Reconstruction & Its Unfinished Legacy

US History

Chapter 6 · Reconstruction & Its Unfinished Legacy

Fort Sumter closed Chapter 5. This chapter picks up after the war, in the period historians call Reconstruction, 1865 to 1877, and follows it through to the Jim Crow system that replaced it. The sources are four reference articles, on the Reconstruction era, on Jim Crow laws, on the Dunning School of historians, and on Andrew Johnson's impeachment. The most important thing one of them shows is that how historians described this period changed sharply over the twentieth century, and the chapter treats that change as part of the history, not a footnote to it.

Reconstruction, 1865 to 1877

Three constitutional amendments were ratified in this period: the Thirteenth, abolishing slavery, the Fourteenth, granting citizenship and equal civil rights to the formerly enslaved, and the Fifteenth, protecting voting rights regardless of race. The source does not give exact ratification dates, so the chapter states only that they belong to this era.

Lincoln's Plan

Lincoln favoured a "ten percent plan" setting lenient readmission conditions for former Confederate states, and vetoed the stricter Wade-Davis Bill.

Johnson's Approach

After Lincoln's 1865 assassination, Andrew Johnson pursued a lenient policy: vetoing Radical Republican bills, pardoning Confederate leaders, and allowing Southern states to enact restrictive Black Codes.

Congressional Reconstruction

Radical Republicans gained control after the 1866 midterm elections and pursued stricter measures. The source frames this as a disagreement over the nature of secession and the conditions for readmission, not detailed further.

Congress established the Freedmen's Bureau to "provide much-needed food and shelter to the newly freed slaves," and it also helped establish educational and religious institutions. Southern states' "draconian Black Codes," restricting freedmen's rights, provoked Northern outrage and renewed concern that the Southern elite would retain power.

The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

Johnson was impeached on 24 February 1868, after he violated the Tenure of Office Act by trying to remove Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and replace him with Lorenzo Thomas without Senate approval. On 16 May the Senate voted 35 to 19 to convict on one article, one vote short of the 36 needed for removal, and identical 35-to-19 votes followed on two more articles on 26 May, after which the trial adjourned without voting on the remaining eight articles. Johnson was acquitted and stayed in office.

A Small Discrepancy, Noted Honestly The source itself flags "a record keeping discrepancy" between the Congressional Globe and the House Journal over the initial impeachment resolution's vote count, 126 to 47 versus 128 to 47, and says the Office of the House Historian uses the lower figure. I follow that choice and note the discrepancy rather than picking silently.

How Historians Have Described This Period

The Dunning School, named for the Columbia University professor William Archibald Dunning (1857 to 1922), dominated scholarly and popular understanding of Reconstruction from about 1900 through the 1930s, with influence in textbooks into the 1960s. According to historian Adam Fairclough, its adherents believed "black suffrage had been a political blunder" and that Republican state governments "rested upon black votes had been corrupt, extravagant, unrepressive." Dunning himself argued that freedmen "proved incapable of self-government," making segregation necessary.

A View Now Rejected, Once Dominant This was not a fringe position when it held sway. It shaped textbooks for decades. The challenge began in 1935 when W.E.B. Du Bois published Black Reconstruction in America, emphasising African American agency, and later historians including Kenneth Stampp and Eric Foner critiqued the school's racial assumptions and methods. By the mid-twentieth century, especially after the Civil Rights Movement, the source says the interpretation had been "substantially discredited," and that the modern consensus treats it as reflecting racist ideology rather than historical accuracy. I report this as the source's own account of a historiographical shift, and I did not read Du Bois, Stampp or Foner directly.

Why This Matters for the Chapter A course built from short reference summaries, as this one is, risks repeating whichever interpretation happens to sit in the source without noticing it has a history of its own. Naming the Dunning School and its rejection is one way to guard against that, though it does not guarantee today's source is free of its own unexamined assumptions. I did not check the current article's own neutrality, only report what it says about the earlier one.

The End of Reconstruction, and Jim Crow

The Compromise of 1877 is named as ending Reconstruction, though the source I read gives no detail on its terms. Jim Crow laws, mandating "racial segregation in all public facilities," emerged in the Southern states beginning in the 1870s. The term "Jim Crow" dates to the 1840s, when abolitionists used it to describe segregated railroad cars, and "Jim Crow law" was first documented in 1884.

Feature	What the source says
Legal cover	Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) upheld segregation through "separate but equal," providing constitutional justification for 58 years.
Disenfranchisement	Poll taxes, literacy tests, residency requirements, and grandfather clauses exempting white voters while targeting Black voters.
A measured effect	In Louisiana, registered Black voters fell from a majority to just 730 by 1910, less than 0.5 percent of eligible Black men.
End	Brown v. Board of Education (1954) declared school segregation unconstitutional, though enforcement was slow, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 overturned most remaining statutes.

The Amendments and Jim Crow, Side by Side The Fifteenth Amendment protected voting rights regardless of race, and within decades Louisiana's own registered Black voters had fallen to under 0.5 percent of eligible men. The sources do not connect the two sentences directly, but the Louisiana figure is offered as a measure of what the disenfranchisement tactics achieved, so I place the two facts together deliberately. Chapter 9 returns to this thread with the Civil Rights Movement.

What I Did Not Verify I did not find the ratification dates for the three amendments, the terms of the Compromise of 1877, the details of Radical Reconstruction's own legislation, the experience of freedpeople day to day, or Jim Crow's operation outside voting (housing, employment, public accommodation) beyond the segregation doctrine stated above. I also did not read Du Bois, Stampp or Foner, only a summary naming them. The chapter covers the political sequence and the historiography, not the lived experience.

Hands-On Exercises

Exercise 1

Set out Lincoln's, Johnson's and the Radical Republicans' approaches to Reconstruction as the chapter gives them, and say what each disagreement was about.

→ Solution

Exercise 2

A student writes "Historians have always agreed that Reconstruction failed because freedmen were unfit to govern." Use the chapter to correct it.

→ Solution

Exercise 3

Explain what the Louisiana voter figure shows about Jim Crow's real effect, and say what the chapter cannot tell you about how it felt to live under these laws.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

Reconstruction: 1865 to 1877; 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments; Freedmen's Bureau; Black Codes
Johnson impeached: 24 February 1868; acquitted 35 to 19, one vote short, 16 and 26 May
Dunning School: dominant about 1900 to the 1930s, in textbooks into the 1960s; discredited after Du Bois (1935), Stampp and Foner
Jim Crow: from the 1870s; Plessy v. Ferguson 1896, "separate but equal" for 58 years; Louisiana registered Black voters fell to 730 by 1910
End: Brown v. Board 1954; Civil Rights Act 1964; Voting Rights Act 1965
Not covered: the amendments' ratification dates, the Compromise of 1877's terms, lived experience