American History Hit - Reconstruction Era: A False Dawn of Freedom?

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

With the end of the Civil War, four million formerly enslaved people in the South were now free. It was the beginning of a remarkable experiment: rebuilding the South on the foundations of freedom and equal citizenship. For a brief moment, the United States of America begins its first real attempt at establishing a multi-racial democracy.Our guest today is Bradley Rebeiro, Associate Professor of Law at BYU Law School. He is the author of ‘Until the Last Yoke is Broke: The Constitutional Vision of Frederick Douglass’, which is out on September 29th of this year.Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Produced by Tomos Delargy. Senior Producer was Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. It is April 1865. The guns have fallen silent.

Across the defeat itself, cities are destroyed, railroads are torn up, and plantations stand eerily silent, as word spreads that the Confederacy has collapsed. Amidst this devastation, for 4 million enslaved men, women, and children, the end of the civil war brings a promise of a new life of freedom. Families begin searching for loved ones who have been separated for years. Couples legalized marriages once denied to them, and within a few years, thousands of black people are running for office in southern legislatures. As Union soldiers and agents of the Freedmen's Bureau arrive, they help oversee a remarkable experiment, rebuilding the South on the foundations of freedom and equal citizenship. For just a brief moment, the United States of America begins its first real attempt at establishing a multiracial,

democracy. Hi everybody, I'm Don Wildman, and this is American History Hit. Thank you for joining us. Today's episode, and a subsequent one soon to follow, is about reconstruction after the Civil War, how it rose, how it developed, and then how it failed and why. Fundamental stuff, making sense of these events. And for this, I speak with Bradley Rubiro, Associate Professor of Law at Brigham Young University in Utah. He is the author of a new soon-to-be-released book entitled, Until the Last Yoke is broke, the constitutional vision of Frederick Douglass, comes out September 29th. As I say, we will discuss the whole of Reconstruction, but today's episode is about the promising beginnings, the flowering, and the false dawn of freedom it ushered in. Hello, Bradley. Thanks for joining

us on American History Hit. Really glad to see you. Excited to be here. I want to discuss the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. I mean, and I do mean immediate, like after the surrender, and especially having to do with the enslaved millions that were down there. How does life change immediately? Well, life doesn't really change until you have the ratification of the 13th Amendment. And this is happening, I mean, we're right at the end of the Civil War, but the drafting of the 13th Amendment is actually happening while the Civil War is still going on, although the Union is more or less assured of victory at this point.

But with the ratification of the 13th Amendment, that's when you see this dramatic change in the south but as well as the north. So again, I always have to do this. People don't like it, but we have to take a small step back, right, take a step back to the Emancipation Proclamation. So Abraham Lincoln issues this emancipation proclamation and at least in all the rebellious states, right? Slaves there are now made free.

It was just interesting note from someone like Booker T. Washington who says that he can recall, right, when this moment happened. and it was almost like his whole world changed. You look at someone like Frederick Douglass, who about 20 years prior had actually escaped to freedom. And the way he described it, I think, is the way that you could probably sense most African-Americans at this time felt. He said it was something like a new life.

Because before, you didn't own your life. Everything, your entire existence, right, was entirely bound up in the quote-unquote master, right? Whatever the master dictated for you, when you ate, when you slept. when you worked, entirely belonged to the master. So when you became free, it's almost like you're born again, right? And this was what it was like for African Americans at the time of the ratification of the 13th Amendment. They were sort of made into new lives, and all of a sudden they had to figure out what are they going to do? We so quickly say the number,

it's so commonly known, four million enslaved. Would they have had any idea, any individual, have any idea of how many of them there were? Was there any sense of solidarity among each other that way? I would say largely no, and this was intentional, right? The way that slavery was actually orchestrated, the idea was to break up families, break up communities. I mean, the greatest fear that Southerners had in holding their slaves was the idea of revolt, revolution, right? You think actually in very American terms, right? Yeah. A lot of these people, they are second, third generation Americans, and they were told stories of how, you know, a group of people coming together could actually fight for their freedom. And this was their greatest fear. So, no, you couldn't, you couldn't allow

for African Americans to have any real sense of community lest you risk this danger. Sure. And that literacy or anti-literacy was such a prevalent thing then for that reason. Don't teach them. Don't allow them to convene. All that, those rules were in place, and especially the breakup of families, in order. to keep this division, you know, it's a divide and conquer, I guess, is an ongoing 400-year-old practice in that situation. I'm going to read that quote that you just referred to. It is from his memoir, which was called Up from Slavery. It recalls that exact moment, and I'll do my best Booker T. Washington here. The most distinct thing that I now recall in connection with the scene

was that some man who seemed to be a stranger, a United States officer, I presume, made a little speech and then read a rather long paper, the Emancipation Proclamation, I think. After the reading, we were told that we were all free, and we could go when and where we pleased. My mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us what it all meant, that this was the day for which she had been so long praying, but fearing that she would never leave to see. I am moved reading that, just thinking of that moment. It is such profound experience, of course, you know, through the mill of literature, but nonetheless, you can feel that feeling that so many had. Yeah, absolutely.

It's hard when you read through these accounts. I've read through many accounts of former slaves. I've read the accounts of northerners recounting how they see, even, you know, people who are enslaved and they're on the block, right, to be sold. It's really hard to fathom the idea that you literally cannot. decide what you're going to do the next day, that someone else dictates every part of your existence. And to imagine to go from that to starkly suddenly, now you can go wherever you will. Oh, and by the way, good luck in doing that. It's really hard for us to wrap our minds around. Yeah. And this didn't mean there wasn't a tremendous sense of uncertainty, as you're talking about,

now faced with this whole prospect of a new life. They could leave the plantations, reunite with families, legalized marriages that they hadn't been previously recognized. This is a social revolution, isn't it? Yeah, it's a social revolution. And it's largely, at least in the early years, backed by Congress. So Congress has the Freedmen's Bureau bill that they're working on simultaneously almost with the 13th Amendment. Because Congress, at least, they also realize, well, once we free the African Americans in the South, what are we going to do with them? I think they realize you can't do nothing. You have to do something about it.

So they passed this bill and like you're just mentioning, this bill has all sorts of provisions, right? It provides for clothing. It provides for refugee camps, you know, medical care, legal services, marriage proceedings, which is a big deal, right? in as much as family is a fundamental building block of a flourishing society. Exactly. Now, it comes as no surprise to anyone that history tells us the southern states immediately try to limit this newfound freedom.

But I think in this conversation, this is a big chance for me personally, to really understand the more subtle versions of these truths, which we just accept as sort of wrote history at this point. I guess the North sees this as their opportunity because they've basically destroyed the entire place. I mean, there's nothing. No economy. This whole South has been turned upside down. And yet, somehow, the Southern States feel, gain some purchase in the situation. There's a lot to talk about, and we will in this conversation, but this is the basic idea. How do they immediately try to restrict this? Yeah. So in some ways, the Southern States try to respond in kind, right?

So, oh, you're going to free all the slaves, right? Also, you're going to set up, you know, all these amenities for them. Well, let's pass these things called black codes. Louisiana, Mississippi, probably have some of the most egregious ones, but you can find this across most of the states. And these codes, like you said, they're somewhat subtle. So they presuppose that suddenly African Americans can enter into contracts, for instance, to give you some context, slaves could not.

by law and turn into contracts. The idea being they could not do anything of their own volition. But now that they can, the southern states started passing these black codes, for instance, saying that, yes, African Americans can turn into contracts, but by law, they are required to abide by those contracts. And if they did not abide by those contracts, there would actually be criminal penalties, not just civil ones. And these criminal ones were rather egregious in the sense that you could actually imprison a black person who fail to adhere to a contract. And then once they're imprisoned, you can then actually force them to, one, actually fulfill the terms of the contract, and two, you could force them to work to

pay off the debt of having had them in prison, right? And this was sort of one of those, I guess you could say hacks of the 13th Amendment, right? Because you could actually still actually force involuntary servitude in cases of criminal punishment. And southern states took advantage of this immediately and set up this new apparatus. Yeah. Did they have these codes in the chamber? You know, was this the bullet in the chamber as the war was drawing to a close? Did they know they were going to do this?

Yeah, that's hard to tell. I mean, probably some states did, right? But by and large, this is actually just a reaction once they know that the writing is on the wall. So I guess, yeah, you could say the bullets in the chamber, but the bullet's not quite there until they know for sure slavery's coming to an end. Right. And then they knew that they had to preserve their way of life in some way. I'm just fascinated by how that must have been discussed, you know, in the chambers of their government or amongst themselves. I mean, there's no way that this whole system unfolds as quickly as it does. When are the black codes enacted? Black codes are enacted anywhere from 1865 until about 1866. And then Congress starts to act immediately. So the Civil Rights Act of 1866 tries to put a stop to all of these black codes. Now, interestingly, because you have to remember the 13th,

Amendment only ended slavery. There was still the problem of citizenship, right? This goes back to the Dred Scott decision in 1857, where Justice Taney says that blacks cannot be citizens of the United States and that they had no rights that white men were bound to respect. Congress still had to answer those constitutional questions. So the Civil Rights Act of 1866 tries to respond to these black codes as well as answer that question by establishing citizenship and allowing for certain civil rights protections across the board. But are they state laws? And how is that operating if there are no governments going on at this moment, right? Yeah. So these were state laws. The black codes were state laws. And then Congress also enacts, the Reconstruction Acts in 1867, right? And these

are set up, they basically sort of abolish the states and effectively set up military districts. Okay. So there's about five military districts that are set up. And then it's basically all union control at this point. I think you can sort of sense the idea here being that Congress is in small step saying, well, let's free African Americans, let's make sure that they have rights. And with each step that the South takes that sort of is trying to resist this change, Congress takes just a step further. And they say, okay, you know what, let's just set up these military districts. Let's have complete federal control over the southern states. Yeah. And I just want to have listeners understand. This is how Reconstruction

is more simply told, which is our objective today, but also gets very complicated because there are these multiple chapters to Reconstruction and the failure of Reconstruction that are really important to understand, and we're kind of in Chapter 1 here, which is the Black Codes,

and the reaction to that. I want to just underscore what you were mentioning before how these Black Codes restricted those freedoms. You've got vagrancy laws enacted, which are a key component of this. And you can imagine, I mean, that's pretty loose. Somebody's hanging around downtown. You can pick him up for vagrancy. Suddenly, he's in the system. And it also restricted the right to buy property, buy and sell land, move freely in public spaces, the vagrancy. And all of this is impacted by these state laws, which then give the state the right to basically incarcerate you, right? That's right. And you have to keep in mind the state affairs, especially the social economic well-being of recently freed men, right?

They had no home. Their home was, well, they were enslaved and they were forced to live in these slave houses on plantations. And then suddenly that they're made free. Well, white plantation owners did not have some sort of obligation, right, to house other formerly enslaved persons. So now you have these freedmen who have nowhere to go. And like you said, you have a vagrancy law. Well, guess what? If you don't have anywhere to go, we'll throw you in jail.

And then we'll make you pay for your. You're imprisonment, right, through forced labor. So you're back in slavery. So the only real option they have is actually just to go back to the plantations and to enter into these contracts that largely favor the plantation owner. And then if they break those contracts, where do they end up? Exactly. Back in prison. Yep.

And you mentioned that this is one of the holdovers in the 13th Amendment. And Eva DuVernay made a very famous documentary about this not too many years ago. And that's the amazing fact that this has lasted onwards into modern incarceration. The congressional response you refer to. By and large, the North was alarmed by these measures taken by the South. Public opinion enraged. They're going to try to get away from the consequences of losing this war. We've been through four years of this. It's just a horrible situation. And now, oh, my God, these guys are trying to try to get away with this. Supported by the fact that one of their own, Andrew Johnson, is in the presidential office. So this along the with the elections of several ex-Confederates returning to power. I mean, this is the big subject. We did an episode just a little while ago on the unpunishment of Confederates and how incredibly off the hook they were, right up to Jefferson Davis, and the choices that were made in order to do that to reunify the country for whatever reasons. That plays a big role in this, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. I mean, it goes back to the

decision of Abraham Lincoln to even choose Andrew Johnson, right, as his vice president. The idea being, well, a man from Tennessee, there would be some conciliation there, right? Reconciliation between the north and the south. And Andrew Johnson, I mean, it's hard to be fair to this man, right? But the slight thing he has going for him is at the very least he's in favor of union, right? He's in favor of keeping the states together. Now, the problem is he's a man. He's a man. from Tennessee. And so he's largely going to favor ex-Confederates. He was in favor of amnesty for them and allowing them back into power. And Congress did face sort of the difficulty of, are we really going to maintain these military districts over all of these southern states and for how long are we going

to do so? But at every turn, right, you imagine that the legislature and the executive are working together, but here, that's just not the case. You have a man in the executive who actually is vetoing most of the laws that Congress is trying to pass, right, to protect blacks in the South. Yeah. And this is the chapter two of this story, because you end up with this becoming a federal dilemma as much as it is a Southern dilemma at this point. And that's thanks to Andrew Johnson. A really important factor here is that the Congress was not in session after Lincoln was assassinated. So there's a good six months, I think it is, until those congressional Republicans come back to Washington, D.C., literally, physically. And so in that period of time, you have what's called presidential

reconstruction during the summer of 1865. And voila, Andrew Johnson pulls out his pen and starts pardoning people, right? Yeah, that's right. He's pardoning people left and right. And a really, for instance, a really important measure of the Friedman's Bureau was to redistribute lands, right? And this was something around 40 acres or so, right, for Friedman. And the idea being, we're going to lease this land to them. And I should mention that this land was, you know, captured land, right? So this is land that was captured during the Civil War. It's under federal control. Okay, let's redistribute this land to freedmen as well as loyal refugees, right?

So even some whites, right, also receive some land. The idea being let's allow them to cultivate the land and then as they work the land, they can actually then buy the land. But Andrew Johnson completely undoes this. Right. And this is, again, one of those moments. You need an executive who's on board, right, with what the legislature is trying to do. And if you don't, it can make for hard times.

Sure. And presidential reconstruction, the summer of 1865, then turns into congressional reconstruction. When the Congress comes back and the Republicans take action furious about what they've been watching happen, they were powerless during these times because they literally were out of session. Their reaction in the latter part of 1866 is against the Black Codes. And that's the Civil Rights Act of 1866. What does this do? Yeah.

So the Civil Rights Act of 1866 does first. and foremost, the most important thing, the very first provision is to establish citizenship, right? It makes clear that blacks who are born in the United States are, in fact, citizens of the United States. This might seem like a simple point, but this was huge. And in fact, why Congress might not have done anything before, because they just assumed if we free blacks, everyone would assume and understand that, yes, they are citizens, but this actually wasn't the case. So that settles that. And then the provisions go through, and establish several rights that really confront the black codes at several junctions.

The right to buy lease and sell property. This was another big thing, right? The idea of being, if you don't have property, you really have nothing, right, in the United States. So allowing them to buy lease and sell property was huge to enter into contracts. And then the catch-all is sort of the equal protection of the laws, making sure that they are equally protected or equally prosecuted, if you will, under the law. The same law that applies to a white person has to apply in the same exact way to a black person. Right. And the institution that will enact or be part of the mechanics of this is the Friedman's Bureau, which you've mentioned.

You walk nearby the White House today next to, I guess, Jackson Square is it? You'll see a plaque on a building there, and that's how close in this institution was. There was a house that was the Freedman's Bureau right next to the White House. It was there to be an agency that established aid and food and shelter and all kinds of services to emancipated African-Americans. So these practical steps have been taken. That was what's so hopeful about this period, all set up by 1865. And then this comes in to play, the 1866 law, which then, of course, leads to the 14th Amendment, which is instituting that and stating that in the constitution. It was a pretty hopeful turn of events, wasn't it? Yeah, I'd say especially like 1868 or so, you know, if you're thinking about like, what's the high watermark of reconstruction, It might be around this time, although there's a good argument to be made 1870 as well when you actually have the ratification of the 15th Amendment.

But the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868, along with the election of President Grant. Because this is actually the first time also that blacks are able to vote in a presidential election in a massive way. And one could argue, but for black votes in the South, Grant does not get elected. A Republican candidate does not get elected in 1868 without the black vote. Well, we're going to revisit that fact in the next section here, but I just wanted to explain to folks that this is really, as you say, the high watermark. It's really that we missed this one point that Johnson vetoes that Civil Rights Act of 1866. And those congressional Republicans have the wherewithal amongst them to override that veto. And that's the end of Johnson's power at that point.

That's the beginning of real congressional reconstruction and so much that follows. And with this reconstruction then becomes a national project rather than just a program of Southern recovery. So let's take a break. And when we come back, we're going to discuss these efforts to rebuild and transform the South. Okay, we're back with Professor Bradley Rivera talking about, we're coming out of 1866, the Civil Rights Act. I want to talk about that more, Bradley. the legalities behind going from the Civil Rights Act to the 14th Amendment. Yeah, that's right. We mentioned earlier how Andrew Johnson actually vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. His theory was Congress did not have power to actually pass the 1866 Rights. Civil Rights Act. On what ground, on what authority did you actually have this power? And he might have had something of an argument. So Congress actually, while they override the veto of the Civil Rights Act, the veto of the Civil Rights Act,

Act, they also simultaneously are getting ready the 14th Amendment, several provisions, right? Because they need to make sure that actually we do have the power in the all-important Section 1 that establishes citizenship, privileges and immunities, equal protection, all these things. They're all guaranteed. But then at the end of that amendment, Section 5 is almost the most important. Congress shall, by appropriate legislation, be able to enforce the provisions of this amendment. And that made sure that, yeah, the Civil Rights Act of 1860. and theoretically anything else that Congress might see fit to pass in order to protect

black interests and really all American interests in the Union, they'd have power to do so. I would venture to say, you know, that in the Great Depression, this is the high watermark of congressional power, isn't it? Yes. Yes, absolutely. And then as you track reconstruction, how quickly it wanes. But yes, I'd say this is the high watermark. The fragility of it all. we're talking about basically the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, which are called the reconstruction amendments for all these reasons. And voting is coming down the pike here. So let's talk

about that. The idea of suffrage is so important in this discussion. Why was voting the key to everything? So voting blacks in the South understood this. Whites in the South understood this. You can pass all kinds of legislation to protect rights. But what really matters is whether you have representation in government, right? Because government can always make changes in the future. So voting was absolutely the key to reconstruction. Blacks understood this. In 1866, you have Frederick Douglas with a delegation of other black men visit Andrew Johnson pleading for the right to vote, suffrage. And Andrew Johnson, I mean, he doesn't just say no. I mean, he really excoriates them for even asking the question. This is how fraught the question of suffrage is. And Congress, someone in

response to that as well, actually, when they pass these reconstruction acts, setting up military districts, et cetera, they also sneak in the ability for blacks to be able to vote, right? And then you see immediately the effects of this. You see progressive constitutions being passed in the South. At this time, in a very weird turn of events, you could actually argue that southern constitutions were more progressive and egalitarian than northern constitutions were. So you can see just how important suffrage was. Yeah. I mean, it's the leverage, right?

That's the idea of this that Frederick Douglass, above all people sees. Without that tool or weapon, whatever you're going to call it, black people can be freed, but they have no power. They have no leverage in the society. That would be true of you and me at this point. That is the key to politics. So off they go, 1865, there are debates within the Republican Party.

key thing to remember. There's all sorts of shades here. You know, if people in the north wanting black people to have the vote, I mean, all over this country, there's racism at that point. It was never really the idea to empower these people to be such a political force, but here we are at the brink. It's a big deal. So those debates have been raging for a while over whether to have universal black severance or not. Radicals like Charles Sumner, Thadius Stevens, those familiar names from this whole period, argue from the, jump that all black men should be granted full voting rights. That's what makes them radical. It's a moral consideration as much as a practical measure to stop these ex-Confederates from regaining power.

That's the inevitability they're worried about, isn't it? Yeah, that's right. And ironically, it's the 13th Amendment that causes the problem. Right. So you have to think back to the original constitution. The representation of southern states was somewhat capped based on the people that they had, in part because they had slaves. Right. And so the Constitution said, well, you only get three-fifths representation for those who are other persons, right, who we all understand are those who are enslaved. But what happens then when you free them? All of a sudden, the South actually has increased representation in Congress the moment that you free them. And so Congress knows, well, we need to do something. So the 14th Amendment right has Section 2, which says, well, let's at least cabin to say, if you don't give them the right to vote, then they don't count for representation at all. And then Charles Sumner, Daddy is Stevens, right? Et cetera, as you mentioned, they're saying, well, we should just grant the right to vote because how are Blacks going to vote? Wow.

They're going to vote Republican, right? They all understood this. And so if they want to keep power in Congress, there's also this sort of quid pro quo, right? Well, let's try to fight for black suffrage, in part for selfish reasons to make sure that we stay in power. Yeah, exactly. I've never thought of that, the irony of the 13th Amendment, making this a more complicated conversation. How strange. Their views would gradually change with the implementation of those

black codes. That really energizes this conversation in terms of voting. They realize how quickly this thing can all slip away from them. And that's really what moves us towards the 15th Amendment, isn't it? Yeah, that's right. Because up until that point, and this is, the other just strange thing about reconstruction is as much as you have northern congressmen pushing for equality, suffrage, etc. in the South, you actually have voting initiatives for black suffrage in the North failing. Yeah. This is from 1866 to about 1868, right? You have these initiatives to try to increase the vote to allow blacks to vote in the North and they're failing left and right in northern states. But it's really

after you see the black codes, et cetera, that then you start to finally see this push even in the North towards no, the only real answer here has to be universal suffrage. We just simply can't cabinet only to white male suffrage at that time. Talk about the Reconstruction Act of 1867. This was news to me. What exactly happens with these passages, which is from Congress, and what are they reacting to? Yeah, so the Reconstruction Acts, they effectively abolished state, southern states, as well as representation in Congress. And we've already talked about the idea that the South, the South has already proven at this point that they are not good faith actors, right, in trying to reconcile with the union. So Congress says, well, let's just set up these military districts,

and now you have the South effectively just under military control. Now, along with this military control, though, they do grant black suffrage, which then radically changes, right, representation in southern legislatures. South Carolina would probably be the best example here, where you actually We go from not a single black representative in their legislature to actually there's a majority of black representatives in their legislature under these military districts. So they don't have, South doesn't have representation in Congress, but in Southern States you see a lot of really good things happening, right? Because you see these new constitutions being drafted and ratified, which are largely egalitarian allowing for equal opportunity, right? for blacks and whites, right, to pursue the vocations as they see fit and among other things. Yeah, well, this is all happening also because Johnson's gone, by the way. Yeah. And you've got

Grant in office after 1868 and he is, you know, the force behind a lot of this for every understandable reason. It was enormously successful, this turnaround. First of all, you are enforcing this. So when we talk about the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, I just, this is really about dividing the south into five military districts that will be enforced by federal troops who are moved in to keep the peace and chase down problems of disenfranchisement and so forth, they are there to keep the law as this Republican Congress has mandated. It leads, as you have mentioned, to enormous amounts of people being elected to serve in black people, being elected to serve in southern legislatures. Over 2,000, roughly about 2,000 black Americans are elected.

That's how incredibly powerful this voting, this suffrage is. When you put the power in this many people's hands, this is what's going to happen. Yeah, and they're going to exercise it, right? There's immense excitement, right, around the idea that they can finally participate in government. And they're pursuing education opportunities along the same ways. And these military districts simply allow all this to happen because it's quelling the violence. Now, granted, we have to say, obviously, they couldn't quell. all violence, but they at least allowed enough space or sufficient space in order for

voting rights to be exercised, in order for blacks to receive education. And all these things are redounding, right, to a more progressive South, a South that is outgrowing in some sense, right? And having some prosperity. Five years out from the Civil War, 1870, Joseph Rainey of South Carolina, Hiram Rhodes, Rebels of Mississippi, become the first black. members of Congress for the House and the Senate respectively. I mean, amazing. And as a result of all of this and the massive domination of the Republicans, 15th Amendment 1870 has passed. Republicans passed this constitutional amendment declaring that the right to vote could not be denied or abridged on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Bam, it's in the

Constitution, the right to vote. With all of this, with this traction, a lot becomes very possible. You have, you know, HBCUs beginning, right down there. Fiske and Howard universities are established. Talk about the effect of this period of time. We're talking to 1870. Yeah, so 1870, you know, Frederick Douglas, I think, said it best. He said something like, today there's a new sky, right? There's a new dawn that's, you know, shining upon America.

This is literally a new America with the 1870 ratification of the 15th Amendment. You know, before we were, you know, we were just simply people, but now we are human beings and we're men, right? We're fully embraced in the human family. And this allows for, again, not only the continued dominance of Republicans in the legislature, but also blacks are being elected to Congress. This is just a huge deal. I mean, it's hard, again, for us to fathom today, right? But just think there had never before been black representatives in Congress, suddenly have Joseph Rainey against. South Carolina, right, where you actually have a majority black representation in the legislature.

He's elected to Congress. And then he's followed by some 16 other black persons that are elected to Congress around this time. Right. And so you just see that massive change. I mean, in Congress, I can only imagine what the halls would have been like, right, to suddenly see black people walking into the halls of Congress with voting power, right? Making national agendas and affecting change on a national scale. And you can imagine the national mood, the temperature on all of this has dropped because you've got Ulysses S. Grant, General Grant in charge, and big changes are happening. The payoff from all those lives lost in the Civil War, blood and treasure, suddenly makes sense to people. And you can just imagine how that must have felt, the sense of, whoof, we did it.

And now we're seeing it really changed the country. we're talking about a multi-racial democracy, you know, that which we lived with and we live with an except today was a brand new idea in many lands, let alone the United States, which just went through what it went through. I mean, and so much of this is education, isn't it? So you mentioned Fiske and Howard universities, right? These are, you know, historically black colleges and universities. And you can still see their influence today, right? But the fascinating thing also just defeating all. the Southern tropes, right, the idea that blacks could not learn. Yes. They did not want to learn, right? Well, lo and behold, you create schools for them. They actually didn't even have enough schools or enough teachers to quell the sad, the want and really the need, right, of blacks who are trying to seek education. Yeah. And then you start to see them to actually attain really high heights, right? Fisk University is a well-established university. Howard University,

you know, not too long ago, I think, became another R1, right? University. I mean, these are just a really well run and prestigious institutions that produce, you know, some of the nation's best. So let's take another break, digest this stuff, because when we come back, there is the heartbreak. Reconstruction's failure begins to, the seeds are planted, and we need to approach that. Okay, we're back with Professor Bradley Rivera. Bradley, we've talked about the successes of reconstruction, which I hope we've found, talked enough about to be rather inspiring to people because, you know, it gets so dark so quickly that you often forget how bright it really was. And that's a really important point because

those leaders come later, and I'm talking about Martin Luther King, you know, anybody through the 20th century knows what happened. It's in denial. The rest of the society is in denial of this, but reconstruction almost worked. Yeah. And I think this is what I tend to try to teach my students as well. we always try to think of progress as sort of this inevitable chain, right? We're always moving forward. But sometimes we have to remember that at any moment in time, we can't always just say, oh, we're definitely better than, you know, whoever came before us 50 years ago or 60 years ago.

That might be true, right? But you have to actually look what was the evidence on the ground? Because these constitutions being passed in the South, like I said, they were very progressive, more progressive than even the northern ones. And then we'll talk shortly in short order about, you know, the regression, right? But at this time, at this high watermark, one could argue that if we had just kept pace at that moment in time, who knows what America would have looked like 50 years from that. Yes, exactly. There's a phrase I looked up and read a lot about called aspirational constitutionalism, which comes into play here, where, you know, despite the big steps backwards, certain changes have happened. and stated in the Constitution, in our case, that mark that ground and you have to march back to it. You know, constantly, there's a whole process of back and forthness that really you can track out through the next 100 years of this story.

But let's talk about 1870 here. So Reconstruction has transformed politics in the South. 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments have all been passed being ratified. Black men are voting over much of the South. Reconstruction governments introduce ambitious reforms to public education in other arenas. There were all these tangible victories and not just symbolic ones, very real ones, with people going to work at Congress. But this all depends on heavy federal intervention, doesn't it?

Yes. Again, these military districts that were set up, well, slowly over time, Congress actually starts to readmit, right? States into the union. And really the condition there was you have to ratify the 14th Amendment and then eventually they set of a condition you have to ratify the 15th Amendment. So you have to keep in mind that these military districts are slowly starting to reform back into the southern states.

But you still had troops on the ground. Right. So theoretically, as long as you had troops on the ground maintaining as much as they could, the peace, then theoretically all this progress that was made could continue and perhaps even improve who knows, right? But it really is contingent upon the idea that there are federal troops on the ground. How much awareness was there in D.C., in Congress especially, that once, if we pull that out of there, the whole thing collapses? Was there an awareness of that direct result? I'd say so. You see from, oh, you look at the congressional debates around the enforcement

acts because they're continually passing legislation, right? It's not like, oh, they passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 were done or Reconstruction Acts were done. No, no, no, no. You see the Enforcement Act of 1870. You see the Enforcement Act of 1871, right? No, Congress is continuing to pass these things and you see testimony after testimony after testimony, especially from, frankly, Southern Republicans think we have to have, right? You know, this sort of protection, because if we don't, then it is all going to unwind. So I think Congress, they do understand the fragile nature of reconstruction. Right. And that's the key word, which we will wind up with here, is the fragility of this system, which have been put into place, only works out if you have federal troops down there supporting those

military districts, which was grants achievement, or at least he supported it and worked that. And we're talking about the KKK and all kinds of things that have to be answered for. And we're going to delve into this collapse in detail. But for now, I want to mark this moment. I mean, we talked about it before as a high water mark. I think this would be it. 1870 to 73 is when Reconstruction really reaches its pinnacle in terms of, you know, the vision and then the practice of it. Both of those things have been put into motion with the major achievements and advancements made, driven by a Republican Party that's really in power, right?

Yeah. And you just have to keep in mind, again, I think in our 20th and 21st century minds, right, we always just think about, well, it's all about civil rights legislation, right? legislation that's going to protect very specific rights. And then that's how we know that we've made it or otherwise we're making progress. But for Frederick Douglass and others, the reason why 1870 we say this is simply the high watermark, because it actually isn't the high watermark as it relates to legislation protecting civil rights and how expansive it is. But it's the high watermark because of voting, right? The idea that the 15th Amendment is ratified, the idea that you have union officers on the ground protecting the ability of blacks to be able to vote.

this is why Frederick Douglass says this is a new dawn, this is a new day, right? So as long as you protect the right to vote, and Douglas, I mean, sometimes he was a little facetious about this. Maybe not in his mind, but he would say, forget all the other stuff, right? Forget the civil rights stuff. Just protect our right to vote and let us take care of ourselves. This is why it's the high water market. That requires troops on the ground, literally. Yeah, that's right. So great progress had been made, but it wasn't the last. In our next episode, and I invite everyone, want to sort of treat this as part one, we'll discuss the efforts to really dismantle reconstruction. We'll talk about the campaigns of violence across the south, the waning political

will in the north, equally important, and also within the Republican Party. Bradley Rubiro teaches at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where he is an associate professor. He is the author of a soon-to-be-released book entitled, Until the Last Yoke is Broke, the Constitutional Vision of Frederick Douglass, which comes out in just a few weeks on September 29th. Order yours early. Thanks, Bradley. We'll conclude this conversation in our episode next week. Can't wait. Thank you. I'm always happy to talk about this era. Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements

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