Reconstruction era

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let the Reconstruction Acts be maintained in peace, in other words, let peace be established in the Rebel States, and the menace of Repudiation will disappear from the scene,—none so poor to do it reverence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It calls for no less that the reconstruction and the demilitarization of the whole civilized world—a world organically unified in all the essential aspects of its life, its political machinery, its spiritual aspiration, its trade and finance, its script and language, and yet infinite in the diversity of the national characteristics of its federated units. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In expecting to realize social reconstruction without political reconstruction—however divergent the aims may now seem to be—he expects to achieve what has never been achieved in any country in the Empire, and to achieve this miracle in the very country which has suffered most from political repression, and possesses the most fantastic system of government to be found in the King's dominions. ”

“ 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” ”

“ Our manifest national policy has been foreshadowed by the conditions that have been created. Averse to wars of conquest, and free from disturbing visions of imperial power and grandeur, the nation has become great beyond the dreams of its founders. A new era is upon it—a condition and not a theory confronts it. Its traditions must be partially shattered and its policy revised and shaped with reference to the exigencies of the times. ”

“ And thus, leaving to others the ostensible part in the work of reconstruction, and abstaining studiously from all political connection and activity, I have hoped in some measure, and in a quiet way, to repair the evil I contributed to bring upon the South by availing myself of every appropriate private opportunity to suggest these counsels of moderation and magnanimity. Passion, to which in truth we had abundant provocation, precipitated us into secession; reason must conduct us back into the path of peace and prosperity. ”

“ There are here no signs of a millennium. Internal reconstruction, while men are still limited, egotistical, passionate, ignorant, and ignorantly led, means seditions and revolutions, and the rectification of frontiers means wars. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Reconstruction sounds the key note of American politics to-day. It is as true now as when Webster first said it, that 'the people of this country, by a vast and countless majority, are attached to the Union.' Reconstruction is the hope of the Union; and the hope of the Union is the controlling energy of the war. Hence, naturally, the theories that prevail in regard to reconstruction begin to define the political parties of the immediate future. ”

“ It is easy enough for the men of our time to criticise, to find fault with and to underrate the efforts of the statesmen of forty years ago who devised the plan for the reconstruction of the states which had been in rebellion. ”

“ The disloyal people came out of their hiding places, and, with apparent sincerity and gratitude, took the oath of allegiance, and went to work as good citizens to perform their part in the work of reconstruction. Union men and rebels shook hands over the bloody chasm, and agreed to bury the past and work together for a better future. ”

“ We should also probably better understand the conditions of successful growth or reform, and have less toleration for schemes of social reconstruction.
Civilization has been of slow and painful growth. ”

“ That in the work of Reconstruction it is important that no false step should be taken, interposing obstacle or delay, but that, by careful provisions, we should make haste to complete the work, so that the unity of the Republic shall be secured on permanent foundations, and fraternal relations once more established among all the people thereof. ”

“ 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 beginning of reconstruction the alternative presented itself to us whether we would keep the rebel States under military government until another generation should have grown up untainted by the spirit of slavery, not animated by those fierce passions which had been engendered by the war, a generation that, in one word, might have been expected to enter into the new order of things with readiness ”

“ The monarchies that would probably have collapsed through internal forces and given place to modern democratic states were smashed from the outside, and a process of political reconstruction, that has probably missed out the complete formal democratic phase altogether—and that has been enormously complicated through religious, national, and dynastic traditions—set in. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Third comes nationalism. The government should help and guide the weak and small racial groups within its national boundaries toward self-determination and self-government. It should offer resistance to foreign aggression, and simultaneously it should revise foreign treaties in order to restore our equality and independence among the nations. 5. The program of national reconstruction shall be divided into three periods:- First the military period ”

“ In the case of countries whose political system underwent a general reconstitution during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era it has been thought not feasible to allude, even briefly, to historical developments prior to the later eighteenth century. ”

“ Certainly we are now being forced back to a new consideration of this periodical beat, in history at least, for now that our own era, which came in by the power of the Renaissance and the Reformation and received its final energizing force through the revolutions of the eighteenth century and the industrial revolution of the nineteenth, is so manifestly coming to its end, we look backward for precedents for this unexpected debacle and lo, they appear every five hundred years back as far as history records. ”

“ The critics of the reconstruction policy are often challenged by its defenders with the question, "But what better course can you suggest, even now?" And the immense difficulty of the problem, even as calmly viewed to-day by the closet student, may well make us charitable toward the men who, for the most part, did the best they knew under the immediate besetment of measureless perplexities and contradictions. ”

“ The absence of slavery, the existence of the Press; the healthful proportions of kingdoms, neither too confined nor too vast, have created new hopes, which history cannot destroy. As a proof, look to all late revolutions: in England the Civil Wars, the Reformation,—in France her awful Saturnalia, her military despotism! Has either nation fallen back? ”

“ 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." ”

“ In the enforcement of the policy of Reconstruction in the South, the evidences were from day to day becoming so cumulative and decisive, that nothing but the discipline of an enraged party, coupled with the "spoils" principle, prevented the whole mass of the community from a universal expression of its desire to have it abandoned. Reasoning men everywhere felt that it must continue to multiply its mischiefs. ”

“ The National Government shall reconstruct the Republic of China on the basis of the revolutionary the Three People's Principles and the Quintuple-Power Constitution. 2. The primary task of reconstruction is the people's livelihood. ”

“ Without intervention from the leaders, reconstruction threatened in time to turn the new nation into an agrarian and proletarian democracy. It is impossible to predict what would have been worked out in time, whether the democratic idealism implicit in the Declaration of Independence would have materialized into a form of society very much modified from the ancient State. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Backed by a State whose resources are second to none in the Union, emerging from an early history of bloody struggle and battle, rising like the fabled Phœnix, from the ashes of an apparent ruin, contributing her best blood and treasure to the war for liberty and union, she may well be proud of her past record, her present progress, her advancement toward a high civilization and her assured position. ”

“ The mind sickens in contemplating the mistakes of the "Reconstruction policy;" and the revolting peculation and crime—which went hand in hand from 1867-8 to 1876, bankrupting and terrorizing those unfortunate States—plunging them into all but anarchy, pure and simple. ”

“ Just as, in my view, reform must naturally precede the securing of independence, liberty, and equality, in political dogma, so do I believe that the political synthesis, or at any rate a glimpse of this synthesis, must, in the new epoch, precede in renovated Europe the manifestation of the religious synthesis of the epoch. ”