Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise

27:29Schertz is excited by what he sees. Fields free from weeds, the cotton plants healthy, the cornfields promised a rich yield, everything breathing thrift, order and prosperity. We passed by a large log house in which a colored preacher was exhorting his congregation, for it was Sunday. This is an area where the Union Army, abolitionists, freed people themselves are experimenting in systems of free labor that would replace slavery. Freed people's idea of free labor was linked to their own traditions of economic autonomy. They envisioned free labor as sometimes even ownership of land, but definitely control over who they labored for, how much they labored, and what they would get for it.

28:19But this pleasant picture would not hold up for long. Shirts leaves the Sea Islands and takes another boat to Charleston, South Carolina. That's where he starts to encounter the real devastation of the war. He writes about how long it takes getting into Charleston before he sees a living creature. This city that was so kind of glamorous and sophisticated on the eve of the war now looks like it's just completely in ruins. He really sees the impact on urban civilian populations and the degree of destruction and the degree of... The word he keeps using is sullenness, the degree of anger and resignation and frustration that he runs into among the kind of, especially the white elite Southern population, who previously had been so dominant in a place like Charleston, now will barely speak.

29:13Schertz travels further into South Carolina. He rides on miserable trains through 95 degree heat. His mule drawn wagon breaks down. The roads are nothing but deep sand. He visits Columbia, the state capital, and finds it reduced to what he calls a confused mass of charred ruins. He passes through the remains of General Sherman's infamous march and sees a broad black streak of desolation. Reconstruction has barely begun. The war is, in a sense, over, in that the major armies have surrendered and Jefferson Davis has been captured, but there's no sense of order or peace. There's just kind of degrees of chaos.

29:54And he talks a lot as he travels to, especially to kind of former Confederates and to white Southerners. And he gets a sense that there's a consensus that the Confederacy has lost and secession has failed. But there's no agreement on what should come next. They want to fight the war over again. And they are sure in five years we are going to have a war bigger than any we have seen yet. They are impatient to get rid of this damned military despotism. They will show us what stuff Southern men are made of. Such is their talk. Schertz makes his way to Savannah, Georgia. He finds a city still reeling from mob violence that broke out on Independence Day.

30:37In Savannah, when they hold a 4th of July celebration in 1865, the war is over. It's a 4th of July celebration. It should be fairly patriotic. Basically, the only people that attend are Union soldiers and freed slaves, and they're attacked by an angry white mob. Historian Manisha Sinha says Karl Schurz wasn't the only person to witness this kind of thing. The patriotic holiday had become a flashpoint. We see evidence coming from all over the South that the only people who want to celebrate the 4th of July are freed people. It's not Southern whites who are very sullen and hate the 4th of July. interestingly enough, at that point.

31:18And Black people really sort of seem to tie their demands and their freedom claims and their rights to the national government, to the Union Army, and to celebrating the nation. Schertz then takes a train to Atlanta. He spends the weekend there and finds yet more lawlessness. The planters in that region seem to have combined to keep the Negroes in their former state of subjection and to kill those that refuse to submit. There's a regular drumbeat at this time of open, regular violence against African Americans, formerly enslaved people, across the South.

31:59One scholar at the time estimates that there's a murder a day happening somewhere, and Schertz sees a lot of it. The demoralization of the people is frightful to behold in its manifestations. Travelers are frequently attacked on the public highways Cotton is stolen in enormous quantities Horses and mules are run off whenever they are not watched with the utmost care And the perpetrators are almost never arrested and punished I'd say the general direction of the whole trip is As he moves further south and certainly further west He runs into more and more chaos and more and more violence And more and more kind of evil plans by former Confederates to do whatever they can to get as close to re-enslaving people as possible.

32:46Schertz finally reaches the end of his journey, New Orleans, in September. He's been traveling for two months through a treacherous landscape. He is, by now, completely exhausted and miserable. He writes about sweltering nights in the wretched country taverns and about nights spent in desperate fights with ravenous swarms of mosquitoes. He gets dengue fever, or as he calls it, break bone fever. And he's just appalled by all that he has witnessed in the South. This is the most shiftless, most immoralized people I have ever seen. If I can only make my main report, I shall open the eyes of the people of the North.

33:33Schertz returns to Washington, D.C. He's ready to write a report to the president documenting all the devastation and lawlessness he's seen. This is precisely the assignment Andrew Johnson had given him. And now, Schertz has the evidence he needs to make the president face reality. This reconstruction thing is not going to be fast, it's not going to be easy, and it's going to take effort on our part. But Andrew Johnson is no longer interested in what Carl Schertz has to say. He doesn't want Schertz around anymore, he doesn't want Schertz involved anymore, He seems to regret ever giving him the position to begin with.

34:08And he certainly doesn't want to publish a report. Schertz writes it anyway. He includes everything he has seen, organized by topic. The rampant violence against Black people and the, quote, utter absence of national feeling among Southern whites. He calls for troops to stay in the South, for Black suffrage to be a condition of any Confederate state's re-entry into the Union. He says there needs to be a reconstruction of the, quote, whole organism of Southern society to bring it in harmony with the rest of American society. This is the report he delivers to Andrew Johnson and which he gives to Johnson's Republican enemies.

34:50I think Johnson miscalculates enormously. I mean, this is sort of a spectacular own goal by Johnson. He finds this guy thinking this guy will be his kind of willing dupe. We'll go back in. Someone with some credibility with the abolitionists will go and give a nice whitewash for what's going on in the South that will justify Johnson's own agenda. And the guy returns and he's not playing ball. He's determined to tell the truth. And now Johnson's stuck. He created this mess, political mess for himself. Exactly. And I think Johnson realizes then that Schertz's report and other such reports coming out of the South is going to result in the failure of his own restoration plan.

35:42That plan being, do as little as possible. Republicans ultimately forced the president to formally submit Karl Schertz's report to Congress, thereby making it a fully public document. but the president attaches a note in which he tries desperately to obscure the facts. His damage control is kind of, it's kind of audacious. In his note, he says, perplexing questions were naturally to be expected. I love the grammatical construction of this, you know, mistakes were made. Perplexing questions were naturally to be expected from the great and sudden change in the relations between the two races, but systems are gradually developing themselves under which the freedmen will receive the protection to which he is justly entitled.

36:32And then he celebrates the spirit of nationality, which is rapidly emerging from the sectional animosity of the war. It's like, it's one plus one is three. Absolutely. And especially for Johnson to talk about freed people's rights is a bit rich, A bit rich, exactly. In your face rich. And, you know, but he really wants to tell Northerners, hey, the South is no longer bitter and they're not bitter against the union or you, that they have all accepted it. And in fact, Schertz has just witnessed the precise opposite.

37:12I think 100 ,000 copies of it go out, which is a huge number back then. And it shows up in basically all the newspapers. And by the end of the year, Schertz's report is really influencing how people are thinking about Reconstruction. Carl Schertz's report ended up being the most radical thing he ever did. He went on to have a successful career and then faded into obscurity. But his report on the condition of the South helped change the course of history. Because the Republicans in Congress immediately begin to challenge Johnson's policies. They put forth their own bold ideas for how the country should be put back together.

37:49And this sparks what is really the first big battle between the branches of American government. The White House versus Congress. Who will have the last word on the direction of the Union? The following year, 1866, is one of the most momentous years in American political history. And that's when Frederick Douglass steps back into the fray.

38:25Here, I'm going to turn our story back to our editor, Kyrite. So you now have two starkly contrasting visions for how the country should be put back together. There's Andrew Johnson's approach, quick and easy, with everything essentially going back to how it was before the war. And then there's the approach Karl Schertz advised in his report. Make Black people full citizens with the right to vote and use the military to enforce that right if need be. In January of 1866, Congress convenes a set of hearings to debate the matter. They're considering a big, sprawling constitutional amendment that will settle things once and for all.

39:07This is what will ultimately become the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And as all of this is consuming the national conversation, Frederick Douglass leads a delegation of Black men to the White House. They managed to get this appointment. They weren't invited. David Blight again, Douglas's biographer. They went in with a prepared statement. They were able to get through part of their prepared statement. They went there to lobby the president of the United States for the right to vote. And protection. And all the other rights. They got through part of their prepared statement and Johnson interrupted them.

39:45He was not going to be preached to by a bunch of black men. In fact, at one point, he said, I especially don't want to be preached to by people like you, and he meant Douglas, who can round out periods and put in fancy words. Wow. Oh, yeah. People who know how to use their words. I don't want to be spoken to by you. No, don't you speak to me like that. Johnson held the floor for 45 minutes. Johnson went on and on and on. And part of Johnson's speech, which is what it was, this was not a discussion. he said you know i once owned slaves i want you to know i i own slaves but i never sold one that's he said that to them i i guess believing that would not offend them no no he's real it's amazing it got worse douglas would try to uh interrupt you know like Mr.

40:41President, may I? Mr. President, may I? And then Johnson finally just said, no, you will not speak to me. And at some point there, about 50, 55 minutes in, Douglas said, well, we're finished here. He asked his whole delegation to get up, and they walked out.

41:05Johnson can barely disguise his own racism. he doesn't see Douglas the way Lincoln sees him, as a Black leader and as somebody who's putting forth some legitimate ideas about Black rights and Reconstruction. It's just the opposite. He demeans Douglas and he calls him the N-word. And he says, oh, he'll cut my throat off just like any other slave. Douglas said he heard it. I've always imagined Douglas turning around looking at Andrew Johnson, and, you know, wishing he could, you know, take his teeth out, but probably just walked out and said, oh, yeah. They went over to a hotel. They wrote up a statement.

41:45They published it immediately the next morning in a Washington, D.C. paper describing exactly what had happened. And then Douglas wrote a new speech. Douglas always did this. When something big happens, he'd go to his desk, and he wouldn't know exactly what he thinks about something until he went through his desk and he wrote a new speech, and he called it... Sources of Danger to the Republic. And it's a barn burner. He just butchered Johnson in this speech. I know of no greater misfortunes to individuals than an overconfidence in their own perfections. And I know of fewer misfortunes that can happen to a nation greater than an overconfidence in the perfection of its government.

42:35Douglas opens the speech by warning, look, don't think there's something divine or almighty about the institutions that support American democracy, starting with the Constitution itself. There were neither thunderings, nor lightnings, nor earthquakes, nor tempests, nor any other disturbance of nature when this great law was given to the world. The Constitution is just a piece of paper, ideas on a page. It is simply a human contrivance. It is the work of man and men struggling with many of the prejudices and infirmities common to man. And it is time to deal with those prejudices. Douglas says, if you want this to be a democracy, it's got to be a real democracy.

43:27Make it a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and for all the people. Each for all, and all for each. Blot out all discriminations against any person, theoretically or practically. Keep no man from the ballot box, or jury box, or the cartridge box because of his color. Exclude no woman from the ballot box because of her sex. Let the government of the country rest securely down upon the shoulders of the whole nation. But really, in this speech, Douglas is here to talk about leadership. He says, yes, we must update the Constitution. But even then, no matter what is written in that document, our liberty actually depends on something more active.

44:17that that is the lesson of the civil war he says imagine if lincoln had not been president during the war imagine the wartime commander-in-chief as the guy we got now had that other embodiment of political treachery meanness baseness ingratitude the vilest of the vile the basest of the base the most execrable of the execrable of modern times, he who shall be nameless, occupied the presidential chair. Your magnificent republic might have been numbered with the things that were. Douglas wants them to get rid of the veto. He wants them to limit presidents to one term. And he wants them to get rid of Johnson's ability to pardon Confederates for sure.

45:07The president, he says, has too much power. Mr. Johnson has sometimes overstepped this power in certain conditions of his mind, which are quite frequent, and mistaken himself for the United States instead of the president of the United States. There's a line in it that gives me chills when I read it today. He says, our government may at some point be in the hands of a bad man. When in the hands of a good man, it is all well enough. We ought to have our government so shaped that even when it is in the hands of a bad man, we shall be safe. Indeed. You know, can you imagine the first time I read that?

45:54I mean, it was, well, I'd have read it before at some point, but you know, you can read a Douglas speech six times and find something new in it. But I used to end... occasionally i used to end talks on douglas with that during trump's first term then just end with that i i wouldn't mention trump i mean i didn't have to you know it was so poignant but you know he what he's saying there's we got problems with our constitution there are structural problems with it but we still do depend on human character on some level it's such a prescient warning for all sorts of political systems, all sorts of places in the world.

46:38Democracy is a great thing. But it first needs law and structure. But then it needs people who believe in it. And one without the other probably won't work.

46:56Frederick Douglass took this speech on the road, campaigning for a bold new constitution. And Andrew Johnson barnstormed across the country with his own speech. It was an election year on top of everything else. So the president wanted voters to give him a new Congress, one that would support his vision for a quick and tidy reconstruction. He even says the real traitors to the union were not the former Confederates, but they are the radical Republicans and the abolitionists. These are the real enemies to the union. Johnson is stuck in this very rigid racist view. So he thinks the majority will support him because he can play the race card.

47:38And he does that constantly. If you give Black people rights, you're taking them away from whites. He says that constantly. And he's stunned when Northern whites do not get duped by his race card because they're seeing what's happening in the South. So the sympathy is for freed people at that point. There is no sort of racial unity between northern whites and southern whites in this issue. Johnson completely misreads the political situation. And it totally backfired on Johnson. The Republicans overwhelmingly won those congressional off-year elections, both houses, and returned a veto-proof two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress that next fall.

48:26And for the next three years, from 1866 to 1870, Congress passes law after law over Andrew Johnson's vetoes. They actually grow so tired of his obstruction that they impeach him in 1868. He's the first ever president to claim that dishonor. Johnson survives by a single vote, but it hardly matters. He's a lame duck president, a leader without a party. And with Johnson out of the way, congressional Republicans radically redesign the United States of America. This would be a tremendous moment. It is kind of a refounding of the republic. Because suddenly you get this momentum for the first federal civil rights laws that are passed at this time, the constitutional amendments, especially the 14th Amendment.

49:15The 14th Amendment. establishing the idea of universal citizenship to anyone born in the United States, regardless of race or any other status, with equality before the law for all citizens. The 15th Amendment, establishing voting rights for Black men, at least. And civil rights laws that spell out how all these new rules are going to work. The founding principles of an interracial democracy in the United States. It's really an exciting moment in American history. Black Southerners leap at the opportunity as well. They rush to the polls to vote. Thousands of Black men hold public office. And they help create some of the most progressive state governments in the history of this country.

50:02States like South Carolina create the first public schools, expand legal rights for women, abolish debtors' prisons, and so much more.

50:17they did engineer a remake in the united states and it's the only time for that brief moment from essentially 1866 to 68 69 70 that that moment when the term radical had a sort of consensus track sheet uh it's hard to imagine in the united states radical republic radical was the They were in power for three years. Yeah. By the way, the greatest legacy of the original Republican Party, try this on as an irony, they believed above all in activist, aggressive use of federal power. I mean, look at the ways they had just used federal power. That period is the laboratory where an American government, the idea of government was reinvented for better or worse.

51:11You can hate it. You can love it. You can like parts of it. But that's the era you got. You want to understand rights in America? You got to go to Reconstruction. You want to understand the role of government in society? Got to go to Reconstruction. You want to talk about what governments owe their people and what people owe their governments? You got to go to Reconstruction. You want to talk about race in America? You got to go to Reconstruction. Because it kind of all starts there in the modern sense. And we relive it now. Every day? All the time. All the time. I would add that if you want to understand education in America, you've got to go to Reconstruction as well.

51:52Because that's when public education as we know it was established. And much of it by the people who'd just recently been enslaved.

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