Civil War reconstruction: Maintaining order
In 1867, just two years after Confederate forces had surrendered at Appomattox, Congress fashioned a set of Reconstruction Acts that would assist the adaption of the South into its new society—accepting blacks and rejoining the Union. The Federal Government partitioned the 11 Confederate states into five districts led by military commanders who used army tactics to provide safety to the newly assimilated African Americans. States now had to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment which would grant citizenship to the newly freed slaves and defend them from Black Codes, (restrictions put on African Americans’ freedom and their ability to work and make money). Lastly, the acts pledged to denying former Confederate leaders positions in political office. This would diminish the possibility of the central government becoming corrupt and denying blacks the freedoms they had recently gained.
But many southerners did not support or obey the government’s orders. Instead, in some areas, violence increased and left members of black communities stripped of their possessions, terrorized, and in some cases, dead. In Dorothy Sterling’s Trouble They Seen: The Story of Reconstruction in the Word of African Americans, the African American residents of Calhoun, Georgia speak to federal forces about the attacks they’ve faced from the Union Republican Party and other white activist groups, stating,
But many southerners did not support or obey the government’s orders. Instead, in some areas, violence increased and left members of black communities stripped of their possessions, terrorized, and in some cases, dead. In Dorothy Sterling’s Trouble They Seen: The Story of Reconstruction in the Word of African Americans, the African American residents of Calhoun, Georgia speak to federal forces about the attacks they’ve faced from the Union Republican Party and other white activist groups, stating,
“There has been houses broken open, windows smashed and doors broken down in the dead hours of the night, men rushing in, cursing and swearing and discharging their Pistols inside the house. Men have been knocked down and unmercifully beaten and yet the authorities do not notice it at all. We would open a school here, but are almost afraid to do so, not knowing that we have any protection for life or limb.”
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Responding to the heavy resistance, Congress passed the Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871 which supervised election in Southern states and sent in forces of officials to monitor the violent backlashes of activist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) against African Americans and white supporters. Marshall Harvey Twitchell, a former northerner and enforcement agent of Louisiana’s Red River Parish, writes about his experience stationed in the South to help along the South’s transition away from slavery:
“My duty was to inform both black and white of their changed relations
from master and slave to employer and employee, giving them the additional
information that it was the order of the government that old master and old
slave should remain where they had been [and] work as usual in the harvesting
of the crop, at which time I would fix the pay of the ex-slave in case he and
his former master did not agree about the amount. I expected all to obey and
should not hesitate to enforce obedience from both employer and employee.
Corporal punishment must not be restored by the planters, but all cases
requiring extreme measures must be reported to me for settlement.”
-- Carpetbagger from Vermont: The Autobiography of Marshall Harvey Twitchell |
Clansmen continued to fight the government’s instructions. According to The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, the degree of threats that officials made increased as KKK members faced exile, imprisonment and death. Some managed to avoid the consequences that the government proposed. During Reconstruction, short periods of time were safer than others for the blacks in the South, however, total order was not even maintained ... even by the turn of the century.