Reconstruction in Perspective
Current scholarship depicts Reconstruction as a critical period in the development of post-Civil War political, economic and social relations in the United States and as a struggle in which African Americans played a significant role. Over time, historians have characterized the Reconstruction era as "tragic," "conservative," and a "failure."
In the early twentieth century this period was portrayed as "tragic" by the racist assumptions of historians who declared that a "monstrous" mistake was made by northern Republicans granting political privileges to an inferior race. On Febuary 8, 1915, D.W. Griffith's controversial silent film, The Birth of a Nation, premiered in Los Angeles, California. Released under the title, The Clansman, the movie debuted only after Griffith sought an injunction from the court. Although local censors approved the film, city council members responded to concerns about the racist nature of the picture by ordering it suppressed. Griffith's story centers on two white families torn apart by the Civil War and reunited by what one subtitle calls, "common defence of their Aryan birthright." Promoting a skewed historical vision of a wartorn South further abused by carpetbaggers, scalawags, and radical Republicans, the film remakes Lincoln as a friend of the South. "I shall deal with them as though they had never been away," Griffith's Lincoln says. In The Birth of a Nation, the Ku Klux Klan rushes in to fill the void left by Lincoln's untimely death and the chaos of Reconstruction. President Woodrow Wilson said of the movie: "It is like writing history with lightning." The film’s release was time with a great resurgence of the Klan, with burgeoning enrollments and a regained national visibility.
Gone with the Wind was one of the most popular novels and motion pictures of all time. The movie, which premiered in December 1939, is a romantic Civil War epic in which the forceful and ruthless heroine Scarlett O'Hara and war profiteer Rhett Butler play out their tempestuous love affair against the background of the war torn South. This was a mythical South, where vast plantations were a way of life, with villas as old and stately as the fine families who lived in them. The novel has little to do with the Civil War and the Deep South, but is more a reflection of the real life and loves of book author Margaret Mitchell.
Revised scholarship, influenced by the civil rights movement of the 1960s, saw the Radical Republicans as idealists attempting to realize an interracial democracy. Still, further studies of the 1970s and 1980s portrayed Republican efforts as "conservative" measures that recognized blacks' citizenship while upholding racist ideology and keeping them in an oppressive system of plantation labor. Finally, while Reconstruction was a time of radical and dramatic change, it was a "failure" in its aspiration to create an egalitarian and prosperous post-emancipation South.
The Politics of Re-Alignment
Lincoln's assassination, the rise of Radical Republicanism, and Johnson's blundering leadership all played into a postwar pattern of politics in which the Republican Party suffered from overreaching in its efforts to remake the South, while the Democrats, through their criticism of Reconstruction, allied themselves with the neo-Confederate Southern white majority. When President Hayes ended Reconstruction, he had hoped it would be possible to build the Republican Party in the South, using the old Whigs as a base and the appeal of regional development as a primary issue. By then, however, Republicanism as the South's white majority perceived it was identified with a hated African-American supremacy.
The war laid the basis for Democratic reunification, because Northern opposition to it centered in the Democratic Party. Few Democrats, whether of the "war" or "peace" faction, believed the emancipation of the slaves was worth Northern blood. Opposition to emancipation had long been party policy. In 1862, for example, virtually every Democrat in Congress voted against eliminating slavery in the District of Columbia and prohibiting it in the territories. The Democrats, through their criticism of Reconstruction, allied themselves with the neo-Confederate Southern white majority. After the War the Democratic Party made the candid judgment that white supremacy offered the best prospects for mobilizing the electorate. In the Deep South, Democratic victory required the neutralization the black electorate.
For three-quarters of a century, the South would be solidly Democratic. For more than half a century, the national Democratic Party would pay solemn deference to states' rights while ignoring civil rights.
The Costigan-Wagner anti-lynching bill was introduced into Congress in early 1934, and while FDR agreed with its sentiments, he did nothing to urge its passage. Eleanor Roosevelt embraced a civil rights agenda which accepted segregation and championed equal opportunity. She could not convince FDR to lend public support to the bill for fear of alienating the senior southern senators. Southern critics, led by Senator Eugene Talmadge, seized the opportunity to attack FDR through ER's support of the NAACP.
During World War II, President Roosevelt responded to complaints about discrimination at home against African Americans by issuing Executive Order 8802 in June 1941, directing that blacks be accepted into job-training programs in defense plants, forbidding discrimination by defense contractors, and establishing a Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC). The Executive Orders banning discrimination in war production plants set the stage for the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
In February 1948 President Truman called on Congress to enact a number of civil rights initiatives. When Southern Senators immediately threatened a filibuster, Truman moved ahead on civil rights by using his executive powers. On July 26, 1948, Truman issued an executive order abolishing segregation in the armed forces and ordering full integration of all the services.
Upheavals at the July 1948 convention led to Democratic splinter-party presidential candidates: J. Strom Thurmond ran on the State's Rights ticket, known more familiarly as the "Dixiecrats," and Henry Wallace ran on the Progressive Party ticket. Both of these Democratic revolts worked to President Harry Truman's advantage. The Dixiecrat Party break-off reassured black voters of Truman's commitment to civil rights, which he reinforced with 1948 executive orders desegregating the armed forces and ending bias in federal employment practices. Henry Wallace's Progressive program was supported by the Communist Party of America.
The Eisenhower administration developed the legal framework for civil rights legislation and Government policies of the 1960s. Eisenhower, in partnership with Attorney General Herbert Brownell, completed the desegregation of the armed forces, desegregated the District of Columbia, appointed pro-civil rights judges at all levels, passed the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, and dispatched troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce a federal court order for school desegregation. Richard Nixon carried a substantial percentage of the black vote in 1960.
The transition of the South from Democratic to Republican control began with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. More Democrats in Congress voted against the Civil Rights Act than Republicans. But the Civil Rights movement drove many southern white Democrats to vote for Republicans.
George Wallace became the standard bearer of white opposition to integration in the 1960s. "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever," was how he put it at his 1963 inaugural as governor of Alabama. Released in the year 2000, the film "George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire" explored Wallace's life. In the film Seymore Trammell, Wallace's finance director, recalled a talk with Wallace after his defeat by John Patterson in the Governor's race: "He said, 'Seymore, do you know why I lost that governor's race?' I said, 'I'm not sure, Judge. What do you think?' He said, 'Seymore, I was out-niggered by John Patterson. And I'll tell you here and now, I will never be out-niggered again.'" Dan Carter, his biographer, says in the film that Wallace said: "You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor." [SOURCE]
The racial and social upheavals of the 1960s helped bring George Wallace to national attention. Wallace built a following through his colorful attacks against civil rights, liberals, and the federal government. Founding the American Independent Party in 1968, he ran his campaign from the statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama, winning 13.5 percent of the overall presidential vote.
By appealing to southern Democrats, President Richard Nixon began to create a political realignment, replacing the Democrat Party in the South with a new Republican Party that would unite all conservatives. The Republican decision to seek the votes of southern whites soon swung a majority of southern congressional districts, Senate seats, and electoral votes to the Republicans.
