NATIONAL PEDAGOGOC UNIVERSITY

FOREIGN PHILOLOGY DEPARTMENT

Tne Impact the Civil War 1861-1865 on Economic, Politic and Industry
Development in the USA

Written by

53-th group student

Tatiana Ryabchun

Kyiv, 2000

Reconstruction

(1865-77), in US history, period during and after the American
Civil War in which attempts were made to solve the political, social, andeconomic problems arising from the readmission to the Union of the 11
Confederate states that had seceded at or before the outbreak of war.

As early as 1862, Pres. Abraham Lincoln had appointed provisionalmilitary governors for Louisiana, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Thefollowing year, initial steps were taken to reestablish governments innewly occupied states in which at least 10 percent of the voting populationhad taken the prescribed oath of allegiance. Aware that the presidentialplan omitted any provision for social or economic reconstruction, the
Radical Republicans in Congress resented such a lenient politicalarrangement under solely executive jurisdiction. As a result, the stricter
Wade-Davis Bill was passed in 1864 but pocket vetoed by the President.

After Lincoln's assassination (April 1865), Pres. Andrew Johnsonfurther alienated Congress by continuing Lincoln's moderate policies. The
Fourteenth Amendment, defining national citizenship so as to includeblacks, passed Congress in June 1866 and was ratified, despite rejection bymost Southern states (July 28, 1868). In response to Johnson's intemperateoutbursts against the opposition as well as to several reactionarydevelopments in the South (eg, race riots and passage of the repugnantblack codes severely restricting rights of blacks), the North gave asmashing victory to the Radical Republicans in the 1866 congressionalelection.

That victory launched the era of congressional Reconstruction (usuallycalled Radical Reconstruction), which lasted 10 years starting with the
Reconstruction Acts of 1867. Under that legislation, the 10 remaining
Southern states (Tennessee had been readmitted to the Union in 1866) weredivided into five military districts; and, under supervision of the US
Army, all were readmitted between 1868 and 1870. Each state had to acceptthe Fourteenth or, if readmitted after its passage, the Fifteenth
Constitutional Amendment, intended to ensure civil rights of the freedmen.
The newly created state governments were generally Republican in characterand were governed by political coalitions of blacks, carpetbaggers
(Northerners who had gone into the South), and scalawags (Southerners whocollaborated with the blacks and carpetbaggers). The Republican governmentsof the former Confederate states were seen by most Southern whites asartificial creations imposed from without, and the conservative element inthe region remained hostile to them. Southerners particularly resented theactivities of the Freedmen's Bureau, which Congress had established tofeed, protect, and help educate the newly emancipated blacks. Thisresentment led to formation of secret terroristic organizations, such asthe Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camelia. The use of fraud,violence, and intimidation helped Southern conservatives regain control oftheir state governments, and, by the time the last Federal troops had beenwithdrawn in 1877, the Democratic Party was back in power.

About 1900, many US historians espoused a theory of racialinferiority of blacks. The Reconstruction governments were viewed as anabyss of corruption resulting from Northern vindictiveness and the desirefor political and economic domination. Later, revisionist historians notedthat not only was public and private dishonesty widespread in all regionsof the country at that time but also that a number of constructive reformsactually were introduced into the South during that period: courts werereorganized, judicial procedures improved, public-school systemsestablished, and more feasible methods of taxation devised. Many provisionsof the state constitutions adopted during the postwar years have continuedin existence.

The Reconstruction experience led to an increase in sectionalbitterness, an intensification of the racial issue, and the development ofone-party politics in the South. Scholarship has suggested that the mostfundamental failure of Reconstruction was in not effecting a distributionof land in the South that would have offered an economic base to supportthe newly won political rights of black citizens.

Wade-Davis Bill
(1864), unsuccessful attempt by Radical Republicans and others in the US
Congress to set Reconstruction policy before the end of the Civil War. Thebill, sponsored by senators Benjamin F. Wade and Henry W. Davis, providedfor the appointment of provisional military governors in the secededstates. When a majority of a state's white citizens swore allegiance to the
Union, a constitutional convention could be called. Each state'sconstitution was to be required to abolish slavery, repudiate secession,and disqualify Confederate officials from voting or holding office. Inorder to qualify for the franchise, a person would be required to take anoath that he had never voluntarily given aid to the Confederacy. President
Abraham Lincoln's pocket veto of the bill presaged the struggle that was totake place after the war between President Andrew Johnson and the Radical
Republicans in Congress.

Property law
Ownership as the absolute right to possession
One may thus define ownership in the same way that the legal philosopher
Felix Cohen defined property: "That is property to which the followinglabel can be attached: To the world: Keep off X unless you have mypermission, which I may grant or withhold. Signed: Private citizen.
Endorsed: The state. "Cohen, however, goes on to warn that all the terms ofthe definition "shade off imperceptibly into other things." Consider, forexample, the large range of possibilities encompassed in the phrase
"permission, which I may grant or withhold." In all Western legal systemsthere are a number of situations in which the law will either assume thatpermission has been granted or will require the private citizen to granthis permission. The situations tend to be dramatic: Firefighters, forexample, are usually allowed to enter private property to prevent thespread of a fire and frequently are authorized to destroy private propertyin order to prevent the spread of a fire.
In the 1960s a number of U.S. Supreme Court cases starkly posed theconflict between the property owner's right to exclude and civil rights, inthe context of "sit-ins" in restaurants that were excluding customers onracial grounds. These cases suggested, if they did not quite hold, that inthis context the possessory right of the restaurant owner would have toyield to the civil-rights claim of those sitting in. In the same period anumber of courts held that owners of farms could not exclude visitors fromagricultural migrant labour camps.
The conflict in these cases between property rights and civil rights wasmade starker by the practice in the United States of treating social issuesas constitutional controversies. The issue, however, of the use of propertyto discriminate against members of the society whom the property ownerdisfavours is present throughout the Western world. Ultimately in the
United States the problem of restaurant sit-ins was resolved by nationallegislation that made it the duty of anyone providing food or lodging toserve all comers without regard to race. Similar legislation exists in many
Western countries, as does legislation allowing access to premises in whichworkers are employed.

Black codein the United States, any of numerous laws enacted in the states of theformer Confederacy after the American Civil War, in 1865 and 1866; the lawswere designed to replace the social controls of slavery that had beenremoved by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment tothe Constitution, and were thus intended to assure continuance of whitesupremacy.
The black codes had their roots in the slave codes that had formerly beenin effect. The general philosophy supporting the institution of chattelslavery in America was based on the concept that slaves were property, notpersons, and that the law must protect not only the property but also theproperty owner from the danger of violence. Slave rebellions were notunknown, and the possibility of uprisings was a constant source of anxietyin colonies and then states with large slave populations. (In Virginiaduring 1780-1864, 1,418 slaves were convicted of crimes; 91 of theseconvictions were for insurrection and 346 for murder.) Slaves also ranaway. In the British possessions in the New World, the settlers were freeto promulgate any regulations they saw fit to govern their labour supply.
As early as the 17th century, a set of rules was in effect in Virginia andelsewhere; but the codes were constantly being altered to adapt to newneeds, and they varied from one colony, and later one state, to another.
All the slave codes, however, had certain provisions in common. In all ofthem the colour line was firmly drawn, and any amount of Negro bloodestablished the race of a person, whether slave or free, as Negro. Thestatus of the offspring followed that of the mother, so that the child of afree father and a slave mother was a slave. Slaves had few legal rights: incourt their testimony was inadmissible in any litigation involving whites;they could make no contract, nor could they own property; even if attacked,they could not strike a white person. There were numerous restrictions toenforce social control: slaves could not be away from their owner'spremises without permission; they could not assemble unless a white personwas present; they could not own firearms; they could not be taught to reador write, or transmit or possess "inflammatory" literature; they were notpermitted to marry.
Obedience to the slave codes was exacted in a variety of ways. Suchpunishments as whipping, branding, and imprisonment were commonly used, butdeath (which meant destruction of property) was rarely called for except insuch extreme cases as the rape or murder of a white person. White patrolskept the slaves under surveillance, especially at night. Slave codes werenot always strictly enforced, but whenever any signs of unrest weredetected the appropriate machinery of the state would be alerted and thelaws more strictly enforced.
The black codes enacted immediately after the American Civil War, thoughvarying from state to state, were all intended to secure a steady supply ofcheap labour, and all continued to assume the inferiority of the freedslaves. There were vagrancy laws that declared a black to be vagrant ifunemployed and without permanent residence; a person so defined could bearrested, fined, and bound out for a term of labour if unable to pay thefine. Apprentice laws provided for the "hiring out" of orphans and otheryoung dependents to whites, who often turned out to be their former owners.
Some states limited the type of property blacks could own, and in othersblacks were excluded from certain businesses or from the skilled trades.
Former slaves were forbidden to carry firearms or to testify in court,except in cases concerning other blacks. Legal marriage between blacks wasprovided for, but interracial marriage was prohibited.
It was Northern reaction to the black codes (as well as to the bloodyantiblack riots in Memphis and New Orleans in 1866; see New Orleans Race
Riot) that helped produce Radical Reconstruction (see Reconstruction) andthe Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments. The Freedmen's Bureau was createdin 1865 to help the former slaves. Reconstruction did away with the blackcodes, but, after Reconstruction was over, many of their provisions werereenacted in the Jim Crow laws, which were not finally done away with untilpassage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

References:

1. Garraty, John A
A short history of the American nation, - 6th ed. - New York Collonscollege publ, 1992
2. Ray Allen Willington,
American frontier heritage, - New Mexico, Press 1991
3. Thomas A. Bailey
David M. Kennedy
The American pageant, - 9th ed .- Toronto