Reconstruction or Civil War: What had the Longest Lastin Effect?

            The Reconstruction period following the Civil War perhaps defined the country for the next 100 years more so than the actual war did.  War is war and it the Civil War was the bloodiest in American History and it is the most researched war of all American Wars.  But the actual war itself besides its hundreds of thousands casualties that took place didn’t change the culture the way Reconstruction did.  The actual enforcement of Reconstruction laws were what shaped the future in the South as we know it.

            Starting on March 2^nd, 1867 the first reconstruction act was passed although it had been vetoed by Andrew Johnson then overridden by the more radical northern based Congress.  Johnson had first, following the end of the war, appointed temporary Governors of all the seceded states in order to re-enforce the Union Federal laws.  But with this Reconstruction provision, the South had been divided up the ten states into five separate military districts ran by high ranking officers of the time.  The job that they were given had the following requirements: "to protect all persons in their rights of person and property, to suppress insurrection, disorder, and violence, and to punish, or cause to be punished, all disturbers of the public peace and criminals.”  This was an example of the kind of thing that the late Abraham Lincoln would not have wanted.  He was in favor of letting the Southern states being reintegrated back into the Union as soon and as swiftly as possible.  But his congressional colleagues were not as forgiving and wanted the South to suffer before they were re-issued their statehood.

            On March 23^rd, 1867 the second provision of Reconstruction was issued.  The Act included as follows: “to include the registration of qualified voters who had taken the oath of allegiance to the United States, the supervision of the election of delegates to state constitutional conventions, and the transmittal to the President of certified copies of the constitutions adopted.”  As unreasonable as the first part of the Reconstruction Acts may have been, the second set of regulations were not as stringent.  Basically they just wanted to register the people of the South that had accepted the fact that the CSA was gone and it was not coming back.  Also they wanted proper officials overseeing the writing of each states new constitution and the delivering them upon their completion to President Johnson. 

            On July 19^th, 1867 the third part of the Reconstruction act was passed.  This act was pretty much the proverbial middle finger to Andrew Johnson.  It read as follows: “defined the powers of the district commander to suspend or remove from office persons occupying positions in the civil government of the state concerned; the provisional governments established by the President were thus made subject to the military commanders.”  Congress had no respect for Johnson or any of the post-war decisions which he had made and this pretty much solidified that.  The Provisional Governors which the President had appointed were now subject to be ousted by the new military regime.

            On February 18^th, 1869 the last reconstruction law of the period was passed.  This showed that the Southerners were none too willing to resume their lives as part of the Union.  “Provided for the removal from office of persons holding civil offices in the "provisional governments" of Virginia, Texas, and Mississippi who could not take the oath of allegiance and directed the district commanders to fill the resulting vacancies by the appointment of persons who could take the oath.”  The district commanders were having a hard time filling positions with qualified personnel in a government in which the electorate wanted little to do with.

            So while the Civil War is much more interesting to talk about, with characters like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and George McClellan and battles like Gettysburg, Bull Run, and Antietam, it was actually the years of Reconstruction that had the longest lasting impact on the future of the South for years to come. 

Sources: Reconstruction Acts. (March 2, 1867, 14 Stat. 428-430, c.153; March 23, 1867, 15 Stat. 2-5, c.6, July 19, 1867, 15 Stat. 14-16, c.30; and March 11, 1868, 15 Stat. 41, c.25)