South under a military dictatorship to protect the rights of freedmen. It was passed, although it did not extend suffrage to Black Americans. It was vetoed by President Johnson. Congress began to consider impeaching President Johnson for his lack of respect for Congressional power. Congress voted to override Johnson’s veto.
Du Bois addresses “originalist” arguments that the Congressional measures were unconstitutional. He argues that the Founding Fathers had never envisioned the conditions in the 1860s and that it was absurd to treat the Constitution as a “fetish” object that must be venerated rather than constantly adapted to new circumstances.
In January 1867, Congress extended the franchise in the District of Columbia (which is governed directly by Congress) over Johnson’s veto. Articles of impeachment against Johnson were filed soon after. Johnson continued to cultivate the support of Southern Democrats, who ran on explicitly racial rather than economic policies. During the state elections that year, Democrats won New York, New Jersey, and Maryland. Johnson’s own racial rhetoric became increasingly strident. On May 6th, 1868, Johnson’s impeachment trial ended. He narrowly avoided impeachment.
Du Bois argues that Reconstruction is best understood as “an attempt to organize capital and labor on a new pattern and build a new economy” (309). While different factions had different goals, key to its understanding is that white laborers were more interested in “the degradation of Negro labor” (309) than improving their own working conditions. Northern labor unions were split on the question of Black suffrage and the inclusion of Black workers in their unions. This forced Black labor to organize itself. Black leadership focused on “economic emancipation.” This lack of integration created a racial split in the labor movement that capital exploited to keep wages low for all workers by pitting factions against one another. Du Bois details the work of Black labor leaders and their organizations to improve the working conditions of Black Americans.
Meanwhile, as a result of the 1867 election results, Republicans became more strident on the question of Black suffrage. They were afraid they would lose more grounds to the Democrats if they did not insist on Black voting rights, as Black Americans would overwhelmingly vote Republican. Between 1867 and 1868, Southern states passed new constitutions that extended the franchise to Black men and the states were readmitted to the Union. In 1868, many Black Americans voted for the first time. Anti-abolitionist Seymour was nominated for the Democratic Presidential ballot over Johnson. Republican Ulysses S. Grant won the presidency with a strong mandate. Republicans used their power to introduce the Fifteenth Amendment, enshrining Black suffrage in the Constitution.
Chapters 8-9 Analysis
In Chapters 8 and 9, Du Bois provides a political history of the legislative actions regarding Reconstruction following the Civil War. In later chapters, he focuses more on the material economics of these politics as applied to specific states. Here, although there is some economic analysis, the overwhelming focus is on political negotiations and political figures, particularly President Andrew Johnson.
DuBois relies heavily on Congressional records and government reports to shape his narrative of the political debates of this period, keeping with his commitment to The Importance of Challenging the “Propaganda of History.” His methodology here is self-consciously and directly in contrast with his characterization of the dominant historiographical approaches to sources used by the “Dunning school” of Reconstruction history. As he writes in the concluding chapter of Black Reconstruction,
Nearly all recent books on Reconstruction agree with each other in discarding the government reports and substituting selected diaries, letters, and gossip. Yet it happens that the government records are an historic source of wide and unrivaled authenticity. (646)
In keeping with his own assessment of proper “scientific” historiography, these chapters cite extensively from the Congressional Globe, the record of congressional debates from 1833 to 1873. Where such records are not available, Du Bois notes the absence. He supplements these government records with secondary sources. In the Bibliography, he categorizes the racial biases of these sources from “standard-anti-Negro” to “propaganda” to “fair to indifferent on the Negro” and “sympathetic” (652-4). This is a highly novel approach to characterizing historiography, and it provides context for the information provided by the secondary sources and their reliability.
In furtherance of his goal to create a “scientific” history and resource for future scholars, Du Bois provides extensive block quotes throughout the work. In the 1930s and indeed until the advent of the public internet, it could be difficult for scholars to access referenced documents. In providing lengthy quotes, Du Bois is creating a record that can be used for further research. This signals that he does not feel his study is a definitive analysis of Black Reconstruction. Rather, he is setting out a framework that he hopes future scholars will build upon by drawing from the resources and arguments he has outlined. The use of lengthy block quotes also illustrates that Du Bois has not taken the quotes out of context to support his argument, which is a practice he accuses his contemporaries of doing.
Chapters 8 and 9 provide a lot of detail about President Andrew Johnson as a man and a political figure. No other figure is as extensively featured in the work. Du Bois describes Johnson’s personal habits, racial and class resentments, and political approach. This psychological portrait of Johnson initially seems at odds with a work that largely avoids a “Great Man” theory of history in favor of a material class analysis. However, the importance of Johnson to Du Bois’s argument is clarified with an understanding that Johnson is used in the historical narrative as an archetype of the “poor white” who would rather suffer or have their own conditions worsened than see Black people succeed.
In understanding Johnson, one can understand the role of racism in shaping class struggle during Reconstruction, reflecting The Civil War and Reconstruction as a Form of Class Struggle. Johnson was defined in politics as a poor Southern white man who railed against the white planter class and oligarchs. However, when faced with the prospect of breaking up the plantations for the benefit of poor Black as well as poor white men, he ceased to make an anti-capitalist argument in favor of an anti-Black one. Du Bois uses religious language to describe this “transubstantiation,” suggesting that racism functions to obscure class consciousness in the same way that traditional Marxist analysis sees religion (e.g., “the opiate of the masses”) as obscuring class struggle.
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