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After The Civil War and Reconstruction

The pains of the Civil War transformed into a healthy economic age. Americans move forward with changing technology in agriculture, trade, manufacturing, mining and communication. Railroad construction was stimulated and unified the economy. The world's people loved America and immigration soared. Cities were born as people moved to them for jobs.  The balance of America's power shifted perceptibly as city's influences surpassed agriculture.   Discoveries of age old material wealth in gold and silver spurred the nation's economy and growth, while the discovery of a new, black gold -- oil -- created entirely new businesses and opportunities.  And, now, it's time for a commercial break.  You can help keep these guides free by shopping at Dick's Guides Mega Mall 

The new age after the civil war created so much prosperity that it was and ahs been referred to as the Gilded Age.  But, all the gilding was not gold.  Some was quite dirty.  Click below to learn more about the gilded age and its dirty tarnish, the black soot of political dishonesty.

1 ... Politics prevailed over honesty.

The "bloody shirt" was a political tool waved by Republican politicians when they wanted to show support for (the bloody shirt of an Ohio carpetbagger was first waved by a Massachusetts congressman who originated this practice) and managed to provide all northern Republicans a way to obscure issues. Actually, Republicans were, depending on the issues, willing to champion black rights or the demands of white southern conservatives.

Grand Army of the Republic made veteran pensions a political issue.

2...The tariff was protective, even when protection was no longer needed. Democrats pretended they were for moderate tariffs, while those from the heavy manufacturing sectors cooperated with Republicans to avoid reducing tariffs.

3...Currency reform was championed by the National Greenback party. $450 million dollars of greenbacks were in circulation and legally prevented from being redeemed for species. Deflation existed. Many debtors wanted inflation. Peter Cooper ran as president for the Greenback Party and got 81,000 votes in 1876. By 1878 a new Greenback Labor Party got over one million votes and elected 14 congressmen. The Democrat and Republican parties were split. "Bourbon" democrats wanted species (it was good for the banks) and western Republicans wanted greenbacks and associated inflation (it was good for settlers who were debtors). Silver miners wanted to turn their silver into the government for good prices, but could not do so since the government went off the silver standard in 1873.

4...Civil Service Reform was recognized as a need by all, but politicians were reluctant to give up their power to give jobs to their pals and supporters. Inefficiency and corruption was rampant, especially in the collection of tariff duties at the New York Custom House where merchants were always willing to pay bribes, and politically connected clerks were always willing to accept them.

The federal workforce had grown from 53,000 jobs in 1871 to 256,000 at the end of the century.

Blacks After Reconstruction

No one with brains would have expected the past southern leadership to treat the ex-slaves properly, if left on their own. Sadly, the political scoundrels, always willing to make a deal for their own benefit, did just this, in the 1877 compromise. Hayes discovered very quickly that lying southern politicians would promise anything to get the federal government out of the south, and then — like many American politicians — do whatever they wanted to do. South Carolina Governor Wade Hampton lied when he "We ... will secure every citizen ... black as well as white ... full and equal protection ... of all rights .... under the Constitution. President Rutherford B. Hayes was either incredibly naive — or just another liar when he told black southerners to trust southern whites. The issue of trust has loomed large in recent politic, when the naive (or lying) George Bush said, trust me, "read my lips, no new taxes." The author of this text, John A. Garratty claims that "by December ... (Hayes) ... was sorely disillusioned," about southern white leaders. I feel Garraty is wrong to think Hayes could have been so naive — after all, Hayes had won the disputed 1876 election which indicated that he must have been much sharper and aware that Garraty credits him. Frederick Douglas, still fighting the fight for blacks after the civil war better described Haye's policy as "sickly conciliation."

Hayes 1880 presidential successor was John A. Garfield who also did not help the blacks. He excused his lack of enthusiasm for doing anything by stressing patience among blacks and their supporters, saying "Time is the only cure." President Chester Arthur actually encouraged anti-Black sentiment by giving federal patronage to anti-Black groups, in attempts to convince the anti-Black groups that the Republicans loved racists as much as the Democrats. By the time Cleveland got into office there was little federal government concern for the plights of southern blacks. While Garfield, Arthur and Hayes were Republicans. Cleveland was a Democrat. Party no longer mattered on black issues. Southern black issues became easy fodder for non caring politicians of both parties, who often still mouthed the right words about equality and constitutional rights.

White federal judges, appointed because of their political stature, quickly found that — "hey, these black people don't have any constitutional rights after all." Thorough and comprehensive studies of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendment enable these dumb (or dishonest) white lawyer-judges to decide. In Hall v. De Cuir 1878, white lawyer-judges decided the 13, 14 and 15th amendments did not prevent segregation on River Boats, because the Constitution forbade the federal government from interfering in interstate commerce. The Civil Rights Cases 1883 declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional, because the fourteenth amendment only gave blacks the right to avoid state invasions of their civil rights. Blacks, therefore, could not sue even racists and bigots for damaging discriminatory actions in the federal courts. Finally, to shut the matter down — hopefully forever — white lawyer-judges discovered tin Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that even in public and state accommodations (like school) Blacks were only entitled to "equal" accommodations. Indeed these lawyer-judges went so far as to state "if one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States can not place them in the same plane." (Guess which race was inferior according to these judges Darwinian interpretations?) Segregation was now totally acceptable in any states with enough powerful, bigoted and racist white politicians to write and enforce such laws. One dissenting white lawyer-judge, Justice John Marshall Harlan did not agree. He reminded his white lawyer colleagues that they had made a decision on social acceptability based on race which was not in the "color blind" constitution. He wrote, "The arbitrary separation of citizens, on the basis of race ... is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with civil freedom ... the interests of both (races) ... require the government shall not permit the seeds of race hatred to be planted under the sanction of law."

Justice Harlan's superior ability to read the Constitution did not sway the other white lawyers. Like many lawyers unable to find a loophole, they just made up their own law, helping to lay the groundwork for many cases yet to come, in which the personal prejudices and attitudes of judges would have more power than the common sense language of the law.

After 1877, while racist judges were still reinventing the Constitution, decent northerners (some who might even have been lawyers) did contribute through their churches and private foundations — like the Peabody Fund and Slater Fund — to black education in the south, at schools like Hampton Institute and Tuskegee Institute. To survive, these black schools needed to be docile, teach a black subservience philosophy, and train blacks for jobs as farmers and craftsmen. Emphasis on academics was avoided since such emphasis might have — God forbid — shown that blacks were not intellectually inferior to the whites. Such a discovery would cause the white racists politicians much consternation.

Booker T. Washington and the Atlanta Compromise

While right thinking, superior white Americans were keeping blacks and Indians in their proper place, things got worse. The superior attitude of whites became a self fulfilling prophesy. Blacks and Indians, because they were inferior, were denied equal opportunities in school, jobs and entrepreneurship. As the Blacks and Indians became worse off, he superior white attitude was reinforced. Some blacks got angry and demonstrated black pride. Others, like Bishop Henry McNeil Turner wanted to get blacks back to Africa saying, "there's no future in this country for the black." T. Thomas Fortune, editor of the New York Age and founder of the Afro-American League, wanted blacks to get together and demand "full civil rights," saying "if others ... use violence ... it's not for us to run away." But, militancy and separatism did not win the hearts of many southern blacks. The living standard of the average southern black more than doubled from 1865 to 1900. This infuriated southern whites, while blacks still fumed with resentment. In 1895 Booker T. Washington made his "Atlanta Compromise" speech saying "cast down your bucket where you are", in which he asked blacks to stop fighting segregation and second class education and get an education (he was the president of Tuskegee Institute) and he asked whites to hire his students to find themselves "surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law abiding, and unresentful people that the world has ever seen." This attitude delighted whites and won him financial support. As one black militant said Washington knew the wisdom of "sagacious silence."

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