What was “Fordism” and how did workers respond to it?

G I V E M E L I B E R T Y ! A N A M E R I C A N H I S T O R Y  B r i e f F o u r t h E d i t i o n G I V E M E L I B E R T Y ! A N A M E R I C A N H I S T O R Y  B r i e f F o u r t h E d i t i o n E R I C F O N E R B W . W . N O R T O N & C O M P A N Y N E W Y O R K . L O N D O N For my mother, Liza Foner (1909–2005), an accomplished artist who lived through most of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first W. W. Norton & Company has been independent since its founding in 1923, when William Warder Norton and Mary D. Herter Norton first published lectures delivered at the People’s Institute, the adult education division of New York City’s Cooper Union. The firm soon expanded its program beyond the Institute, publishing books by celebrated academics from America and abroad. By mid-century, the two major pillars of Norton’s publishing program— trade books and college texts—were firmly established. In the 1950s, the Norton family transferred control of the company to its employees, and today—with a staff of 400 and a comparable number of trade, college, and professional titles published each year— W. W. Norton & Company stands as the largest and oldest publishing house owned wholly by its employees. Copyright © 2014, 2012 by Eric Foner All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Fourth Edition Editor: Steve Forman Associate Editor: Justin Cahill Editorial Assistant: Penelope Lin Managing Editor, College: Marian Johnson Managing Editor, College Digital Media: Kim Yi Project Editor: Diane Cipollone Copy Editor: Elizabeth Dubrulle Marketing Manager: Sarah England Media Editors: Steve Hoge, Tacy Quinn Assistant Editor, Media: Stefani Wallace Production Manager: Sean Mintus Art Director: Rubina Yeh Designer: Chin-Yee Lai Photo Editor: Stephanie Romeo Photo Research: Donna Ranieri Permissions Manager: Megan Jackson Permissions Clearing: Bethany Salminen Composition and Layout: Jouve Manufacturing: Transcontinental Since this page cannot accommodate all of the copyright notices, the Credits pages at the end of the book constitute an extension of the copyright page. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for. This edition: ISBN 978-0-393-92034-5 (pbk.) W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110-0017 wwnorton.com W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 A B O U T T H E A U T H O R  E R I C F O N E R is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, where he earned his B.A. and Ph.D. In his teaching and scholarship, he focuses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and nineteenth-century America. Professor Foner’s publi- cations include Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War; Tom Paine and Revolutionary America; Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy; Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877; The Story of American Free- dom; and Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction. His history of Recon- struction won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for History, the Bancroft Prize, and the Parkman Prize. He has served as president of the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association. In 2006 he received the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching from Columbia University. His most recent book is The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, winner of the Lincoln Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize.  C O N T E N T S  A b o u t t h e A u t h o r . . . v L i s t o f M a p s , T a b l e s , a n d F i g u r e s . . . x v i i i P r e f a c e . . . x x 1 5 . “ W H A T I S F R E E D O M ? ” : R E C O N S T R U C T I O N , 1 8 6 5 – 1 8 7 7 . . . 4 4 1 T H E M E A N I N G O F F R E E D O M . . . 443 Families in Freedom … 443  Church and School … 444  Political Freedom … 444  Land, Labor, and Freedom … 445  Masters without Slaves … 445  The Free Labor Vision … 447  The Freedmen’s Bureau … 447  The Failure of Land Reform … 448  The White Farmer … 449 Voices of Freedom: From Petition of Committee in Behalf of the Freedmen to Andrew Johnson (1865), and From A Sharecropping Contract (1866) … 450 Aftermath of Slavery … 453 T H E M A K I N G O F R A D I C A L R E C O N S T R U C T I O N . . . 454 Andrew Johnson … 454  The Failure of Presidential Reconstruction … 454  The Black Codes … 455  The Radical Republicans … 456  The Origins of Civil Rights … 456  The Fourteenth Amendment … 457  The Reconstruction Act … 458  Impeachment and the Election of Grant … 458  The Fifteenth Amendment … 460  The “Great Constitutional Revolution” … 461  The Rights of Women … 461 R A D I C A L R E C O N S T R U C T I O N I N T H E S O U T H . . . 462 “The Tocsin of Freedom” … 462  The Black Officeholder … 464  Carpetbaggers and Scalawags … 464  Southern Republicans in Power … 465  The Quest for Prosperity … 465 T H E O V E R T H R O W O F R E C O N S T R U C T I O N . . . 466 Reconstruction’s Opponents … 466  “A Reign of Terror” … 467  The Liberal Republicans … 469  The North’s Retreat … 470  The Triumph of the Redeemers … 471  The Disputed Election and Bargain of 1877 … 472  The End of Reconstruction … 473 R E V I E W . . . 4 7 4 1 6 . A M E R I C A ’ S G I L D E D A G E , 1 8 7 0 – 1 8 9 0 . . . 4 7 5 T H E S E C O N D I N D U S T R I A L R E V O L U T I O N . . . 476 The Industrial Economy … 477  Railroads and the National Market … 478  The Spirit of Innovation … 479  Competition and Consolidation … 480  The Rise of Andrew Carnegie … 481  The C o n t e n t s v i i Triumph of John D. Rockefeller … 481  Workers’ Freedom in an Industrial Age … 482 T H E T R A N S F O R M A T I O N O F T H E W E S T . . . 483 A Diverse Region … 484  Farming in the Trans-Mississippi West … 485  The Cowboy and the Corporate West … 486  Conflict on the Mormon Frontier … 487  The Subjugation of the Plains Indians … 488  “Let Me Be a Free Man” … 489  Remaking Indian Life … 489  The Dawes Act and Wounded Knee … 490  Settler Societies and Global Wests … 491 Voices of Freedom: From Andrew Carnegie, “Wealth” (1889), and From Ira Steward, “A Second Declaration of Independence” (1879) … 492 P O L I T I C S I N A G I L D E D A G E . . . 494 The Corruption of Politics … 494  The Politics of Dead Center … 495  Government and the Economy … 496  Reform Legislation … 497  Political Conflict in the States … 497 F R E E D O M I N T H E G I L D E D A G E . . . 498 The Social Problem … 498  Social Darwinism in America … 499  Liberty of Contract and the Courts … 500 L A B O R A N D T H E R E P U B L I C . . . 501 “The Overwhelming Labor Question” … 501  The Knights of Labor and the “Conditions Essential to Liberty” … 502  Middle-Class Reformers … 502  Protestants and Moral Reform … 504  A Social Gospel … 504  The Haymarket Affair … 505  Labor and Politics … 506 R E V I E W . . . 5 0 7 1 7 . F R E E D O M ’ S B O U N D A R I E S , A T H O M E A N D A B R O A D , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 0 0 . . . 5 0 8 T H E P O P U L I S T C H A L L E N G E . . . 510 The Farmers’ Revolt … 510  The People’s Party … 511  The Populist Platform … 512  The Populist Coalition … 513  The Government and Labor … 513  Populism and Labor … 514  Bryan and Free Silver … 515  The Campaign of 1896 … 516 T H E S E G R E G A T E D S O U T H . . . 517 The Redeemers in Power … 517  The Failure of the New South Dream … 517  Black Life in the South … 518  The Kansas Exodus … 518  The Decline of Black Politics … 519  The Elimination of Black Voting … 520  The Law of Segregation … 521  The Rise of Lynching … 522  Politics, Religion, and Memory … 523 R E D R A W I N G T H E B O U N D A R I E S . . . 524 The New Immigration and the New Nativism … 524  Chinese Exclusion and Chinese Rights … 525  The Emergence of v i i i Contents Booker T. Washington … 526  The Rise of the AFL … 527  The Women’s Era … 528 B E C O M I N G A W O R L D P O W E R . . . 529 The New Imperialism … 529  American Expansionism … 529  The Lure of Empire … 530  The “Splendid Little War” … 531  Roosevelt at San Juan Hill … 532  An American Empire … 533  The Philippine War … 535 Voices of Freedom: From Josiah Strong, Our Country (1885), and From “Aguinaldo’s Case against the United States” (1899) … 536 Citizens or Subjects? … 538  Drawing the Global Color Line … 539  “Republic or Empire?” … 539 R E V I E W . . . 5 4 2 1 8 . T H E P R O G R E S S I V E E R A , 1 9 0 0 – 1 9 1 6 . . . 5 4 3 A N U R B A N A G E A N D A C O N S U M E R S O C I E T Y . . . 545 Farms and Cities … 545  The Muckrakers … 546  Immigration as a Global Process … 546  The Immigrant Quest for Freedom … 548  Consumer Freedom … 548  The Working Woman … 549  The Rise of Fordism … 550  The Promise of Abundance … 550 V A R I E T I E S O F P R O G R E S S I V I S M . . . 551 Industrial Freedom … 552  The Socialist Presence and Eugene Debs … 552 Voices of Freedom: From Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and Economics (1898), and From John Mitchell, “A Workingman’s Conception of Industrial Liberty” (1910) … 554 AFL and IWW … 556  The New Immigrants on Strike … 556  Labor and Civil Liberties … 557  The New Feminism … 558  The Birth- Control Movement … 558  Native American Progressivism … 559 T H E P O L I T I C S O F P R O G R E S S I V I S M . . . 559 Effective Freedom … 559  State and Local Reforms … 560  Progressive Democracy … 561  Jane Addams and Hull House … 562  The Campaign for Woman Suffrage … 563  Maternalist Reform … 564 T H E P R O G R E S S I V E P R E S I D E N T S . . . 566 Theodore Roosevelt … 566  John Muir and the Spirituality of Nature … 567  The Conservation Movement … 567  Taft in Office … 568  The Election of 1912 … 569  New Freedom and New Nationalism … 569  Wilson’s First Term … 570  The Expanding Role of Government … 571 R E V I E W . . . 5 7 3 C o n t e n t s i x 1 9 . S A F E F O R D E M O C R A C Y : T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S A N D W O R L D W A R I , 1 9 1 6 – 1 9 2 0 . . . 5 7 4 A N E R A O F I N T E R V E N T I O N . . . 576 “I Took the Canal Zone” … 576  The Roosevelt Corollary … 578  Moral Imperialism … 579  Wilson and Mexico … 579 A M E R I C A A N D T H E G R E A T W A R . . . 580 Neutrality and Preparedness … 581  The Road to War … 582  The Fourteen Points … 582 T H E W A R A T H O M E . . . 584 The Progressives’ War … 584  The Wartime State … 584  The Propaganda War … 585  The Coming of Woman Suffrage … 586  Prohibition … 587  Liberty in Wartime … 587 Voices of Freedom: From Eugene V. Debs, Speech to the Jury before Sentencing under the Espionage Act (1918), and From W. E. B. Du Bois, “Returning Soldiers,” The Crisis (1919) … 588 The Espionage Act … 590  Coercive Patriotism … 590 W H O I S A N A M E R I C A N ? . . . 591 The “Race Problem” … 591  The Anti-German Crusade … 592  Toward Immigration Restriction … 593  Groups Apart: Mexicans and Asian-Americans … 593  The Color Line … 594  Roosevelt, Wilson, and Race … 594  W. E. B. Du Bois and the Revival of Black Protest … 595  Closing Ranks … 596  The Great Migration … 596  Racial Violence, North and South … 597  The Rise of Garveyism … 598 1 9 1 9 . . . 599 A Worldwide Upsurge … 599  Upheaval in America … 599  The Red Scare … 600  Wilson at Versailles … 601  The Wilsonian Moment … 602  The Seeds of Wars to Come … 604  The Treaty Debate … 605 R E V I E W . . . 6 0 7 2 0 . F R O M B U S I N E S S C U L T U R E T O G R E A T D E P R E S S I O N : T H E T W E N T I E S , 1 9 2 0 – 1 9 3 2 . . . 6 0 8 T H E B U S I N E S S O F A M E R I C A . . . 610 A Decade of Prosperity … 610  A New Society … 611  The Limits of Prosperity … 612  The Farmers’ Plight … 612  The Image of Business … 613  The Decline of Labor … 613  The Equal Rights Amendment … 615  Women’s Freedom … 615 B U S I N E S S A N D G O V E R N M E N T . . . 616 The Republican Era … 617  Corruption in Government … 617  The Election of 1924 … 618  Economic Diplomacy … 618 T H E B I R T H O F C I V I L L I B E R T I E S . . . 619 A “Clear and Present Danger” … 620  The Court and Civil Liberties … 621 x Contents T H E C U L T U R E W A R S . . . 621 The Fundamentalist Revolt … 621  The Scopes Trial … 622  The Second Klan … 623  Closing the Golden Door … 624  Race and the Law … 625  Promoting Tolerance … 626  The Emergence of Harlem … 627 Voices of Freedom: From André Siegfried, “The Gulf Between,” Atlantic Monthly (March 1928), and From Majority Opinion, Justice James C. McReynolds, in Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) … 628 The Harlem Renaissance … 630 T H E G R E A T D E P R E S S I O N . . . 631 The Election of 1928 … 631  The Coming of the Depression … 632  Americans and the Depression … 633  Resignation and Protest … 635  Hoover’s Response … 636  The Worsening Economic Outlook … 636  Freedom in the Modern World … 637 R E V I E W . . . 6 3 8 2 1 . T H E N E W D E A L , 1 9 3 2 – 1 9 4 0 . . . 6 3 9 T H E F I R S T N E W D E A L . . . 641 FDR and the Election of 1932 … 641  The Coming of the New Deal … 642  The Banking Crisis … 642  The NRA … 643  Government Jobs … 644  Public-Works Projects … 645  The New Deal and Agriculture … 646  The New Deal and Housing … 647  The Court and the New Deal … 648 T H E G R A S S R O O T S R E V O L T . . . 648 Labor’s Great Upheaval … 648  The Rise of the CIO … 649  Labor and Politics … 650  Voices of Protest … 651  Religion on the Radio … 651 T H E S E C O N D N E W D E A L . . . 652 The WPA and the Wagner Act … 653  The American Welfare State: Social Security … 654 A R E C K O N I N G W I T H L I B E R T Y . . . 655 The Election of 1936 … 655 Voices of Freedom: From Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Fireside Chat” (1934), and From John Steinbeck, The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath (1938) … 656 The Court Fight … 658  The End of the Second New Deal … 659 T H E L I M I T S O F C H A N G E . . . 660 The New Deal and American Women … 660  The Southern Veto … 661  The Stigma of Welfare … 661  The Indian New Deal … 662  The New Deal and Mexican-Americans … 662  Last Hired, First Fired … 663  Federal Discrimination … 664 A N E W C O N C E P T I O N O F A M E R I C A . . . 665 The Heyday of American Communism … 665  Redefining the People … 666  Challenging the Color Line … 667  Labor and Civil C o n t e n t s x i Liberties … 667  The End of the New Deal … 668  The New Deal in American History … 669 R E V I E W . . . 6 7 1 2 2 . F I G H T I N G F O R T H E F O U R F R E E D O M S : W O R L D W A R I I , 1 9 4 1 – 1 9 4 5 . . . 6 7 2 F I G H T I N G W O R L D W A R I I . . . 674 Good Neighbors … 674  The Road to War … 675  Isolationism … 675  War in Europe … 676  Toward Intervention … 677  Pearl Harbor … 677  The War in the Pacific … 678  The War in Europe … 679 T H E H O M E F R O N T . . . 682 Mobilizing for War … 682  Business and the War … 683  Labor in Wartime … 684  Fighting for the Four Freedoms … 684  The Fifth Freedom … 685  Women at War … 686 V I S I O N S O F P O S T W A R F R E E D O M . . . 687 Toward an American Century … 687  “The Way of Life of Free Men” … 688  The Road to Serfdom … 689 T H E A M E R I C A N D I L E M M A . . . 689 Patriotic Assimilation … 690  The Bracero Program … 690  Indians during the War … 691  Asian-Americans in Wartime … 691  Japanese- American Internment … 692  Blacks and the War … 694  Blacks and Military Service … 695  Birth of the Civil Rights Movement … 695  The Double-V … 696  The War and Race … 696  An American Dilemma … 697 Voices of Freedom: From Henry R. Luce, The American Century (1941), and From Charles H. Wesley, “The Negro Has Always Wanted the Four Freedoms,” in What the Negro Wants (1944) … 698 Black Internationalism … 700 T H E E N D O F T H E W A R . . . 700 “The Most Terrible Weapon” … 701  The Dawn of the Atomic Age … 701  The Nature of the War … 702  Planning the Postwar World … 703  Yalta and Bretton Woods … 703  The United Nations … 704  Peace, but not Harmony … 704 R E V I E W . . . 7 0 6 2 3 . T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S A N D T H E C O L D W A R , 1 9 4 5 – 1 9 5 3 . . . 7 0 7 O R I G I N S O F T H E C O L D W A R . . . 709 The Two Powers … 709  The Roots of Containment … 709  The Truman Doctrine … 710  The Marshall Plan … 711 x i i Contents  The Reconstruction of Japan … 712  The Berlin Blockade and NATO … 713  The Growing Communist Challenge … 713  The Korean War … 715  Cold War Critics … 717  Imperialism and Decolonization … 717 Voices of Freedom: From Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (1955), and From Henry Steele Commager, “Who Is Loyal to America?” in Harper’s (September 1947) … 718 T H E C O L D W A R A N D T H E I D E A O F F R E E D O M . . . 720 Freedom and Totalitarianism … 720  The Rise of Human Rights … 721  Ambiguities of Human Rights … 722 T H E T R U M A N P R E S I D E N C Y . . . 722 The Fair Deal … 722  The Postwar Strike Wave … 723  The Republican Resurgence … 723  Postwar Civil Rights … 724  To Secure These Rights … 725  The Dixiecrat and Wallace Revolts … 725 T H E A N T I C O M M U N I S T C R U S A D E . . . 727 Loyalty and Disloyalty … 728  The Spy Trials … 729  McCarthy and McCarthyism … 730  An Atmosphere of Fear … 731  The Uses of Anticommunism … 731  Anticommunist Politics … 732  Cold War Civil Rights … 733 R E V I E W . . . 7 3 5 2 4 . A N A F F L U E N T S O C I E T Y , 1 9 5 3 – 1 9 6 0 . . . 7 3 6 T H E G O L D E N A G E . . . 738 A Changing Economy … 738  A Suburban Nation … 739  The Growth of the West … 740  The TV World … 741  Women at Work and at Home … 741  A Segregated Landscape … 742  The Divided Society … 743  Religion and Anticommunism … 743  Selling Free Enterprise … 744  The Libertarian Conservatives and the New Conservatives … 744 T H E E I S E N H O W E R E R A . . . 745 Ike and Nixon … 745  The 1952 Campaign … 746  Modern Republicanism … 747  The Social Contract … 748  Massive Retaliation … 749  Ike and the Russians … 749  The Emergence of the Third World … 750  Origins of the Vietnam War … 751  Mass Society and Its Critics … 752  Rebels without a Cause … 753 T H E F R E E D O M M O V E M E N T . . . 754 Origins of the Movement … 755  The Legal Assault on Segregation … 755  The Brown Case … 757  The Montgomery Bus Boycott … 758  The Daybreak of Freedom … 758  The Leadership of King … 759  Massive Resistance … 760  Eisenhower and Civil Rights … 760 C o n t e n t s x i i i Voices of Freedom: From Richard Right, “I Choose Exile” (1950), and From The Southern Manifesto (1956) … 762 T H E E L E C T I O N O F 1 9 6 0 . . . 764 Kennedy and Nixon … 764  The End of the 1950s … 765 R E V I E W . . . 7 6 7 2 5 . T H E S I X T I E S , 1 9 6 0 – 1 9 6 8 . . . 7 6 8 T H E C I V I L R I G H T S R E V O L U T I O N . . . 770 The Rising Tide of Protest … 770  Birmingham … 771  The March on Washington … 772 T H E K E N N E D Y Y E A R S . . . 773 Kennedy and the World … 773  The Missile Crisis … 774  Kennedy and Civil Rights … 775 L Y N D O N J O H N S O N ’ S P R E S I D E N C Y . . . 776 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 … 776  Freedom Summer … 776  The 1964 Election … 777  The Conservative Sixties … 778  The Voting Rights Act … 780  Immigration Reform … 780  The Great Society … 781  The War on Poverty … 781  Freedom and Equality … 782 T H E C H A N G I N G B L A C K M O V E M E N T . . . 782 The Ghetto Uprisings … 783  Malcolm X … 784  The Rise of Black Power … 784 V I E T N A M A N D T H E N E W L E F T . . . 785 Old and New Lefts … 785  The Fading Consensus … 786  America and Vietnam … 787 Voices of Freedom: From Young Americans for Freedom, The Sharon Statement (September 1960), and From Tom Hayden and Others, The Port Huron Statement (June 1962) … 788 Lyndon Johnson’s War … 790  The Antiwar Movement … 792  The Counterculture … 793  Personal Liberation and the Free Individual … 793  Faith and the Counterculture … 794 T H E N E W M O V E M E N T S A N D T H E R I G H T S R E V O L U T I O N . . . 7 9 5 The Feminine Mystique … 795  Women’s Liberation … 796  Personal Freedom … 796  Gay Liberation … 797  Latino Activism … 797  Red Power … 798  Silent Spring … 798  The Rights Revolution … 799  The Right to Privacy … 801 1 9 6 8 . . . 802 A Year of Turmoil … 802  The Global 1968 … 803  Nixon’s Comeback … 804  The Legacy of the Sixties … 804 R E V I E W . . . 8 0 5 x i v Contents 2 6 . T H E T R I U M P H O F C O N S E R V A T I S M , 1 9 6 9 – 1 9 8 8 . . . 8 0 6 P R E S I D E N T N I X O N . . . 807 Nixon’s Domestic Policies … 808  Nixon and Welfare … 808  Nixon and Race … 809  The Burger Court … 809  The Continuing Sexual Revolution … 810  Nixon and Détente … 811 V I E T N A M A N D W A T E R G A T E . . . 813 Nixon and Vietnam … 813  The End of the Vietnam War … 814  Watergate … 815  Nixon’s Fall … 815 T H E E N D O F T H E G O L D E N A G E . . . 816 The Decline of Manufacturing … 816  Stagflation … 818  The Beleaguered Social Compact … 818  Ford as President … 819  The Carter Administration … 820  Carter and the Economic Crisis … 820  The Emergence of Human Rights Politics … 821  The Iran Crisis and Afghanistan … 822 T H E R I S I N G T I D E O F C O N S E R V A T I S M . . . 823 Voices of Freedom: From Redstockings Manifesto (1969), and From Jerry Falwell, Listen, America! (1980) … 824 The Religious Right … 826  The Battle over the Equal Rights Amendment … 827  The Abortion Controversy … 828  The Tax Revolt … 829  The Election of 1980 … 829 T H E R E A G A N R E V O L U T I O N . . . 830 Reagan and American Freedom … 830  Reaganomics … 831  Reagan and Labor … 831  The Problem of Inequality … 832  The Second Gilded Age … 833  Conservatives and Reagan … 834  Reagan and the Cold War … 834  The Iran-Contra Affair … 836  Reagan and Gorbachev … 836  Reagan’s Legacy … 837  The Election of 1988 … 837 R E V I E W . . . 8 3 9 2 7 . G L O B A L I Z A T I O N A N D I T S D I S C O N T E N T S , 1 9 8 9 – 2 0 0 0 . . . 8 4 0 T H E P O S T – C O L D W A R W O R L D . . . 842 The Crisis of Communism … 842  A New World Order? … 844  The Gulf War … 845  Visions of America’s Role … 845  The Election of Clinton … 845  Clinton in Office … 846  The “Freedom Revolution” … 847 Voices of Freedom: From Bill Clinton, Speech on Signing of NAFTA (1993), and From Global Exchange, Seattle, Declaration for Global Democracy (December 1999) … 848 Clinton’s Political Strategy … 850  Clinton and World Affairs … 851  Human Rights … 852 C o n t e n t s x v A N E W E C O N O M Y ? . . . 853 The Computer Revolution … 853  The Stock Market Boom and Bust … 854  The Enron Syndrome … 855  Fruits of Deregulation … 855  Rising Inequality … 856 C U L T U R E W A R S . . . 857 The Newest Immigrants … 858  The New Diversity … 859  African- Americans in the 1990s … 861  The Spread of Imprisonment … 862  The Continuing Rights Revolution … 863  Native Americans … 864  Multiculturalism … 865  “Family Values” in Retreat … 866  The Antigovernment Extreme … 866 I M P E A C H M E N T A N D T H E E L E C T I O N O F 2 0 0 0 . . . 867 The Impeachment of Clinton … 868  The Disputed Election … 868  A Challenged Democracy … 869 F R E E D O M A N D T H E N E W C E N T U R Y . . . 870 Exceptional America … 871 R E V I E W . . . 8 7 3 2 8 . A N E W C E N T U R Y A N D N E W C R I S E S . . . 8 7 4 T H E W A R O N T E R R O R I S M . . . 876 Bush before September 11 … 876  “They Hate Freedom” … 877  The Bush Doctrine … 877  The “Axis of Evil” … 878 A N A M E R I C A N E M P I R E ? . . . 878 Confronting Iraq … 879  The Iraq War … 880  The World and the War … 881 T H E A F T E R M A T H O F S E P T E M B E R 1 1 A T H O M E . . . 883 Security and Liberty … 883  The Power of the President … 883  The Torture Controversy … 884  The Economy under Bush … 885 T H E W I N D S O F C H A N G E . . . 885 The 2004 Election … 885  Bush’s Second Term … 886  Hurricane Katrina … 886  The Immigration Debate … 887  Islam, America, and the “Clash of Civilizations” … 888  The Constitution and Liberty … 889  The Court and the President … 890  The Midterm Elections of 2006 … 890  The Housing Bubble … 891  The Great Recession … 892  “A Conspiracy against the Public” … 893  Bush and the Crisis … 894 T H E R I S E O F O B A M A . . . 895 The 2008 Campaign … 896  The Age of Obama? … 897  Obama’s First Inauguration … 897 Voices of Freedom: From The National Security Strategy of the United States (September 2002), and From President Barack Obama, Speech on the Middle East (2011) … 898 Obama in Office … 900 x v i Contents O B A M A ’ S F I R S T T E R M . . . 902 The Continuing Economic Crisis … 902  Obama and the World … 902  The Republican Revival … 904  The Occupy Movement … 905  The 2012 Campaign … 905 L E A R N I N G F R O M H I S T O R Y . . . 907 R E V I E W . . . 9 0 9 A P P E N D I X D O C U M E N T S The Declaration of Independence (1776) … A-2 The Constitution of The United States (1787) … A-5 From George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796) … A-17 The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments And Resolutions (1848) … A-22 From Frederick Douglass’s “What, To the Slave, Is The Fourth Of July?” Speech (1852) … A-25 The Gettysburg Address (1863) … A-29 Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (1865) … A-30 The Populist Platform of 1892 … A-31 Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address (1933) … A-34 From The Program For The March On Washington For Jobs And Freedom (1963) … A-37 Ronald Reagan’s First Inaugural Address (1981) … A-38 Barack Obama’s First Inaugural Address (2009) … A-42 T A B L E S A N D F I G U R E S Presidential Elections … A-46 Admission of States … A-54 Population of the United States … A-55 Historical Statistics of The United States: Labor Force—Selected Characteristics Expressed As A Percentage of The Labor Force, 1800–2010 … A-56 Immigration, By Origin … A-56 Unemployment Rate, 1890–2013 … A-57 Union Membership As A Percentage Of Nonagricultural Employment, 1880–2012 … A-57 Voter Participation in Presidential Elections 1824–2012 … A-57 Birthrate, 1820–2011 … A-57 S U G G E S T E D R E A D I N G S … A – 5 9 G L O S S A R Y … A – 6 9 C R E D I T S … A – 9 7 I N D E X … A – 9 9 C o n t e n t s x v i i M A P S Japanese-American Internment, 1942–1945 … 693 C H A P T E R 1 5 C H A P T E R 2 3 The Barrow Plantation … 446 Sharecropping in the South, 1880 … 452 Cold War Europe, 1956 … 714 The Presidential Election of 1868 … 460 The Korean War, 1950–1953 … 716 Reconstruction in the South, 1867–1877 … 471 The Presidential Election of 1948 … 727 The Presidential Election of 1876 … 472 C H A P T E R 2 4 C H A P T E R 1 6 The Interstate Highway System … 740 The Railroad Network, 1880 … 479 The Presidential Election of 1952 … 747 Indian Reservations, ca. 1890 … 491 The Presidential Election of 1960 … 765 Political Stalemate, 1876–1892 … 496 C H A P T E R 2 5 C H A P T E R 1 7 The Presidential Election of 1964 … 778 Populist Strength, 1892 … 512 The Vietnam War, 1964–1975 … 791 The Presidential Election of 1896 … 516 The Spanish-American War: The Pacific … 532 C H A P T E R 2 6 The Spanish-American War: The Caribbean … 532 The Presidential Election of 1980 … 830 American Empire, 1898 … 534 The United States in the Caribbean and Central C H A P T E R 1 8 America, 1954–2004 … 835 Socialist Towns and Cities, 1900–1920 … 553 C H A P T E R 2 7 The Presidential Election of 1912 … 571 Eastern Europe after the Cold War … 844 C H A P T E R 1 9 The Presidential Election of 2000 … 868 The United States in the Caribbean, 1898–1941 … 577 C H A P T E R 2 8 World War I: The Western Front … 583 U.S. Presence in the Middle East, Europe in 1914 … 602 1947–2012 … 882 Europe in 1919 … 603 The Presidential Election of 2012 … 906 C H A P T E R 2 0 T A B L E S A N D F I G U R E S The Presidential Election of 1928 … 632 C H A P T E R 2 1 C H A P T E R 1 6 The Presidential Election of 1932 … 641 Table 16.1 Indicators of Economic Change, The Tennessee Valley Authority … 646 1870–1920 … 477 C H A P T E R 2 2 C H A P T E R 1 7 World War II in the Pacific, 1941–1945 … 679 Table 17.1 States with Over 200 Lynchings, World War II in Europe, 1942–1945 … 681 1889–1918 … 523 x v i i i List of Maps, Tables, and Figures C H A P T E R 1 8 Figure 24.3 The Baby Boom and Its Decline … 742 Table 18.1 Rise of the City, 1880–1920 … 546 Table 18.2 Immigrants and Their Children as C H A P T E R 2 5 Percentage of Population, Ten Major Cities, 1920 … 547 Figure 25.1 Percentage of Population below Table 18.3 Percentage of Women 14 Years and Poverty Level, by Race, 1959–1969 … 782 Older in the Labor Force … 549 Table 18.4 Percentage of Women Workers in C H A P T E R 2 6 Various Occupations … 550 Figure 26.1 Median Age of First Marriage, Table 18.5 Sales of Passenger Cars … 551 1947–1981 … 810 Table 26.1 The Misery Index, 1970–1980 … 817 C H A P T E R 1 9 Figure 26.2 Real Average Weekly Wages, 1955–1990 … 819 Table 19.1 The Great Migration … 597 Figure 26.3 Changes in Families’ Real Income, 1980–1990 … 832 C H A P T E R 2 0 Figure 20.1 Household Appliances, 1900–1930 … C H A P T E R 2 7 611 Figure 27.1 U.S. Income Inequality, 1913–2003 … Table 20.1 Selected Annual Immigration Quotas 856 under the 1924 Immigration Act … 626 Table 27.1 Immigration to the United States, 1960–2010 … 858 C H A P T E R 2 1 Figure 27.2 Birthplace of Immigrants, Figure 21.1 The Building Boom and Its Collapse, 1990–2000 … 860 1919–1939 … 647 Figure 27.3 The Projected Non-White Majority: Figure 21.2 Unemployment, 1925–1945 … 659 Racial and Ethnic Breakdown … 861 Table 27.2 Home Ownership Rates by Group, 1970–2000 … 862 C H A P T E R 2 2 Figure 27.4 Changes in Family Structure, Table 22.1 Labor Union Membership … 684 1970–2010 … 865 Figure 27.5 Women in the Paid Workforce, C H A P T E R 2 4 1940–2000 … 866 Figure 24.1 Real Gross Domestic Product per Capita, 1790–2000 … 738 C H A P T E R 2 8 Figure 24.2 Average Daily Television Viewing … Figure 28.1 Portrait of a Recession … 893 741 L i s t s o f M a p s , Ta b l e s , a n d F i g u r e s x i x P R E F A C E Since it originally appeared late in 2004, Give Me Liberty! An American History has gone through three editions and been adopted for use in survey courses at close to one thousand two- and four-year colleges in the United States, as well as a good number overseas. Of course, I am extremely gratified by this response. The book offers students a clear narra- tive of American history from the earliest days of European exploration and conquest of the New World to the first decade of the twenty-first century. Its central theme is the changing contours of American freedom. The comments I have received from instructors and students encour- age me to think that Give Me Liberty! has worked well in the classroom. These comments have also included many valuable suggestions, ranging from corrections of typographical and factual errors to thoughts about subjects that need more extensive treatment. In preparing new editions of the book I have tried to take these suggestions into account, as well as incorporating the insights of recent historical scholarship. Since the original edition was written, I have frequently been asked to produce a more succinct version of the textbook, which now runs to some 1,200 pages. This Brief Edition is a response to these requests. The text of the current volume is about one-third shorter than the full version. The result, I believe, is a book more suited to use in one-semester survey courses, classes x x Preface where the instructor wishes to supplement the text with additional read- ings, and in other situations where a briefer volume is desirable. Since some publishers have been known to assign the task of reduction in cases like this to editors rather than the actual author, I wish to empha- size that I did all the cutting and necessary rewriting for this Brief Edition myself. My guiding principle was to preserve the coverage, structure, and emphases of the regular edition and to compress the book by eliminating details of secondary importance, streamlining the narrative of events, and avoiding unnecessary repetition. While the book is significantly shorter, no subject treated in the full edition has been eliminated entirely and noth- ing essential, I believe, has been sacrificed. The sequence of chapters and subjects remains the same, and the freedom theme is present and operative throughout. In abridging the textbook I have retained the original interpretive framework as well as the new emphases added when the second and third editions of the book were published. The second edition incorporated new material about the history of Native Americans, an area of American his- tory that has been the subject of significant new scholarship in the past few years. It also devoted greater attention to the history of immigration and the controversies surrounding it—issues of considerable relevance to Amer- ican social and political life today. The most significant change in the third edition reflected my desire to place American history more fully in a global context. In the past few years, scholars writing about the American past have sought to delineate the influ- ences of the United States on the rest of the world as well as the global devel- opments that have helped to shape the course of events here at home. They have also devoted greater attention to transnational processes—the expan- sion of empires, international labor migrations, the rise and fall of slavery, the globalization of economic enterprise—that cannot be understood solely within the confines of one country’s national boundaries. Without seek- ing in any way to homogenize the history of individual nations or neglect the domestic forces that have shaped American development, this edition retains this emphasis. The most significant changes in this Fourth Edition reflect my desire to integrate more fully into the narrative the history of American religion. Today, this is a thriving subfield of American historical writing, partly because of the increased prominence in our own time of debates over the relations between government and religion and over the definition of reli- gious liberty—issues that are deeply rooted in the American experience. The Brief Edition also employs a bright new design for the text and its various elements. The popular Voices of Freedom feature—a pair of excerpts from primary source documents in each chapter that illuminate divergent inter- pretations of freedom—is present here. So too are the useful chapter opening P r e f a c e x x i focus questions, which appear in the running heads of the relevant text pages as well. There are chapter opening chronologies and end-of- chapter review pages with questions and key terms. As a new feature in the Brief Edition there are marginal glosses in the text pages that are meant to highlight key points and indicate the chapter structure for students. They are also useful means for review. The Brief Edition features more than 400 illustrations and over 100 captioned maps in easy to read four-color renditions. The Fur- ther Readings sections appear in the Appendix along with the Glossary and the collection of key documents. The Brief Edition is fully supported by the same array of print and electronic supplements that support the other edi- tions of Give Me Liberty! These materials have been revised to match the con- tent of the Brief Edition. Americans have always had a divided attitude toward history. On the one hand, they tend to be remarkably future-oriented, dismissing events of even the recent past as “ancient history” and sometimes seeing history as a bur- den to be overcome, a prison from which to escape. On the other hand, like many other peoples, Americans have always looked to history for a sense of personal or group identity and of national cohesiveness. This is why so many Americans devote time and energy to tracing their family trees and why they visit historical museums and National Park Service historical sites in ever-increasing numbers. My hope is that this book will help to con- vince readers with all degrees of interest that history does matter to them. The novelist and essayist James Baldwin once observed that history “does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, . . . [that] history is literally present in all that we do.” As Baldwin recognized, the power of history is evident in our own world. Especially in a political democracy like the United States, whose government is designed to rest on the consent of informed citizens, knowledge of the past is essential—not only for those of us whose profession is the teaching and writing of history, but for everyone. History, to be sure, does not offer simple lessons or imme- diate answers to current questions. Knowing the history of immigration to the United States, and all of the tensions, turmoil, and aspirations associated with it, for example, does not tell us what current immigration policy ought to be. But without that knowledge, we have no way of understanding which approaches have worked and which have not—essential information for the formulation of future public policy. History, it has been said, is what the present chooses to remember about the past. Rather than a fixed collection of facts, or a group of inter- pretations that cannot be challenged, our understanding of history is con- stantly changing. There is nothing unusual in the fact that each generation rewrites history to meet its own needs, or that scholars disagree among x x i i Preface themselves on basic questions like the causes of the Civil War or the rea- sons for the Great Depression. Precisely because each generation asks dif- ferent questions of the past, each generation formulates different answers. The past thirty years have witnessed a remarkable expansion of the scope of historical study. The experiences of groups neglected by earlier scholars, including women, African-Americans, working people, and others, have received unprecedented attention from historians. New subfields—social history, cultural history, and family history among them—have taken their place alongside traditional political and diplomatic history. Give Me Liberty! draws on this voluminous historical literature to pres- ent an up-to-date and inclusive account of the American past, paying due attention to the experience of diverse groups of Americans while in no way neglecting the events and processes Americans have experienced in common. It devotes serious attention to political, social, cultural, and eco- nomic history, and to their interconnections. The narrative brings together major events and prominent leaders with the many groups of ordinary peo- ple who make up American society. Give Me Liberty! has a rich cast of char- acters, from Thomas Jefferson to campaigners for woman suffrage, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to former slaves seeking to breathe meaning into emancipation during and after the Civil War. The unifying theme of freedom that runs through the text gives shape to the narrative and integrates the numerous strands that make up the American experience. This approach builds on that of my earlier book, The Story of American Freedom (1998), although Give Me Liberty! places events and personalities in the foreground and is more geared to the structure of the introductory survey course. Freedom, and battles to define its meaning, has long been central to my own scholarship and undergraduate teaching, which focuses on the nineteenth century and especially the era of Civil War and Reconstruction (1850–1877). This was a time when the future of slavery tore the nation apart and emancipation produced a national debate over what rights the former slaves, and all Americans, should enjoy as free citizens. I have found that attention to clashing definitions of freedom and the struggles of differ- ent groups to achieve freedom as they understood it offers a way of mak- ing sense of the bitter battles and vast transformations of that pivotal era. I believe that the same is true for American history as a whole. No idea is more fundamental to Americans’ sense of themselves as individuals and as a nation than freedom. The central term in our politi- cal language, freedom—or liberty, with which it is almost always used interchangeably—is deeply embedded in the record of our history and the language of everyday life. The Declaration of Independence lists liberty among mankind’s inalienable rights; the Constitution announces its pur- pose as securing liberty’s blessings. The United States fought the Civil War P r e f a c e x x i i i to bring about a new birth of freedom, World War II for the Four Freedoms, and the Cold War to defend the Free World. Americans’ love of liberty has been represented by liberty poles, liberty caps, and statues of liberty, and acted out by burning stamps and burning draft cards, by running away from slavery, and by demonstrating for the right to vote. “Every man in the street, white, black, red or yellow,” wrote the educator and statesman Ralph Bunche in 1940, “knows that this is ‘the land of the free’ . . . ‘the cradle of liberty.’” The very universality of the idea of freedom, however, can be mislead- ing. Freedom is not a fixed, timeless category with a single unchanging defi- nition. Indeed, the history of the United States is, in part, a story of debates, disagreements, and struggles over freedom. Crises like the American Revo- lution, the Civil War, and the Cold War have permanently transformed the idea of freedom. So too have demands by various groups of Americans to enjoy greater freedom. The meaning of freedom has been constructed not only in congressional debates and political treatises, but on plantations and picket lines, in parlors and even bedrooms. Over the course of our history, American freedom has been both a real- ity and a mythic ideal—a living truth for millions of Americans, a cruel mockery for others. For some, freedom has been what some scholars call a “habit of the heart,” an ideal so taken for granted that it is lived out but rarely analyzed. For others, freedom is not a birthright but a distant goal that has inspired great sacrifice. Give Me Liberty! draws attention to three dimensions of freedom that have been critical in American history: (1) the meanings of freedom; (2) the social conditions that make freedom possible; and (3) the boundaries of free- dom that determine who is entitled to enjoy freedom and who is not. All have changed over time. In the era of the American Revolution, for example, freedom was pri- marily a set of rights enjoyed in public activity—including the right of a com- munity to be governed by laws to which its representatives had consented and of individuals to engage in religious worship without governmental interference. In the nineteenth century, freedom came to be closely identi- fied with each person’s opportunity to develop to the fullest his or her innate talents. In the twentieth, the “ability to choose,” in both public and private life, became perhaps the dominant understanding of freedom. This develop- ment was encouraged by the explosive growth of the consumer marketplace which offered Americans an unprecedented array of goods with which to satisfy their needs and desires. During the 1960s, a crucial chapter in the history of American freedom, the idea of personal freedom was extended into virtually every realm, from attire and “lifestyle” to relations between the sexes. Thus, over time, more and more areas of life have been drawn into Americans’ debates about the meaning of freedom. x x i v Preface A second important dimension of freedom focuses on the social con- ditions necessary to allow freedom to flourish. What kinds of economic institutions and relationships best encourage individual freedom? In the colonial era and for more than a century after independence, the answer centered on economic autonomy, enshrined in the glorification of the inde- pendent small producer—the farmer, skilled craftsman, or shopkeeper— who did not have to depend on another person for his livelihood. As the industrial economy matured, new conceptions of economic freedom came to the fore: “liberty of contract” in the Gilded Age, “industrial freedom” (a say in corporate decision making) in the Progressive era, economic security during the New Deal, and, more recently, the ability to enjoy mass consump- tion within a market economy. The boundaries of freedom, the third dimension of this theme, have inspired some of the most intense struggles in American history. Although founded on the premise that liberty is an entitlement of all humanity, the United States for much of its history deprived many of its own people of free- dom. Non-whites have rarely enjoyed the same access to freedom as white Americans. The belief in equal opportunity as the birthright of all Ameri- cans has coexisted with persistent efforts to limit freedom by race, gender, class, and in other ways. Less obvious, perhaps, is the fact that one person’s freedom has fre- quently been linked to another’s servitude. In the colonial era and nine- teenth century, expanding freedom for many Americans rested on the lack of freedom—slavery, indentured servitude, the subordinate position of women—for others. By the same token, it has been through battles at the boundaries—the efforts of racial minorities, women, and others to secure greater freedom—that the meaning and experience of freedom have been deepened and the concept extended into new realms. Time and again in American history, freedom has been transformed by the demands of excluded groups for inclusion. The idea of freedom as a universal birthright owes much to abolitionists who sought to extend the blessings of liberty to blacks and to immigrant groups who insisted on full recognition as American citizens. The principle of equal protection of the law without regard to race, which became a central element of American freedom, arose from the antislavery struggle and Civil War and was rein- vigorated by the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, which called itself the “freedom movement.” The battle for the right of free speech by labor radicals and birth control advocates in the first part of the twentieth century helped to make civil liberties an essential element of freedom for all Americans. Freedom is the oldest of clichés and the most modern of aspirations. At various times in our history, it has served as the rallying cry of the power- less and as a justification of the status quo. Freedom helps to bind our cul- ture together and exposes the contradictions between what America claims P r e f a c e x x v to be and what it sometimes has been. American history is not a narrative of continual progress toward greater and greater freedom. As the abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson noted after the Civil War, “revolutions may go backward.” While freedom can be achieved, it may also be taken away. This happened, for example, when the equal rights granted to former slaves immediately after the Civil War were essentially nullified during the era of segregation. As was said in the eighteenth century, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. In the early twenty-first century, freedom continues to play a central role in our political and social life and thought. It is invoked by individuals and groups of all kinds, from critics of economic globalization to those who seek to export American freedom overseas. As with the longer version of the book, I hope that this Brief Edition of Give Me Liberty! will offer begin- ning students a clear account of the course of American history, and of its central theme, freedom, which today remains as varied, contentious, and ever-changing as America itself. x x v i Preface A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S All works of history are, to a considerable extent, collaborative books, in that every writer builds on the research and writing of previous scholars. This is especially true of a textbook that covers the entire American experience, over more than five centuries. My greatest debt is to the innumerable histo- rians on whose work I have drawn in preparing this volume. The Suggested Reading list in the Appendix offers only a brief introduction to the vast body of historical scholarship that has influenced and informed this book. More specifically, however, I wish to thank the following scholars, who gener- ously read portions of this work and offered valuable comments, criticisms, and suggestions: Wayne Ackerson, Salisbury University Mary E. Adams, City College of San Francisco Jeff Adler, University of Florida David Anderson, Louisiana Tech University John Barr, Lone Star College, Kingwood Lauren Braun-Strumfels, Raritan Valley Community College James Broussard, Lebanon Valley College Michael Bryan, Greenville Technical College Stephanie Cole, The University of Texas at Arlington Ashley Cruseturner, McLennan Community College Jim Dudlo, Brookhaven College Beverly Gage, Yale University Monica Gisolfi, University of North Carolina, Wilmington Adam Goudsouzian, University of Memphis Mike Green, Community College of Southern Nevada Vanessa Gunther, California State University, Fullerton David E. Hamilton, University of Kentucky Brian Harding, Mott Community College Sandra Harvey, Lone Star College–Cy Fair April Holm, University of Mississippi David Hsiung, Juniata College James Karmel, Harford Community College Kelly Knight, Penn State University Marianne Leeper, Trinity Valley Community College Jeffrey K. Lucas, University of North Carolina at Pembroke Tina Margolis, Westchester Community College Kent McGaughy, HCC Northwest College James Mills, University of Texas, Brownsville Gil Montemayor, McLennan Community College Jonathan Noyalas, Lord Fairfax Community College Robert M. O’Brien, Lone Star College–Cy Fair P r e f a c e x x v i i Joseph Palermo, California State University, Sacramento Ann Plane, University of California, Santa Barbara Nancy Marie Robertson, Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis Esther Robinson, Lone Star College–Cy Fair Richard Samuelson, California State University, San Bernadino Diane Sager, Maple Woods Community College John Shaw, Portland Community College Mark Spencer, Brock University David Stebenne, Ohio State University Judith Stein, City College, City University of New York George Stevens, Duchess Community College Robert Tinkler, California State University, Chico Elaine Thompson, Louisiana Tech University David Weiman, Barnard College William Young, Maple Woods Community College I am particularly grateful to my colleagues in the Columbia University Department of History: Pablo Piccato, for his advice on Latin American his- tory; Evan Haefeli and Ellen Baker, who read and made many suggestions for improvements in their areas of expertise (colonial America and the history of the West, respectively); and Sarah Phillips, who offered advice on treating the history of the environment. I am also deeply indebted to the graduate students at Columbia Univer- sity’s Department of History who helped with this project. Theresa Ventura offered invaluable assistance in gathering material for the new sections plac- ing American history in a global context. April Holm provided similar assis- tance for new coverage in this edition of the history of American religion and debates over religious freedom. James Delbourgo conducted research for the chapters on the colonial era. Beverly Gage did the same for the twenti- eth century. Daniel Freund provided all-round research assistance. Victoria Cain did a superb job of locating images. I also want to thank my colleagues Elizabeth Blackmar and Alan Brinkley for offering advice and encourage- ment throughout the writing of this book. Many thanks to Joshua Brown, director of the American Social History Project, whose website, History Matters, lists innumerable online resources for the study of American history. Nancy Robertson at IUIPUI did a superb job revising and enhancing the in-book pedagogy. Monica Gisolfi (Univer- sity of North Carolina, Wilmington) and Robert Tinkler (California State University, Chico) did excellent work on the Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank. Kathleen Thomas (University of Wisconsin, Stout) helped greatly in the revisions of the companion media packages. x x v i i i Preface At W. W. Norton & Company, Steve Forman was an ideal editor— patient, encouraging, and always ready to offer sage advice. I would also like to thank Steve’s assistants, Justin Cahill and Penelope Lin, for their indispensable and always cheerful help on all aspects of the project; Ellen Lohman and Debbie Nichols for their careful copyediting and proof read- ing work. Stephanie Romeo and Donna Ranieri for their resourceful atten- tion to the illustrations program; Hope Miller Goodell and Chin-Yee Lai for their refinements of the book design; Mike Fodera and Debra Morton-Hoyt for splendid work on the covers for the Fourth Edition; Kim Yi for keep- ing the many threads of the project aligned and then tying them together; Sean Mintus for his efficiency and care in book production; Steve Hoge for orchestrating the rich media package that accompanies the textbook; Jessica Brannon-Wranosky, Texas A&M University–Commerce, our digital media author for the terrific new web quizzes and outlines; Volker Janssen, Cali- fornia State University, Fullerton, for the helpful new online reading exer- cises; Nicole Netherton, Steve Dunn, and Mike Wright for their alert reads of the U.S. survey market and their hard work in helping establish Give Me Liberty! within it; and Drake McFeely, Roby Harrington, and Julia Reidhead for maintaining Norton as an independent, employee-owned publisher ded- icated to excellence in its work. Many students may have heard stories of how publishing companies alter the language and content of textbooks in an attempt to maximize sales and avoid alienating any potential reader. In this case, I can honestly say that W. W. Norton allowed me a free hand in writing the book and, apart from the usual editorial corrections, did not try to influence its content at all. For this I thank them, while I accept full responsibility for the interpretations pre- sented and for any errors the book may contain. Since no book of this length can be entirely free of mistakes, I welcome readers to send me corrections at ef17@columbia.edu. My greatest debt, as always, is to my family—my wife, Lynn Garafola, for her good-natured support while I was preoccupied by a project that con- sumed more than its fair share of my time and energy, and my daughter, Daria, who while a ninth and tenth grader read every chapter as it was writ- ten and offered invaluable suggestions about improving the book’s clarity, logic, and grammar. Eric Foner New York City July 2013 P r e f a c e x x i x G I V E M E L I B E R T Y ! A N A M E R I C A N H I S T O R Y  B r i e f F o u r t h E d i t i o n 1865 Special Field Order 15 C H A P T E R 1 5 Freedmen’s Bureau established Lincoln assassinated; Andrew Johnson becomes president 1865– Presidential Reconstruction 1867 Black Codes “ W H A T I S 1866 Civil Rights Bill Ku Klux Klan established 1867 Reconstruction Act of 1867 F R E E D O M ? ” Tenure of Office Act 1867– Radical Reconstruction 1877  1868 Impeachment and trial of President Johnson Fourteenth Amendment ratified R E C O N S T R U C T I O N , 1 8 6 5 – 1 8 7 7 1869 Inauguration of Ulysses S. Grant 1870 Hiram Revels, first black U.S. senator Fifteenth Amendment ratified 1870– Enforcement Acts 1871 1872 Liberal Republicans established 1873 Colfax Massacre Slaughterhouse Cases National economic depression begins 1876 United States v. Cruikshank 1877 Bargain of 1877 The Shackle Broken—by the Genius of Freedom. This 1874 lithograph depicts Robert B. Elliott, a black congressman from South Carolina, delivering celebrated speech supporting the bill that became the Civil Rights Act of 1875. F O C U S On the evening of January 12, 1865, less than a month after Union forces captured Savannah, Georgia, twenty leaders of the city’s black community gathered for a discussion with General William T. Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. The con- Q U E S T I O N S versation revealed that the black leaders brought out of slavery a clear definition of freedom. Asked what he understood by slavery, Garrison s Frazier, a Baptist minister chosen as the group’s spokesman, responded did the former slaves and that it meant one person’s “receiving by irresistible power the work of slaveholders pursue in the another man, and not by his consent.” Freedom he defined as “placing postwar South? us where we could reap the fruit of our own labor, and take care of our- selves.” The way to accomplish this was “to have land, and turn it and till s it by our own labor.” visions of Reconstruction? Sherman’s meeting with the black leaders foreshadowed some of the radical changes that would take place during the era known s as Reconstruction (meaning, literally, the rebuilding of the shattered political effects of Radi- nation). In the years following the Civil War, former slaves and their cal Reconstruction in the white allies, North and South, would seek to redefine the meaning and South? boundaries of American freedom. Previously an entitlement of whites, freedom would be expanded to include black Americans. The laws and s Constitution would be rewritten to guarantee African-Americans, for tors, in both the North and the first time in the nation’s history, recognition as citizens and equality South, for the abandon- before the law. Black men would be granted the right to vote, ushering ment of Reconstruction? in a period of interracial democracy throughout the South. Black schools, churches, and other institutions would flourish, laying the foundation for the modern African-American community. Many of the advances of Reconstruction would prove temporary, swept away during a campaign of violence in the South and the North’s retreat from the ideal of equal- ity. But Reconstruction laid the foundation for future struggles to extend freedom to all Americans. Four days after the meeting, Sherman responded to the black delegation by issuing Special Field Order 15. This set aside the Sea Islands and a large area along the South Carolina and Georgia coasts for the settlement of black families on forty-acre plots of land. He also offered them broken-down mules that the army could no longer use. In Sherman’s order lay the origins of the phrase, “forty acres and a mule,” which would reverberate across the South in the next few years. Among the emancipated slaves, Sherman’s order raised hopes that the end of slavery would be accompanied by the economic independence that they, like other Americans, believed essential to genuine freedom. 442 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What visions of freedom did the former slaves and slaveholders pursue in the postwar South? T H E M E A N I N G O F F R E E D O M “What is freedom?” asked Congressman James A. Garfield in 1865. “Is it the bare privilege of not being chained? If this is all, then freedom is a bitter mockery, a cruel delusion.” Did freedom mean simply the absence of slavery, or did it imply other rights for the former slaves, and if so, which ones? Equal civil rights, the vote, ownership of property? During Reconstruction, freedom became a terrain of conflict, its substance open to different, often contradictory interpretations. Conflicts over freedom African-Americans’ understanding of freedom was shaped by their experiences as slaves and their observation of the free society around them. To begin with, freedom meant escaping the numerous injustices of slavery—punishment by the lash, the separation of families, denial of access to education, the sexual exploitation of black women by their owners—and sharing in the rights and opportunities of American citizens. “If I cannot do like a white man,” Henry Adams, an emancipated slave in Family Record, a lithograph marketed Louisiana, told his former master in 1865, “I am not free.” to former slaves after the Civil War, centers on an idealized portrait of a middle-class black family, with scenes of slavery and freedom. F a m i l i e s i n F r e e d o m With slavery dead, institutions that had existed before the war, like the black family, free blacks’ churches and schools, and the secret slave church, were strength- ened, expanded, and freed from white supervision. The family was central to the postemancipation black community. Former slaves made remarkable efforts to locate loved ones from whom they had been separated under slavery. One northern reporter in 1865 encoun- tered a freedman who had walked more than 600 miles from Georgia to North Carolina, searching for the wife and children from whom he had been sold away before the war. While freedom helped to stabilize family life, it also subtly altered relationships within the family. Immediately after the Civil War, planters complained that freedwomen had “withdrawn” from field labor and work as house servants. Many black women preferred to devote more time to their families than had been pos- sible under slavery, and men considered it a badge of T H E M E A N I N G O F F R E E D O M 443 honor to see their wives remain at home. Eventually, the dire poverty of the black community would compel a far higher proportion of black women than white women to go to work for wages. C h u r c h a n d S c h o o l At the same time, blacks abandoned white-controlled religious institutions to create churches of their own. On the eve of the Civil War, 42,000 black Methodists worshiped in biracial South Carolina churches; by the end of Reconstruction, only 600 remained. As the major institution independent of white control, the church Five Generations of a Black Family, played a central role in the black community. A place of worship, it also an 1862 photograph that suggests housed schools, social events, and political gatherings. Black ministers the power of family ties among came to play a major role in politics. Some 250 held public office during emancipated slaves. Reconstruction. Another striking example of the freedpeople’s quest for individual and community improvement was their desire for education. The thirst for learn- ing sprang from many sources—a desire to read the Bible, the need to prepare for the economic marketplace, and the opportunity, which arose in 1867, to take part in politics. Blacks of all ages flocked to the schools established by Mother and Daughter Reading, Mt. Meigs, Alabama, an 1890 northern missionary societies, the Freedmen’s Bureau, and groups of ex- photograph by Rudolph Eickemeyer. slaves themselves. Reconstruction also witnessed the creation of the nation’s During Reconstruction and for years first black colleges, including Fisk University in Tennessee, Hampton thereafter, former slaves exhibited Institute in Virginia, and Howard University in the nation’s capital. a deep desire for education, and learning took place outside of school as well as within. P o l i t i c a l F r e e d o m In a society that had made political participation a core element of freedom, the right to vote inevitably became central to the former slaves’ desire for empowerment and equality. As Frederick Douglass put it soon after the South’s surrender in 1865, “Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot.” In a “monarchial government,” Douglass explained, no “special” disgrace applied to those denied the right to vote. But in a democ- racy, “where universal suffrage is the rule,” excluding any group meant branding them with “the stigma of inferiority.” Anything less than full citizenship, black spokesmen insisted, would betray the nation’s democratic promise and the war’s meaning. To demon- strate their patriotism, blacks throughout the South organized Fourth of July celebrations. For years after the Civil War, white southerners would 444 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What visions of freedom did the former slaves and slaveholders pursue in the postwar South? The First African Church, Richmond, as depicted in Harper’s Weekly, June 27, 1874. The establishment of independent black churches was an enduring accomplishment of Reconstruction. “shut themselves within doors” on Independence Day, as a white resident of Charleston recorded in her diary, while former slaves commemorated the holiday themselves. L a n d , L a b o r , a n d F r e e d o m Like those of rural people throughout the world, former slaves’ ideas of freedom were directly related to landownership. On the land they would Freedom and landownership develop independent communities free of white control. Many former slaves insisted that through their unpaid labor, they had acquired a right to the land. “The property which they hold,” declared an Alabama black con- vention, “was nearly all earned by the sweat of our brows.” In some parts of the South, blacks in 1865 seized property, insisting that it belonged to them. In its individual elements and much of its language, former slaves’ definition of freedom resembled that of white Americans—self-ownership, Freedom’s meaning for former slaves family stability, religious liberty, political participation, and economic autonomy. But these elements combined to form a vision very much their own. For whites, freedom, no matter how defined, was a given, a birthright to be defended. For African-Americans, it was an open-ended process, a transformation of every aspect of their lives and of the society and cul- ture that had sustained slavery in the first place. Although the freedpeople failed to achieve full freedom as they understood it, their definition did much to shape national debate during the turbulent era of Reconstruction. M a s t e r s w i t h o u t S l a v e s Most white southerners reacted to military defeat and emancipation with The southern white reaction to dismay, not only because of the widespread devastation but also because emancipation they must now submit to northern demands. “The demoralization is T H E M E A N I N G O F F R E E D O M 445 Two maps of the Barrow plantation illustrate the effects of emancipation T H E B A R R O W P L A N T A T I O N on rural life in the South. In 1860, 1860 1881 slaves lived in communal quarters near the owner’s house. Twenty years later, former slaves working as Sabrina sharecroppers lived scattered across Dalton the plantation and had their own Lizzie Dalton iver iver church and school. Frank Maxey Joe Bug Jim Reid ittle R ittle R L W L r Wr Nancy Pope ig i h g t h ‘s t ‘s Cane Pope B Church r B an Gus Barrow ra c School Willis n h c Bryant h Gin House Lem Bryant Gin House Lewis Watson Tom Wright Reuben Barrow Ben Thomas Omy Barrow “Granny” Slave Peter Tom Landlord’s Quarters Master’s Barrow Thomas House House Milly Barrow Handy Barrow Old Isaac Calvin Tom Tang Branch Creek Parker Branch Creek Beckton Barrow Syll’s Fork Syll’s Fork Lem Douglas complete,” wrote a Georgia girl. “We are whipped, there is no doubt about it.” The appalling loss of life, a disaster without parallel in the American Confederate deaths experience, affected all classes of southerners. Nearly 260,000 men died for the Confederacy—more than one-fifth of the South’s adult male white population. The widespread destruction of work animals, farm buildings, and machinery ensured that economic revival would be slow and painful. In 1870, the value of property in the South, not counting that represented by slaves, was 30 percent lower than before the war. Planter families faced profound changes in the war’s aftermath. Many Planters lost not only their slaves but their life savings, which they had patrioti- cally invested in now-worthless Confederate bonds. Some, whose slaves departed the plantation, for the first time found themselves compelled to do physical labor. Southern planters sought to implement an understanding of freedom quite different from that of the former slaves. As they struggled to accept the reality of emancipation, most planters defined black freedom in the narrowest manner. As journalist Sidney Andrews discovered late in 1865, “The whites seem wholly unable to comprehend that freedom for the negro means the same thing as freedom for them.” 446 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What visions of freedom did the former slaves and slaveholders pursue in the postwar South? T h e F r e e L a b o r V i s i o n Along with former slaves and former masters, the victorious Republican North tried to implement its own vision of freedom. Central to its defini- tion was the antebellum principle of free labor, now further strengthened as a definition of the good society by the Union’s triumph. In the free labor Free labor and the good society vision of a reconstructed South, emancipated blacks, enjoying the same opportunities for advancement as northern workers, would labor more productively than they had as slaves. At the same time, northern capital and migrants would energize the economy. The South would eventually come to resemble the “free society” of the North, complete with public schools, small towns, and independent farmers. With planters seeking to establish a labor system as close to slavery as possible, and former slaves demanding economic autonomy and access to land, a long period of conflict over the organization and control of labor followed on plantations throughout the South. It fell to the Freedmen’s Winslow Homer’s 1876 painting , A Bureau, an agency established by Congress in March 1865, to attempt to Visit from the Old Mistress, depicts an imaginary meeting between a establish a working free labor system. southern white woman and her former slaves. Their stance and gaze suggest the tensions arising from the birth T h e F r e e d m e n ’ s B u r e a u of a new social order. Homer places his subjects on an equal footing, Under the direction of O. O. Howard, a graduate of Bowdoin College in yet maintains a space of separation Maine and a veteran of the Civil War, the bureau took on responsibilities between them. He exhibited the that can only be described as daunting. The bureau was an experiment in painting to acclaim at the Paris government social policy that seems to belong more comfortably to the Universal Exposition in 1878. New Deal of the 1930s or the Great Society of the 1960s (see Chapters 21 and 25, respec- tively) than to nineteenth-century America. Bureau agents were supposed to establish schools, provide aid to the poor and aged, settle disputes between whites and blacks and among the freedpeople, and secure for former slaves and white Unionists equal treatment before the courts. “It is not . . . in your power to fulfill one-tenth of the expec- tations of those who framed the Bureau,” General William T. Sherman wrote to Howard. “I fear you have Hercules’ task.” The bureau lasted from 1865 to 1870. Even at its peak, there were fewer than T H E M E A N I N G O F F R E E D O M 447 The Freedmen’s Bureau, an engraving from Harper’s Weekly, July 25, 1868, depicts the bureau agent as a promoter of racial peace in the violent postwar South. Achievements of the 1,000 agents in the entire South. Nonetheless, the bureau’s achievements Freedmen’s Bureau in some areas, notably education and health care, were striking. By 1869, nearly 3,000 schools, serving more than 150,000 pupils in the South, reported to the bureau. Bureau agents also ran hospitals established dur- ing the war and provided medical care and drugs to both black and white southerners. T h e F a i l u r e o f L a n d R e f o r m One provision of the law establishing the bureau gave it the authority to divide abandoned and confiscated land into forty-acre plots for rental and eventual sale to the former slaves. In the summer of 1865, however, President Andrew Johnson and land Andrew Johnson, who had succeeded Lincoln, ordered nearly all land in reform federal hands returned to its former owners. A series of confrontations followed, notably in South Carolina and Georgia, where the army forcibly evicted blacks who had settled on “Sherman land.” When O. O. Howard, head of the Freedmen’s Bureau, traveled to the Sea Islands to inform blacks of the new policy, he was greeted with disbelief and protest. A committee of former slaves drew up petitions to Howard and President Johnson. Land, the freedmen insisted, was essential to the meaning of freedom. Without it, they declared, “we have not bettered our condition” from the days of slavery—“you will see, this is not the condition of really free men.” Because no land distribution took place, the vast majority of rural freedpeople remained poor and without property during Reconstruction. 448 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What visions of freedom did the former slaves and slaveholders pursue in the postwar South? They had no alternative but to work on white-owned plantations, often for their former owners. Far from being able to rise in the social scale through hard work, black men were largely confined to farm work, unskilled labor, and service jobs, and black women to positions in pri- vate homes as cooks and maids. The failure of land reform produced a deep sense of betrayal that survived among the former slaves and their descendants long after the end of Reconstruction. “No sir,” Mary Gaffney, an elderly ex-slave, recalled in the 1930s, “we were not given a thing but freedom.” Out of the conflict on the plantations, new systems of labor emerged in the different regions of the South. Sharecropping came to dominate the Cotton Belt and much of the Tobacco Belt of Virginia and North Carolina. Sharecropping initially arose as a compromise between blacks’ desire for land and planters’ demand for labor discipline. The system allowed each A nursemaid and her charge, from a black family to rent a part of a plantation, with the crop divided between daguerreotype around 1865. worker and owner at the end of the year. Sharecropping guaranteed the planters a stable resident labor force. Former slaves preferred it to gang labor because it offered them the prospect of working without day-to- day white supervision. But as the years went on, sharecropping became more and more oppressive. Sharecroppers’ economic opportunities were severely limited by a world market in which the price of farm products suffered a prolonged decline. T h e W h i t e F a r m e r The plight of the small farmer was not confined to blacks in the postwar South. Wartime devastation set in motion a train of events that perma- nently altered the independent way of life of white yeomen, leading to what they considered a loss of freedom. To obtain supplies from mer- chants, farmers were forced to take up the growing of cotton and pledge a part of the crop as collateral (property the creditor can seize if a debt is not paid). This system became known as the “crop lien.” Since interest rates The crop-lien system were extremely high and the price of cotton fell steadily, many farmers found themselves still in debt after marketing their portion of the crop at year’s end. They had no choice but to continue to plant cotton to obtain new loans. By the mid-1870s, white farmers, who cultivated only 10 percent of the South’s cotton crop in 1860, were growing 40 percent, and many who had owned their land had fallen into dependency as sharecroppers who now rented land owned by others. Both black and white farmers found themselves caught in the share- The burden of debt cropping and crop-lien systems. The workings of sharecropping and the T H E M E A N I N G O F F R E E D O M 449 V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M F r o m P e t i t i o n o f C o m m i t t e e i n B e h a l f o f t h e F r e e d m e n t o A n d r e w J o h n s o n ( 1 8 6 5 ) In the summer of 1865, President Andrew Johnson ordered land that had been distributed to freed slaves in South Carolina and Georgia returned to its former owners. A committee of freedmen drafted a petition asking for the right to obtain land. Johnson did not, however, change his policy. We the freedmen of Edisto Island, South Carolina, have learned from you through Major General O. O. Howard . . . with deep sorrow and painful hearts of the possibility of [the] government restoring these lands to the former owners. We are well aware of the many perplexing and trying questions that burden your mind, and therefore pray to god (the preserver of all, and who has through our late and beloved President [Lincoln’s] proclamation and the war made us a free people) that he may guide you in making your decisions and give you that wisdom that cometh from above to settle these great and important questions for the best interests of the country and the colored race. Here is where secession was born and nurtured. Here is where we have toiled nearly all our lives as slaves and treated like dumb driven cattle. This is our home, we have made these lands what they were, we are the only true and loyal people that were found in possession of these lands. We have been always ready to strike for liberty and humanity, yea to fight if need be to preserve this glorious Union. Shall not we who are freedmen and have always been true to this Union have the same rights as are enjoyed by others? . . . Are not our rights as a free people and good citizens of these United States to be considered before those who were found in rebellion against this good and just government? . . . [Are] we who have been abused and oppressed for many long years not to be allowed the privilege of purchasing land but be subject to the will of these large land owners? God forbid. Land monopoly is injurious to the advancement of the course of freedom, and if government does not make some provision by which we as freedmen can obtain a homestead, we have not bettered our condition. . . . We look to you . . . for protection and equal rights with the privilege of purchasing a homestead—a homestead right here in the heart of South Carolina. 450 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” F r o m a S h a r e c r o p p i n g C o n t r a c t ( 1 8 6 6 ) Few former slaves were able to acquire land in the post–Civil War South. Most ended up as sharecroppers, working on white-owned land for a share of the crop at the end of the growing season. This contract, typical of thousands of others, originated in Tennessee. The laborers signed with an X, as they were illiterate. Thomas J. Ross agrees to employ the Freedmen to plant and raise a crop on his Rosstown Plantation. . . . On the following Rules, Regulations and Remunerations. The said Ross agrees to furnish the land to cultivate, and a sufficient number of mules & horses and feed them to make and house said crop and all necessary farming utensils to carry on the same and to give unto said Freedmen whose names appear below one half of all the cotton, corn and wheat that is raised on said place for the year 1866 after all the necessary expenses are deducted out that accrues on said crop. Outside of the Freedmen’s labor in harvesting, carrying to market and selling the same the said Freedmen . . . covenant and agrees to and with said Thomas J. Ross that for and in consideration of one half of the crop before mentioned that they will plant, cultivate, and raise under the management control and Superintendence of said Ross, in good faith, a cotton, corn and oat crop under his management for the year 1866. And we the said Freedmen agrees to furnish ourselves & families in provisions, clothing, medicine and medical bills and all, and every kind of other expenses that we may incur on said plantation for the year 1866 free of charge to said Ross. Should the said Ross furnish us any of the above supplies or any other kind of expenses, during said year, [we] are to settle and pay him out of the net proceeds of our part of the crop the retail price of the county at time of sale or any price we may agree upon—The said Ross shall keep a regular book account, against each and every one or the head of every family to be adjusted and settled at the end of the year. We furthermore bind ourselves to and with said Ross that we will do good work and labor ten hours a day on an average, winter and summer. . . . We further agree that we will lose all lost time, or pay at the rate of one dollar per day, rainy days excepted. In sickness and women lying in childbed are to lose the time and account for it to the other hands out Q U E S T I O N S of his or her part of the crop. . . . We furthermore bind ourselves that we will 1. Why do the black petitioners believe obey the orders of said Ross in all things in carrying that owning land is essential to the out and managing said crop for said year and be enjoyment of freedom? docked for disobedience . . . and are also respon- sible to said Ross if we carelessly, maliciously 2. In what ways does the contract limit maltreat any of his stock for said year to said Ross the freedom of the laborers? for damages to be assessed out of our wages. Samuel (X) Johnson, Thomas (X) Richard, 3. What do these documents suggest Tinny (X) Fitch, Jessie (X) Simmons, Sophe (X) about competing definitions of black Pruden, Henry (X) Pruden, Frances (X) Pruden, freedom in the aftermath of slavery? Elijah (X) Smith. V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M 451 S H A R E C R O P P I N G I N T H E S O U T H , 1 8 8 0 Percentage of farms sharecropped (by county) 35–80% 26–34% 20–25% 13–19% 0–12% VIRGINIA NORTH CAROLINA TENNESSEE ARKANSAS SOUTH CAROLINA GEORGIA TEXAS MISSISSIPPI ALABAMA A t l a n t i c LOUISIANA O c e a n FLORIDA Gulf of Mexico 0 150 200 miles 0 150 200 kilometers By 1880, sharecropping had become crop-lien system are illustrated by the case of Matt Brown, a Mississippi the dominant form of agricultural farmer who borrowed money each year from a local merchant. He began labor in large parts of the South. The system involved both white and black 1892 with a debt of $226 held over from the previous year. By 1893, farmers. although he produced cotton worth $171, Brown’s debt had increased to $402, because he had borrowed $33 for food, $29 for clothing, $173 for supplies, and $112 for other items. Brown never succeeded in getting out of debt. He died in 1905; the last entry under his name in the merchant’s account book is a coffin. Even as the rural South stagnated economically, southern cities expe- Growth of southern cities rienced remarkable growth after the Civil War. As railroads penetrated the interior, they enabled merchants in market centers like Atlanta to trade directly with the North, bypassing coastal cities that had traditionally monopolized southern commerce. A new urban middle class of merchants, railroad promoters, and bankers reaped the benefits of the spread of cotton production in the postwar South. 452 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What visions of freedom did the former slaves and slaveholders pursue in the postwar South? The cotton depot at Guthrie, Texas. Bales of cotton have been loaded onto trains for shipment. After the Civil War, more and more white farmers began growing cotton to support their families, permanently altering their formerly self-sufficient way of life. A f t e r m a t h o f S l a v e r y The United States, of course, was not the only society to confront the prob- lem of the transition from slavery to freedom. Indeed, many parallels exist Emancipation in the Western between the debates during Reconstruction and struggles that followed Hemisphere slavery in other parts of the Western Hemisphere over the same issues of land, control of labor, and political power. Planters elsewhere held the same stereotypical views of black laborers as were voiced by their coun- terparts in the United States—former slaves were supposedly lazy and lacking in ambition, and thought that freedom meant an absence of labor. For their part, former slaves throughout the hemisphere tried to carve Chinese laborers at work on out as much independence as possible, both in their daily lives and in their a Louisiana plantation during Reconstruction. labor. On small Caribbean islands like Barbados, where no unoccupied land existed, former slaves had no alternative but to return to plantation labor. Elsewhere, the plantations either fell to pieces, as in Haiti, or continued operating with a new labor force composed of indentured ser- vants from India and China, as in Jamaica, Trinidad, and British Guiana. Southern planters in the United States brought in a few Chinese laborers in an attempt to replace freedmen, but since the federal government opposed such efforts, the Chinese remained only a tiny proportion of the southern workforce. But if struggles over land and labor united its poste- mancipation experience with that of other societies, in T H E M E A N I N G O F F R E E D O M 453 one respect the United States was unique. Only in the United States were former slaves, within two years of the end of slavery, granted the right Emancipation and the to vote and, thus, given a major share of political power. Few anticipated right to vote this development when the Civil War ended. It came about as the result of one of the greatest political crises of American history—the battle between President Andrew Johnson and Congress over Reconstruction. The struggle resulted in profound changes in the nature of citizenship, the structure of constitutional authority, and the meaning of American freedom. T H E M A K I N G O F R A D I C A L R E C O N S T R U C T I O N A n d r e w J o h n s o n To Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, fell the task of overseeing the restoration of the Union. Born in poverty in North Carolina, as a youth Johnson’s background Johnson worked as a tailor’s apprentice. Becoming a successful politician after moving to Tennessee, Johnson identified himself as the champion of his state’s “honest yeomen” and a foe of large planters, whom he described as a “bloated, corrupted aristocracy.” A strong defender of the Union, he became the only senator from a seceding state to remain at his post in Washington, D.C., when the Civil War began in 1861. When northern forces occupied Tennessee, Abraham Lincoln named him military gov- ernor. In 1864, Republicans nominated him to run for vice president as a symbol of the party’s hope of extending its organization into the South. Outlook In personality and outlook, Johnson proved unsuited for the respon- sibilities he shouldered after Lincoln’s death. A lonely, stubborn man, he was intolerant of criticism and unable to compromise. He lacked Lincoln’s political skills and keen sense of public opinion. Moreover, while Johnson had supported emancipation once Lincoln made it a goal of the war effort, he held deeply racist views. African-Americans, Johnson believed, had no role to play in Reconstruction. T h e F a i l u r e o f P r e s i d e n t i a l R e c o n s t r u c t i o n A little over a month after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, and with Congress out of session until December, Johnson in May 1865 outlined his plan for reuniting the nation. He issued a series of proclamations that 454 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What were the competing visions of Reconstruction? began the period of Presidential Reconstruction (1865–1867). Johnson offered a pardon (which restored political and property rights, except for Johnson’s program slaves) to nearly all white southerners who took an oath of allegiance. He excluded Confederate leaders and wealthy planters whose prewar property had been valued at more than $20,000. Most of those exempted, however, soon received individual pardons from the president. Johnson also appointed provisional governors and ordered them to call state con- ventions, elected by whites alone, that would establish loyal governments in the South. Apart from the requirement that they abolish slavery, repu- diate secession, and refuse to pay the Confederate debt—all unavoidable consequences of southern defeat—he granted the new governments a free hand in managing local affairs. The conduct of the southern governments elected under Johnson’s program turned most of the Republican North against the president. By and large, white voters returned prominent Confederates and members of the old elite to power. Reports of violence directed against former slaves and northern visitors in the South further alarmed Republicans. T h e B l a c k C o d e s But what aroused the most opposition to Johnson’s Reconstruction policy were the Black Codes, laws passed by the new southern governments that attempted to regulate the lives of the former slaves. These laws granted Regulating former slaves blacks certain rights, such as legalized marriage, ownership of property, and limited access to the courts. But they denied them the rights to testify Selling a Freedman to Pay His Fine at Monticello, Florida, an engraving from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, January 19, 1867. Under the Black Codes enacted by southern legislatures immediately after the Civil War, blacks convicted of “vagrancy”—often because they refused to sign contracts to work on plantations—were fined and, if unable to pay, auctioned off to work for the person who paid the fine. T H E M A K I N G O F R A D I C A L R E C O N S T R U C T I O N 455 against whites, to serve on juries or in state militias, or to vote. And in response to planters’ demands that the freedpeople be required to work on the plantations, the Black Codes declared that those who failed to sign yearly labor contracts could be arrested and hired out to white landowners. Clearly, the death of slavery did not automatically mean the birth of freedom. But the Black Codes so completely violated free labor principles Reaction to Black Codes that they called forth a vigorous response from the Republican North. In general, few groups of rebels in history have been treated more leniently than the defeated Confederates. A handful of southern leaders were arrested, but most were quickly released. Only one was executed—Henry Wirz, the commander of Andersonville prison, where thousands of Union prisoners of war had died. Most of the Union army was swiftly demobilized. What moti- vated the North’s turn against Johnson’s policies was not a desire to “punish” the white South, but the inability of the South’s political leaders to accept the reality of emancipation as evidenced by the Black Codes. T h e R a d i c a l R e p u b l i c a n s When Congress assembled in December 1865, Johnson announced that with loyal governments functioning in all the southern states, the nation had been reunited. In response, Radical Republicans, who had grown increas- ingly disenchanted with Johnson during the summer and fall, called for the dissolution of these governments and the establishment of new ones with “rebels” excluded from power and black men guaranteed the right to vote. Thaddeus Stevens, leader of Radicals shared the conviction that Union victory created a golden opportu- the Radical Republicans in the nity to institutionalize the principle of equal rights for all, regardless of race. House of Representatives during Reconstruction. The most prominent Radicals in Congress were Charles Sumner, a senator from Massachusetts, and Thaddeus Stevens, a lawyer and iron manufacturer who represented Pennsylvania in the House of Representatives. Before the Civil War, both had been outspoken foes of slavery and defenders of black rights. Stevens’s most cherished aim was to confiscate the land of disloyal planters and divide it among former slaves and northern migrants to the South. But his plan to make “small indepen- dent landholders” of the former slaves proved too radical even for many of his Radical colleagues and failed to pass. T h e O r i g i n s o f C i v i l R i g h t s With the South unrepresented, Republicans enjoyed an overwhelming majority in Congress. Most Republicans were moderates, not Radicals. Moderates believed that Johnson’s plan was flawed, but they desired to 456 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What were the competing visions of Reconstruction? work with the president to modify it. They feared that neither northern Radical Republicans versus nor southern whites would accept black suffrage. Moderates and Radicals moderates joined in refusing to seat the southerners recently elected to Congress, but moderates broke with the Radicals by leaving the Johnson governments in place. Early in 1866, Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois proposed two bills that reflected the moderates’ belief that Johnson’s policy required modi- fication. The first extended the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau, which had originally been established for only one year. The second, the Civil Rights Bill, was described by one congressman as “one of the most important bills ever presented to the House for its action.” It defined all persons born in the United States as citizens and spelled out rights they were to enjoy without The Civil Rights Bill of 1866 regard to race. Equality before the law was central to the measure—no longer could states enact laws like the Black Codes discriminating between white and black citizens. So were free labor values. According to the law, no state could deprive any citizen of the right to make contracts, bring lawsuits, or enjoy equal protection of one’s person and property. These, said Trumbull, were the “fundamental rights belonging to every man as a free man.” The bill made no mention of the right to vote for blacks. In President Andrew Johnson, in an constitutional terms, the Civil Rights Bill represented the first attempt to 1868 lithograph by Currier and Ives. define in law the essence of freedom. Because of Johnson’s stubborn To the surprise of Congress, Johnson vetoed both bills. Both, he said, opposition to the congressional would centralize power in the national government and deprive the states Reconstruction policy, one disgruntled citizen drew a crown on of the authority to regulate their own affairs. Moreover, he argued, blacks his head with the words, “I am King.” did not deserve the rights of citizenship. Congress failed by a single vote to muster the two-thirds majority necessary to override the veto of the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill (although later in 1866, it did extend the bureau’s life to 1870). But in April 1866, the Civil Rights Bill became the first major law in American history to be passed over a presidential veto. T h e F o u r t e e n t h A m e n d m e n t Congress now proceeded to adopt its own plan of Reconstruction. In June, it approved and sent to the states for ratification the Fourteenth Amendment, which placed in the Constitution the principle of citizenship for all persons born in the United States, and which empowered the fed- eral government to protect the rights of all Americans. The amendment prohibited the states from abridging the “privileges and immunities” of citizens or denying them the “equal protection of the law.” This broad language opened the door for future Congresses and the federal courts to breathe meaning into the guarantee of legal equality. T H E M A K I N G O F R A D I C A L R E C O N S T R U C T I O N 457 In a compromise between the radical and moderate positions on black suffrage, the amendment did not grant blacks the right to vote. But it did provide that if a state denied the vote to any group of men, that state’s representation in Congress would be reduced. (This provision did not apply when states barred women from voting.) The abolition of slavery Black suffrage and political threatened to increase southern political power, since now all blacks, not power merely three-fifths as in the case of slaves, would be counted in determin- ing a state’s representation in Congress. The Fourteenth Amendment offered the leaders of the white South a choice—allow black men to vote and keep their state’s full representation in the House of Representatives, or limit the vote to whites and sacrifice part of their political power. By writing into the Constitution the principle that equality before the law Significance of the Fourteenth regardless of race is a fundamental right of all American citizens, the amend- Amendment ment made the most important change in that document since the adoption of the Bill of Rights. T h e R e c o n s t r u c t i o n A c t The Fourteenth Amendment became the central issue of the political campaign of 1866. Johnson embarked on a speaking tour of the North. Denouncing his critics, the president made wild accusations that the Radicals were plotting to assassinate him. His behavior further under- mined public support for his policies, as did riots that broke out in Memphis and New Orleans, in which white policemen and citizens killed dozens of blacks. In the northern congressional elections that fall, Republicans op posed to Johnson’s policies won a sweeping victory. Nonetheless, at the president’s urging, every southern state but Tennessee refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. The intransigence of Johnson and the bulk of the white South pushed moderate Republicans toward the Radicals. In March 1867, over Johnson’s veto, Congress adopted the Reconstruction Act, which temporar- ily divided the South into five military districts and called for the creation of new state governments, with black men given the right to vote. Thus began Radical Reconstruction the period of Radical Reconstruction, which lasted until 1877. I m p e a c h m e n t a n d t h e E l e c t i o n o f G r a n t In March 1867, Congress adopted the Tenure of Office Act, barring the president from removing certain officeholders, including cabinet mem- bers, without the consent of the Senate. Johnson considered this an unconstitutional restriction on his authority. In February 1868, he removed 458 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What were the competing visions of Reconstruction? A Democratic Party broadside from the election of 1866 in Pennsylvania uses racist imagery to argue that government assistance aids lazy former slaves at the expense of hardworking whites. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, an ally of the Radicals. The House of Representatives responded by approving articles of impeachment—that is, it presented charges against Johnson to the Senate, which had to decide whether to remove him from office. That spring, for the first time in American history, a president was placed on trial before the Senate for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” By this The trial of Andrew Johnson point, virtually all Republicans considered Johnson a failure as president. But some moderates feared that conviction would damage the constitutional separation of powers between Congress and the executive. Johnson’s lawyers assured moderate Republicans that, if acquitted, he would stop interfering with Reconstruction policy. The final tally was 35-19 to convict Johnson, one vote short of the two-thirds necessary to remove him. Seven Republicans had joined the Democrats in voting to acquit the president. A few days after the vote, Republicans nominated Ulysses S. Grant, Ulysses Grant the Union’s most prominent military hero, as their candidate for president. Grant’s Democratic opponent was Horatio Seymour, the former governor of New York. Reconstruction became the central issue of the bitterly fought 1868 campaign. Democrats denounced Reconstruction as unconstitutional and condemned black suffrage as a violation of America’s political tradi- tions. They appealed openly to racism. Seymour’s running mate, Francis P. Blair Jr., charged Republicans with placing the South under the rule of “a T H E M A K I N G O F R A D I C A L R E C O N S T R U C T I O N 459 semi-barbarous race” who longed to “subject T H E P R E S I D E N T I A L the white women to their unbridled lust.” E L E C T I O N O F 1 8 6 8 T h e F i f t e e n t h A m e n d m e n t 5 5 7 Grant won the election of 1868, although 3 4 8 33 12 by a margin—300,000 of 6 million votes 8 4 cast—that many Republicans found uncom- 26 7 6 3 3 8 21 16 13 3 fortably slim. The result led Congress to 5 5 3 11 7 11 adopt the Fifteenth Amendment, which 10 9 prohibited the federal and state govern- 5 6 8 9 ments from denying any citizen the right to 7 vote because of race. Bitterly opposed by the 3 Democratic Party, it was ratified in 1870. Non-voting territory Although the Fifteenth Amendment opened the door to suffrage restrictions Electoral Vote Popular Vote Party Candidate (Share) (Share) not explicitly based on race—literacy tests, Republican Grant 214 (73%) 3,012,833 (53%) property qualifications, and poll taxes—and Southern Democrat Seymour 80 (27%) 2,703,249 (47%) Not voting due to Reconstruction did not extend the right to vote to women, it State legislature cast the electoral votes for Grant marked the culmination of four decades of abolitionist agitation. “Nothing in all his- tory,” exclaimed veteran abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, equaled “this wonderful, quiet, sudden transformation of four millions of human beings from . . . the auction-block to the ballot-box.” The Fifteenth Amendment, an 1870 lithograph marking the ratification of the constitutional amendment prohibiting states from denying citizens the right to vote because of race. Surrounding an image of a celebration parade are portraits of Abraham Lincoln; President Ulysses S. Grant and his vice president, Schuyler Colfax; the abolitionists John Brown, Martin R. Delany, and Frederick Douglass; and Hiram Revels, the first black to serve in the U.S. Senate. At the bottom are scenes of freedom—education, family, political representation, and church life. 460 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What were the competing visions of Reconstruction? T h e “ G r e a t C o n s t i t u t i o n a l R e v o l u t i o n ” Effects of Reconstruction The laws and amendments of Reconstruction reflected the intersection amendments of two products of the Civil War era—a newly empowered national state, and the idea of a national citizenry enjoying equality before the law. What Republican leader Carl Schurz called the “great Constitutional revolution” of Reconstruction transformed the federal system and with it, the language of freedom so central to American political culture. Before the Civil War, American citizenship had been closely linked to race. But the laws and amendments of Reconstruction repudiated the idea that citizenship was an entitlement of whites alone. And, as one congress- Race and citizenship man noted, the amendments expanded the liberty of whites as well as blacks, including “the millions of people of foreign birth who will flock to our shores.” The new amendments also transformed the relationship between the federal government and the states. The Bill of Rights had linked civil liberties to the autonomy of the states. Its language—“Congress shall make no law”—reflected the belief that concentrated national power posed the greatest threat to freedom. The authors of the Reconstruction amendments assumed that rights required national power to enforce them. Rather than a threat to liberty, the federal government, in Charles Sumner’s words, had become “the custodian of freedom.” The Reconstruction amendments transformed the Constitution from Constitutional significance a document primarily concerned with federal-state relations and the rights of property into a vehicle through which members of vulnerable minori- ties could stake a claim to freedom and seek protection against misconduct by all levels of government. In the twentieth century, many of the Supreme Court’s most important decisions expanding the rights of American citi- zens were based on the Fourteenth Amendment, perhaps most notably the 1954 Brown ruling that outlawed school segregation (see Chapter 24). T h e R i g h t s o f W o m e n “The contest with the South that destroyed slavery,” wrote the Philadelphia lawyer Sidney George Fisher in his diary, “has caused an immense increase in the popular passion for liberty and equality.” But advocates of women’s rights encountered the limits of the Reconstruction commitment Women and the limits of to equality. Women activists saw Reconstruction as the moment to claim equality their own emancipation. The rewriting of the Constitution, declared suf- frage leader Olympia Brown, offered the opportunity to sever the blessings of freedom from sex as well as race and to “bury the black man and the woman in the citizen.” T H E M A K I N G O F R A D I C A L R E C O N S T R U C T I O N 461 Even Radical Republicans insisted that Reconstruction was the “Negro’s hour” (the hour, that is, of the black male). The Fourteenth Amend ment for the first time introduced the word “male” into the Constitution, in its clause penalizing a state for denying any group of men the right to vote. The Fifteenth Amendment outlawed discrimination in voting based on race but not gender. These measures pro- duced a bitter split both between feminists and Radical Republicans, and within femi- nist circles. Some leaders, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, denounced their former abolitionist allies and moved to sever the women’s rights move- A Delegation of Advocates of Woman ment from its earlier moorings in the antislavery tradition. Suffrage Addressing the House Thus, even as it rejected the racial definition of freedom that had Judiciary Committee, an engraving from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated emerged in the first half of the nineteenth century, Reconstruction left the Newspaper, February 4, 1871. The gender boundary largely intact. When women tried to use the rewritten group includes Elizabeth Cady legal code and Constitution to claim equal rights, they found the courts Stanton, seated just to the right of the unreceptive. Myra Bradwell invoked the idea of free labor in challenging speaker, and Susan B. Anthony, at an Illinois stat ute limiting the practice of law to men, but the Supreme the table on the extreme right. Court in 1873 rebuffed her claim. Free labor principles, the justices declared, did not apply to women, since “the law of the Creator” had assigned them to “the domestic sphere.” Despite their limitations, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments America’s great departure and the Reconstruction Act of 1867 marked a radical departure in American and world history. Alone among the nations that abolished slavery in the nineteenth century, the United States, within a few years of emancipation, clothed its former slaves with citizenship rights equal to those of whites. The Reconstruction Act of 1867 inaugurated America’s first real experi- ment in interracial democracy. R A D I C A L R E C O N S T R U C T I O N I N T H E S O U T H “ T h e T o c s i n o f F r e e d o m ” Among the former slaves, the passage of the Reconstruction Act inspired an Political action by outburst of political organization. At mass political meetings—community African-Americans gatherings attended by men, women, and children—African-Americans 462 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What were the social and political effects of Radical Reconstruction in the South? Electioneering at the South, an engraving from Harper’s Weekly, July 25, 1868, depicts a speaker at a political meeting in the rural South. Women as well as men took part in these grassroots gatherings. staked their claim to equal citizenship. Blacks, declared an Alabama meeting, deserved “exactly the same rights, privileges and immunities as are enjoyed by white men. We ask for nothing more and will be content with nothing less.” Determined to exercise their new rights as citizens, thousands joined the Union League, an organization closely linked to the Republican Party, and the vast majority of eligible African-Americans registered to vote. James K. Green, a former slave in Hale County, Alabama, and a League The First Vote, an engraving from organizer, went on to serve eight years in the Alabama legislature. In Harper’s Weekly, November 16, 1867, the 1880s, Green looked back on his political career. Before the war, he depicts the first biracial elections in declared, “I was entirely ignorant; I knew nothing more than to obey my southern history. The voters represent master; and there were thousands of us in the same attitude. . . . But the key sources of the black political leadership that emerged during tocsin [warning bell] of freedom sounded and knocked at the door and we Reconstruction—the artisan carrying walked out like free men and shouldered the responsibilities.” his tools, the well-dressed city person By 1870, all the former Confederate states had been readmitted to (probably free before the war), and the Union, and in a region where the Republican Party had not existed the soldier. before the war, nearly all were under Republican control. Their new state constitutions, drafted in 1868 and 1869 by the first public bodies in American history with substantial black representation, marked a consid- erable improvement over those they replaced. The constitutions greatly expanded public responsibilities. They established the region’s first state- funded systems of free public education, and they created new peniten- tiaries, orphan asylums, and homes for the insane. The constitutions guaranteed equality of civil and political rights and abolished practices of the antebellum era such as whipping as a punishment for crime, property qualifications for officeholding, and imprisonment for debt. A few states initially barred former Confederates from voting, but this policy was quickly abandoned by the new state governments. R A D I C A L R E C O N S T R U C T I O N I N T H E S O U T H 463 T h e B l a c k O f f i c e h o l d e r Throughout Reconstruction, black voters provided the bulk of the Republican Party’s support. But African-Americans did not control Reconstruction politics, as their opponents frequently charged. The high- est offices remained almost entirely in white hands, and only in South Carolina, where blacks made up 60 percent of the population, did they form a majority of the legislature. Nonetheless, the fact that some 2,000 African-Americans in African-Americans held public office during Reconstruction marked public office a fundamental shift of power in the South and a radical departure in American government. African-Americans were represented at every level of government. Fourteen were elected to the national House of Representatives. Two blacks served in the U.S. Senate during Reconstruction, both repre- senting Mississippi. Hiram Revels, who had been born free in North Carolina, in 1870 became the first black senator in American history. The second, Blanche K. Bruce, a former slave, was elected in 1875. At state and local levels, the presence of black officeholders and their white allies A portrait of Hiram Revels, the first black U. S. senator, by Theodore made a real difference in southern life, ensuring that blacks accused of Kaufmann, a German-born artist who crimes would be tried before juries of their peers and enforcing fairness emigrated to the United States in in such aspects of local government as road repair, tax assessment, and 1855. Lithograph copies sold widely poor relief. in the North during Reconstruction. In South Carolina and Louisiana, homes of the South’s wealthiest and Frederick Douglass, commenting best-educated free black communities, most prominent Reconstruction on the dignified image, noted that African-Americans “so often see officeholders had never experienced slavery. In addition, a number of ourselves described and painted as black Reconstruction officials, like Pennsylvania-born Jonathan J. Wright, monkeys, that we think it a great who served on the South Carolina Supreme Court, had come from the piece of fortune to find an exception North after the Civil War. The majority, however, were former slaves who to this general rule.” had established their leadership in the black community by serving in the Union army; working as ministers, teachers, or skilled craftsmen; or engaging in Union League organizing. C a r p e t b a g g e r s a n d S c a l a w a g s The new southern governments also brought to power new groups of whites. Many Reconstruction officials were northerners who for one reason or another had made their homes in the South after the war. Their opponents dubbed them “carpetbaggers,” implying that they had packed all their belongings in a suitcase and left their homes in order to reap the spoils of office in the South. Some carpetbaggers were undoubtedly corrupt adventurers. The large majority, however, were former Union 464 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What were the social and political effects of Radical Reconstruction in the South? soldiers who decided to remain in the South when the war ended, before there was any prospect of going into politics. Most white Republicans, however, had been born in the South. Southern Republicans Former Confederates reserved their greatest scorn for these “scalawags,” whom they considered traitors to their race and region. Some southern- born Republicans were men of stature and wealth, like James L. Alcorn, the owner of one of Mississippi’s largest plantations and the state’s first Republican governor. Most “scalawags,” however, were non-slaveholding white farmers from the southern upcountry. Many had been wartime Unionists, and they now cooperated with the Republicans in order to pre- vent “rebels” from returning to power. S o u t h e r n R e p u b l i c a n s i n P o w e r In view of the daunting challenges they faced, the remarkable thing is not that Reconstruction governments in many respects failed, but how much they did accomplish. Perhaps their greatest achievement lay in establish- ing the South’s first state-supported public schools. The new educational State-supported public schools systems served both black and white children, although generally in schools segregated by race. Only in New Orleans were the public schools integrated during Reconstruction, and only in South Carolina did the state university admit black students (elsewhere, separate colleges were established). The new governments also pioneered civil rights legislation. Civil rights legislation Their laws made it illegal for railroads, hotels, and other institutions to discriminate on the basis of race. Enforcement varied considerably from locality to locality, but Reconstruction established for the first time at the state level a standard of equal citizenship and a recognition of blacks’ right to a share of public services. Republican governments also took steps to strengthen the position of rural laborers and promote the South’s economic recovery. They passed laws to ensure that agricultural laborers and sharecroppers had the first claim on harvested crops, rather than merchants to whom the landowner owed money. South Carolina created a state Land Commission, which by 1876 had settled 14,000 black families and a few poor whites on their own farms. T h e Q u e s t f o r P r o s p e r i t y Rather than on land distribution, however, the Reconstruction governments Economic development during pinned their hopes for southern economic growth and opportunity for Reconstruction African-Americans and poor whites alike on regional economic development. R A D I C A L R E C O N S T R U C T I O N I N T H E S O U T H 465 A group of black students and their teacher in a picture taken by an amateur photographer, probably a Union army veteran, while touring Civil War battlefields. Railroad construction Railroad construction, they believed, was the key to transforming the South into a society of booming factories, bustling towns, and diversified agriculture. Every state during Reconstruction helped to finance railroad construction, and through tax reductions and other incentives tried to attract northern manufacturers to invest in the region. The program had mixed results. Economic development in general remained weak. To their supporters, the governments of Radical Reconstruction presented a complex pattern of disappointment and accomplishment. A revitalized southern economy failed to materialize, and most African- Biracial democracy Americans remained locked in poverty. On the other hand, biracial demo- cratic government, a thing unknown in American history, for the first time functioned effectively in many parts of the South. The conservative elite that had dominated southern government from colonial times to 1867 found itself excluded from political power, while poor whites, newcomers from the North, and former slaves cast ballots, sat on juries, and enacted and administered laws. It is a measure of how far change had progressed that the reaction against Reconstruction proved so extreme. T H E O V E R T H R O W O F R E C O N S T R U C T I O N R e c o n s t r u c t i o n ’ s O p p o n e n t s The South’s traditional leaders—planters, merchants, and Democratic politicians—bitterly opposed the new governments. “Intelligence, virtue, Sources of opposition and patriotism” in public life, declared a protest by prominent southern 466 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What were the main factors, in both the North and South, for the abandonment of Reconstruction? Democrats, had given way to “ignorance, stupidity, and vice.” Corruption did exist during Reconstruction, but it was con- fined to no race, region, or party. The rapid growth of state budgets and the benefits to be gained from public aid led in some states to a scramble for influence that pro- duced bribery, insider dealing, and a get- rich-quick atmosphere. Southern frauds, however, were dwarfed by those practiced in these years by the Whiskey Ring, which involved high officials of the Grant admin- istration, and by New York’s Tweed Ring, controlled by the Democrats, whose thefts ran into the tens of millions of dollars. (These are discussed in the next chapter.) The rising taxes needed to pay for schools and other new public facilities and to assist railroad development were another cause of opposition to Reconstruction. Many poor whites who had initially supported the Republican Party turned against it when it became clear that their economic situation was not improving. The most basic reason for opposi- tion to Reconstruction, however, was that most white southerners could not accept the idea of former slaves voting, holding office, and enjoying equality before the law. Opponents launched a campaign of violence in an effort to end Republican rule. Their actions posed a fundamental challenge both for Reconstruction A cartoon from around 1870 governments in the South and for policymakers in Washington, D.C. illustrates a key theme of the racist opposition to Reconstruction—that blacks had forced themselves upon “ A R e i g n o f T e r r o r ” whites and gained domination over them. A black school teacher inflicts The Civil War ended in 1865, but violence remained widespread in large punishment on a white student in an integrated classroom, and a racially parts of the postwar South. In the early years of Reconstruction, violence mixed jury judges a white defendant. was mostly local and unorganized. Blacks were assaulted and murdered for refusing to give way to whites on city sidewalks, using “insolent” T H E O V E R T H R O W O F R E C O N S T R U C T I O N 467 language, challenging end-of-year contract settlements, and attempting to buy land. The violence that greeted the advent of Republican governments after 1867, however, was far more pervasive and more directly moti- vated by politics. In wide areas of the South, secret societies sprang Campaigns of violence up with the aim of preventing blacks from voting and destroying the organization of the Republican Party by assassinating local leaders and public officials. The most notorious such organization was the Ku Klux Klan, which in effect served as a military arm of the Democratic Party in the South. From its founding in 1866 in Tennessee, the Klan was a terror- ist organization. It committed some of the most brutal criminal acts in American history. In many counties throughout the South, it launched what one victim called a “reign of terror” against Republican leaders, black and white. A Prospective Scene in the City of The Klan’s victims included white Republicans, among them war- Oaks, a cartoon in the September 1, time Union ists and local officeholders, teachers, and party organizers. 1868, issue of the Independent But African-Americans—local political leaders, those who managed to Monitor, a Democratic newspaper acquire land, and others who in one way or another defied the norms published in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The cartoon sent a warning to of white supremacy—bore the brunt of the violence. On occasion, vio- the Reverend A. S. Lakin, who lence escalated from assaults on individuals to mass terrorism and even had moved from Ohio to become local insurrections. The bloodiest act of violence during Reconstruction president of the University of took place in Colfax, Louisiana, in 1873, where armed whites assaulted Alabama, and Dr. N. B. Cloud, a the town with a small cannon. Hundreds of former slaves were mur- southern-born Republican serving as Alabama’s superintendent of public dered, including fifty members of a black militia unit after they had education. The Ku Klux Klan forced surrendered. both men from their positions. In 1870 and 1871, Congress adopted three Enforcement Acts, outlawing ter- rorist societies and allowing the presi- dent to use the army against them. These laws continued the expansion of national authority during Reconstruction. In 1871, President Grant dispatched federal mar- shals, backed up by troops in some areas, to arrest hundreds of accused Klansmen. Many Klan leaders fled the South. After a series of well-publicized trials, the Klan went out of existence. In 1872, for the first time since the Civil War, peace reigned in most of the former Confederacy. 468 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What were the main factors, in both the North and South, for the abandonment of Reconstruction? T h e L i b e r a l R e p u b l i c a n s Despite the Grant administration’s effective response to Klan terrorism, Waning commitment to the North’s commitment to Reconstruction waned during the 1870s. the North Northerners increasingly felt that the South should be able to solve its own problems without constant interference from Washington. The federal government had freed the slaves, made them citizens, and given them the right to vote. Now, blacks should rely on their own resources, not demand further assistance. In 1872, an influential group of Republicans, alienated by corruption within the Grant administration and believing that the growth of federal power during and after the war needed to be curtailed, formed their own party. They included Republican founders like Lyman Trumbull and prominent editors and journalists such as E. L. Godkin of The Nation. Calling themselves Liberal Republicans, they nominated Horace Greeley, editor of Liberal Republicans the New York Tribune, for president. Democratic criticisms of Recon struction found a receptive audi- ence among the Liberals. As in the North, they became convinced, the “best men” of the South had been excluded from power while “ignorant” voters controlled politics, producing corruption and mis- government. Greeley had spent most of his career, first as a Whig and then as a Republican, denouncing the Democratic Party. But with the Changes in graphic artist Thomas Nast’s depiction of blacks in Harper’s Weekly mirrored the evolution of Republican sentiment in the North. And Not This Man? August 5, 1865, shows the black soldier as an upstanding citizen deserving of the vote. Colored Rule in a Reconstructed (?) State, March 14, 1874, suggests that Reconstruction legislatures had become travesties of democratic government. T H E O V E R T H R O W O F R E C O N S T R U C T I O N 469 1872 election Republican split presenting an opportunity to repair their political fortunes, Democratic leaders endorsed Greeley as their candidate. But many rank-and-file Democrats, unable to bring themselves to vote for Greeley, stayed at home on election day. As a result, Greeley suffered a devastating defeat by Grant, whose margin of more than 700,000 popular votes was the largest in a nineteenth-century presidential contest. But Greeley’s campaign placed on the northern agenda the one issue on which the Liberal reformers and the Democrats could agree—a new policy toward the South. T h e N o r t h ’ s R e t r e a t The Liberal attack on Reconstruction, which continued after 1872, con- tributed to a resurgence of racism in the North. Journalist James S. Pike, a leading Greeley supporter, in 1874 published The Prostrate State, an influential account of a visit to South Carolina. The book depicted a state engulfed by political corruption, drained by governmental extrava- gance, and under the control of “a mass of black barbarism.” Resurgent racism offered a convenient explanation for the alleged “failure” of Reconstruction. The solution, for many, was to restore leading whites to political power. Factors weakening Other factors also weakened northern support for Reconstruction. Reconstruction In 1873, the country plunged into a severe economic depression. Distracted by economic problems, Republicans were in no mood to devote further attention to the South. The depression dealt the South a severe blow and further weakened the prospect that Republicans could revitalize the region’s economy. Democrats made substantial gains throughout the nation in the elections of 1874. For the first time since the Civil War, their party took control of the House of Representatives. Before the new Congress met, the old one enacted a final piece of Reconstruction legislation, the Civil Rights Act of 1875. This outlawed racial discrimination in places of public accommodation like hotels and theaters. But it was clear that the northern public was retreating from Reconstruction. The Supreme Court and The Supreme Court whittled away at the guarantees of black rights Reconstruction Congress had adopted. In the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), the justices ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment had not altered traditional fed- eralism. Most of the rights of citizens, it declared, remained under state control. Three years later, in United States v. Cruikshank, the Court gutted 470 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What were the main factors, in both the North and South, for the abandonment of Reconstruction? the Enforcement Acts by throwing out the convictions of some of those responsible for the Colfax Massacre of 1873. T h e T r i u m p h o f t h e R e d e e m e r s By the mid-1870s, Reconstruction was clearly on the defensive. Democrats had already regained control of states with substantial white voting Democratic victories at majorities such as Tennessee, North Carolina, and Texas. The victori- the polls ous Democrats called themselves Redeemers, since they claimed to have “redeemed” the white South from corruption, misgovernment, and north- ern and black control. In those states where Reconstruction governments survived, violence again erupted. This time, the Grant administration showed no desire to intervene. In Mississippi, in 1875, armed Democrats destroyed ballot Return of violence boxes and drove former slaves from the polls. The result was a Democratic landslide and the end of Reconstruction in Mississippi. Similar events R E C O N S T R U C T I O N I N T H E S O U T H , 1 8 6 7 – 1 8 7 7 PENNSYLVANIA COLORADO INDIANA OHIO ILLINOIS MARYLANDDELAWARE KANSAS WEST VIRGINIA MISSOURI VIRGINIA 1870 (1873) KENTUCKY NEW MEXICO NORTH CAROLINA TENNESSEE 1868 (1876) TERRITORY INDIAN 1866 (1870) TERRITORY ARKANSAS 1868 (1874) SOUTH CAROLINA 1868 (1876) MISSISSIPPI ALABAMA GEORGIA 1870 (1875) 1868 (1874) 1870 (1871) TEXAS 1870 (1873) LOUISIANA A t l a n t i c 1868 (1876) O c e a n FLORIDA 1868 (1876) Gulf of Mexico Former Confederate states 1869 Date of readmission to the Union 0 150 300 miles (1873) Date of election that produced Democratic control of legislature 0 150 300 kilometers and governorship T H E O V E R T H R O W O F R E C O N S T R U C T I O N 471 took place in South Carolina in 1876. Democrats nominated for gover- nor former Confederate general Wade Hampton. Hampton promised to respect the rights of all citizens of the state, but his supporters, inspired by Democratic tactics in Mississippi, launched a wave of intimidation. Democrats intended to carry the election, one planter told a black official, “if we have to wade in blood knee-deep.” T h e D i s p u t e d E l e c t i o n a n d B a r g a i n o f 1 8 7 7 Events in South Carolina directly affected the outcome of the presidential campaign of 1876. To succeed Grant, the Republicans nominated Gov- Rutherford B. Hayes ernor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio. The Democrats chose as his opponent New York’s governor, Samuel J. Tilden. By this time, only South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana remained under Republican control. The election turned out to be so close that whoever captured these states—which both parties claimed to have carried—would become the next president. Unable to resolve the impasse on its own, Congress in January 1877 appointed a fifteen-member Electoral Commission, composed of sena- tors, representatives, and Supreme Court justices. Republicans enjoyed an 8-7 majority on the commission, and to no one’s surprise, the members decided by T H E P R E S I D E N T I A L that margin that Hayes had carried the dis- E L E C T I O N O F 1 8 7 6 puted southern states and had been elected president. Even as the commission deliberated, 5 5 7 2 5 however, behind-the-scenes negotiations 1 13 10 35 11 took place between leaders of the two par- 4 3 11 29 6 9 ties. Hayes’s representatives agreed to 3 21 22 15 3 3 5 recognize Democratic control of the entire 6 5 15 11 8 12 10 South and to avoid further intervention 12 6 7 in local affairs. For their part, Democrats 8 10 11 promised not to dispute Hayes’s right to 8 8 office and to respect the civil and political 4 rights of blacks. Non-voting territory Thus was concluded the Bargain of Electoral Vote Popular Vote 1877. Hayes became president and quickly Party Candidate (Share) (Share) ordered federal troops to stop guarding Republican Hayes 185 (50%) 4,036,298 (48%) Democrat Tilden 184 (50%) the state houses in Louisiana and South 4,300,590 (51%) Greenback Cooper 0 (0%) 93,895 (1%) Carolina, allowing Democratic claimants Disputed (assigned to Hayes by electoral commission) to become governors. (Contrary to legend, 472 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What were the main factors, in both the North and South, for the abandonment of Reconstruction? Hayes did not remove the last soldiers from the South—he simply ordered them to return to their barracks.) The triumphant southern Democrats failed to live up to their pledge to recognize blacks as equal citizens. T h e E n d o f R e c o n s t r u c t i o n As a historical process—the nation’s adjustment to the destruction of slavery—Reconstruction continued well after 1877. Blacks continued to vote and, in some states, hold office into the 1890s. But as a distinct era of national history—when Republicans controlled much of the South, blacks exercised significant political power, and the federal government accepted the responsibility for protecting the fundamental rights of all American citizens—Reconstruction had come to an end. Despite its limitations, Reconstruction was a remarkable chapter in the story of American free- dom. Nearly a century would pass before the nation again tried to bring Is This a Republican Form of equal rights to the descendants of slaves. The civil rights era of the 1950s Government?, a cartoon by Thomas and 1960s would sometimes be called the Second Reconstruction. Nast in Harper’s Weekly, September 2, 1876, illustrates his conviction that the overthrow of Reconstruction meant that the United States was not prepared to live up to its democratic ideals or protect the rights of black citizens threatened by violence. T H E O V E R T H R O W O F R E C O N S T R U C T I O N 473 C H A P T E R R E V I E W A N D O N L I N E R E S O U R C E S R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S K E Y T E R M S 1. In 1865, the former Confederate general Robert Freedmen’s Bureau (p. 447) Richardson remarked that “the emancipated slaves own sharecropping (p. 449) crop-lien system (p. 449) nothing, because nothing but freedom has been given to Black Codes (p. 455) them.” Explain whether this would be an accurate assess- Civil Rights Bill of 1866 (p. 457) ment of Reconstruction twelve years later. Fourteenth Amendment (p. 457) Reconstruction Act (p. 458) 2. The women’s movement split into two separate national Fifteenth Amendment (p. 460) organizations in part because the Fifteenth Amendment women’s rights (p. 461) did not give women the vote. Explain why the two groups carpetbaggers and scalawags (p. 464) split. Ku Klux Klan (p. 468) Colfax Massacre (p. 468) 3. How did black families, churches, schools, and other Enforcement Acts (p. 468) institutions contribute to the development of African- Civil Rights Act of 1875 (p. 470) American culture and political activism in this period? Slaughterhouse Cases (p. 470) Redeemers (p. 471) 4. Why did ownership of land and control of labor become Bargain of 1877 (p. 472) major points of contention between former slaves and whites in the South? 5. By what methods did southern whites seek to limit African-American civil rights and liberties? How did the federal government respond? 6. How did the failure of land reform and continued poverty lead to new forms of servitude for both blacks and whites? wwnorton.com 7. What caused the confrontation between President /studyspace Johnson and Congress over Reconstruction policies? VISIT STUDYSPACE FOR THESE RESOURCES AND MORE 8. What national issues and attitudes combined to bring an s end to Reconstruction by 1877? s s 9. By 1877, how did the condition of former slaves in the s United States compare with that of freedmen around the s globe? 474 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” C H A P T E R 1 6 1872 Crédit Mobilier Scandal 1873 Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s Gilded Age 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn 1877 Reconstruction ends A M E R I C A ’ S Great Railroad Strike 1879 Henry George’s Progress and Poverty 1883 Civil Service Act G I L D E D A G E Railroads create time zones 1886 Knights of Labor’s membership peaks Haymarket affair  1887 Interstate Commerce Commission created Dawes Act 1 8 7 0 – 1 8 9 0 1888 Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward 1889 Andrew Carnegie’s “Wealth” 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives Massacre at Wounded Knee 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis 1894 Henry Demarest Lloyd’s Wealth against Commonwealth 1895 United States v. E. C. Knight Co. 1899 Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class 1905 Lochner v. New York Forging the Shaft, a painting from the 1870s by the American artist John Ferguson Weir, depicts workers in a steel factory making a propeller shaft for an ocean liner. Weir illustrates both the dramatic power of the factory at a time when the United States was overtaking European countries in manufacturing, and the fact that industrial production still required hard physical labor. F O C U S An immense crowd gathered in New York Harbor on October 28, 1886, for the dedication of Liberty Enlightening the World, a fitting symbol for a nation now wholly free. The idea for the statue originated in 1865 with Édouard de Laboulaye, a French educator and Q U E S T I O N S the author of several books on the United States, as a response to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Measuring more than 150 feet from s torch to toe and standing atop a huge pedestal, the edifice was the tallest make the United States a man-made structure in the Western Hemisphere. mature industrial society In time, the Statue of Liberty, as it came to be called, would become after the Civil War? Americans’ most revered national icon. For over a century it has stood as a symbol of freedom. The statue has welcomed millions of immigrants— s the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” celebrated in a poem by formed economically and Emma Lazarus inscribed on its base in 1903. In the years since its dedi- socially in this period? cation, the statue’s familiar image has been reproduced by folk artists in every conceivable medium and has been used by advertisers to promote s everything from cigarettes and lawn mowers to war bonds. It has become political system effective a powerful international symbol as well. in meeting its goals? The year of the statue’s dedication, 1886, also witnessed the “great upheaval,” a wave of strikes and labor protests that touched every part s of the nation. The 600 dignitaries (598 of them men) who gathered on development of the Gilded what is now called Liberty Island for the dedication hoped the Statue Age affect American of Liberty would inspire renewed devotion to the nation’s political and freedom? economic system. But for all its grandeur, the statue could not conceal the deep social divisions and fears about the future of American freedom that s accompanied the country’s emergence as the world’s leading industrial the period approach the power. Crucial questions moved to the center stage of American public problems of an industrial life during the 1870s and 1880s and remained there for decades to come: society? What are the social conditions that make freedom possible, and what role should the national government play in defining and protecting the liberty of its citizens? T H E S E C O N D I N D U S T R I A L R E V O L U T I O N Between the end of the Civil War and the early twentieth century, the United States underwent one of the most rapid and profound economic revolutions any country has ever experienced. There were numerous Roots of economic change causes for this explosive economic growth. The country enjoyed abundant natural resources, a growing supply of labor, an expanding market for manufactured goods, and the availability of capital for investment. In 476 C h a p t e r 1 6  America’s Gilded Age What factors combined to make the United States a mature industrial society after the Civil War? addition, the federal government actively promoted industrial and agri- cultural development. It enacted high tariffs that protected American industry from foreign competition, granted land to railroad companies to encourage construction, and used the army to remove Indians from west- ern lands desired by farmers and mining companies. T h e I n d u s t r i a l E c o n o m y The rapid expansion of factory production, mining, and railroad construc- tion in all parts of the country except the South signaled the transition from Lincoln’s America—a world centered on the small farm and artisan A changing America TABLE 16.1 Indicators of Economic Change, 1870–1920 1870 1900 1920