Reconstruction (American history)

“ The suggestion in the proclamation as to maintaining the political frame-work of the States on what is called reconstruction, is made in the hope that it may do good without danger of harm. It will save labor, and avoid great confusion. ”

“ The failure hitherto to present in a single view the striking features of these neglected parts is chiefly responsible for the fact that Reconstruction remains one of the most obscure parts of our history. A candid and comprehensive account of the political events of the time appears to divest the subject of much of the difficulty commonly supposed to attend its investigation. From a sufficient body of essential facts the step to an understanding and exposition of every principle of moment is comparatively easy. ”

“ Nor was it possible for such an era to end in a day. Other peoples have had revolutions, and with like results. The French Revolution, with nearly 1700 years of Christian training behind its victims, and its consequences still a factor of no small power in French life, is a pointed instance. Indeed eras, good or bad, do not really end; they carry forward and onward. The era of Reconstruction carried onward in American life ”

“ Meanwhile, we citizens and citizenesses of the North should remember that Reconstruction means something more than setting things right in the Southern States. We have saved our government and institutions, but we have paid a fearful price for their salvation ”

“ Reconstruction came upon the South with fearful impulse.
Perhaps the "hour is on the wing," when a worthier hand will write the history of the institutional age that was sandwiched between the slavery civilization ante-dating the sixties, and that which minimized the pernicious power of manhood suffrage at the close of the century; or perhaps when that remnant that still survives in the weakness of age to
"Weep o'er their wounds, o'er tales of sorrow done. ”

“ American men and women are working for the reconstruction of France as they would work for the reconstruction of their own homes—and all this because we are all sharing the same hope. A new faith is in our hearts. The Great War is the herald of another world for men. The coming of democracy is the spiritual rebirth. ”

“ The history of the Reconstruction and the merits and demerits of the men who figured in that awful drama belong to the present generation. The unstable Reconstruction regime was overthrown in 1874 and the whites, eliminating the freedmen and free people of color from the government, established what they are pleased to call "home rule." ”

“ And a plan of reconstruction based upon that seems to me far more like a plan of adjourning reconstruction for years, at least, with all the liabilities of mischief which are always to be expected in the fluctuations of politics in a free nation. ”

“ Admitting that some institutions may be better than others, it must also be admitted that human nature is composed of most rebellious material, and that the extent to which it can be modified by social and political institutions of any kind is, at best, extremely small. Such critics may, consequently, have reached the conclusion that the proposed system of reconstruction, even if desirable, would not accomplish anything really effectual or decisive towards the fulfillment of the American national Promise. ”

“ In the reconstruction that is now coming there lies more than the reconstruction of States and the arrangement of the machinery of government. We need to know and feel, all of us, that, from the moment of the death of Slavery, we parted finally from the régime and control of all the old ideas formed under old oppressive systems of society, and came upon a new plane of life. ”

“ Oppressive legislation in the shape of certain apprentice and vagrant laws quickly followed, developing a policy of gross injustice toward the colored people on the part of the courts, and a reign of lawlessness and disorder ensued which, throughout the remote districts of the State at least, continued till Congress, by what are known as the Reconstruction Acts, took into its own hands the rehabilitation of the seceded States. ”

“ In the face of these peremptory words, it is difficult to see what headway can be made in contesting the validity of the Reconstruction Acts, except by arms. If ever a question was political, it is this. It is political in every aspect, whether regarded as springing from the necessity of the case, from the rights of war, from the obligation to guaranty a republican government, or from the power to enforce the abolition of Slavery. Never before was any question [Pg 347] presented so completely political. Reconstruction is as political as the war, or as any of the means for its conduct. ”

“ There is a too easy and sanguine expectation of “good coming out of evil.” People talked as if Armageddon would naturally be followed by the millennium. But history shows that modern wars leave periods of exhaustion and repression. “Reconstruction” is a phrase now much in vogue, but reconstruction is not progress. If two neighbouring families, or several families, quarrel and pull down each others’ houses, there will certainly have to be “reconstruction” ”

“ The curtain has fallen upon the great drama of war. It rises for a political drama equally great. The work of reconstruction presents problems which will tax to the utmost the practical sagacity of the American people ”

“ It is a splendid tribute to the character of Americans that one of the most destructive conflicts in history, with all the animosities which protracted civil wars engender, did not perceptibly impair in them the feelings of humanity. ”

“ A sanguinary and expensive war, growing out of this strengthening of the slave power, had just terminated, adding to the Union still larger territories—now free soil indeed, but furnishing a field for renewed battles between slavery and liberty. New revolutions were about to break forth in Europe, to convulse the Eastern Hemisphere, and cause old thrones to totter and fall!
How momentous the era! How deeply fraught with the prosperity of the American Republic—with the progress of man—the freedom of nations—the happiness of succeeding generations! ”

“ So the statesmen proceeded to manufacture the "Reconstruction policy"—a policy more fatuous, more replete with fatal concessions and far more fatal omissions than any ever before adopted for the acceptance and governance of a rebellious people on the one hand and a newly made, supremely helpless people on the other. ”

“ The principle has been to make such a list of men in public life that the aggregation of all their biographies would give, in this personal shape, the history and the picture of the growth and development of the United States from the beginning of that agitation which led to the Revolution until the completion of that solidarity which we believe has resulted from the civil war and the subsequent reconstruction. ”

“ In a catastrophe, such as this, let that band of patriots to which it is my pride to belong, share in the spirit of the last of the Romans; that spirit which scorns to bow before any earthly power, save that of their beleaguered country.
The reconstruction government has purposely demoralized the economic conditions which contributed to the prosperity of the South. Full well it knew that the wealth of the people depended upon their labor. There was a time when plunder was the great resource of the nations of the earth. ”

“ The process of political reconstruction has been progressing for twenty years and more, and is still incomplete. That is an easy work compared with what must be created intellectually, and socially, and morally. ”

“ The nation had been born anew, and on the fair pages of her history appear no longer the dark stain of human slavery. The strong arm of enterprise quickly washed away the red stain of war. The word 'America' had a deeper and more sacred meaning than before, and the nation was re-established on the indestructible foundation of national unity ”

“ It has been reserved for the power of oppression, in its active and diffused state, to give effect to the unhallowed innovation upon the rights of the South.
Reconstruction is the Gethsemane of southern life. God's law is higher than man's law. Man's feeble statutes cannot annul the immutable ordinances of the Almighty. Those whom God has put asunder, let no man join together. ”

“ Such is the object of the foregoing suggestions towards reconstruction which, radical as they may seem, have been suggested chiefly by an examination of the practical conditions of contemporary reform. Only by the adoption of some such plan can the reformers become something better than perpetual moral protestants who are fighting a battle in which a victory may be less fruitful than defeat. As it is, they are usually flourishing in the eyes of the American people a flask of virtue which, when it is uncorked, proves to be filled with oaths of office. ”

“ In these days when it is the custom of historical essayists to disparage the Congressional work of Reconstruction, it is well that we have an author restating as Mr. Smith does the causes leading to the drastic measures of Reconstruction, the arguments for manhood suffrage, the political theory underlying the War Amendments, and the faith in the equal rights of all men, white or black, that prompted the able and sincere Congressional leaders in Reconstruction times. ”

“ That policy relied for its vindication upon the judgment and conscience of the loyal people, and it was an impeachment of their good faith to say that either could be affected by the removal of one man, or of many men, from official position under the Federal Government. The Reconstruction policy stood upon a strong and enduring principle,—as strong and enduring as the question of human right,—and was sustained with vigor and enthusiasm by the great party which was responsible for the war measures that had saved the Union. ”

“ There is much yet to do and to suffer, and there is need of wisdom, patience, and sacrifice in the renovation of our country, and the establishment of free institutions throughout the South, involving as it does the complete reconstruction of society there. ”

“ To bring this study within the plan and purposes of the American Crisis Series of Biographies, such subjects as “The Genesis of the Anti-Slavery Agitation,” “The Fugitive Slave Law,” “The Underground Railway,” “The American Colonization Society,” “The Conflict in Kansas for Free Soil,” “The John Brown Raid,” “The Civil War,” “The Enlistment of Colored Troops,” and “Reconstruction,” have been given more space than they have received in earlier biographies. ”

“ The fact was then recognized that this was the settled and accepted policy of the Government and that further opposition to it was useless. A few of the southern whites, General Alcorn being one of the number, had accepted the result of the Presidential and Congressional elections of 1868 as conclusive as to the policy of the country with reference to Reconstruction; but those who thought and acted along those lines at that time were exceptions to the general rule. ”

“ Let the reconstruction be the work of such men only as can be trusted for the Union. Exclude all others, and trust that your government so organized will be recognized here as being the one of republican form to be guaranteed to the State, and to be protected against invasion and domestic violence. ”

“ But, sir, speaking from the shadow of that memory, which I honor as I do nothing else on earth, I say that the cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his life was adjudged by higher and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am glad that the omniscient God held the balance of battle in his Almighty hand, and that human slavery was swept forever from American soil—the American Union saved from the wreck of war. ”

“ Nothing is more delightful to the human mind than to ascend
from important results to their primitive causes; and surely the
Reformation alone has produced as extensive and important
effects as the American Revolution: yet how few understand
the springs which set that tremendous machine in motion.
America is now vigorous and majestic ”

“ The Civil war gendered this brood that filled the South with horror, and their disorders and tumults precipitated a crisis that plunged the Southland into a paroxysm from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. There was no refuge from an evil that was all-pervasive. The great war with its pageants and sacrifices, its banners and generals, its storming soldiery and reservoirs of human blood was almost thrust out of the memory as the patriots of the sixties stood face to face to the all-encompassing perils of reconstruction. ”

“ As I survey the growing and enormous moral evils which degrade society, here as everywhere, in spite of Bunker Hills and Plymouth Rocks, and all the windy declamations of politicians and philanthropists, and all the advance in useful mechanisms, I am sometimes tempted to propound inquiries which suggest the old, mournful story of the decline and ruin of States and Empires. I ask myself, Why should America be an exception to the uniform fate of nations, as history has demonstrated? ”

“ In spite of all the confusion and ruin and bloodshed, in spite of all the mourning, and suffering, and sundering of ties, and upheaving of the very foundations and apparent total disruption of American society, no greater blessing could have befallen us than this same war, which has roused us to a new life, to the consciousness of defects and determination of reform, thereby planting us firmly on the true road to prosperity and happiness and power. ”