Summary: After Presidential Reconstruction in 1865, once Congress resumed session, Congress faced a similar reconstruction as the Presidency did.
Timestamp 8:08: After Andrew Johnson completes Reconstruction on his own, he made it so that Congress only had to seat certain delegates. Congress refuses to seat the Southern delegates, which leads to the conundrum of if you are not represented in Congress you are technically under military rule.
Timestamp 10:43: People are trying to figure out what exactly is happening down South. We have stories from intercepted letters, and things written in the media which tend to be media biased. Congress chooses to hold hearings to collect testimony in Washington. They offer to pay a dollar a day to those who testify. This leads to the concept of “Crisis Actors” because Southern Democrats say the testimony can’t be trusted as accurate as they are receiving payment.
Timestamp 13:49: Congress pushes for the Freedmen's Bureau act. This is to push for a Civic Presence for African Americans in court, which would allow them to testify and sue. This also expands public education, which is decided by literacy rates. Around the same time the Civil rights Act was proposed, giving African American men the right to hold property and vote. This was vetoed by Anderew Johnson on the grounds that this gave African Americans rights that White Men didn’t have, and also because the Southern States didn’t have representation in congress. With Andrew Johnson’s veto, he cements the perspective that any legislation that will benefit African Americans is a redistribution of wealth to the detriment of White taxpayers.
Timestamp 24:06: Congress comes back from the veto by presenting the 14th Amendment. This amendment overturned the Dread Scott ruling of 1865, which stated African Americans had no rights as they weren’t citizens. This amendment also exempts American Indians for Citizenship, and also proclaims that anyone who made an oath to the United States and has broken it (the confederacy) is not entitled to representation. This cuts the power hold the Southern states had in congress.
Timestamp 28:42: In the Spring and summer of 1866, there is the Great Memphis Riot occurs over Race and Sidewalk use. At the time sidewalk use and maintenance was split between the storefront and the city, so if the shop owner didn’t approve of African Americans they couldn’t use it. This resulted in African Americans being forced to use the part of the street where Chamber Pots and waste were dumped. This was a way of saying “you don’t belong here”. This was proceeded by in July of 1866, there was an attempt to rewrite the State constitution of Louisiana in an attempt to get African Americans to vote.
Timestamp 33:18: Upon Andrew Johnson suggesting everyone Ignore the 14th Amendment, Tennessee turns around and ratifies based almost entirely on the grounds that Andrew Johnson doesn’t like it.
Timestamp 36:57: The Military reconstruction act is passed, and under the Military reconstruction, voters vote for delegates to rewrite the state Constitutions written under Andrew Johnson. One of the changes allows African American men the right to vote. White Southerners are not a fan of this, and try to stop it from happening by refusing to vote. Congress reacts by passing law putting the Military in charge of voter registration.
Timestamp 40:54: In February 1868, Johnson is at his wits end with Republicans, and fire’s Edward Stanton from the War Department, which is in violation of the Tenure of Office Act. Congress had previously prepared Articles of Impeachment, and then proceeded to try to impeach him. They come to the realization that impeachment may not be a good choice at that particular moment given the riots and Indian wars.
Timestamp 48:37: The KKK rises as a terrorist organization in 1868, which is in conjunction with the state constitutions being ratified. They dress as the ghosts of dead confederates, but choose to hide their identities with hoods because they are acutely aware that their actions are illegal and could land them in trouble with the government.
Timestamp 53:45: After the election of 1868 is complete, Georgia throws out its African American legislatures. This causes Congress to not seat them, which technically puts them under military rule as they have no representation in Congress or the Senate. In an effort to avoid another war, the 15th amendment is passed. The Amendment states that the right to vote should not be abridged by race, color, or previous condition of servitude. This conveniently omits women.
[From wikipedia] Richardson’s first book, The Greatest Nation of the Earth (1997), stemmed from her dissertation at Harvard University. Inspired by Eric Foner’s work on pre-Civil War Republican ideology, Richardson analyzed Republican economic policies during the war. She contended that their efforts to create an activist Federal Government during the Civil War marked a continuation of Republican free labor ideology. These policies, such as war bonds and greenbacks or the Land Grant College Act and the Homestead Act, revolutionized the role of the Federal Government in the U.S. economy. At the same time, these actions laid the groundwork for the Republican Party’s shift to Big Business after the Civil War.
In this 2001 book, Richardson "focused on the “Northern abandonment of Reconstruction.” Building on the earlier work of C. Vann Woodward, she argued that a more complete understanding of the period required appreciation of class, not only race. As Reconstruction continued into the 1870s and especially the 1880s, Republicans began to view African Americans in the South more from a class perspective and less from the perspective of race that had driven their earlier humanitarianism. In the midst of the labor struggles of the Gilded Age, Republicans came to compare “the demands of the ex-slaves for land, social services, and civil rights” to the demands of white laborers in the North. This ideological shift was the key to Republican abandonment of Reconstruction, as they chose the protection of their economic and business interests over their desire for racial equality." [From wikipedia]
In this 2007 book, "Richardson presented Reconstruction as a national event that impacted all Americans, not just those in the South. She incorporated the West into the discussion of Reconstruction as no predecessor had. Between 1865 and 1900, Americans re-imagined the role of the federal government, calling upon it to promote the well-being of its citizens. However, racism, sexism, and greed divided Americans, and the same people who increasingly benefited from government intervention—white, middle-class Americans—actively excluded African-Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, and organized laborers from the newfound bounties of their reconstructed nation." [from wikipedia]
In this book, published in 2010, Richardson "focused on the U.S. Army’s slaughter of Native Americans in South Dakota in 1890. She argued that party politics and opportunism led to Wounded Knee. After a bruising midterm election, President Benjamin Harrison needed to shore up his support. To do so, he turned to The Dakotas, where he replaced seasoned Indian agents with unqualified political allies, who incorrectly assumed that the Ghost Dance Movement presaged war. The Army responded by sending one third of its force in order to avoid spending cuts from Congress. After the event, Republicans tried to paint the massacre as a heroic battle to stifle the resurgent Democrats." [wikipedia]
In this 2014 book, Richardson "extended her study of the Republican Party into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book studied the entire life of the GOP, from its inception in the 1850s through the presidency of George W. Bush. The party’s founders united against the “slave power,” a small group of wealthy white men who controlled all three branches of government. These Republicans articulated a new vision of an America in which all hardworking men could rise. But after the Civil War, Republicans began to emulate what they originally opposed. They tied themselves to powerful bankers and industrialists, sacrificing the well-being of ordinary Americans. A similar process took place after World War II, when Republicans sought to dismantle successful New Deal policies and prop up the wealthy. However, in both cases, reformers within the party were able to return the GOP to its founding vision of equality of opportunity, first Theodore Roosevelt during the Progressive Era, and then Dwight D. Eisenhower, who enforced integration and maintained the New Deal. The Nixon and Reagan administrations have represented yet another fall from the GOP’s founding purpose. It's ironic, Richardson points out, that Republicans treated Barack Obama with an unprecedented level of disrespect, as Obama's rise from humble beginnings to the highest office in the nation embodied the vision of the original Republicans." [wikipedia]
In her most recent publication, Richardson argues "that America was founded with contradicting ideals, with the ideas of liberty, equality, and opportunity on one hand, and slavery and hierarchy on the other. United States victory in the American Civil War should have settled that tension forever, but at the same time that the Civil War was fought, Americans also started moving into the West. In the West, Americans found and expanded upon deep racial hierarchies, meaning that hierarchical values survived in American politics and culture despite the crushing defeat of the pro-slavery Confederacy. Those traditions--a rejection of democracy, an embrace of entrenched wealth, the marginalization of women and people of color--have found a home in modern conservative politics, leaving the tremendous promise of America unfulfilled." [wikipedia]
