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Reconstruction was an era of unprecedented political conflict and of far-reaching changes in the nature of American government. At the national level, new laws and constitutional amendments permanently altered the federal system and the definition of citizenship. In the South, a politically mobilized black community joined with white allies to bring the Republican party to power, while excluding those accustomed to ruling the region.

The national debate over Reconstruction centered on three questions: on what terms should the defeated Confederacy be reunited with the Union? Who should establish these terms, Congress or the President? What should be the place of the former slaves in the political life of the South?

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During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln announced a lenient plan, with suffrage limited to whites, to attract Southern Confederates back to the Union. By the end of his life, however, Lincoln had come to favor extending the right to vote to educated blacks and former soldiers.

Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, in 1865 put into effect his own Reconstruction plan, which gave the white South a free hand in establishing new governments. Many Northerners became convinced that Johnson's policy, and the actions of the governments he established, threatened to reduce African Americans to a condition similar to slavery, while allowing former "rebels" to regain political power in the South. As a result, Congress overturned Johnson's program. Between 1866 and 1869, Congress enacted new laws and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution, guaranteeing blacks' civil rights and giving black men the right to vote.

These measures for the first time enshrined in American law the principle that the rights of citizens could not be abridged because of race. And they led directly to the creation of new governments in the South elected by blacks as well as white -- America's first experiment in interracial democracy.

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Subsection Label: Presidential Reconstruction

President Andrew Johnson in 1865 implemented a plan of Reconstruction that gave the white South a free hand in regulating the transition from slavery to freedom and offered no role to blacks in the politics of the South. The conduct of the governments he established turned many Northerners against the president's policies.

The end of the Civil War found the nation without a settled Reconstruction policy. In May 1865, President Andrew Johnson offered a pardon to all white Southerners except Confederate leaders and wealthy planters (although most of these later received individual pardons), and authorized them to create new governments. Blacks were denied any role in the process. Johnson also ordered nearly all the land in the hands of the government returned to its prewar owners -- dashing black hope for economic autonomy.

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At the outset, most Northerners believed Johnson's plan deserved a chance to succeed. The course followed by Southern state governments under Presidential Reconstruction, however, turned most of the North against Johnson's policy. Members of the old Southern elite, including many who had served in the Confederate government and army, returned to power. The new legislatures passed the Black Codes, severely limiting the former slaves' legal rights and economic options so as to force them to return to the plantations as dependent laborers. Some states limited the occupations open to blacks. None allowed any blacks to vote, or provided public funds for their education. The apparent inability of the South's white leaders to accept the reality of emancipation undermined Northern support for Johnson's policies.

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Biographical Sidebar: Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson (1808-1875) came from the humblest origins of any man who reached the White House. Born in poverty in North Carolina, he worked as a youth as a tailor's apprentice.

After moving to Greenville, Tennessee, Johnson achieved success through politics. Beginning as an alderman, he rose to serve two terms as governor. Although the owner of five slaves before the Civil War, Johnson identified himself as the champion of his state's "honest yeomen" and a foe of large planters, who he described as a "bloated, corrupted aristocracy." He strongly promoted public education, and free land for Western settlers.

A fervent believer in states rights, Johnson was also a strong defender of the Union. He was the only Senator from a seceding state to remain at his post in 1861, and when Union forces occupied Tennessee, Abraham Lincoln named him military governor. In 1864, he was elected vice president.

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Succeeding to the presidency after Lincoln's death, Johnson failed to provide the nation with enlightened leadership, or deal effectively with Congress. Racism prevented him from responding to black demands for civil rights, and personal inflexibility rendered him unable to compromise with Congress. Johnson's vetoes of Reconstruction legislation and opposition to the Fourteenth Amendment alienated most Republicans. In 1868, he came within one vote of being removed from office by impeachment.

After leaving office in 1875, Johnson returned to Tennessee. He died shortly after being reelected to the Senate.

1 Andrew Johnson, c. 1865. (Library of Congress)

2 Andrew Johnson's Masonic apron, painted silk, c. 1860. (Tennessee State Museum Collection)
In 1851, Andrew Johnson, then a U.S. Congressman, became a Mason. Perhaps his lifelong devotion to the order reflected his aspirations to rise above his humble origins and the pride he took in doing so. The symbols on Johnson's ceremonial apron indicate that he had attained a high rank in the fraternal order.

3 "Selling a Freeman to Pay His Fine at Monticello, Florida," Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, January 19, 1867.
According to Florida's Black Code, blacks who violated broke labor contracts could be whipped, pilloried, and sold for up to one year's labor.

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Subsection Label: Congress and Civil Rights

Reconstructing the South became a divisive issue in national politics, pitting President Johnson against the Republican majority in Congress. Eventually, Congress implemented its own plan of Reconstruction, based on federal action protecting the rights of the former slaves. Federal laws and two further Constitutional Amendments established the principle of equal rights for all citizens, regardless of race.

When Congress assembled in December 1865, Radical Republicans called for the overthrow of the governments established under President Johnson's Reconstruction policy and the establishment of new ones with black men as well as white allowed to vote. Moderate Republicans, still hoping to work with the president, rejected this plan. Following their lead, Congress adopted two bills, one extending the life of the Freedmen's Bureau, the second, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, guaranteeing blacks' equality before the law, short of the suffrage.

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Johnson's veto of these measures moved many moderates into the radical camp, and inaugurated a bitter conflict over control of Reconstruction policy, which culminated in 1868 when he was nearly removed from office by impeachment. In 1866, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act over Johnson's veto, and proceeded to approve the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbade states to deprive any citizen of the "equal protection of the laws," the first Constitutional guarantee of the principle of equal civil rights regardless of race. This was a major change in the federal system, establishing the national government as the arbiter of citizens' rights, and empowering it to overturn discriminatory measures adopted by state governments. In 1870, the last of the Reconstruction-era Constitutional Amendments was ratified -- the Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibited states from abridging the right to vote because of race.

4 Desk and chair used in the U.S. House of Representatives during Reconstruction. (Chicago Historial Society)
5 "And Not This Man?," Harper's Weekly, August 5, 1865.
6 "The Fifteenth Amendment," 1870. (Chicago Historical Society)
7 Reconstruction, 1867 (Library of Congress)

Between 1866 and 1877, Republicans in Congress charted the course of Reconstruction in the South. During these years, Congress passed and the states ratified the 14th and 15th amendments, which granted African Americans citizenship and the right to vote, over bitter opposition from Southern white Democrats.

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Biographical Sidebar: Thaddeus Stevens

The most prominent Radical Republican in Congress during Reconstruction, Thaddeus Stevens (1792-1868) was born and educated in New England. He moved as a young man to Pennsylvania, where he practiced law, became an iron manufacturer, and entered politics.

Stevens served several terms in the legislature, where he won renown as an advocate of free public education. He also championed the rights of Pennsylvania's black population. A delegate to the constitutional convention of 1838, he refused to sign the document because it limited voting to whites.

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As a Congressman, Stevens during the Civil War urged the administration to free and arm the slaves and by 1865 favored black suffrage in the South. He became one of Andrew Johnson's fiercest critics and an early advocate of his impeachment.

To Stevens, Reconstruction offered an opportunity to create a "perfect republic" based on the principle of equal rights for all citizens. As floor leader of House Republicans, he helped to shepherd Reconstruction legislation through Congress, although he thought much of it too moderate. His plan for confiscating the land of Confederate planters and dividing it among Northern settlers and the former slaves failed to pass.

After his death, Stevens was buried in an integrated cemetery in Pennsylvania, to illustrate in death, as the epitaph he had composed stated, "the principle which I advocated through a long life, Equality of Man before his Creator."

Object Labels

8 Thaddeus Stevens, c. 1865. (Library of Congress)

9 "Office of the Freedmen's Bureau, Memphis, Tennessee," Harper's Weekly, June 2, 1866.
In 1865, Congress established the Freedmen's Bureau to provide assistance to former slaves. Union Army general Oliver O. Howard was the Bureau's Commissioner. Among other responsibilities, bureau agents negotiated labor contracts and settled disputes between black and white Southerners. The Bureau's jurisdiction in civil matters eventually became a point of controversy.

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Subsection Label: The National Debate Over Reconstruction; Impeachment; and the Election of Grant

The breach between President and Congress inaugurated a period of bitter debate over Reconstruction. Congress failed in 1868 to remove Johnson from office, but the election of Ulysses S. Grant as his successor guaranteed that Reconstruction as established by the Republican party would continue.

Despite strong appeals to racial prejudice and the principle of states rights by Johnson's supporters, the Northern electorate gave Republicans a resounding triumph in the elections of 1866. The following March, Congress enacted the Reconstruction Act over Johnson's veto, placing the South under temporary military rule. The law extended the vote to Southern black men, while temporarily depriving many white leaders of the rights to vote and hold office. The Reconstruction Act launched the period of Congressional, or Radical, Reconstruction, which lasted until 1877.

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The conflict between President Johnson and Congress did not end with the passage of the Reconstruction Act. When, in February, 1868, Johnson removed Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, in violation of the recently-enacted Tenure of Office Act, he was impeached by the House of Representatives. The Senate failed by one vote to remove him from office. Shortly after the trial, the Republicans nominated Ulysses S. Grant, the North's greatest war hero, for president. Grant defeated Democrat Horatio Seymour in the election of 1868.

Object Labels

10 NEED/SCAN (p. 83) President Andrew Johnson, Currier & Ives, 1866. (Museum of American Political Life)
One disgruntled citizen registered his opinion of Andrew Johnson by mocking him as "king."

11 "The Freedman's Bureau," 1866. (Library of Congress)
12 "The Reconstruction Policy of Congress," 1867 (Library of Congress)
Much of the debate over Reconstruction swirled around the Freedman's Bureau and efforts to extend suffrage to non-whites. Political cartoons used racist imagery to reflect Democratic charges that government assistance would benefit indolent freedman at the expense of whites, and linking suffrage for blacks with the enfranchisement of Chinese immigrants and Native Americans (shouldered by George C. Gorham, Republican candidate for governor of California in 1867)

13 "Formal Notice of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson," Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, March 14, 1868.
On February 25, 1868, the House Managers of Impeachment, led by Thaddeus Stevens and John A. Bingham of Ohio, went before the U.S. Senate to present eleven articles of impeachment against President Andrew Johnson. The case rested on Johnson's removal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton from office, but in reality grew out of congressional disapproval of Johnson's Reconstruction policies. On May 26, 1868, the Senate voted 35?19 to convict Johnson, one vote short of the two?thirds necessary to remove him from office.

14 Impeachment Managers, 1868. (National Archives)

The House Board of Managers for the impeachment of Andrew Johnson included, standing from left to right: James F. Wilson, Iowa; George S. Boutwell, Massachusetts; John Logan, Illinois; and, seated, from left: Benjamin F. Butler, Massachusetts; Thaddeus Stevens, Pennsylvania; Thomas E. Williams, Pennsylvania; and John A. Bingham, Ohio.

15 Ticket of Admission to Impeachment (Tennessee State Museum)

16 Presidential campaign button, 1868 (Museum of American Political Life)
17 Presidential campaign ribbons, 1868 (Smithsonian Institution)
18 "This Is A White Man's Government," Harper's Weekly, September 5, 1868.
The 1868 presidential campaign revolved around the issues of Reconstruction. The Republican nominee, Ulysses S. Grant ran on the slogan "Let Us Have Peace" while Democrats adopted the slogan, "This Is A White Man's Government." Political cartoonist Thomas Nast ridiculed the Democratic candidate Horatio Seymour as the representative of a coalition of Irish immigrants, white supremacists, and Northern capitalists.

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Subsection Label: Reconstruction Government in the South

Under the terms of the Reconstruction Act of 1867, Republican governments came to power throughout the South, offering blacks, for the first time in American history, a genuine share of political power. These governments established the region's first public school systems, enacted civil rights laws, and sought to promote the region's economic development.

The coming of black suffrage under the Reconstruction Act of 1867 produced a wave of political mobilization among African Americans in the South. In Union Leagues and impromptu gatherings, blacks organized to demand equality before the law and economic opportunity. Blacks were joined by white newcomers from the North -- called "carpetbaggers" by their political opponent. And the Republican party in some states attracted a considerable number of white Southerners, to whom Democrats applied the name "scalawag" -- mostly Unionist small farmers but including some prominent plantation owners.

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By 1870, the former Confederate states had been readmitted to the Union under new constitutions that marked a striking departure in Southern government. For the first time in the region's history, state-funded public school systems were established, as well as orphan asylums and other facilities. The new governments passed the region's first civil rights laws, reformed the South's antiquated tax system, and embarked on ambitious and expensive programs of economic development, hoping that railroad and factory development would produce a prosperity shared by both races.

Composed of slave ministers, artisans, and Civil War veterans, and blacks who had been free before the Civil War, a black political leadership emerged that pressed aggressively for an end to the South's racial caste system. African Americans served in virtually every governmental capacity during Reconstruction, from member of Congress to state and local officials. Their presence in positions of political power symbolized the political revolution wrought by Reconstruction.

Object Labels

19 "Reconstruction of the South," c. 1870. (National Museum of American History)
An optimistic view of Reconstruction with Biblical overtones presents key elements of the Republican plan to remake the South along Northern lines: education, capital, and economic development.
20 "The First Vote," engraving based on a sketch by Alfred R.Waud, Harper's Weekly, November 16, 1867.

Under provisions of the Reconstruction Act passed by Congress in 1867, Southern states could no longer restrict the right to vote because of race. This engraving depicts three members of the black community ?? an artisan, a member of the middle class, and a soldier ?? standing in line to cast their ballots.

21 "Electioneering at the South," Harper's Weekly, July 25, 1868.

22 "The First Colored Senator and Representatives," Currier & Ives, 1872. (Library of Congress)
The Forty-First and Forty-Second Congress included black members for the first time in American history. A total of sixteen blacks served in Congress during Reconstruction.

23 "Louisiana Constitution and Members of Convention," 1868 (Library of Congress)
Blacks, most of them freeborn, formed a majority of delegates at the Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1868. They included Oscar J. Dunn, the state's lieutenant governor, and P.B.S. Pinchback, who became lieutenant governor and subsequently, for one month, the nation's first black governor.

24 Election campaign in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, c.1868. (Louisiana State University)
106- NEED/SCAN Election tickets, 1868-1871 (Mississippi Archives)
Reconstruction--America's first experiment in interracial democracy--generated widespread interest in the political process. Typical of the 19th century, voters cast their ballots along straight party lines that also reflected racial divisions as most African Americans supported Republican candidates. Voters used these tickets as ballots by dropping them into a box.

25 "The State Convention at Richmond, Virginia in Session," engraving, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, February 15, 1868.
African Americans constituted twenty-five per cent of the delegates attending state conventions held in Southern states in 1868-69, making them the first public bodies in American history with substantial black representation. The conventions, held in accordance with the Reconstruction Act of 1867, drafted new constitutions that granted former slaves the rights of citizenship.

Biographical Sidebar: Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce

The first African Americans to serve in the United States Senate, Hiram R. Revels (1822-1901) and Blanche K. Bruce (1841-1898) illustrate the diverse backgrounds and community activities of Reconstruction's black political leaders.

Revels was born free in North Carolina, attended Knox College in Illinois, and before the Civil War preached throughout the Midwest for the African Methodist Episcopal Church. During the Civil War, he served as chaplain for a black regiment. Revels came to Mississippi in 1865 and became involved in the movement to establish schools for the former slaves.

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After being elected to the state Senate in 1869, Revels was chosen by the legislature to fill Mississippi's unexpired term in the U. S. Senate, serving from February 1870 to March 1871. After leaving the Senate, Revels was for several years president of Alcorn University, an institution for African American students established during Reconstruction. He also worked for the Methodist Episcopal Church, which he had joined during the Civil War, and in 1876 unsuccessfully protested his church's plans to hold racially segregated annual conferences in the South.

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Unlike Revels, Blanche K. Bruce (1841-1898) was born a slave. He may have been the son of his owner, a wealthy Virginia planter, and was educated by the same private tutor who instructed his master's legitimate child. Bruce was taken to Missouri in 1850, and in the early days of the Civil War escaped to Kansas, where he established the state's first school for African American children.

Bruce came to Mississippi in 1868 with 75 cents to his name, and launched a successful political career in Bolivar county, where he served as sheriff and tax collector, and edited a local newspaper. During his term in the Senate (1875-81), he worked to obtain federal aid for economic development in Mississippi. A staunch defender of black civil rights, Bruce also spoke eloquently in opposition to the 1878 law prohibiting Chinese immigrants from entering the United States.

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Bruce remained in Washington after his term expired, holding a succession of government appointments. His wife, Josephine, who had been the first black teacher in the Cleveland public schools, went on to serve as Woman Principal of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

Object Labels

26 Hiram Revels, by Theodor Kaufmann, c. 1870. (Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University)

27 Blanche K. Bruce, c. 1875. (Library of Congress)

Lithograph copies of the Revels portrait by Theodore Kaufman, who had emigrated to the United States from Germany in 1855, sold widely in the North during Reconstruction. Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass, commenting on the dignified image in the lithograph, noted that African-Americans "so often see ourselves described and painted as monkeys, that we think it a great piece of fortune to find an exception to this general rule."

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Biographical Sidebar: Robert B. Elliott

One of the South's most brilliant political organizers during Reconstruction, Robert B. Elliott (1842-1884) appears to have been born in Liverpool, England, of West Indian parents, and to have come to Boston on an English naval vessel shortly after the Civil War.

After moving to South Carolina in 1867, Elliott established a law practice and helped to organize the Republican party. He "knew the political condition of every nook and corner throughout the state," said one political ally. Elliott served in the constitutional convention of 1868 and the state legislature, and was twice elected to Congress. He resigned in 1874 to fight political corruption in South Carolina, where he became Speaker of the House.

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In Congress, Elliott delivered a celebrated speech in favor of the bill that became the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which prohibited discrimination in public accommodations because of race. Elliott himself had been denied service in a restaurant while traveling to Washington.

In 1881, Elliott headed a delegation that met with president-elect James A. Garfield to complain that with the end of Reconstruction, Southern blacks were "citizens in name and not in fact." Because of his role in politics, Elliott's law practice was boycotted by white patrons. He died penniless in New Orleans.

Object Labels

28 Robert B. Elliott, c. 1875. (Library of Congress)

29"The Shackle Broken By The Genius of Freedom," 1874. (Chicago Historical Society)
A print celebrating the heroes and history of black freedom depicts the famous address by Congressman Robert B. Elliott in favor of the bill that became the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The imagery also extols the virtues of free labor for African Americans.

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Biographical Sidebar: Mifflin Gibbs and Jonathan Gibbs

The sons of an African American minister in Philadelphia, Mifflin Gibbs (1823-1915) and Jonathan Gibbs (1827-1874) had remarkable careers before becoming involved in Reconstruction politics.

A building contractor active in the antislavery movement, Mifflin Gibbs left Philadelphia for California in 1850 to take part in the gold rush. In 1855, he founded the state's first black newspaper, which campaigned for granting California blacks the right to vote. Three years later, Gibbs moved to British Columbia, where he became involved in mining and railroad ventures and was twice elected to the Victoria city council.

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Gibbs returned to the United States after the Civil War, studied at Oberlin College, and in 1871 moved to Arkansas, where he served as a judge in Little Rock. As an attorney, he won a case against a saloon that refused to serve black patrons. Gibbs remained active in Republican politics into the twentieth century, and from 1897 to 1901 was U. S. consul at Madagascar. In 1902, he published Shadow and Light, an autobiography.

Jonathan Gibbs was educated in Philadelphia and then, he later related, was "refused admittance into eighteen colleges because of my color." Eventually, he attended Dartmouth College, graduating in 1852. He later served as a Presbyterian minister in New York and Pennsylvania.

Sent to North Carolina as a religious missionary after the Civil War, Gibbs opened a school for the freedpeople, and then moved to Florida. He was appointed Secretary of State in 1868, and Superintendent of Education in 1873, becoming the only African American to hold statewide office in Florida during Reconstruction. Hoping to counteract Democratic charges that blacks were by nature incapable of taking part in government, he wrote sketches of "distinguished colored men," past and present, for a local newspaper.

30 Mifflin Gibbs, c. 1870 (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture).

31 Jonathan Gibbs as a Young Man (Howard University)

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Biographical Sidebar: Robert Smalls

Among the most celebrated black heroes of the Civil War, Robert Smalls (1839-1915) had a political career that stretched into the twentieth century.

Born a slave in Beaufort, South Carolina, Smalls worked on the Charleston docks before the Civil War. Employed by the Confederacy as a pilot on the Planter, Smalls secretly guided the ship out of Charleston harbor in May 1862 and delivered it to federal forces. He was given a reward of $1,500 and made a second lieutenant in the Union navy. In 1864, Smalls was evicted from a segregated Philadelphia streetcar; a mass protest followed that led to the integration of the city's public transportation.

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During Reconstruction, Smalls became a powerful political leader on the South Carolina Sea Islands. He represented Beaufort in the constitutional convention of 1868, published a local newspaper, and was elected to five terms in Congress. In 1895, he was one of six black delegates to the state constitutional convention, where he protested against the decision to deprive blacks of the right to vote. Until 1913, he held office as collector of customs at Beaufort.

32 Robert Smalls, c. 1870 (Library of Congress)

33 The Planter, c. 1862 (Naval Historical Center)

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Biographical Sidebar: James L. Alcorn

Born in Illinois but raised in Kentucky, James L. Alcorn (1816-1894) became Mississippi's first Reconstruction governor, and perhaps the era's most prominent "scalawag," or Southern white Republican.

Alcorn in 1844 moved to Mississippi, where he married a planter's daughter, and became one of the largest landowners in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta. In 1860, he strongly opposed secession. After serving briefly in the Confederate Army, Alcorn retired to his plantation.

At the end of the Civil War, Alcorn broke with his state's political leadership by advocating limited black suffrage and supporting the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1867, he joined the Republican party, insisting that only if men like himself took the lead in Reconstruction could a "harnessed revolution" take place. Blacks' rights would be respected, but political power would remain in white hands.

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Elected governor in 1869, Alcorn appointed many white Democrats to office and opposed civil rights legislation. Black leaders and "carpetbaggers" became disaffected from his administration. Alcorn resigned in 1871 to take a seat in the U. S. Senate. Two years later, alarmed by blacks' increasing political assertiveness, he ran again for governor, this time with Democratic support. He was defeated by Adelbert Ames.

After Reconstruction, Alcorn remained a Republican. But as a delegate to the constitutional convention of 1890, he supported the clause taking the right to vote away from Mississippi blacks, perhaps hoping to restore white domination of his party.

34 James L. Alcorn, c. 1870. (Library of Congress)

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Biographical Sidebar: Adelbert Ames

A native of Maine, Adelbert Ames (1835-1933) graduated in 1861 from the U. S. Military Academy at West Point. He served with distinction in the Union army, winning the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery at the battle of Bull Run.

Appointed by President Grant to command the fourth military district (including Mississippi) under the Reconstruction Act of 1867, Ames became convinced that he "had a Mission with a large M" to assist the former slaves. He appointed blacks to local offices and ordered that, for the first time in the state's history, they be eligible to serve on juries.

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Elected to the U. S. Senate in 1870, Ames became leader of the Republican faction that opposed the moderate policies of Gov. James L. Alcorn. In 1873, black leaders urged Ames to run for governor, and he handily defeated Alcorn. As governor, Ames attempted to reduce the cost of government and make public land available to the former slaves.

In 1875, Democrats launched a violent campaign to win control of the Mississippi legislature. Ames appealed for federal intervention to restore order, but without success.

After the Democratic victory, Ames resigned as governor, returned to the North, and went into his father's flour-milling business. For the remainder of his life, he continued to defend his Reconstruction record, insisting that racial discrimination was "the curse of the world." He died at his winter home in Florida.

Object Labels

35 Carpetbag, tapestry wool, mid 19th century. (The Valentine Museum)
Widely used as travel bags in the mid 19th century, carpetbags became associated with Northern white Republicans who moved South after the Civil War. "Carpetbagger," a derisive term devised by Reconstruction's opponents, has remained part of the vocabulary of American politics

36 Adelbert Ames, c. 1870 (Library of Congress)

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Biographical Sidebar: Albion W. Tourgée
Throughout his long career, carpetbagger Albion W. Tourgée (1838-1905) advocated equal rights for African-Americans. Born on an Ohio farm, he attended the University of Rochester before serving in the Union army. He was twice wounded, and spent four months in Confederate prisons.

After the war, Tourgée moved with his wife to North Carolina, where he became involved in Reconstruction politics. At the constitutional convention of 1868, he was instrumental in democratizing the state's local government and judicial system.

As a superior court judge during Reconstruction, Tourgée courageously challenged the Ku Klux Klan. His appeals to Congress revealing the extent of violence helped speed passage of laws authorizing the use of troops against the Klan.

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After 1877, Tourgée returned to the North, where he expressed his disappointment over the failure of Reconstruction in A Fool's Errand, a partly autobiographical account of a young carpetbagger's career. The book became a bestseller, and Tourgée wrote several other popular novels.

In 1896, Tourgée served without fee as attorney for Homer A. Plessy, who challenged a Louisiana law requiring the racial segregation of railroad cars. By denying blacks equal protection of the law, Tourgée argued, segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment. In Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court upheld the law and announced the principle of "separate but equal." Not until 1954, in the Brown school segregation decision, did the Court adopt Tourgée's earlier reasoning.

Tourgée spent his last years serving as U. S. consul at Bordeaux, France, where he died.

37 Albion W. Tourgée, c,. 1870 (Library of Congress)

38 "Atlanta," 1871 (Library of Congress)

39 Advertisement for the Savannah and Charleston Railroad, 1878 (South Carolina Historical Society)
40 Bonds issued by Tennessee to Louisville and Nashville Railroad, 1868 (Tennessee State Museum)
During Reconstruction, the new state governments embarked on ambitious and expensive programs of economic development, rebuilding its cities and hoping that railroad and factory development would produce a prosperity shared by both races. However, the goals were never fully realized, partly because Northern investors preferred new opportunities in the West.