The First Reconstruction A Revolution
Many people will argue that the social and political changes in the period between 1860 and 1877 culminated in a revolution. This time period, known as the First Reconstruction, made many advances in equality for Blacks in voting, politics, and the use of public facilities. The lawmakers of the time were however unable to make adequate progress in advancing economic equality; therefore Blacks didn't completely escape their original plight. This should not be considered a revolution because its results were quickly reversed when former confederate leaders and other bigots reclaimed the power of legislation in the South. The First Reconstruction was a result of the Civil War and lasted until 1977. The political, social, and economic conditions after the war helped define the goals of lawmakers during the Reconstruction. Congress now had to decide on how they were going to address such topics as; Black equality, rebuilding of the South, admission of southern state to the Union, and deciding who would control the government. In the south the newly freed slaves wandered the countryside and the white population was devastated due to their loss in the recent war. The south was also devastated economically; plantations were de
Andrew Johnson has to be considered the fourth political element of the time due to his unpartisan views and actions. Johnson's only apparent goal was unification of North and South. It is impossible that any practical equality of rights can exist where a few thousand men monopolize the whole landed property. These new goals were established for two reasons, Northerners were siding with the Southern Blacks in increasing numbers but also because the Radical Republicans saw an opportunity to gain the votes needed to all but insure their continued majority and keep the Southern Democrats out of office. There were several plans proposed to grant economic equality to the Blacks, including one that if implemented, would seize property from rich Southern Landowners and redistribute it to the newly freed slaves. How can Republican institutions, free school, free churches, free social intercourse exist in a mingled community of nabobs and serfs, of owners of twenty-thousand-acre manors, with the lordly palaces, and the occupants of narrow huts inhabited low white trash? The plan was eventually shot down, being called, "brash and unfair. Although the extension of suffrage to the Black man worked fairly well it did not give the Black man any real power. The Radical Republicans surfaced as the country's dominant political party and with the majority in Congress they set the goals for reconstruction. The reason I feel that this was not at all a revolution but merely an uprising is that by 1905 the progress made in the Reconstruction Period was almost completely reversed. Both Moderate and Radical Republicans reacted to the Codes with expansion of the Freedman's Bureau to include the protection of Blacks from such codes and laws. They also sought the reinstitution of slavery under a different name, Black Codes. And those Blacks who did manage to get into a political office usually owed it to an alliance that hindered their effectiveness as an office holder. So as you can see the political and social changes of the period between 1860 and 1877 amounted in a mere uprising and not in a revolution. " The Government did not yet understand the importance of economic equality in the freeing of a people. In Louisiana alone, the number of Black voters dropped 99% and the number of Black officials dropped to zero.
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