By Gary W. Gallagher, University of Virginia
During the process of Reconstruction, new constitutional conventions were held in the 10 former Confederate states. Barring one or two, in most of these conventions, Black delegates were a decided minority. These conventions wrote progressive new constitutions that included universal manhood suffrage and were way ahead of many of the northern states in that regard.
Voter Registration
As the process of Reconstruction proceeded in the South by September 1867, voter registration in the former Confederate states had been completed. Seven hundred and thirty-five thousand black voters and 635,000 white voters had been enrolled. About 210,000 of those 635,000 white voters registered as Republicans.
Many of the potential white voters in the South, 25–35 percent of them, remained aloof from the process. They would have been Democrats, and as a gesture of either defiance or just as a way to show that they didn’t approve of what Congress was doing, they refused to register to vote. Thus there were a significant block of white Democratic voters in the South, who simply didn’t participate in this enrollment of voters in the summer of 1867.
There were also black majorities in five of the ten states where this enrollment took place. South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Alabama all had black majorities, and of course, the black voters who enrolled were overwhelmingly Republican.
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Constitutional Conventions
During this process, new constitutional conventions were held in these 10 former Confederate states. Delegates to these conventions were about three-quarters Republican and about one-quarter Democratic. Nearly half of the delegates were scalawags, that is, white southerners who had been Unionists before the war, and during the great sectional crisis of the late 1850s and early 1860s.
Black delegates in South Carolina had a majority. In Louisiana, delegates were split almost exactly evenly between the whites and the blacks. However, in all the other constitutional conventions, black members were a decided minority. In Texas, for example, only 10 percent of the delegates were black. In Virginia, only 11 percent of the delegates were black. Thus, clearly, these weren’t constitutional conventions dominated by black members of the conventions, as it would later be alleged by many who opposed Reconstruction.
Liberal Constitutions
These conventions wrote liberal new constitutions that included universal suffrage and were way ahead of many of the northern states in that regard. They provided for statewide public schools, as the South had always lagged behind the North in terms of its public schooling. Literacy in the South had always lagged a little bit behind and education had simply been better in the North all along.
This was an effort on the part of these Reconstruction constitution writers to help address the problem in the South. There was some prison reform in these constitutions, and so forth.
These were forward-looking constitutions that were written as a result of the radical Republican legislation. The constitutions disqualified some ex-Confederates from voting and participating in the political process, 10–20 percent at the most. By 1872, all those disqualifications were gone, and all former rebels could vote and hold office.
Ratification of the State Constitutions
After some delays, all but three former rebel states ratified these state constitutions. State elections were held. They were won by the Republicans, and new state legislatures ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. In early 1868, seven of the legislatures had done that, and thereby they had met the requirements for readmission to the Union, and were readmitted.
The Fourteenth Amendment became part of the Constitution in the summer of 1868. Congress passed a concurrent resolution on July 21 declaring the amendment ratified. The second of the three great Civil War era amendments, then, was now in place in the summer of 1868.
Only three of the former Confederate states remained outside the Union in June 1868: Texas, Virginia, and Mississippi. These three were readmitted in 1870, and when they were, it seemed to many that at least the basic work of Reconstruction had been completed.
Referendum on Republican Reconstruction Legislation
Just as the election of 1864 was a referendum emancipation and Abraham Lincoln’s war policies, the election of 1868 was a referendum on Republican Reconstruction legislation. The Republicans nominated U.S. Grant.
This was in the tradition of taking the great hero from each of the great wars the United States had engaged in and running that person for president: George Washington from the Revolution, Andrew Jackson from the War of 1812, Zachary Taylor from the Mexican War, and now U.S. Grant from the Civil War.
The Republicans rode a platform praising their Reconstruction legislation. The only disagreement at the Republican Convention centered on whether or not to call for universal black suffrage, male suffrage, North and South. In the end, the convention couldn’t quite bring itself to come out directly for black male suffrage, and said only that the South would have to adopt black suffrage. Though the radicals and others in the party said this made the party look very hypocritical, they decided to leave it up to the northern states to decide whether they wanted to or not.
Common Questions about Reconstruction
These weren’t constitutional conventions dominated by black members of the conventions, as it would later be alleged by many who opposed Reconstruction.
The conventions wrote liberal new constitutions that included universal suffrage and were way ahead of many of the northern states in that regard. They provided for statewide public schools, as the South had always lagged behind the North in terms of its public schooling
The Fourteenth Amendment became part of the Constitution in the summer of 1868. Congress passed a concurrent resolution on July 21 declaring the amendment ratified.
