Opus 2014-145: 2014, 1860 or 1866, part 2 of 3

Elections have consequences.

Now we come to 1865, not an election year, and the issue of “what do you do with the freedmen?”  This involved the evolving concept of civil rights.  The South had lost the war.  The Democrats were definitely a minority party.  The thing that gave the Democrats hope was that the moderate Republicans were in control of congress and the White House.  At the end of the Civil War the moderate Republicans were happy to be winners and wanted to get along.  As a result they allowed the Southern states, still controlled by Democrats, to return to the fold with only lip service to protecting the freed slaves. 

You had two trends developing.  On the positive side, many of the freed slaves were highly skilled craftsmen.  They were the ones who had been the blacksmiths, furniture makers, carpenters and so forth because they had been trained while slaves.  Many set themselves up in business and began to do very well.  Thousands of people came from the North to try and give the new citizens the things they had been denied.  The Freedman’s Bureau was established to provide emergency food, jobs and education.  With no money to back the mandate these volunteers still started 4,300 schools and several colleges.  A lot of hope was visible.

On the negative side you had the emergence of the Black Codes, laws that had only one purpose:  Limit the liberty of the freed slaves and keep them slaves in fact if not in name.  Things got really bad.  This is where black Americans were not allowed to own property or have firearms.  They were forced back into menial servitude.  The white Democrats of the South knew how politics worked and they wrote laws that would keep them in power.  About the same time the Ku Klux Klan, again filled with Democrats, was organized to destroy those who could not be dealt with through the law. 

But an election was coming and elections have consequences.

To be concluded...

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