Who Killed Reconstruction: Factors to Demise of Reconstruction

Introduction

I found this shortened version of Foner's 'Reconstruction, America's Unfinished Revolution,' to be an incredibly well-written and critically analyzed account of the factors that led to the demise of Reconstruction, shedding light on the question of 'who killed reconstruction.' Foner's expertise as a historian is evident in his thorough documentation of the social, economic, and political trends during this captivating period in American history.

Foner's Analysis of Reconstruction

Foner’s clear analysis tries to get us to have empathy with President Andrew Johnson during the period of Presidential reconstruction and to also empathize with the Radical Republicans that took their turn with Radical Reconstruction. Both phases of Reconstruction had to deal with a similar situation, that the infrastructure and social network of the Southern states after the war still retained Confederates of considerable education and influence and that the Unionist or Southern Republicans were just not strong enough or supported enough to remake the South after the war. The Southern states were devastated. There was considerable hunger and homelessness. The banking and commodities infrastructure was demolished and Confederate bond holders were now bankrupt. There were Unionists and Southern Republicans who risked their lives to stay in the Southern states during the war but at the end of the war the tasks of rebuilding the southern states was beyond the abilities or resources of these Unionists and the old power structure came forward and moved into public offices and positions of influence. This trend was much in evidence during Andrew Johnson’s Presidential Reconstruction period but was also present in the Radical or Congressional Reconstruction period also.

Economic and Slavery Considerations During Reconstruction

Foner makes it very clear that the fate of the freed slaves was a major social upheaval and consideration during this period. The complexity of the situation was amazing for a million people were now free with no jobs, land, opportunity, education, nor power. Foner’s analysis is primarily an economic analysis around the struggle between capital and labor and that when the slaves were freed, capital found it in their best interest to return these freed slaves to near-slave economic conditions as tenant farmers with no rights to negotiate the conditions of their tenancy. The presidency and impeachment of President Andrew Johnson is well presented and reveals that Johnson was just not capable to enforcing Reconstruction and thus the planter power structure of the old South crept back into authority during the final two years of his presidency. However, once responsibility for reconstruction shifted from the President to Congress, some progress was made but old relationships emerged in the South that were beyond intervention by a distant Republican congress in Washington.

The Complexity of the Post-Civil War Era

Foner avoids the major summary statements that sum it all up for the reader. This is not popular literature, it is a serious historic analysis, and it is through careful presentation of the facts that the complexity emerges. I found that I would read pages of Foner’s narrative before I was able to step back and summarize for myself these enormous social, political, and economic trends that unfolded in the years after the Civil War. Suppression of the black population was accomplished with considerable amounts of violence and threat to a highly vulnerable people. Foner never sentimentalizes this process but continues to keep a cool analytic approach that most often focused on the need to increase profit through inexpensive labor. The black people were labor and to the degree that they could be intimidated into accepting bare subsistence compensation for their labor was to the extent that the white ruling class could move out of post war poverty into comfort.

Conclusion

The Gilded Age has its roots in the first four years of Grant’s presidency. Movement west with the massive expansion of the railroads captured the attention of the entire country. Eventually the Northern Republicans grew tired of monitoring the South and resources dried up due to the Depression of 1873. Without support from Northern Republicans, Southern Republicans were over powered by the Planter class and Southern Democrats. The two terms of President Grant was the period in which the Republicans shifted their interests and capital to other ventures.

Works Cited

1. Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. Harper Perennial, 2014.