Introduction to Document Project 14: Testing and Contesting Freedom

DOCUMENT PROJECT 14

Testing and Contesting Freedom

Nine months after the Civil War ended in April 1865, twenty-seven states ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery throughout the United States. Freedom, however, did not guarantee equal rights or the absence of racial discrimination. Immediately following the North’s victory, white southern leaders enacted black codes, which aimed to prevent freedpeople from improving their social and economic status (Document 14.5). Although Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, did not support the codes, he did nothing to overturn them. A southern advocate of limited government, Johnson clashed repeatedly with Congress over Reconstruction, vetoing renewal of the Freedmen’s Bureau bill and opposing ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1867 the Republican majority in Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Acts, placing the South under military rule and forcing whites to extend equal political and civil rights to African Americans.

Then in 1870, the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment extended suffrage to black men. In alliance with white Republicans, blacks won election to a variety of public offices, including seats in local and state governments. These interracial legislatures improved conditions for blacks and whites, providing funds for public education, hospitals, and other social services (Document 14.6). But their opponents succeeded in tarring them with claims of fraud, corruption, wasteful spending, and “Black Rule” (Document 14.8). By the mid-1870s, many white Northerners sought reconciliation rather than continued conflict while southern whites created vigilante groups like the Ku Klux Klan that used violence to intimidate black and white Republicans (Documents 14.9 and 14.7). By 1877, these attacks on black political access crushed southern Republicanism, leaving African Americans struggling to retain the freedoms they had gained during Reconstruction.

As you read the following documents, consider these general questions: How did blacks and whites view freedom? How essential was it for the federal government to supervise the movement from slavery to freedom? Why didn’t southern whites accept the extension of civil rights for blacks, if only in a limited way? How did views about Reconstruction change over time?