Consolidation

Note to students: The best preparation for taking the reading quiz is to pay close attention to the key terms as you read. Each question in the question banks is directly linked to these key terms and phrases.

The battle over power and politics in the South was just 1 of 2 major fronts in a war for the future of the United States. Although historians often separate the history of the US West from that of the South, the tumultuous and violent histories of the 2 regions in this period were deeply intertwined. Indeed, the question of whether slavery would be permitted in the territories acquired from Mexico was the major source of sectional conflict before the war.

Other dilemmas about the West had remained unresolved during the sectional crisis of the 1850s, including where railroad lines would be located and how they would be paid for. The parties were divided on the West, with Republicans supporting government policies that would promote settlement and economic growth and the Democrats more reluctant to commit resources that way. Another enduring question had been put on hold: As white settlers moved into new regions, what would be the government's policies toward the Native Americans who already lived there?

During the Civil War, Republican dominance and the absence of 13 southern states from Congress made it possible to begin to answer these questions. Heirs to the Whig vision of government investment in infrastructure development, congressional Republicans passed legislation that would help Americans settle the trans-Mississippi West and exploit the region's natural resources.

In 1862, Congress established land grant colleges and passed the Homestead Act, an attempt to help families settle public lands. The same year, Congress brought transcontinental railroads into existence by passing the Pacific Railroad Act, one of several railroad acts that granted millions of acres of government land to private railroad companies, along with millions of dollars in loans. Moreover, in 1862 and 1863 Congress also established a national paper currency — the Greenback — and created a system of national banks. These and other wartime measures helped modernize the American economy and made new forms of investment and expansion possible.

White settlers continued migrating into the West. The 13th Amendment decisively established that the region, like everywhere else in the United States, would be "free soil." But the vision of a free West was also in many respects a vision of a white West. For decades before the war, the US government had been pushing Native Americans off lands they lived on, attempting to corral them on reservations and urging them to settle in permanent farming communities and adopt Christianity. The US military had been a crucial part of that process. The army built forts in areas where white settlers and Indians were likely to come into conflict, cultivated alliances with cooperative Native groups, and fought military campaigns against those who resisted the terms the government offered.

White settlement of the West continued during the war, encouraged by prosperity in the North and the discovery of gold and other valuable resources. Yet the dynamics of the war disturbed relationships between Indians and whites in many places. In Indian Territory, present-day Oklahoma, several tribes broke treaties with the US government and joined the Confederacy.

On the northern plains, white settlers feared that the deployment of the army in the Civil War would create an opening for Indian uprisings. Their fears were realized in late summer of 1862, when Santee Sioux in southern Minnesota, starving and frustrated by ill treatment at the hands of federal agents, attacked government installations and white towns. Meanwhile, in Arizona and New Mexico, US forces beat back a Confederate advance and then made war on Navajos and Apaches, ultimately pushing most onto a reservation at Bosque Redondo, New Mexico.

In the war's aftermath, the government experimented with new policies toward Native Americans, particularly on the Great Plains. The region was home to powerful Native American groups such as the Cheyenne and Sioux, but white settlers increasingly coveted the land as a source of wealth and a throughway to the Pacific coast. The war department deployed army units, many of them fresh from duty in the South, to subdue Native groups that had refused to make treaties. Most army commanders had attempted to treat white civilians in the Confederacy according to the laws of war. They accorded Indians no such respect. At Sand Creek, Colorado, and on the Washita River in Indian Territory, for example, white soldiers murdered unarmed Native women and children in actions that would today be labeled genocide.

Responding to criticism that the government's policy toward Native Americans was too brutal and too expensive, the Grant administration proposed a "peace policy." The government hired Protestant missionaries to work as Indian agents on reservations and focused on urging Native Americans to leave their traditional cultures behind and accept family farming, public education, and Christianity.

It also declared an end to treaty making. Henceforth, the government would treat Native Americans as individuals, not as members of separate and sovereign Indian nations. Through such policies, the federal government sought to consolidate its authority, eliminating pockets of resistance and building a uniform regime of citizens and territory. Indeed, amid the peace policy the army continued making war on Native groups. And if the new approach held out the possibility that Native Americans could become citizens, it also demanded that they abandon their cultural heritage in the process.

As the government struggled to subdue Native American groups in the West, it also faced violent resistance from white Southerners who steadfastly refused the terms of Reconstruction policy. The Ku Klux Klan is most notorious among the many violent organizations white Southerners created to subjugate freedpeople and run the Republicans out of office. Sometimes such organizations used threats, beatings, rape, and murder for social and economic ends — to force black laborers to work for whites, force black landowners off their property, or punish members of a community for breaches of the moral order, such as adultery or dishonesty. But the Klan and other such organizations focused their greatest attention on defeating Republicans at the polls.

Thomas Nast Cartoon "Worse Than Slavery" Condemning White League and Klan Violence
A Thomas Nast cartoon condemning the White League and Klan Violence as both organizations come together to inflict violence on African Americans.

During political campaigns, white men often visited the homes of black and white Republicans at night. They murdered political leaders and threatened (and carried out) violence against would-be voters. Sexual violence was often part of such attacks, as night riders invaded African Americans' homes and raped women, sometimes in the presence of their children and male relatives. In 1870 and 1871, Congress attempted to end such terrorism, passing new legislation that made conspiracy and intimidation of voters a federal crime. Yet the federal government did not have the capacity or will to enforce these laws, and in its 1876 Cruikshank decision, the Supreme Court invalidated some of the most important provisions.

In the end, the Republican vision of equal citizenship for African Americans and a peaceful bi-racial democracy was no match for southern white resistance and the resurgent Democratic Party. In some southern states, the Republicans never came to power in the first place. In others, particularly in Deep South states with large African American populations, Republican governments continued into the 1870s. Mississippi sent 2 black men to the US Senate, and 7 southern states sent black men to the House of Representatives. Even more important, African Americans continued to serve in local elected offices; elections, though tense and sometimes violent, remained competitive.

A chart stating African American’s presence in Office between 1870 and 1899. By 1880 the number of house representatives drops and the number of senators is no longer counted after 1880.

Yet white leaders were poised to restore what they called "home rule." They organized through the Democratic Party and in armed societies with names such as "White Leagues" and "Red Shirts" to take control of their state. Republican officials needed federal support to fend off such challenges, but by 1875, the Grant administration was no longer interested. Grant refused to send soldiers to oversee elections in Mississippi that year, after the Republican governor, Adelbert Ames, requested help. The impact was immediate. Scared for their lives, Republican voters stayed home. The Democrats triumphed, and the federal government's refusal to act conveyed to whites in other states that they could terrorize voters with impunity.

Governor Adelbert Ames and Intimidation in the Mississippi Election of 1875
Three images of Governor Ames and intimidation towards blacks and women who try to vote in Mississippi.

A variety of factors shaped the federal government's retreat from Reconstruction. The Republican Party, originally galvanized in opposition to the spread of slavery, was now divided. As the former abolitionists aged, the rising generation of party leaders was wealthier and more interested in promoting economic growth than in undoing the legacies of slavery. A severe economic crisis in 1873 prompted by the overly rapid expansion of railroad companies whose executives had close ties to the party was also significant.

After 12 years of Republican power in Washington, when banks closed their doors and called in their loans, many Americans believed it was time to give the Democrats a chance. The 1874 midterm election was a landslide; Democrats won gubernatorial races in 7 southern states. Most significant for federal policy, Democrats broke the Republican monopoly on power in Congress, winning a majority in the House of Representatives. Upheavals such as these made Republicans in Washington cautious about continuing federal intervention in the Deep South.

A map of the US showing the congressional seat changes in 1874 after a landslide midterm election for Democrats that broke the monopoly of Republican power in Congress.

Although many of the dynamics that characterized the Civil War era continued into the 1880s and beyond, it is useful to take stock of the nation as it stood in 1877, the year Reconstruction is usually said to have ended. That year, a closely fought presidential election came down to the counting of votes in 3 Deep South states — South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. Amid concerns about renewed sectional strife, a special election commission determined that the Republican presidential candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, had won election but that Democrats had prevailed in the state contests.

Disputed Election of 1877 and the Compromise
Two images of the disputed election of 1877 between Tilden and Hayes and the corresponding compromise.

Democratic victories in the South were widely acknowledged to be the result of fraud and violent voter suppression. But Republicans in Washington no longer made any pretense that they would intervene. The summer after his inauguration, President Hayes deployed the US Army in northern cities, including Pittsburgh, Chicago, and St. Louis, to smash a strike led by railroad workers. And that fall, the Indian wars on the northern plains limped to an end, as groups of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Nez Perce that had waged long struggles against the government finally surrendered, destitute and exhausted.

Railroad Strike of 1877 and Great Sioux War of 1876
Two images of the Railroad Strike in 1877 and the Great Sioux War of 1876. Two issues that the US was facing in the 1870s.

The nation thus emerged from the Civil War, its greatest crisis, larger and more politically stable than ever. With its vast natural resources and growing industrial capacity, it was poised to become a global power. Yet American democracy itself was a work in progress. Politically motivated violence often went unpunished, most political and civic leaders insisted that only white Protestants were "real" Americans, and large swaths of the adult population were prevented from voting because of their race or sex. Although many white Americans enjoyed prosperity and upward mobility, the nation's farmers and laborers were increasingly demoralized by high prices, low wages, and poor living conditions. The price of national unification was high.