History of Reconstruction

As previously mentioned, the term ‘carpet-bagger’ is directly rooted in Reconstruction, and some knowledge of that process is required to engage with it fully. A brief outline of Reconstruction is as follows: First, ex-confederate states were placed under military rule. The federal government appointed high-ranking military officials as Governor of each state with supreme authority, with their first task being to establish a committee in each county to draw up a new registration of all eligible voters in their respective provinces (more on this later). Once this process was complete, each county was to elect a man to represent them in a constitutional convention, which would draft a new state constitution and put it up for a vote. Once the state constitution was ratified, Congress would hold a vote to readmit the state to the Union and restore to it all the rights enjoyed by the other states.

The question of eligibility was hotly debated, with the primary concerns being disenfranchisement of those who had participated in rebellion and enfranchisement of the Black population. The end result was that in order to register, one must swear an oath that they had never wielded political authority against the United States (those with significant positions in the Confederate government), had not participated in rebellion in any way after swearing an oath of allegiance to the US (meaning confederates who had held governmental offices prior to the war), or been found guilty of a felony. This enfranchised all Black men in the South, and those who would be affected by the restrictions proved unlikely to desire or attempt to register anyway. The work happened quickly and within a year of Reconstruction seven ex-rebel states had ratified new constitutions and by July 1868, under two years after the war had ended, six formally confederate states were granted full statehood. At the same time, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, and Kansas refused the Black residents of their states the right to vote, outraging their Southern counterparts and provoking the ratification of the 15th Amendment (Dunning, 202). 

The new constituency of the ex-rebel states was dominated by former slaves, who in most cases outnumbered the white residents of their states. The constitutional conventions and early legislatures reflected this, and nearly all the delegates were members of Lincoln’s Republican Party. In the congress of 1869-1871, 20 of the 22 senators and 44 of the 48 representatives serving ex-rebel states were Republican (Dunning, 205). The tide quickly shifted, however, once the military presence of the federal government was lifted. Militant groups organized to terrorize and intimidate Black and other Republican voters, Democrats used extreme gerrymandering to minimize the voices of certain communities, and literacy tests as well as voting schemes designed to confuse the uneducated ex-slave Black population were put in place. The combination of these forces, especially the rise of widespread and powerful militant groups such as the KKK, effectively silenced the Black vote in these states. By the Congress of 1889-1891, there were 0 Republican senators and only 3 Republican representatives elected by ex-rebel states (Dunning, 205).

The objective of Reconstruction was twofold. First, rehabilitating and reaccepting the states that tried to secede, and second, enfranchising the Black populations of those states. It was a complete success on the first point, and saw initial successes on the second, but waning Northern interest in upholding those rights paired with organized, extensive, and violent efforts in the opposite direction in the South quickly nullified this point. As a result, Reconstruction is generally considered to have been a failure.