Emancipation Betrayed: Reconstruction amid Southern Resistance

Greetings, this week we examine the Federal government's role in Reconstruction, how embittered Southerners resisted, and the implications of "ending" Reconstruction.  

By April of 1865, many remaining Confederate forces under the direction of General. Robert E. Lee surrendered at the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia; although occasional cells of white rebels would continue to resist Union occupation, the Confederacy had essentially exhausted its wartime capabilities. General Lee's surrender staunched the hemorrhaging of raw materials and men from the South. Nonetheless, those disgruntled Confederate veterans survived and returned home. Frequently these officers and veterans became statesmen, lawyers, plantation owners, and farmers after returning home. 

Before the Civil War, Florida was on a trajectory to have booming cotton, lumber, and meat markets; all supported with the use of slaves as laborers. Union efforts to recruit Africans and sympathetic Whites were only mildly successful. Even before major defeats, the state of Florida had a reduced tactical presence. Florida's long, peninsular coastline was hard to patrol but also acted as a buffer from naval incursions. Instead, Confederate troops were stationed deep within the state; their central defense meant that they could support themselves, only splitting off and adding regiments from other armies in emergencies. 

However, after the Civil War's symbolic conclusion at Appomattox, Union troops were sent into southern states to enforce the federal government's "Reconstruction" program. The Republican government sought to enfranchise Black voters, now all citizens, by physically protecting their right to vote. Indeed, southern resistance to Black voters was aggressive, violent, and even community organized. Early on Democrat governments in the south sought to mimic legislation like the previous slave codes and included broad "vagrancy" motifs. Freedmen could be arrested for minor infractions and subjected to forced labor: slavery by another name. 

The Black Codes, named after their obvious purpose of subverting the rights of African American citizens, sprung up rather quickly in Florida. White resentment ensured that federal occupation lasted until 1877 as the freeing of the enslaved caused immediate problems for some southern states. Uneducated, and without economic wealth or support, their liberty caused a labor shortage and the system of sharecropping (and later the "hiring system") was born. In this system, the racial hierarchy was still largely enforced. Slave owners would rent out the land for cultivation in exchange for a percentage of the yields, profits, or working time. 

In addition to vagrancy laws where a freedman could be fined, whipped, or sold for a year's labor for not working; there existed numerous other legislation intent on restricting the movements and prosperity of black men. Strictly held curfews meant you had to be home before sunset; Freedmen were not allowed to own land, forcing them back onto plantations; black women were to work the field instead of staying home; and other restrictions on movement by white supremacy groups (such as the KKK) which could often result in targeted lynching, ostracization, and other community terrorism efforts.