Changing Agendas in the North

 

I. Introduction

II. Grant Administration

Grant elected, 1868--"Let us have peace."

Corruption: Whiskey Ring; Credit Mobiler. USG personally honest, but naive about those around him.

Limits of federal expansion of authority: 15th Amendment (1870)

1. Protected right to vote regardless of race, color, or "previous condition of servitude."

a. Met greater opposition, even in North--votes of 4 Southern states required to offset opposition even in North.

A. Civil Service Reform

1. targeted spoils systems; culminated in Pendleton Act (1883)

B. Financial Issues—"greenback" issue; question of paying interest on gov't bonds in specie or paper money. Larger question of whether to resume gold standard. Finally done in 1875 (actually went into effect) in 1879. Gold and silver jointly recognized as specie. Specie Resumption Act. Problems: deflation; contracted currency in midst of economic expansion. Tensions between East and West, esp. over deflation, which hurt farmers badly.

III. Industrialization

A. Railroading
B. Consolidation of industries
1. demise of small manufacturing; artisanship
2. more labor works for a wage; wage earner supplants craftsman as typical laborer.

C. Decline of free labor ideology: interests of elites North and South begins to focus on control of labor.

IV. Rise of Liberal Republicanism

A. Liberalism defined
B. Suspicion of democracy; corruption that occurred when government tried to regulate business. Better to let free market operate, have measures available to block labor unrest. Tended to surprisingly hostile to continued federal intervention in South—bayonet rule. Presence of Liberal Republicans forced Grant to be cautious about Reconstruction policy.

C. Election of 1872 and Panic of 1873.

D. Agenda changing

1. Growing sense that South had accepted verdict of the war, which was what chiefly concerned many Northerners.

2. Desire of North for black equality--never very strong in the first place--diminished.

a. After all, 14th and 15th Amendments also applied in North.

3. Sense that Constitutional changes had been great--perhaps too great.

a. 3 amendments in 5 years--there had not been any from 1804 to 1865. There would not be another one until 1913.

4. Panic of 1873 refocussed concern on economic issues.

5. Industrialization and labor unrest gave Northern manufacturers and Southern planters a common problem--control of labor. Certain sympathy between the two.

a. blacks viewed as threat to Northern labor

(1) desire to keep them in the South

b. changing concept of labor

(1) old "free labor" concept dying out

c. replaced by adversarial relationship between business & labor

d. growing alliance bet. Northern business interests and prosperous, industry-minded Southern elite - "Redeemers"

E. 1872 - Liberal Republicans bolt
1. precarious situation leads Grant to seek to avoid alienating Southern whites

V. Conclusion

A. Return of conservative rule
1. begins as early as 1869 (Tenn.)
2. Amnesty Act, 1872 - almost all ex-Confederates refranchised
3. 1874 - House of Rep. again in Dem. hands
4. Civil Rights of 1875 - guaranteed equal accommodations
a. but weak, unenforceable
b. later struck down
5. Grant refuses to act after Clinton, MS riot, 1875
6. by 1876, only three states: La., SC, Fla. still under Republican rule
B. Supreme Court Cases
1. US v. Slaughterhouse, 1873 - sharply distinguished between state and federal citizenship. Most rights of citizens remained under state control; amendments had nothing to do with this.
2. US v. Cruikshank, 1876 Cruickshank arose from Colfax massacre. Court i n effect ruled that Enforcement Act of 1870 was unconstitutional because it targeted individuals trying to abridge constitutional rights, whereas 14th and 15th Amendments had targeted States.
3. US v. Reese, 1876 -
a. Reese permitted devices like "grandfather clause"

4. All worked to emasculate 14th & 15th Amendments

C. Why this retreat from Reconstruction? What was going on. More on this next time.