1876 in the United States |
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Reconstruction and 1876: Crash Course US History #22
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25. The "End" of Reconstruction: Disputed Election of 1876, and the "Compromise of 1877"
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Reconstruction The United States from 1865-1877
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The Industrial Economy: Crash Course US History #23
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Westward Expansion: Crash Course US History #24
Transcription
Episode 21: Reconstruction Hi, I’m John Green, this is Crash Course U.S. History and huzzah! The Civil War is over! The slaves are free! Huzzah! That one hit me in the head? It’s very dangerous, Crash Course. So when you say, “Don’t aim at a person,” that includes myself? The roller coaster only goes up from here, my friends. Huzzah! Mr. Green, Mr. Green, what about the epic failure of Reconstruction? Oh, right. Stupid Reconstruction always ruining everything intro So after the Civil War ended, the United States had to reintegrate both a formerly slave population and a formerly rebellious population back into the country, which is a challenge that we might’ve met, except Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and we were left with Andrew “I am the Third Worst President Ever” Johnson. I’m sorry, Abe, but you don’t get to be in the show anymore. So, Lincoln’s whole post-war idea was to facilitate reunion and reconciliation, and Andrew Johnson’s guiding Reconstruction principle was that the South never had a right to secede in the first place. Also, because he was himself a Southerner, he resented all the elites in the South who had snubbed him, AND he was also a racist who didn’t think that blacks should have any role in Reconstruction. TRIFECTA! So between 1865 and 1867, the so-called period of Presidential Reconstruction, Johnson appointed provisional governors and ordered them to call state conventions to establish new all-white governments. And in their 100% whiteness and oppression of former slaves, those new governments looked suspiciously like the old confederate governments they had replaced. And what was changing for the former slaves? Well, in some ways, a lot. Like, Fiske and Howard universities were established, as well as many primary and secondary schools, thanks in part to The Freedman’s Bureau, which only lasted until 1870, but had the power to divide up confiscated and abandoned confederate land for former slaves. And this was very important because to most slaves, land ownership was the key to freedom, and many felt like they’d been promised land by the Union Army. Like, General Sherman’s Field Order 15, promised to distribute land in 40 acre plots to former slaves. But that didn’t happen, either through the Freedman’s Bureau or anywhere else. Instead, President Johnson ordered all land returned to its former owners. So the South remained largely agricultural with the same people owning the same land, and in the end, we ended up with sharecropping. Let’s go to the Thought Bubble. The system of sharecropping replaced slavery in many places throughout the South. Landowners would provide housing to the sharecroppers--no, Thought Bubble, not quite that nice. There ya go--also tools and seed, and then the sharecroppers received, get this, a share of their crop--usually between a third and a half, with the price for that harvest often set by the landowner. Freed blacks got to control their work, and plantation owners got a steady workforce that couldn’t easily leave, because they had little opportunity to save money and make the big capital investments in, like, land or tools. By the late 1860s, poor white farmers were sharecropping as well--in fact, by the Great Depression, most sharecroppers were white. And while sharecropping certainly wasn’t slavery, it did result in a quasi-serfdom that tied workers to land they didn’t own--more or less the opposite of Jefferson’s ideal of the small, independent farmer. So, the Republicans in Congress weren’t happy that this reconstructed south looked so much like the pre-Civil War south, so they took the lead in reconstruction after 1867. Radical Republicans felt the war had been fought for equal rights and wanted to see the powers of the national government expanded. Few were as radical as Thaddeus “Tommy Lee Jones” Stephens who wanted to take away land from the Southern planters and give it to the former slaves, but rank-and-file Republicans were radical enough to pass the Civil Rights Bill, which defined persons born in the United States as citizens and established nationwide equality before the law regardless of race. Andrew Johnson immediately vetoed the law, claiming that trying to protect the rights of African Americans amounted to discrimination against white people, which so infuriated Republicans that Congress did something it had never done before in all of American history. They overrode the Presidential veto with a 2/3rds majority and the Civil Rights Act became law. So then Congress really had its dander up and decided to amend the Constitution with the 14th amendment, which defines citizenship, guarantees equal protection, and extends the rights in the Bill of Rights to all the states (sort of). The amendment had almost no Democratic support, but it also didn’t need any, because there were almost no Democrats in Congress on account of how Congress had refused to seat the representatives from the “new” all-white governments that Johnson supported. And that’s how we got the 14th amendment, arguably the most important in the whole Constitution. Thanks, Thought Bubble. Oh, straight to the mystery document today? Alright. The rules here are simple. I guess the author of the Mystery Document and try not to get shocked. Alright let’s see what we’ve got today. Sec. 1. Be it ordained by the police jury of the parish of St. Landry, That no negro shall be allowed to pass within the limits of said parish without special permit in writing from his employer. Sec. 4. . . . Every negro is required to be in the regular service of some white person, or former owner, who shall be held responsible for the conduct of said negro.. Sec. 6. . . . No negro shall be permitted to preach, exhort, or otherwise declaim to congregations of colored people, without a special permission in writing from the president of the police jury. . . . Gee, Stan, I wonder if the President of the Police Jury was white. I actually know this one. It is a Black Code, which was basically legal codes where they just replaced the word “slave” with the word “negro.” And this code shows just how unwilling white governments were to ensure the rights of new, free citizens. I would celebrate not getting shocked, but now I am depressed. So, okay, in 1867, again over Johnson’s veto, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act, which divided the south into 5 military districts and required each state to create a new government, one that included participation of black men. Those new governments had to ratify the 14th amendment if they wanted to get back into the union. Radical Reconstruction had begun. So, in 1868, Andrew Johnson was about as electable in the U.S. as Jefferson Davis, and sure enough he didn’t win. Instead, the 1868 election was won by Republican and former Union general Ulysses S. Grant. But Grant’s margin of victory was small enough that Republicans were like, “Man, we would sure win more elections if black people could vote.” Which is something you hear Republicans say all the time these days. So Congressional Republicans pushed the 15th Amendment, which prohibited states from denying men the right to vote based on race, but not based on gender or literacy or whether your grandfather could vote. So states ended up with a lot of leeway when it came to denying the franchise to African Americans, which of course they did. So here we have the federal government dictating who can vote, and who is and isn’t a citizen of a state, and establishing equality under the law--even local laws. And this is a really big deal in American history, because the national government became, rather than a threat to individual liberty, “the custodian of freedom,” as Radical Republican Charles Sumner put it. So but with this legal protection, former slaves began to exercise their rights. They participated in the political process by direct action, such as staging sit-ins to integrate street-cars, by voting in elections, and by holding office. Most African Americans were Republicans at the time, and because they could vote and were a large part of the population, the Republican party came to dominate politics in the South, just like today, except totally different. Now, Southern mythology about the age of radical Reconstruction is exemplified by Gone with the Wind, which of course tells the story of northern Republican dominance and corruption by southern Republicans. Fortune seeking northern carpetbaggers, seen here, as well as southern turncoat scalawags dominated politics and all of the African American elected leaders were either corrupt or puppets or both. Yeah, well, like the rest of Gone with the Wind, that’s a bit of an oversimplification. There were about 2,000 African Americans who held office during Reconstruction, and the vast majority of them were not corrupt. Consider for example the not-corrupt and amazingly-named Pinckney B.S. Pinchback, who from 1872 to 1873 served very briefly in Louisiana as America’s first black governor. And went on to be a senator and a member of the House of Representatives. By the way, America’s second African American governor, Douglas Wilder of Virginia was elected in 1989. Having African American officeholders was a huge step forward in term of ensuring the rights of African Americans because it meant that there would be black juries and less discrimination in state and local governments when it came to providing basic services. But in the end, Republican governments failed in the South. There were important achievements, especially a school system that, while segregated, did attempt to educate both black and white children. And even more importantly, they created a functioning government where both white and African American citizens could participate. According to one white South Carolina lawyer, “We have gone through one of the most remarkable changes in our relations to each other that has been known, perhaps, in the history of the world.” That’s a little hyperbolic, but we are America after all. (libertage) It’s true that corruption was widespread, but it was in the North, too. I mean, we’re talking about governments. And that’s not why Reconstruction really ended: It ended because 1. things like schools and road repair cost money, which meant taxes, which made Republican governments very unpopular because Americans hate taxes, and 2. White southerners could not accept African Americans exercising basic civil rights, holding office or voting. And for many, the best way to return things to the way they were before reconstruction was through violence. Especially after 1867, much of the violence directed toward African Americans in the South was politically motivated. The Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1866 and it quickly became a terrorist organization, targeting Republicans, both black and white, beating and murdering men and women in order to intimidate them and keep them from voting. The worst act of violence was probably the massacre at Colfax, Louisiana where hundreds of former slaves were murdered. And between intimidation and emerging discriminatory voting laws, fewer black men voted, which allowed white Democrats to take control of state governments in the south, and returned white Democratic congressional delegations to Washington. These white southern politicians called themselves “Redeemers” because they claimed to have redeemed the south from northern republican corruption and black rule. Now, it’s likely that the South would have fallen back into Democratic hands eventually, but the process was aided by Northern Republicans losing interest in Reconstruction. In 1873, the U.S. fell into yet another not-quite-Great economic depression and northerners lost the stomach to fight for the rights of black people in the south, which in addition to being hard was expensive. So by 1876 the supporters of reconstruction were in full retreat and the Democrats were resurgent, especially in the south. And this set up one of the most contentious elections in American history. The Democrats nominated New York Governor (and NYU Law School graduate) Samuel Tilden. The Republicans chose Ohio governor (and Kenyon College alumnus) Rutherford B. Hayes. One man who’d gone to Crash Course writer Raoul Meyer’s law school. And another who’d gone to my college, Kenyon. Now, if the election had been based on facial hair, as elections should be, there would’ve been no controversy, but sadly we have an electoral college here in the United States, and in 1876 there were disputed electoral votes in South Carolina, Louisiana, and, of course, Florida. Now you might remember that in these situations, there is a constitutional provision that says Congress should decide the winner, but Congress, shockingly, proved unable to accomplish something. So they appointed a 15 man Electoral Commission--a Super-Committee, if you will. And there were 8 Republicans on that committee and 7 Democrats, so you will never guess who won. Kenyon College’s own Rutherford B. Hayes. Go Lords and Ladies! And yes, that is our mascot. Shut up. Anyway in order to get the Presidency and win the support of the supercommittee, Hayes’ people agreed to cede control of the South to the Democrats and to stop meddling in Southern affairs and also to build a transcontinental railroad through Texas. This is called the Bargain of 1877 because historians are so good at naming things and it basically killed Reconstruction. Without any more federal troops in Southern states and with control of Southern legislatures firmly in the hands of white democrats the states were free to go back to restricting the freedom of black people, which they did. Legislatures passed Jim Crow laws that limited African American’s access to public accommodations and legal protections. States passed laws that took away black people’s right to vote and social and economic mobility among African Americans in the south declined precipitously. However, for a brief moment, the United States was more democratic than it had ever been before. And an entire segment of the population that had no impact on politics before was now allowed to participate. And for the freedmen who lived through it, that was a monumental change, and it would echo down to the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, sometimes called the second reconstruction. But we’re gonna end this episode on a downer, as we are wont to do here at Crash Course US History because I want to point out a lesser-known legacy of Reconstruction. The Reconstruction amendments and laws that were passed granted former slaves political freedom and rights, especially the vote, and that was critical. But to give them what they really wanted and needed, plots of land that would make them economically independent, would have required confiscation, and that violation of property rights was too much for all but the most radical Republicans. And that question of what it really means to be “free” in a system of free market capitalism has proven very complicated indeed. I’ll see you next week. Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller. Our script supervisor is Meredith Danko. The associate producer is Danica Johnson. The show is written by my high school history teacher, Raoul Meyer, and myself. And our graphics team is Thought Café. Every week there’s a new caption for the libertage. You can suggest those in comments where you can also ask questions about today’s video that will be answered by our team of historians. Thank you for watching Crash Course. Don’t forget to subscribe. And as we say in my hometown, don’t forget to be awesome. reconstruction -
Incumbents
Federal government
- President: Ulysses S. Grant (R-Illinois)
- Vice President: vacant
- Chief Justice: Morrison Waite (Ohio)
- Speaker of the House of Representatives: Michael C. Kerr (D-Indiana) (until August 19), Samuel J. Randall (D-Pennsylvania) (starting December 4)
- Congress: 44th
Events
January–March
- January 27 – The Northampton Bank robbery occurs.[1]
- February 2 – The National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs is formed at a meeting in Chicago, Illinois; it replaces the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. Morgan Bulkeley of the Hartford Dark Blues is selected as the league's first president.
- February 22 – Johns Hopkins University is founded in Baltimore, Maryland.
- February/March – The Harvard Lampoon humor magazine is founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- March – Librarian Melvil Dewey first publishes the Dewey Decimal Classification system.[2]
- March 2 – Secretary of War William W. Belknap resigns his office in the wake of the trader post scandal.
- March 7 – Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the telephone.[3]
- March 10 – Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful call by saying "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.."
April–June
- April 17 – Friends Academy is founded by Gideon Frost at Locust Valley, New York.
- May 10 – The Centennial Exposition begins in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
- May 18 – Wyatt Earp starts work in Dodge City, Kansas, serving under Marshal Larry Deger.
- May 29 – Senate votes 37 to 29 that Secretary of War William W. Belknap cannot be barred from trial and impeachment, despite being a private citizen; however, this is far short of the two-thirds majority required and thus he is acquitted.
- June 4 – The Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco, California via the First Transcontinental Railroad, 83 hours and 39 minutes after having left New York City.
- June 11 – Rutherford B. Hayes selected by the Republicans as presidential candidate.
- June 17 – Indian Wars: Battle of the Rosebud – 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne led by Crazy Horse beat back General George Crook's forces at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory.
- June 25 – Indian Wars: Battle of the Little Bighorn – an army under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer is defeated by 1,500-2,500 Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, suffering over 300 casualties.
- June 27 – Samuel J. Tilden selected by the Democrats as presidential candidate.
July–September
- July 4 – The United States centennial is celebrated.
- August 1
- Colorado is admitted as the 38th U.S. state (see History of Colorado).
- Senate votes to acquit former Secretary of War William W. Belknap of all impeached charges relating to the trader post scandal.
- August 2 – Wild Bill Hickok is killed during a poker game in Deadwood, Dakota.
- August 8 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.
- September 6 – Southern Pacific line from Los Angeles to San Francisco completed.
- September 7 – In Northfield, Minnesota, Jesse James and the James-Younger Gang attempt to rob the town's bank but are surrounded by an angry mob and are nearly wiped out.
October–December
- October 4 – Texas A&M University opens for classes.
- October 6 – American Library Association founded in Philadelphia.
- November 7
- The 1876 presidential election ends indecisively with 184 Electoral College votes for Samuel J. Tilden, 165 for Rutherford B. Hayes, and 20 in dispute. The new president (Hayes) is not decided until 1877.
- A failed grave robbery of the Lincoln Tomb takes place this night.
- November 10 – The Centennial Exposition ends in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
- November 23 – Corrupt Tammany Hall leader William Marcy Tweed (better known as Boss Tweed) is delivered to authorities in New York City after being captured in Spain.
- November 25 – Indian Wars: In retaliation for the dramatic American defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, United States Army troops under General Ranald S. Mackenzie sack Chief Dull Knife's sleeping Cheyenne village at the headwaters of the Powder River. The soldiers destroy all of the villagers' winter food and clothing, and then slash their ponies' throats.
- December – The first American edition of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, his first individual extended work of fiction, is published by the American Publishing Company; a British edition has appeared in early June in London with the first review appearing on June 24 in a British magazine.
- December 5 – The Brooklyn Theater Fire kills at least 278, possibly more than 300.
- December 6 – The first cremation in the U.S. takes place in a crematory built by Francis Julius LeMoyne.
- December 29 – Ashtabula River railroad disaster: collapse of a bridge over the Ashtabula River near Ashtabula, Ohio kills 92 and injures 64, the worst U.S. railroad accident until 1918.
Undated
- Emile Berliner invents an improved form of microphone which will be adopted for Alexander Graham Bell's telephone.[4]
- Meharry Medical College is founded in Nashville, Tennessee, as the Medical Department of Central Tennessee College; it is the first medical school for African Americans in the South.
- Lyford House, by Richardson Bay, Tiburon, California is constructed.
- Heinz Tomato Ketchup introduced.
- Adolphus Busch's brewery, Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis, Missouri, first markets Budweiser, a pale lager, as a nationally sold beer.
- Melville Reuben Bissell files a patent for an improved carpet sweeper.[5]
- First carousel at Coney Island built by Charles I. D. Looff.
- Spring – Vast numbers of Indians move north to an encampment of the Sioux chief Sitting Bull in the region of the Little Bighorn River, creating the last great gathering of native peoples on the Great Plains.
Ongoing
- Reconstruction era (1865–1877)
- Gilded Age (1869–c. 1896)
- Depression of 1873–79 (1873–1879)
Sport
- September 26 - Chicago White Stockings win the First National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs Championship
- December 9 - Yale win College Football National Championship
Births
- January 12
- Jack London, born John Griffith Chaney, author (died 1916)
- W. H. Twining, Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives (d. 1946)[6]
- January 23 – Bess Houdini, stage assistant and wife of Harry Houdini (died 1943)
- February 4 – Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn, poet and socialist (died 1959)
- February 16 – Mack Swain, actor and vaudevillian (died 1935)
- March 5 – John Flammang Schrank, attempted assassin of Theodore Roosevelt (died 1943)
- March 11 – Carl Ruggles, composer (died 1971)
- March 21 – Walter Tewksbury, track athlete (died 1968)
- March 31 – William H. Dieterich, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1933 to 1939 (died 1940)
- April 9 – Park Trammell, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1917 to 1936 (died 1936)
- April 23 – Mary Ellicott Arnold, social activist (died 1968)
- June 5 – Tony Jackson, jazz pianist (died 1920)
- July 12 – Alphaeus Philemon Cole, portrait painter (died 1988)
- August 8 – Pat McCarran, Democratic United States Senator from Nevada from 1933 until 1954 (died 1954)
- August 18 – George B. Martin, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1918 to 1919 (died 1945)
- September 13 – Sherwood Anderson, novelist (died 1941)
- September 16
- Marian Cruger Coffin, landscape architect (died 1957)
- Marvin Hart, heavyweight boxer (died 1931)
- September 26 – Edith Abbott, social worker and educator (died 1957)
- October 10 Nash; William James Bryan, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1907 to 1908 (died 1908)
- November 23 – Thomas M. Storke, U.S. Senator from California from 1938 to 1939 (died 1971)
- November 24 – Walter Burley Griffin, architect (died 1937)
- November 29 – Nellie Tayloe Ross, 14th Governor of Wyoming from 1925 to 1927 and director of the United States Mint from 1933 to 1953; first female state governor in the U.S. (died 1977)
- December 9 – Pauline Whittier, golfer (died 1946)[7]
- December 12 – Alvin Kraenzlein, hurdler (died 1928)
- December 20 – Walter Sydney Adams, astronomer (died 1956)
Full date unknown
- Halver Halversen, traveling jewelry auctioneer and store owner (d. ?)[8]
Deaths
- January 10 – Gordon Granger, U.S. and Union Army general (born 1822)
- January 15 – Eliza McCardle Johnson, First Lady of the United States, Second Lady of the United States (born 1810)
- February 18 – Charlotte Cushman, actress (born 1816)
- April 9 – Charles Goodyear, politician (born 1804)
- April 23 – Archibald Dixon, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1852 to 1855 (born 1802)
- May 7 – William Buell Sprague, clergyman and biographer (born 1795)
- June 20 – John Neal, eccentric and influential writer, critic, lecturer, and activist (born 1793)[9]
- June 25 – George Armstrong Custer, U.S. Army colonel (in battle) (born 1839)
- August 2 – Wild Bill Hickok, gunfighter and gambler (murdered) (born 1837)
- August 23 – Joseph R. Underwood, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1847 to 1853 (born 1791)
- September 27 – Braxton Bragg, U.S. and Confederate Army general (born 1817)
- October 1 – James Lick, land baron (born 1796)
- December 3 – Samuel Cooper, United States Army officer during the Second Seminole War and the Mexican–American War, highest-ranking Confederate general during the American Civil War (born 1798)
- December 9 – George Trenholm, 2nd Confederate States Secretary of the Treasury (born 1807)
See also
References
- ^ Roth, Cheyna (December 28, 2023). "My Favorite Victorian Criminal Was a Bank Robber With a Secret Weapon". Slate. ISSN 1091-2339. Retrieved January 6, 2024.
- ^ Dewey, Melvil (1876). A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library. OCLC 78870163. Retrieved July 31, 2012.
- ^ U.S. Patent #174,466.
- ^ "Birth of the Microphone: How Sound Became Signal". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved September 19, 2023.
- ^ Baxter, Albert (1891). History of the City of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Munsell.
- ^ "Warren Hugh Twining". Political Graveyard. Retrieved November 7, 2011.
- ^ "Olympedia – Polly Whittier". www.olympedia.org. Retrieved July 20, 2021.
- ^ Bell, John L. Hard Times : Beginnings of the Great Depression in North Carolina, 1929-1933. Raleigh: North Carolina Dept. of Cultural Resources, Division of Archives and History, 1982. Print.
- ^ Sears, Donald A. (1978). John Neal. Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers. p. 12. ISBN 080-5-7723-08.