February 5, 2025 • 19 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in our 33rd episode of "The Story of America" series, Bill McClay, author of Land of Hope, tells the story of what happened after the guns fell silent across America following our deadliest man-made disaster to date—the Civil War—and how despite massive gains in bringing "liberty and justice to all", not all was well in transforming and healing the nation.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories and with another
installment of our series about Us, the Story of America
series with Hillsdale College professor and author of Land of
Hope Bill McLay. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln had profound
implications for the country outside of the sheer shock and
(00:31):
terror it caused. How was the South to be rebuilt,
the nation reconstructed? How would those who sided with the
Confederacy be treated? Let's get into the story, take it away, Bill.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
The year eighteen sixty six would prove to be an
important one regarding the advancement of civil rights. The Fourteenth
Amendment to the US Constitution passed in June of that year.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
This historic amendment was far broader and.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Impactful than the Civil Rights Act and much more complicated.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
It would be.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
The first time that Americans would lay down a definition
of what it meant to be a citizen. More important,
it stated quite clearly that all persons born or naturalized
in the United States were citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment also
guaranteed citizens their rights could not be taken away without
equal protection.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Of the laws.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
What made those words in the amendments so important? Those
words equal protection of the laws. Was this those words
extended to each of the states in the very same
manner that the federal government was required to do so.
This would be the beginning of a process developed in
our courts extending through the nineteen twenties, of a concept
(01:58):
called incorporation, which would extend the guarantees and protections of
the Bill of Rights to the states. See Before incorporation,
the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government,
making the Fourteenth Amendment a significant contribution to the rights
of all Americans with great long term and lasting impact.
(02:21):
But that was just section one of five sections. Section
two was directed at the refusal of those Southern states
to grant voting rights to their black citizens. The terms
of this section were strong, punishing states that kept any
eligible persons.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
From voting, and the punishment was harsh.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
The guilty states would have their representation in Congress and
the Electoral College reduced for violations. To say the least,
President Andrew Johnson was not pleased.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
As the eighteen sixties's.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Mid term election approached, he decided to go on national
campaign tour, something presidents didn't do, putting the Fourteenth Amendment
itself on trial. The tactic had some success at first,
but then things began to unravel. In Cleveland, he got
entangled with a spectator and exchanged that bordered on a
(03:21):
shouting match with a heckler. Those irredvised and intemperate remarks
of his were picked up by the media of.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
The day, newspapers and broadsides.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
By the end of his campaign tour, things only got
worse for Johnson as he was met with jeering crowds
who made every effort to drown out his effort to
address them. The elections that fall were a huge repudiation
of Johnson's efforts, as the Republicans garnered unprecedented landslide victories,
leaving the party in control of the House of Representatives
(03:55):
and the Senate.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
With veto proof majorities.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
It would effectively end Johnson's presidency. Never before in our
history had one branch of government had such control and
power over the other two, And in early eighteen sixty seven,
the all powerful Congress passed not one, not two, but
three reconstruction Acts that all but treated the states of
(04:23):
the South as a congregnation, even abolishing the state governments,
dividing the Southern territory into five distinct military districts and
placing the entire region under what was in essence a
military occupation. But Congress wasn't finished. It also passed something
called the Tenure of Office Act, which prohibited the President
(04:47):
of the United States from removing any federal official from
any office without Congress's consent. This was a measure that
was clearly unconstitutional, but understandable given the nature of the
politics of the day. Republicans didn't want Johnson to be
able to remove officials by his whim, one of whom
(05:11):
was the Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who had the
job of overseeing the military governments in the South. Johnson
was undeterred, stepping right into the trap that Congress had
baited for him by firing Stanton. The House of Representatives
took quick action, exercising its constitutional authority to impeach Johnson.
(05:36):
This set the stage for one hack of a quasi
courtroom drama, one with huge political states. As instructed by
Article one, Section three of the Constitution, impeached presidents are
tried in the Senate with the two thirds vote needed
for conviction, a wise choice by our founders picking such
(05:59):
a large majority.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
This trial went on for what seemed like an eternity.
Three months three months, and.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
The trial was filled with twists and turns, palace intrigues,
courtroom theatrics, and packed galleries. When the vote was finally taken,
Johnson survived by the narrowest of margins, one vote, one
unexpected vote against conviction by Republican.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Senator from Kansas named Edmund Ross.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Johnson had survived, but his presidency had come to an end.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Angry.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Right up until the bitter end of his presidency, Johnson's
last act as president was designed to infuriate his opponents
and enemies. He pardoned Jefferson Davis, the former president of
the Confederate.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Well.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
The Republicans turned the page choosing Ulysses S. Grant as
their candidate in the eighteen sixty eight election. He was
a hero, a man with great war experience and absolutely
no political experience, but he was viewed by the Republicans
as a candidate that people would respond to, would be
attracted to in much the same way that generals like
(07:29):
George Washington and Andrew Jackson had been. Despite his military honorifics.
Though Grant won by a very slim margin, the fact
that gave impetus to a quick passage of the fifteenth
Amendment designed to protect.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
The right to vote for former slaves.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Okay, so let's step back for a moment and ask
a bigger question. Had the radicals succeeded or failed as
he related to the reconstruction.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Of the South.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
The states of the Confederacy were under the control of
Republican governance, and they not only secured the right to
vote of freed slaves, but in a few instances elected
lack officials. There were real and profound improvements on infrastructure,
the building of a public school system, building of hospitals.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
These were not small things, but the facts on the
ground were more stark.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
The government of the Southern States was still controlled by whites,
and Northerners who came to the South did so for
any number of reasons, some idealistic and some opportunistic. The
white Southerners labeled such outsiders with the derogatory term carpetbaggers.
Those Northerners were undeterred, as for the free slaves, though
(08:46):
they didn't get the forty acres and a mule they'd
hoped and prayed for, a deferred dream that meant, for
all practical purposes that most freed blacks would still be
working for white landowners, which would lead to the development
of contractual arrangements like sharecroppers. The farmers would receive their tools, seeds,
(09:08):
and other supplies that they needed to do their work,
and for those advances, the farmers agreed to give a
percentage of their crops, generally in the range of one
half to one third. Add to that the fact that
the remaining portion of the crop was often dedicated to
paying off other debts and encumbrances, the result didn't feel
very much different from slavery itself, and though progress was
(09:32):
evidence in many areas of the freed slaves' lives, by
the time Grant was in office, anti black hostility began
to swell in the South, which manifested itself in the
founding of the Ku Klux Klan and organizations like it.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
When we come back, you'll hear more about this story
what happens when Grant becomes president. This story continues here
on our American Stories, and we returned to our American
(10:11):
Stories and our latest installment of our Story of America
series with doctor Bill McLay, author of the terrific book
Land of Hope. When we last left off. Despite best intentions,
reconstruction was running into very serious problems, and African Americans
in the South was starting to move back to a
place where they were before. Let's get back to the story.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
General Grant, a man with a soldier's heart and mindset,
went about putting an end to these attacks, and at
his urging, Congress went ahead and passed three enforcement Acts
in eighteen seventy and eighteen seventy one. Though the acts
were created to deter such violence and protect black voting rights,
(11:02):
enforcement proved very difficult. The very groups it was designed
to control proved uncontrollable. In reality, those hateful and violent
groups only seemed to get stronger. It didn't take long
for the threats of violence to achieve the political ends
these groups were seeking. The story of one Mississippi County
(11:25):
Yazoo County, tells us the tale. In eighteen seventy three,
Republicans cast nearly twenty five hundred votes, while Democrats cast
a bit over six hundred, a bit more than a
four to one advantage. In eighteen seventy six, two years later,
Democrats received slightly over four thousand votes, where Republicans received
(11:50):
an astonishing.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Low number of seven. Yeah, you heard that right. Seven.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
The campaign of terror waged by the Kukluklan and other
groups like it was a success. They'd lost the Civil War,
but now we're continuing it with a different kind of war,
and it raged on. You may be wondering what were
the Northern States doing and thinking as all of this
(12:18):
was happening. Well, it turns out that much of the
idealistic zeal that drove the Great Abolition Movement and the
reforms that Northerners.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Hoped would follow the war had withered away. By then.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
The North had issues of its own problems to solve,
a new continent to grow and expand expansion of the railroads,
a modern industrial economy to build, and an immigrant population
to build that industrial economy. So opportunity beckoned, prosperity beckoned
(12:56):
reform took a back seat. There were other factors that
played too, were nuanced factors. As the war and memories
of it began to fade, loyalties of old began to
re emerge. While the Virginia had definitely been an enemy
of the North in the Civil War, it was also
(13:18):
true that native sons of Virginia, like George Washington. James
Madison and Thomas Jefferson were great national heroes.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
The nation could not have become what it is without them.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Abraham Lincoln was himself a Southerner by birth. The mystic
courts of memory that he so beautifully wrote about, a
deep urge for the.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Nation to move ahead together was not lost entirely.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Indeed, a well of support for a national reconciliation emerged,
even when it entailed looking past the seemingly entrenched social
and racial problems of the South. The knockout blow to
the reconstruction effort would come with the eighteen seventy six
presidential election, which pitted Rutherford B.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Hayes against Samuel Tilden.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Both of the candidates favored a more hands off approach
in the South, whereas the candidates disagreed on very few
big issues, which meant that the campaign would rely less
on policy debates than on personal character attacks and personal slurs.
Democrats attacked Republicans for being corrupt. Republicans accused Democrats of
(14:34):
being the party of secession, the cause of the Civil
War itself.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
It was a very close election.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Tilden won the popular vote by a tiny majority, but
was a single vote.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Shy of a win in the electoral college, there.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Were flurries of claims and counterclaims by the two parties,
and Congress weighed in with an election commission to decide
the outcome. In the end, it was not pretty, but
Hayes was able to win the day with one vote
on a strict party line. Democrats, to put it mild,
(15:09):
they were not pleased at the outcome, and of course
why should they have been, and they threatened to use
every weapon at their disposal to thwart the Republicans. They
even threatened a march on Washington to force the inauguration
of Filden. In the end, an agreement was cobbled together
to save the day. It would become known as the
Compromise of eighteen seventy seven. It was a steep price
(15:33):
to be paid for this compromise. The Republicans promised that
if Hayes was made president, they would withdraw the remaining
troops in the South and also allow the final to
Republican state governments in Louisiana and South Carolina to end.
(15:54):
For that promised that Democrats agreed to end their fight
against Hayes and agreed to fully accept and acknowledge the thirteenth, fourteenth,
and fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. With that agreement, the
Reconstruction era finally met its end. Looking back as difficult
not to see the Grand Plan as mostly a failed project.
(16:23):
One man, a former slave named Henry Adams, may have
singularly expressed what many thought.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
In eighteen seventy seven. We lost all hopes.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
We found ourselves in such condition that we looked around
and we saw that there was no way on earth.
It seemed that we could better our condition there, and
we discussed that thoroughly in our organization. Along in May,
we said that the whole South had got into the
hands of the very men that held us as slaves.
(16:57):
And we thought that the men that held us slaves
was holding the reins of government over our heads in
every respect, the Constable up to the governor.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
We felt we had almost as well be slaves under
these men.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
What utterly tragic words, those final words bear repeating. We
felt we'd almost as well be slaves under these men.
Whatever life there may have been for a better future
for blacks in the South, whatever hope they had had
had been in Adams's view of things, extinguished hope itself,
(17:40):
for blacks had been killed. The fact is the reformers
on all sides underestimated the difficulties of this task of
reformation during the Reconstruction era. The fact is changing a
culture is not a small task, takes generations. If anyone
understood these matters, it was able to him Lincoln.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
But in reflecting upon the era.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
And sadly the fact that Lincoln was not alive to
lead us into that era, one must not lose sight
of some of the major accomplishments, which included the passage
of those three great amendments to the US Constitution, the thirteenth,
fourteenth and fifteenth Amendment.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
These were not a small things.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
These were fundamental changes in our constitution, improvements of our constitution.
But there were still deep wounds to heal, and much
important work that had been left undone. That work that healing,
real reconciliation, would await the labors of future generations.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Had a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Monty Montgomery, and a special thanks to
Hillsdale College professor doctor Bill McLay. His book Land of
Hope and the Young Readers are important reads. Pick up
one for your family. Heck, pick up two. Give them
to the kids, lead them to the kids, better still,
and the grandkids. The Story of America series. Here on
(19:13):
our American Stories
And we returned to our American stories and with another
installment of our series about Us, the Story of America
series with Hillsdale College professor and author of Land of
Hope Bill McLay. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln had profound
implications for the country outside of the sheer shock and
(00:31):
terror it caused. How was the South to be rebuilt,
the nation reconstructed? How would those who sided with the
Confederacy be treated? Let's get into the story, take it away, Bill.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
The year eighteen sixty six would prove to be an
important one regarding the advancement of civil rights. The Fourteenth
Amendment to the US Constitution passed in June of that year.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
This historic amendment was far broader and.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Impactful than the Civil Rights Act and much more complicated.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
It would be.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
The first time that Americans would lay down a definition
of what it meant to be a citizen. More important,
it stated quite clearly that all persons born or naturalized
in the United States were citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment also
guaranteed citizens their rights could not be taken away without
equal protection.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Of the laws.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
What made those words in the amendments so important? Those
words equal protection of the laws. Was this those words
extended to each of the states in the very same
manner that the federal government was required to do so.
This would be the beginning of a process developed in
our courts extending through the nineteen twenties, of a concept
(01:58):
called incorporation, which would extend the guarantees and protections of
the Bill of Rights to the states. See Before incorporation,
the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government,
making the Fourteenth Amendment a significant contribution to the rights
of all Americans with great long term and lasting impact.
(02:21):
But that was just section one of five sections. Section
two was directed at the refusal of those Southern states
to grant voting rights to their black citizens. The terms
of this section were strong, punishing states that kept any
eligible persons.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
From voting, and the punishment was harsh.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
The guilty states would have their representation in Congress and
the Electoral College reduced for violations. To say the least,
President Andrew Johnson was not pleased.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
As the eighteen sixties's.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Mid term election approached, he decided to go on national
campaign tour, something presidents didn't do, putting the Fourteenth Amendment
itself on trial. The tactic had some success at first,
but then things began to unravel. In Cleveland, he got
entangled with a spectator and exchanged that bordered on a
(03:21):
shouting match with a heckler. Those irredvised and intemperate remarks
of his were picked up by the media of.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
The day, newspapers and broadsides.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
By the end of his campaign tour, things only got
worse for Johnson as he was met with jeering crowds
who made every effort to drown out his effort to
address them. The elections that fall were a huge repudiation
of Johnson's efforts, as the Republicans garnered unprecedented landslide victories,
leaving the party in control of the House of Representatives
(03:55):
and the Senate.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
With veto proof majorities.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
It would effectively end Johnson's presidency. Never before in our
history had one branch of government had such control and
power over the other two, And in early eighteen sixty seven,
the all powerful Congress passed not one, not two, but
three reconstruction Acts that all but treated the states of
(04:23):
the South as a congregnation, even abolishing the state governments,
dividing the Southern territory into five distinct military districts and
placing the entire region under what was in essence a
military occupation. But Congress wasn't finished. It also passed something
called the Tenure of Office Act, which prohibited the President
(04:47):
of the United States from removing any federal official from
any office without Congress's consent. This was a measure that
was clearly unconstitutional, but understandable given the nature of the
politics of the day. Republicans didn't want Johnson to be
able to remove officials by his whim, one of whom
(05:11):
was the Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who had the
job of overseeing the military governments in the South. Johnson
was undeterred, stepping right into the trap that Congress had
baited for him by firing Stanton. The House of Representatives
took quick action, exercising its constitutional authority to impeach Johnson.
(05:36):
This set the stage for one hack of a quasi
courtroom drama, one with huge political states. As instructed by
Article one, Section three of the Constitution, impeached presidents are
tried in the Senate with the two thirds vote needed
for conviction, a wise choice by our founders picking such
(05:59):
a large majority.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
This trial went on for what seemed like an eternity.
Three months three months, and.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
The trial was filled with twists and turns, palace intrigues,
courtroom theatrics, and packed galleries. When the vote was finally taken,
Johnson survived by the narrowest of margins, one vote, one
unexpected vote against conviction by Republican.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Senator from Kansas named Edmund Ross.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Johnson had survived, but his presidency had come to an end.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Angry.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Right up until the bitter end of his presidency, Johnson's
last act as president was designed to infuriate his opponents
and enemies. He pardoned Jefferson Davis, the former president of
the Confederate.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Well.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
The Republicans turned the page choosing Ulysses S. Grant as
their candidate in the eighteen sixty eight election. He was
a hero, a man with great war experience and absolutely
no political experience, but he was viewed by the Republicans
as a candidate that people would respond to, would be
attracted to in much the same way that generals like
(07:29):
George Washington and Andrew Jackson had been. Despite his military honorifics.
Though Grant won by a very slim margin, the fact
that gave impetus to a quick passage of the fifteenth
Amendment designed to protect.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
The right to vote for former slaves.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Okay, so let's step back for a moment and ask
a bigger question. Had the radicals succeeded or failed as
he related to the reconstruction.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Of the South.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
The states of the Confederacy were under the control of
Republican governance, and they not only secured the right to
vote of freed slaves, but in a few instances elected
lack officials. There were real and profound improvements on infrastructure,
the building of a public school system, building of hospitals.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
These were not small things, but the facts on the
ground were more stark.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
The government of the Southern States was still controlled by whites,
and Northerners who came to the South did so for
any number of reasons, some idealistic and some opportunistic. The
white Southerners labeled such outsiders with the derogatory term carpetbaggers.
Those Northerners were undeterred, as for the free slaves, though
(08:46):
they didn't get the forty acres and a mule they'd
hoped and prayed for, a deferred dream that meant, for
all practical purposes that most freed blacks would still be
working for white landowners, which would lead to the development
of contractual arrangements like sharecroppers. The farmers would receive their tools, seeds,
(09:08):
and other supplies that they needed to do their work,
and for those advances, the farmers agreed to give a
percentage of their crops, generally in the range of one
half to one third. Add to that the fact that
the remaining portion of the crop was often dedicated to
paying off other debts and encumbrances, the result didn't feel
very much different from slavery itself, and though progress was
(09:32):
evidence in many areas of the freed slaves' lives, by
the time Grant was in office, anti black hostility began
to swell in the South, which manifested itself in the
founding of the Ku Klux Klan and organizations like it.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
When we come back, you'll hear more about this story
what happens when Grant becomes president. This story continues here
on our American Stories, and we returned to our American
(10:11):
Stories and our latest installment of our Story of America
series with doctor Bill McLay, author of the terrific book
Land of Hope. When we last left off. Despite best intentions,
reconstruction was running into very serious problems, and African Americans
in the South was starting to move back to a
place where they were before. Let's get back to the story.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
General Grant, a man with a soldier's heart and mindset,
went about putting an end to these attacks, and at
his urging, Congress went ahead and passed three enforcement Acts
in eighteen seventy and eighteen seventy one. Though the acts
were created to deter such violence and protect black voting rights,
(11:02):
enforcement proved very difficult. The very groups it was designed
to control proved uncontrollable. In reality, those hateful and violent
groups only seemed to get stronger. It didn't take long
for the threats of violence to achieve the political ends
these groups were seeking. The story of one Mississippi County
(11:25):
Yazoo County, tells us the tale. In eighteen seventy three,
Republicans cast nearly twenty five hundred votes, while Democrats cast
a bit over six hundred, a bit more than a
four to one advantage. In eighteen seventy six, two years later,
Democrats received slightly over four thousand votes, where Republicans received
(11:50):
an astonishing.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Low number of seven. Yeah, you heard that right. Seven.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
The campaign of terror waged by the Kukluklan and other
groups like it was a success. They'd lost the Civil War,
but now we're continuing it with a different kind of war,
and it raged on. You may be wondering what were
the Northern States doing and thinking as all of this
(12:18):
was happening. Well, it turns out that much of the
idealistic zeal that drove the Great Abolition Movement and the
reforms that Northerners.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Hoped would follow the war had withered away. By then.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
The North had issues of its own problems to solve,
a new continent to grow and expand expansion of the railroads,
a modern industrial economy to build, and an immigrant population
to build that industrial economy. So opportunity beckoned, prosperity beckoned
(12:56):
reform took a back seat. There were other factors that
played too, were nuanced factors. As the war and memories
of it began to fade, loyalties of old began to
re emerge. While the Virginia had definitely been an enemy
of the North in the Civil War, it was also
(13:18):
true that native sons of Virginia, like George Washington. James
Madison and Thomas Jefferson were great national heroes.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
The nation could not have become what it is without them.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Abraham Lincoln was himself a Southerner by birth. The mystic
courts of memory that he so beautifully wrote about, a
deep urge for the.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Nation to move ahead together was not lost entirely.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Indeed, a well of support for a national reconciliation emerged,
even when it entailed looking past the seemingly entrenched social
and racial problems of the South. The knockout blow to
the reconstruction effort would come with the eighteen seventy six
presidential election, which pitted Rutherford B.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Hayes against Samuel Tilden.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Both of the candidates favored a more hands off approach
in the South, whereas the candidates disagreed on very few
big issues, which meant that the campaign would rely less
on policy debates than on personal character attacks and personal slurs.
Democrats attacked Republicans for being corrupt. Republicans accused Democrats of
(14:34):
being the party of secession, the cause of the Civil
War itself.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
It was a very close election.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Tilden won the popular vote by a tiny majority, but
was a single vote.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Shy of a win in the electoral college, there.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Were flurries of claims and counterclaims by the two parties,
and Congress weighed in with an election commission to decide
the outcome. In the end, it was not pretty, but
Hayes was able to win the day with one vote
on a strict party line. Democrats, to put it mild,
(15:09):
they were not pleased at the outcome, and of course
why should they have been, and they threatened to use
every weapon at their disposal to thwart the Republicans. They
even threatened a march on Washington to force the inauguration
of Filden. In the end, an agreement was cobbled together
to save the day. It would become known as the
Compromise of eighteen seventy seven. It was a steep price
(15:33):
to be paid for this compromise. The Republicans promised that
if Hayes was made president, they would withdraw the remaining
troops in the South and also allow the final to
Republican state governments in Louisiana and South Carolina to end.
(15:54):
For that promised that Democrats agreed to end their fight
against Hayes and agreed to fully accept and acknowledge the thirteenth, fourteenth,
and fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. With that agreement, the
Reconstruction era finally met its end. Looking back as difficult
not to see the Grand Plan as mostly a failed project.
(16:23):
One man, a former slave named Henry Adams, may have
singularly expressed what many thought.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
In eighteen seventy seven. We lost all hopes.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
We found ourselves in such condition that we looked around
and we saw that there was no way on earth.
It seemed that we could better our condition there, and
we discussed that thoroughly in our organization. Along in May,
we said that the whole South had got into the
hands of the very men that held us as slaves.
(16:57):
And we thought that the men that held us slaves
was holding the reins of government over our heads in
every respect, the Constable up to the governor.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
We felt we had almost as well be slaves under
these men.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
What utterly tragic words, those final words bear repeating. We
felt we'd almost as well be slaves under these men.
Whatever life there may have been for a better future
for blacks in the South, whatever hope they had had
had been in Adams's view of things, extinguished hope itself,
(17:40):
for blacks had been killed. The fact is the reformers
on all sides underestimated the difficulties of this task of
reformation during the Reconstruction era. The fact is changing a
culture is not a small task, takes generations. If anyone
understood these matters, it was able to him Lincoln.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
But in reflecting upon the era.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
And sadly the fact that Lincoln was not alive to
lead us into that era, one must not lose sight
of some of the major accomplishments, which included the passage
of those three great amendments to the US Constitution, the thirteenth,
fourteenth and fifteenth Amendment.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
These were not a small things.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
These were fundamental changes in our constitution, improvements of our constitution.
But there were still deep wounds to heal, and much
important work that had been left undone. That work that healing,
real reconciliation, would await the labors of future generations.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Had a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Monty Montgomery, and a special thanks to
Hillsdale College professor doctor Bill McLay. His book Land of
Hope and the Young Readers are important reads. Pick up
one for your family. Heck, pick up two. Give them
to the kids, lead them to the kids, better still,
and the grandkids. The Story of America series. Here on
(19:13):
our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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