Reconstruction – America After the Civil War

Produced by PBS television network

Narrated by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

I recently viewed the four-hour, four part, PBS documentary on Reconstruction. This documentary corrects many of the misconceptions that have been promoted by the government, the media, as well as the educational system in this country. What are those misconceptions, that we are all familiar with?

From and early age, teachers told me a story that in spite of a few problems, the United States of America is a great and wonderful nation. They asked me at the beginning of every day to stand up, place my hand on my heart, and pledge allegiance to a flag that claimed to represent, liberty and justice for all. All that is required is for people to apply themselves and take responsibility. For those who meet this modest criterion, the so-called “American Dream” can become a reality.

This documentary shows that before the election of Abraham Lincoln, during the 1800s, the supporters of slave owners ran the government in this country. Their rule made torture, murder, as well as slavery routine legal practices in this country. The political organization that ran this horrendous system was the Democratic Party.

Frederick Douglass, who spent his first 19 years of life as a slave, had this to say about the Democratic Party. He argued that they were, “fiendish hell-hounds, at war with history and humanity.”

After the Civil War and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, President Andrew Johnson worked with former leaders of the confederacy to continue the disenfranchisement of former slaves. However, there was a mass sentiment in favor of repressing the interests of the former slave owners.

So, the republican dominated government worked against the President, and passed the 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution. These Amendments prevented soldiers of the confederacy from voting. They also gave full and equal rights to all men in this country, including the millions of former slaves. In order to enforce these new laws, the federal government ordered the military to occupy the former slave states.

As a result, there was a flowering of culture for all races during the years known as Reconstruction. Blacks and caucasians learned to read for the first time. Black people were elected to government office and advanced the interests of the majority of people they represented. As a result, there was a transformation in the thinking of people throughout the Southern states. People began to believe there was a real possibility for the masses to begin to have much better lives.

I believe that it is accurate to say that a revolution had erupted in this country because of the Civil War and it’s aftermath. Former slaves were members of state, as well as the federal government. This meant that everyone in these states was becoming enfranchised. This was a complete change from the reality of slavery that existed before the Civil War.

However, with all revolutions, there are counter-revolutions. The war of 1812 was aimed at re-imposing British rule of the thirteen colonies. The rise of Napoleon signaled a betrayal of the French Revolution. The civil war after the Russian Revolution, as well as the rise of Joseph Stalin, were both betrayals of the Russian Revolution.

After the Civil War, the counter revolutionary movement was led by the terrorist organization the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK understood that they would not be able to re-impose slavery, so their goal was to do away with citizenship rights of African Americans.

In order to begin to understand what happened, we need to look at why the union army was able to defeat the confederacy in the Civil War. This happened because of a united front that included northern capitalists, workers, small farmers, and escaped slaves. This coalition began to understand that they would need to carry out a tenacious struggle to free this country from slavery.

After the Civil War the northern capitalists worked to consolidate their interests. The kind of genuine democracy that existed in reconstruction was not the kind of government structure these capitalists needed to advance their drive to maximize profits. However, the capitalist drive for profits was not mentioned in this documentary as one of the reasons for the defeat of reconstruction.

For these reasons, the Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes made a deal to withdraw federal troops from the former slave states. This decision made it clear that the federal government was willing to ignore the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution that gave full citizenship rights to former slaves. This was the signal for the Ku Klux Klan to mobilize to militarily over-through the reconstruction governments.

We might consider that President Abraham Lincoln acknowledged that he needed to draft his Emancipation Proclamation because he needed African American soldiers to win the Civil War. While these soldiers played an indispensable role in winning the war, the federal government abandoned them, when their constitutional rights were being threatened by terrorists.

Today, there is a memorial to about 4,000 victims of lynchings in Montgomery, Alabama. We can say that this is also a memorial to the fact that the United States government refused to enforce the 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution for decades. The Jim Crow laws that denied Black people citizenship rights in this country were open and flagrant violations of the Constitution. Today, we know that the government paid federal and state officials to flagrantly violate the Constitution. This aspect of our history was not included in the documentary on reconstruction.

One positive aspect of this documentary was that it showed how Black people worked to advance their interests in spite of a government that wasn’t interested in enforcing the law. We see the campaign against lynching organized by Ida Wells. We see the example of W.E.B. DuBois and the formation of the NAACP as well as the publication of it’s journal The Crisis. We see how Black people organized entire neighborhoods where they learned how to become self-reliant.

We also know that many of these Black neighborhoods became targets of racists who resented the fact that Black people were becoming independent. There was a mass murder in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1920 as well as in many other cities. Clearly, the federal government continued to refuse to enforce the Constitution and arrest and prosecute those who were routinely murdering Black people.     

The horrendous history of the so-called entertainment industry

While the Jim Crow laws stripped Black people of their citizenship rights, the so-called entertainment industry promoted horrendous stereotypical images of Black people for decades. Caucasians routinely wore blackface in minstrel shows.

The film Birth of a Nation portrayed Reconstruction as a time when caucasians needed to be protected from imagined horrors of Black people. As we have seen, the true horrors that followed Reconstruction were carried out by supporters of the Ku Klux Klan. Yet, President Woodrow Wilson had a private screening of Birth of the Nation in the White House.

It was out of this apparent madness, that Black people developed the arts that have inspired people from around the world. To break from the stereotypical images of the past, today we see the genuine humanity of Black people portrayed in the arts. However, understanding the facts presented in this documentary, we shouldn’t forget the roots of what we call the entertainment industry.

The government continued it’s repression against Native Americans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Filipinos, and child factory workers

While this documentary was about Reconstruction and it’s aftermath, I believe it is useful to look at other repressive policies carried out by the United States government during these same years. We can start with the genocidal wars against Native Americans.

Native Americans have been struggling to defend their culture for literally hundreds of years. Military commanders of the revolution of the thirteen colonies went to war against Native Americans before, during, and after that revolution.

The three most prestigious Generals of the Union Army during the Civil War were Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Phillip Henry Sheridan. All three of these generals were also commanders of the war against Native Americans. General Sheridan made his famous quotation: “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” This was a typical point of view in government circles at that time. Ironically. General Sherman was named for the outstanding Shawnee leader, Tecumseh.

Another Union General in the Civil war General Nelson A. Miles. Miles headed a military detachment to prevent the Nez Perce from escaping from the United States. As with hundreds of Native American nations, the Nez Perce discovered that the government of this country had no intention of enforcing a treaty it had agreed to.

So, the Nez Perce, under the leadership of Chief Joseph attempted to escape from this country and attempt to live in Canada. General Miles’ forces prevented most of the Nez Perce from escaping. General Miles also participated in the wars against the Kiowa, the Comanche, the Cheyenne, and the Lakota.

After the genocidal wars against Native Americans, General Miles commanded a force that invaded Puerto Rico at the town of Guánica. While this invasion was aimed at the Spanish colonization of the island, General Miles’ forces also suppressed those who were struggling for Puerto Rican independence. Puerto Rico became a colony of the United States, and this was also the beginning of the international corporation known as Domino Sugar.

The U.S. armed forces carried out a similar action against the nation of Cuba. The Cubans had been fighting for their independence for about thirty years under the outstanding leadership of José Martí, Antonio Maceo, and Maximo Gomez. Then, the U.S. military entered the conflict and declared victory after two battles. The U.S. corporate interests dominated the Cuban economy until the Cuban Revolution of 1959.

After the U.S. forces defeated the Spanish in the Philippines, the Philippine independence movement continued it’s struggle for liberation. In all about 250,000 Filipinos were murdered because of the U.S. occupation of that nation.

The withdrawal of the federal armed forces from the former slave states during reconstruction coincided with the repression of the Nez Perce in the year 1877. Also in the year 1877 the government ordered the military to suppress a rail workers strike, so the Vanderbilt family would be able to maximize profits on their investments.

Today, it is difficult to even imagine what the industrial conditions were like during those years. We might get a glimmer of this by looking at a garment workers strike in the year 1903 in Philadelphia.

The labor leader known as Mother Jones came to Philadelphia to support this strike. The principal demand of the 65,000 strikers was not to be forced to work more than 65 hours per week. This strike failed to achieve that demand.

However, Mother Jones discovered that about 15,000 of these workers were children who were as young as ten years old. Mother Jones was horrified at the conditions these children faced and learned that they needed to carry heavy loads for long hours every day. Some of these children lost their fingers on the job.

So, Mother Jones organized her March of the Children. This was a 125 mile march to the summer home of the then President Theodore Roosevelt in Long Island. On this march Mother Jones stopped at Princeton University where she explained to the students that their education was being paid for by the horrendous toil of these children. She felt that this kind of information would give the Princeton students a better education.

Conclusion

Clearly the documentary on Reconstruction gives us invaluable information about our past. It shows that while the government initially supported Reconstruction, ultimately it abandoned every attempt to grant Black people their Constitutional rights in this country. The facts are that the government of the United States of America, that claims to represent, liberty and justice for all, gave political power to the terrorist organization of the Ku Klux Klan.

When we see how this same government carried out genocidal wars against Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, Filipinos, and even children, we get a completely different picture from the idea presented in the press and on the university campuses.

However, the repressive nature of the U.S. government is only one part of this documentary. We also see the resistance of the people against seemingly impossible odds. This resistance continued through decades and culminated in the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Next week I will be travelling to Cuba. I will be a member of a 300 person international May Day Brigade. One of the events that I will witness will be the May Day celebration in Havana. Over one million Cubans will demonstrate and celebrate the support of their government.

While Cuba doesn’t have many of the conveniences we have in this country, they have three times more doctors than the United States. As a result, the infant mortality rate in Cuba is lower than it is in this country. This is a clear example for me, that if we dare to struggle, we can indeed dare to win.