RECONSTRUCTION AND LABOR FERMENT
In the post–Civil War era, the recently reunited United States
was the most dynamic and soon the largest capitalist state in the
world. No country illustrated Marx’s ideas with greater precision
and purity. Great railroads spanned the continent, and vast facto-
ries sprouted up, producing steel, agricultural machinery, sewing
machines. Th
e emancipation of four million slaves, the demobili-
zation of three million soldiers, and the arrival of a stream of new
immigrants swelled the size of the most diverse laboring class in
the world. Marx predicted that capitalist conditions would gener-
ate class confl ict as workers were brought into contact with one
another and discovered their common condition. Th
ough they
might at fi rst follow their employers, their attempts to acquire
security and improved pay or conditions would repeatedly bring
them into confl ict with them. Th
is would teach the workers the
need to organize and seek political representation. And since capi-
talism would create wealth at one pole and misery at another, and
since it would be gripped by recurrent crises, the workers would be
drawn to support increasingly radical measures. Th
e Gilded Age
served as a laboratory test of such ideas, and with its robber-baron
capitalists and titanic labor confl icts, it vindicated many of them.
95
But despite several attempts, no broad-based working-class party
emerged in the United States, and the country proved a laggard in
developing a welfare state. In these respects much greater progress
was made in Europe, especially in Marx’s native Germany, where
the rise of a Social Democratic Party inspired by Marx’s ideas per-
suaded Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to begin construction of a
social security system.
Marx had observed that labor in the white skin would not be truly
free so long as labor in the black skin was in chains. Th
is should be
understood as a complex sociological proposition as much as a sim-
ple moral statement. In 1865, the Th
irteenth Amendment, which
abolished slavery in the United States, ended a formal legal sta-
tus that was already crumbling because of massive slave desertions,
the Emancipation Proclamation, and deep, disruptive inroads by
the Union armies. Th
e greater part of the Confederate forces had
95 Matthew
Josephson,
Th
e Robber Barons, New York 1934.
introduction 61
melted away and the planter class was reeling from its spectacular
defeat. But, paradoxically, local white power emerged in some ways
stronger than before. Alarmed at the sight of free black people,
former Confederate offi
cers and men formed militia and patrols
designed to defend white families from luridly imagined threats
and to deny land and hunting rights to the freemen, to ensure that
they were still available for work. Union offi
cers enforced a ban on
the whip, but they could not be everywhere. Moreover, the coercion
applied to the freed people was increasingly economic rather than
physical. Many were obliged to enter very lopsided contracts, with
minimal pay until the crop had been sold and with wages paid in
“checks” that could only be redeemed at the local store.
Th
e new president in Washington condoned and shared the
Southern whites’ reaction to black freedom. Johnson urged white-
only Southern assemblies to endorse the Th
irteenth Amendment,
saying that if they did their states could then reenter the Union. He
was angered by the continuing demands of the Radical Republicans
and the actions of some Union offi
cers who had taken over prop-
erties abandoned by Confederate offi
cials and begun distributing
land to the freedmen. Johnson believed that the freedmen now
needed to be taught their place. He sympathized with the actions
of all-white assemblies who enacted strict new labor codes, obliging
the freedmen to accept work where it was off ered and penalizing
“vagrants.” Leading Southern gentlemen and ladies paid court to
Johnson in the White House, hailing him as the harbinger of rec-
onciliation and the savior of his country. So although Johnson did
press Southerners to accept the Th
irteenth Amendment, he did
so while assuring them that their acceptance would smooth their
state’s path to rapid reentry into the Union. Th
e idea that the origi-
nal secessions had been illegal, null, and void potentially opened
the way to arguing that the seceders could now simply return. Th
e
Republicans insisted that it should fall to Congress to set out the
terms of “Reconstruction.” Th
ey passed resolutions stripping former
Confederate offi
cials and offi
cers of their political rights and lay-
ing down procedures for fi nes and confi scations. But the president
found ways to frustrate them.
Using his presidential power, Johnson issued thousands of par-
dons to Confederate military and civilian offi
cials. He also issued a
62 an unfinished revolution
decree halting the distribution of land to the freedmen (of course
the estates of whites who had been pardoned could not be seized
anyway). Th
e Republican Radicals were able to pass a series of
Reconstruction Acts by margins large enough to make the meas-
ures immune to presidential veto. In 1866 the Republicans had
shied away from giving the freedmen the vote, but the confl ict with
Johnson and their own plans for Reconstruction persuaded them
that only extending the franchise could bring about the election of
genuinely loyal assemblies in the Southern states. Th
e presence of
an occupying Union Army certainly helped, but the Republicans
also needed to mobilize as much political support as possible in the
states undergoing Reconstruction.
Th
e Republicans failed (by a narrow margin) to impeach Johnson
for treason, but nevertheless were able to impose much of their own
vision of Reconstruction on the former slave states, thanks to the
presence of Union troops and to the emergence of Union Leagues
drawing support from the freedmen and from Southern whites who
resented the power of the planters. But the Republican leaders set
too much store by the ballot, underestimating the need for meas-
ures to tackle the severe economic problems of the South. So long
as Union troops were on hand, the freedmen braved intimidation
and went out to vote, but occupation was not a long-term solution.
Returning Confederate soldiery lurked in the shadows and bided
their time.
96
As the Northern public became aware of the new President’s
gross indulgence of traitors and of the planters’ resort to violence
in their attempt to rebuild a coercive labor regime, support for the
Radicals grew. Northern outrage at the presidential pardons and
at the vicious racial revanchism of the Ku Klux Klan and kindred
groups led the Congressional Republican majority to support
more radical measures and to propose extending the vote to the
freedmen of the South. Th
e Fourteenth Amendment of 1868 pro-
moted the enfranchisement of black males. In 1866–8 the Radical
Republicans had the wind in their sails and managed to overrule
the president on key issues. But the momentum of the Radicals was
96 Foner, Reconstruction, pp. 228–81, and William McKee Evans, Open
Wound: the Long View of Race in America, Urbana 2009, pp. 147–74. See also
David Roediger, How Race Survived US History, New York 2009.
introduction 63
Dostları ilə paylaş: |