Why the Army could not secure the South during Reconstruction

After the Civil War the Army was handed an enormous job with fewer soldiers than it had during the fighting. According to a National Park Service article, calls for economy in Congress cut the Army from a high of over 1.5 million men to 54,000 by the end of 1866, with more reductions to come. Roughly a third, 18,000 to 20,000, were stationed in the former Confederacy, an area the size of Western Europe with eight million people. It was in effect an occupation force, a role largely unfamiliar to the Army.

Andrew Johnson. Library of Congress.

Whose orders?

Over the twelve years of Reconstruction the Army carried out, in turn, the will of President Andrew Johnson, the Radical Republicans in Congress, and Presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes. The article says Johnson, picked as Lincoln's 1864 running mate as a loyal Southern Democrat, was also a virulent racist and white supremacist, and that Radical Republicans took Reconstruction out of his hands in 1866 and 1867.

On May 29, 1865, Johnson issued two proclamations: a loyalty oath for Southerners and the appointment of William Holden as provisional governor of North Carolina, with other provisional governors to follow. The Army was to help readmit the Southern states by overseeing elections for state conventions, protect freedmen and their white Republican supporters, aid the Freedmen's Bureau, prevent violence and help restore civil authority.

It was hard going. Many white Southerners resented what they saw as northern domination and the presence of Black troops, many of whom were eventually removed to keep the peace. Johnson's oath disqualified too many Southerners from office, since they could not swear they had never aided the Confederacy, leaving too few to rebuild civil government, and some who took it were later judged disloyal and removed by Army commanders, which strained relations with local leaders. Commanders often wanted civilians to handle violence and crime, and sometimes refused to help them.

Congress takes over

Congressional Republicans set up a Joint Committee on Reconstruction, and in March 1867 passed two Reconstruction acts that put the South under military control. They created five military districts whose commanders had sweeping powers to protect persons and property, remove disloyal officials and replace civil courts with military commissions when thought necessary. They also declared Southern state governments provisional and barred independent militias, most of them white.

Commanders were aware that their troops should not needlessly antagonize white Southerners, which the article calls almost impossible, since some Union officers and soldiers viewed "former rebels" negatively and the feeling was returned. From 1867 to 1870 violence was sporadic but frequent enough, and peace was tenuous.

After 1870

By 1870 all the former Confederate states had ratified the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, ending slavery and granting citizenship and the vote, and were readmitted. Matters nonetheless got worse, even with Grant pleading for peace.

Once Democrats regained power in several states in the mid-1870s, ballot fraud grew: boxes were seized, votes "counted in" or "counted out," and districts were gerrymandered, with one Black congressional district in Mississippi squeezed into a narrow band along the river to guarantee white majorities in five others. A prominent South Carolina Democrat bragged that fraud and violence had won back control. Groups known as White Leaguers, White Liners, Red Liners and Red Shirts, and the Ku Klux Klan, terrorized Black citizens and white Republicans, with mob attacks and lynching used to discourage voting. Violence at the streets and polls was so frequent that at times the Army formed a barrier between Democrats and Republicans. In Louisiana in 1872 and 1873, Republicans held the state house and Democrats a nearby hall, and the Democrats attacked with what they called militia, so the Army sent troops.

A Harper's Weekly cartoon from the election crisis of 1876, showing the slogan "Tilden or Blood." Harper's Weekly.

In the November 1876 elections in Louisiana and South Carolina, Democrats and Republicans each claimed victory, in the presidential vote and for governor and legislature, and each backed its claim with threats of mob violence. Grant voiced his concern that the public was tired of these annual autumn outbreaks in the South and that most were ready to condemn federal interference. By the end of 1876 there were fewer federal troops to protect people and property in the South than at any time since the war, too few to monitor elections.

The final pullout of federal troops from South Carolina and Louisiana, the article concludes, conceded that military force to protect persons and property had failed to bring the social justice the war's victors had sought.

Sources

• National Park Service, James A. Garfield National Historic Site, "Murder, Mayhem, Voter Fraud, and Political High Jinks: The U.S. Army's Thankless Task in the South, 1865-77", by Alan Gephardt, park ranger, written for the site's newsletter in August 2017, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/murder-mayhem-voter-fraud-and-political-high-jinks-the-u-s-army-s-thankless-task-in-the-south-1865-77.htm; Library of Congress portrait; rewritten in hubnx's own words.