After Slavery

The ‘party of Lincoln’ had moved hesitantly toward linking emancipation with preservation of the Union in the last two years of the War, but on plantations across the South slaves seem to have grasped from the outset that their freedom was bound up with the fortunes of the Union military. In pockets of Confederate territory recaptured by federal troops in eastern North Carolina and the sea islands below Charleston, military and government officials began to patch together the new systems of labor and civil authority that would replace slavery once the war ended, but it was not until the Confederate surrender in April 1865 that discussions began in earnest about the extent to which freedpeople would be regarded as full citizens–whether they would have the right to vote or hold office, testify in court or have a meaningful say in constructing the new society.

Freedpeople played a central role in forcing this discussion, and in pushing it in more democratic directions. At a national level, the Republican Party was deeply divided over its commitment to black freedom: a minority, know as the Radicals, fought consistently for a more expansive vision compatible with the ex-slaves’ demands, but most brought to the task a ‘free labor’ outlook that drew a sharp line between civil and economic equality; on the right of the Party were men who had been reluctantly drawn into the frontal assault on slavery, and who insisted that the abolition of slavery ended their obligations to freedpeople; in the middle, the majority of northern Republicans were pulled in both directions, anxious (especially in the early years after the war) to deny former Confederates the space to rebuild a system that pushed blacks back into slavery, but without any real plan for ensuring this, and often lacking a genuine commitment to thoroughly re-making the South. Black freedom therefore depended on an alliance between freedpeople and the Radicals, a partnership that was itself subject to tensions, and buffeted by fluctuations in public support among the northern public.

Freedpeople in South Carolina were in some ways in a far more favorable position to influence Republican politics than their neighbors to the north: the state was one of two ex-slave states with a black majority, and after freedmen won the right to vote it became virtually impossible for conservatives to return to power there through legal means. In North Carolina, the presence of a substantial number of white unionists who had opposed the war partially offset freedpeople’s numerical weakness. The evidence suggests that there were possibilities for winning a minority of whites to republicanism, and in both states the Party’s ranks included a number of courageous whites who risked ostracism (and worse) to stand with freedpeople. But deeply-rooted racial divisions, combined with bitterness over the results of the war, made this an uphill battle, and freedpeople found out quickly that even wartime unionists could not be counted on to defend black rights. In both states the project of sustaining a Republican government required serious organization, persistence in the face of continual challenges, and–for activists on the ground–great personal sacrifice, sometimes including their lives.

Armed confrontations–or “paramilitary politics,” in historian Steven Hahn’s phrase– played an important role in the changing possibilities for black political assertion in both states. Although we have included only a couple of documents that touch upon paramilitarism below, you will find a useful selection in the unit on Coercion, Paramilitary Terror and Resistance.

As Reconstruction came under greater strain from the early 1870s onwards, the tensions that had been submerged in the Republican ranks became more and more apparent, and debilitating. In both states the strategies of white moderates had never neatly corresponded with the aspirations and expectations of their mostly destitute, ex-slave constituents. Among blacks themselves, tensions between former slaves and a rising minority of relatively prosperous race leaders became more pronounced. These divisions between the republican leadership and its base widened at a time when white conservatives were recovering their momentum and aggressively raising the banner of white unity. The federal commitment to black rights began to wane, and after economic crisis in 1873 the clamor to withdraw from entanglement in the South (and on the side of freed slaves) grew louder. Under these pressures, as some of the documents below suggest, Republican strength began to wither, opening the door to the restoration of “white home rule” after the mid-1870s.


Sources:
Document 1. Black Charleston Reacts to News of the Confederate Surrender
Document 2. An Appeal for Resources to Organize the South
Document 3. A North Carolina Republican Attempts to Clear his Name
Document 4. White Moderates Maneuver to Prevent Radical Domination of the Republican Party
Document 5. A South Carolina Agitator Falls Foul of Military Authorities
Document 6. Blacks Organize against Discrimination in the Republican Party
Document 7. North Carolina Conservatives Refuse to Seat a Black Republican Appointee
Document 8. Republicans in Tallyho, North Carolina, Protest against Democratic Fraud
Document 9. Illiteracy, Competence and the Difficulty of Building a Bi-Racial Party
Document 10. Pressures on Freedmen to Vote the Conservative Ticket
Document 11. Election Day Street Confrontations in Charleston
Document 12. A White Schoolteacher on the 1876 Elections in the South Carolina Lowcountry
Document 13. Freedpeople Confront a Black Politician for Having ‘Sold Out his Race’