A Just and Lasting Peace: A Documentary History of Reconstruction (3 page)

A Just and Lasting Peace
uses period documents to introduce Reconstruction's complex history and long-term meaning to a new generation of readers. Writing in 2000, Foner remarked, “Reconstruction remains perhaps the most controversial and least understood era of American history.” Understanding the postwar years remains essential for Americans, however, as “long as the issues central to Reconstruction remain unresolved—the balance of power in the federal system, the place of black Americans in national life, and the relationship between economic and political democracy.”
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W
ARTIME
R
ECONSTRUCTION

The Reconstruction process began years before Confederate defeat. In fact, President Lincoln took steps to prepare for Reconstruction as early as 1862. In that year, Lincoln proclaimed emancipation for bondsmen and -women in the District of Columbia and, after issuing his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862, on January 1, 1863, he issued the Final Emancipation Proclamation. This order only freed blacks then in Confederate-held territory, but nonetheless signified a radical first step in the experiment that became Reconstruction, suggesting civil and political equality for people of color and allowing blacks into the military to fight alongside white soldiers. By war's end, roughly 200,000 black soldiers and sailors wore the Union blue. Historian Eric Foner notes that African-Americans who served in the army and navy during the Civil War composed a leadership class during Reconstruction. They held at least 129 public offices in the postwar years.
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Foner also observes that the Final Emancipation Proclamation created a turning point in the course of the Civil War, but it did not immediately address the divisive question of Reconstruction. Rather, the Proclamation created more problems, as it ensured that after the war, the political social structure of the South would be fundamentally and dramatically altered forever. The questions thus raised included who would mandate the changes in Southern society and what shape they would take. What would be the role of blacks in Southern society once they became freedmen?

Lincoln took the first step in reconstructing the Union when, on December 8, 1863, he issued the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. He declared that insurgents who agreed to swear an oath of loyalty to the U.S. Constitution and who would accept emancipation would receive full pardons. Once ten percent of a rebellious state's 1860 electorate had agreed to these terms and took the oath, Lincoln specified, the state could reenter the U.S. after reestablishing a republican government. This offer of amnesty excluded certain classes of individuals, including Confederate military officers, high government officials, and members of the U.S. government or military who had resigned their posts to aid the slaveholders' rebellion. Lincoln proposed a conservative Reconstruction plan, hopeful that it would attract moderate former Southern Whigs and make the process of restoration occur smoothly. The president purposely avoided the question of black suffrage in his so-called Ten Percent Plan, hoping that allowing Southern Whigs to oversee the process of transitioning from a slave economy to a free-labor economy would serve as a viable concession to Southern Unionists. Although the provisions of Lincoln's Proclamation of Amnesty never came to pass, it set a precedent that the Executive branch of government, not the Legislative branch, would regulate and direct the Reconstruction process.

The Radical Republicans, the wing of the president's party that had shunned compromise with the Confederates before secession and that pressed for emancipation following Fort Sumter, considered Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan too accommodating and lenient. Determined to reorganize the South and implement black equality, in July 1864 two leading Radicals, Senator Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio and Representative Henry Winter Davis of Maryland, passed a congressional bill as an alternate to the president's Ten Percent Plan.

Under the terms of the Wade-Davis Bill, Reconstruction and the reintegration of the rebellious states into the Union required that once hostilities ceased in a state, a majority (
not
ten percent) of the state's citizens take a loyalty oath. Those persons who could attest to past and future loyalty to the Union could then elect a convention to amend their state constitutions to abolish slavery, disfranchise Confederate military officers, and declare their state's war debt invalid. Lincoln, determined to lead the Reconstruction process and to provide a smooth transition for willing former Confederate states to rejoin the Union, pocket vetoed the Wade-Davis plan on July 8, 1864. He hoped that the restoration (including the abolition of slavery) of Union governments in Louisiana and Arkansas under his Ten Percent Plan would establish a model for reconstructing the remaining Confederate states, and also that a Constitutional amendment would end slavery permanently. Lincoln's veto exacerbated the growing rift between Congressional Radicals and the president. Responding to his pocket veto, on August 5, 1864, Wade and Davis published a manifesto in the
New York Tribune
, condemning Lincoln for overstepping his authority regarding Reconstruction. Wade and Davis insisted that Reconstruction was the province of the Legislative branch, a concern solely within the scope of congressional authority. They implored the president to execute and obey, not make laws. Yet, as Foner notes, “Despite the harsh language of the Wade-Davis Manifesto, these events did not signal an irreparable breach between Lincoln and the Radical Republicans. The points of unity among Republicans, especially their commitment to winning the war and rendering emancipation unassailable, were far greater than their differences.”
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In assessing the rival wartime Reconstruction plans, historian James M. McPherson notes that in reality, among the Rebel states only Tennessee could have met the prerequisites set by Wade and Davis. According to McPherson, “The real purpose of the Wade-Davis bill was to postpone Reconstruction until the war was won. Lincoln, by contrast, wanted to initiate Reconstruction immediately in order to convert lukewarm Confederates into Unionists as a means of winning the war.”
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(April 16, 1862)

For decades, abolitionists and other critics of slavery underscored the shame of slavery existing in the nation's capital. On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill ending slavery in the District of Columbia. It provided for immediate emancipation, compensation of up to three hundred dollars per slave belonging to loyal (Union) masters, and for the voluntary colonization of the freedpeople outside the United States. The bill suggests that notwithstanding Lincoln's denials that abolition was to be an outcome of the war, almost nine months before he issued the Emancipation Proclamation the president had established freeing the slaves as one of his war aims.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
That all persons held to service or labor within the District of Columbia by reason of African descent are hereby discharged and freed of and from all claim to such service or labor; and from and after the passage of this act neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except for crime, whereof the party shall be duly convicted, shall hereafter exist in said District.

Sec. 2.
And be it further enacted,
That all persons loyal to the United States, holding claims to service or labor against persons discharged therefrom by this act, may, within ninety days from the passage thereof, but not thereafter, present to the commissioners hereinafter mentioned their respective statements or petitions in writing, verified by oath or affirmation, setting forth the names, ages, and personal description of such persons, the manner in which said petitioners acquired such claim, and any facts touching the value thereof, and declaring his allegiance to the Government of the United States, and that he has not borne arms against the United States during the present rebellion, nor in any way given aid or comfort thereto:
Provided,
That the oath of the party to the petition shall not be evidence of the facts therein stated.

Sec. 3.
And be it further enacted,
That the President of the United States, with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint three commissioners, residents of the District of Columbia, any two of whom shall have power to act, who shall receive the petitions above mentioned, and who shall investigate and determine the validity and value of the claims therein presented, as aforesaid, and appraise and apportion, under the proviso hereto annexed, the value in money of the several claims by them found to be valid:
Provided, however,
That the entire sum so appraised and apportioned shall not exceed in the aggregate an amount equal to three hundred dollars for each person shown to have been so held by lawful claim:
And provided, further,
That no claim shall be allowed for any slave or slaves brought into said District after the passage of this act, nor for any slave claimed by any person who has borne arms against the Government of the United States in the present rebellion, or in any way given aid or comfort thereto, or which originates in or by virtue of any transfer heretofore made, or which shall hereafter be made by any person who has in any manner aided or sustained the rebellion against the Government of the United States. . . .

Sec. 10.
And be it further enacted,
That the said clerk and his successors in office shall, from time to time, on demand, and on receiving twenty-five cents therefor, prepare, sign, and deliver to each person made free or manumitted by this act, a certificate under the seal of said court, setting out the name, age, and description of such person, and stating that such person was duly manumitted and set free by this act.

Sec. 11.
And be it further enacted,
That the sum of one hundred thousand dollars, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, is hereby appropriated, to be expended under the direction of the President of the United States, to aid in the colonization and settlement of such free persons of African descent now residing in said District, including those to be liberated by this act, as may desire to emigrate to the Republics of Hayti or Liberia, or such other country beyond the limits of the United States as the President may determine:
Provided,
The expenditure for this purpose shall not exceed one hundred dollars for each emigrant.

(September 22, 1862)

In June 1862, Lincoln began drafting an emancipation decree designed to prevent European powers from recognizing the Confederates, to satisfy radicals in the Republican party who favored emancipation, and to placate border state slaveholders who professed loyalty to the Union as long as slavery remained protected by federal law. At a strategic moment, following the Union Army's success at repulsing Confederate General Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Antietam (September 17, 1862), the president issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. This document promised freedom to all slaves held in territory still in rebellion one hundred days later (January 1, 1863). Lincoln hoped that the threat of his emancipation edict would convince the Confederates to lay down their arms.

I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, and Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby proclaim and declare that hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted for the object of practically restoring the constitutional relation between the United States, and each of the states, and the people thereof, in which states that relation is, or may be suspended, or disturbed.

That it is my purpose, upon the next meeting of Congress to again recommend the adoption of a practical measure tendering pecuniary aid to the free acceptance or rejection of all slave-states, so called, the people whereof may not then be in rebellion against the United States, and which states, may then have voluntarily adopted, or thereafter may voluntarily adopt, immediate, or gradual abolishment of slavery within their respective limits; and that the effort to colonize persons of African descent, with their consent, upon this continent, or elsewhere, with the previously obtained consent of the Governments existing there, will be continued.

That on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state, or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

That the executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States, and parts of states, if any, in which the people thereof respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any state, or the people thereof shall, on that day be, in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States, by members chosen thereto, at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such state shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such state and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.