Climbing Up to Glory (33 page)
Read Climbing Up to Glory Online
Authors: Wilbert L. Jenkins
Despite the bleak record of failures in the era of emancipation and Republican rule, and the counterrevolution of white conservatives in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were some enduring accomplishments.
71
Black politicians played a role in many of these successes. Under Republican rule, many of the undemocratic features of earlier state constitutions were eliminated. Every state approved universal men's suffrage and loosened requirements for holding office. To make the basis of representation fairer, more legislative seats were apportioned to the less-populated interior regions of Southern states. Social legislation was passed that abolished laws requiring imprisonment for owing debts. The first divorce laws in many Southern states were enacted, and laws granting married women property rights were also passed. Penal laws were modernized, and as a result, in one state, the list of crimes punishable by death was reduced from twenty-six to five.
Republican governments undertook the task of financially and physically reconstructing the South. They overhauled outdated tax systems, approved generous railroad and other capital investment bonds, and invested in the infrastructure by rebuilding bridges, harbors, and roads. They also expanded social services to the sick, poor, and elderly and established hospitals and asylums. Before the Republican governments took over, there were no state-supported systems of public education. By the time the Democrats took over, there was one in every Southern state. For the first time, both races, and rich and poor alike, had access to education.
72
Such huge investments cost money, and the Republicans had to raise taxes and increase state debts. All in all, however, the Republican governments “dragged the South, screaming and crying into the modern world.”
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This accomplishment alone made their efforts worthwhile. Moreover, the fact that blacks, who until recently had been slaves, were the architects of many of the accomplishments of the Reconstruction period is truly remarkable. These black politicians were real trailblazers, and it would take nearly another century before America again would see blacks in large numbers in so many important political offices. In fact, many of the political offices held by blacks during Reconstruction have never been recaptured by them.
Emancipation and Reconstruction occurred amid great expectations for Southern blacks. It initially appeared that they might be eventually accepted as first-class citizens in America. However, in the waning years of Reconstruction and the ensuing decades, the long arm of white supremacy reached out, grabbed Southern blacks, and launched a campaign not only to stop their progress but also to return them as nearly as possible to a state of slavery. Blacks struggled tenaciously against overwhelming obstacles to achieve first-class citizenship. That they failed to accomplish their goal completely is not due to any lack of determination and effort on their part. The fact that America missed a golden opportunity to build a truly egalitarian society is the most tragic failure of Reconstruction. Unfortunately, both Northern and Southern whites allowed racism to halt and then reverse what had been a remarkable movement to obtain freedom, justice, and equality for their black brothers and sisters. This country continues to pay a heavy price for that failure.
Colin A. Palmer,
Passageways: An Interpretive History of Black America,
2 vols. (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1998), 1:288-89.
Ibid., 289.
Ibid.
Ibid., 295.
Ibid., 290.
George P. Rawick, ed.,
The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977), Vol. 10, Texas Narratives, Part 9, 4060.
Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, and Stanley Harrold,
The African-American Odyssey
(Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2000), 230; Benjamin Quarles,
The Negro in the Making of America,
3d rev. ed. (New York: MacMillan, 1987), 110; John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss Jr.,
From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans,
7th rev. ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), 199.
Quarles,
The Negro in the Making,
110; Franklin and Moss,
From Slavery to Freedom,
199; Clark Hine et al.,
The African-American Odyssey,
230.
Ibid.
Quarles,
The Negro in the Making,
110-11.
Ibid., 111; Clark Hine et al.,
The African-American Odyssey,
230.
Quarles,
The Negro in the Making,
111; Jim Cullen, “ âI's a Man Now': Gender and African American Men” in Darlene Clark Hine and Earnestine Jenkins, eds.,
A Question of Manhood: A Reader in U.S. Black Men's History and Masculinity
(Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999), 490.
Quarles,
The Negro in the Making,
111.
Lt. Col. (Ret.) Michael Lee Lanning,
The African-American Soldier: From Crispus Attucks to Colin Powell
(Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing Group, 1997), 1-29; Gary A. Donaldson,
The History of African-Americans in the Military
(Malabar, FL: Krieger, 1991), 1-30; Jack D. Foner,
Blacks and the Military in American History
(New York: Praeger, 1974), 3-25.
Benjamin Quarles,
Lincoln and the Negro
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), 18; Richard N. Current, “The Friend of Freedom,” in Kenneth M. Stampp and Leon F. Litwack, eds.,
Reconstruction: An Anthology of Revisionist Writings
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969), 25-26.
Quarles,
Lincoln and the Negro,
18; Current, “The Friend of Freedom,” 27-28.
Current, “The Friend of Freedom,” 28.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., 29.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Stephen B. Oates,
With Malice toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln
(New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 254.
James M. McPherson,
Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War
(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 201.
Oates,
With Malice toward None,
260.
McPherson,
Drawn with the Sword,
201.
Oates,
With Malice toward None,
298-99.
Ibid., 299.
Ibid.
Philip Shaw Paludan,
The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994), 145-47; David Herbert Donald,
Lincoln
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 364-65; Mark E. Neely Jr.,
The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 108; Oates,
With Malice toward None,
309-10.
Paludan,
The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln,
146.
Donald,
Lincoln,
314.
Paludan,
The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln,
146.
Ibid., 146-47.
August Meier and Elliott Rudwick,
From Plantation to Ghetto: An Interpretive History of American Blacks,
3d rev. ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1976), 158; Quarles,
The Negro in the Making,
113.
Paludan,
The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln,
127-28.
Quarles,
The Negro in the Making,
113; Palmer,
Passageways,
1:295.
Allen C. Guelzo,
The Crisis of the American Republic: A History of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), 136; Quarles,
The Negro in the Making,
113-14; Dorothy C. Salem,
The Journey: A History of the African American Experience
(Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt, 1997), 185; Clark Hine et al.,
The African-American Odyssey,
234; Franklin and Moss,
From Slavery to Freedom,
206.
Meier and Rudwick,
From Plantation to Ghetto,
158-59.
Palmer,
Passageways,
1:293.
Guelzo,
The Crisis of the American Republic,
136.
Ibid., 136; Quarles,
The Negro in the Making,
114; J. G. Randall and Richard N. Current, “Race Relations in the White House,” in Don E. Fehrenbacher, ed.,
The Leadership of Abraham Lincoln
(New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1970), 151-52; Clark Hine et al.,
The African-American Odyssey,
234.
Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds.,
Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War
(New York: New Press, 1992), 38-42.
Quarles,
The Negro in the Making,
114-15; Meier and Rudwick,
From Plantation to Ghetto,
159.
McPherson,
Drawn with the Sword,
202; William L. Barney,
The Passage of the Republic: An Interdisciplinary History of Nineteenth-Century America
(Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1987), 220.
Barney,
The Passage of the Republic,
220.
Franklin and Moss,
From Slavery to Freedom,
207.
William L. Barney,
Battleground for the Union: The Era of the Civil War and Reconstruction, 1848-1877
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990), 184.
Franklin and Moss,
From Slavery to Freedom,
207.
Victor B. Howard,
Black Liberation in Kentucky: Emancipation and Freedom, 1862-1884
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983), 34.
John W. Blassingame, ed.,
Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies
(Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), 618.
Rawick, ed.,
The American Slave,
Vol. 6, Mississippi Narratives, Part 1, 323.
Blassingame, ed.,
Slave Testimony,
616-17.
James M. McPherson,
The Negro's Civil War: How American Negroes Felt and Acted during the War for the Union
(New York: Vintage Books, 1965), 61.
Ibid., 63-64; Genevieve S. Gray, ed.,
Army Life in a Black Regiment
(By Colonel Thomas W. Higginson) (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1970), 30-32.
Patricia W. Romero and Willie Lee Rose, eds.,
Reminiscences of My Life: A Black Woman's Civil War Memoirs
(By Susie King Taylor) (New York: Markus Wiener, 1988), 14.
Rawick, ed.,
The American Slave,
Vol. 5, Texas Narratives, Part 4,1646-47.
Neely,
The Last Best Hope of Earth,
121.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Rawick, ed.,
The American Slave,
Vol. 6, Mississippi Narratives, Part 1, 8, 9, 11, 12.
Benjamin Quarles,
The Negro in the Civil War
(Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969), 170-75.
John Mack Faragher,
Out of Many: A History of the American People,
2 vols. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1994), 1:491.
Michael L. Conniff and Thomas J. Davis,
Africans in the Americas: A History of the Black Diaspora
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), 202.
Ibid.
Quarles,
The Negro in the Making,
115.
McPherson,
The Negro's Civil War,
49.
Donald,
Lincoln,
377-78. For a discussion of Northern and Southern white reaction to the Emancipation Proclamation, and the racial climate in the North before and during the Civil War, please consult Thomas A. Bailey,
The American Pageant: A History of the Republic,
2 vols. (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1991), 1:458-59. Oates,
With Malice toward None,
320-21; Leon F. Litwack,
North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961); James O. Horton and Lois E. Horton,
Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the Antebellum North
(New York: Holmes and Meier, 1979); Julie Winch,
Philadelphia's Black Elite: Activism, Accommodation, and the Struggle for Autonomy, 1787-1848
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988); Vincent Harding,
There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America
(New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1981), 239-40; Eric Foner,
Reconstruction: America's Llnfinished Revolution, 1863-1877
(New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 32-33; Donald Yacovone, ed.,
A Voice of Thunder: The Civil War Letters of George E. Stephens
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997); Bailey,
The American Pageant,
1:459-60; and Barney,
Battleground for the Union,
183.
Barney,
Battleground for the Union,
184-86; Bailey,
The American Pageant,
1:458; Maulana Karenga,
Introduction to Black Studies
(Los Angeles, CA: University of Sankore Press, 1982), 103.
Blassingame, ed.,
Slave Testimony,
372.
Barney,
Battleground for the Union,
185-86; Clark Hine et al.,
The African-American Odyssey,
236-37.
McPherson,
Drawn with the Sword,
204-5.
Paludan,
The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln,
301; Oates,
With Malice toward None,
404-5.
La Wanda Cox, “Lincoln and Black Freedom,” in Gabor S. Boritt, ed.,
The Historian's Lincoln: Pseudohistory, Psychohistory, and History
(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 181.
James M. McPherson,
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1989), 839; Oates,
With Malice toward None,
405; Paludan,
The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln,
302.
